On the monitor, Unislaves stood in concentric circles on the hilltop around the stable door, horns linked by beams of light. In the center, at the edge of the door, twenty centurions gathered the magic from their maniples and transferred the energy to Easy Money.

Lyra adjusted the camera controls to zoom in on him. His mane floated out from his neck, blond wisps hovering independently of any breeze. His horn glowed bright, then flashed with a layer of overglow, followed by a second and a third. A wide beam shot out from his horn.

“What’s he doing?” said Crispy, leaning over her shoulder. “Can you tell me what spell that is?”

“Hold on, hold on,” said Lyra, zooming out. “Looks like some kind of conjuration.”

A glowing diamond-shaped solid hovered over the Stable 93 door. A spiral groove dug itself into the diamond’s surface. Lyra didn’t realize what she was seeing until the drill began to spin.

“Oh fuck,” said Lyra, Crispy, and Vindaloo with one breath.

The drill lowered slowly until the tip touched the stable door.

A horrible screech echoed through the foyer. The walls of the security room began to shake.

“This is my fault,” said Lyra.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Vindaloo.

Lyra hung her head. “I showed them how to do that. When I was being tortured. They asked me about amniomorphic spells. They said they’d let me see my son if I cooperated. So I showed them the best ones I know. It seemed so harmless. It seemed really basic. But I know some really good ones that will let dozens of unicorns cooperate on a spell. Like this. So this attack? What happened to 114? This is all on me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Vindaloo.

Lyra looked up. Blinked. “But I caved under torture.”

“Everycreature caves under torture. That’s why they do it to you,” said Vindaloo. She hugged her. “I should never have let you go.”

“I know what an amniomorphic spell is,” said Crispy. “They’re a tool. Harmless to a pony with an innocent mind. It takes a monster to use one to build a stable cracker or a megaspell.”

Lyra pushed her face against Vindaloo’s hard chest. “A monster or Fluttershy.”

“Yeah, well.” Crispy whacked a hoof against the button of the PA microphone. “All right, my little ponies. This is it. Ponysmith’s troops are coming into the stable; there’s no way to keep them out. Some of you remember the last time someone tried to take over our stable. As tough a battle as that was, this one’s going to be worse.

“I’m not going to lie to you — we’re outnumbered, we’re outgunned, and there’s no place to run. Are you afraid to fight? I’ve got bad news for you — there’s no place else to go. This is the last chance: not just for you and me. Not just for the Minutemares. But for freedom in the wasteland.

“But we can win this fight. We can, and we will. And when creatures across the wasteland ask you if you fought the Ponysmith, you will show them your scars, and you will tell them, ‘I earned these at Stable 93!’”

“Nice speech,” said Lyra, after he released the PA button.

“Thanks. It wasn’t completely original,” said Crispy.

“We’ve got to get to our positions,” said Vindaloo. “Lyra, have you gotten anywhere on that helmet?”

“No,” said Lyra, honestly.

“Well get your ass in gear. We haven’t got much time.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Rainpril 9th, EOH 47, 3:00 AM

The sound of gunfire rattled through the walls of Lyra’s office like a thousand hyperactive jackhammers.

“All right! I’ve got something!” said Lyra, unplugging her PipBuck from the terminal and screwing the case back on. She entered a simple command, ‘order:status’ into her improvised interface and got a response that the Sombra helmet was awaiting instructions. She felt elated, and at the same time like she needed a bath. This wasn’t just a bad feeling about the helmet’s negative association; she could feel the residue of its dark magic sliding along the surface of her soul like an oil slick. “It’s working!”

Paneer squinted at the helmet, then at Lyra. “How can you tell?”

“Well, it’s talking to my PipBuck.”

Paneer pursed her lips. “It’s talking to you, but is it being honest?”

“Only one way to find out,” said Lyra. She looked over towards her smaller terminal, which they’d set to view one of the camera feeds from the atrium.

A little before midnight, Easy Money’s magic drill had torn through the stable door. He sent in a flood of unislaves backed by a withering fusillade of magic support. Over the intervening hours, the sounds of gunfire and screaming had drawn gradually closer while Lyra and Paneer struggled to hack the Sombra helmet. The atrium was the Minutemare’s last line of defense. While it was a great place for an ambush, with only one entrance from outside, it was also the final place they could mount a concentrated defense. After that, the stable broke off into a half dozen little complexes — maintenance, residential, storage, administrative, the technical wing, and the reclaimed secret stable. Easy Money could concentrate his forces against these one at a time, and clean out remaining resistance with minimal casualties.

Lyra couldn’t tell how the battle was going from the camera feed. She could see Vindaloo, ensconced in cover on the atrium mezzanine with the anti-machine rifle. The minigun and the fifty caliber machine gun had been deployed in the foyer; with those presumably lost that rifle was the last weapon the Minutemares had that could be relied on to take down a centurion or penetrate Easy Money’s shields.

Except for Little Macintosh, which Lyra had lent to Vindaloo as well.

Aside from two burned-out power armors on the atrium floor — impossible to tell if they were friend or foe in black and white — there was no sign of Easy Money or his centurions. Instead, a swarm of unislaves tore away at Vindaloo’s cover with magic bolts and telekinesis. Minutemare small arms fire tore them down, but their casualties were instantly replaced from an endless pool of ponypower.

“Fuck this death trap,” muttered Lyra. “Okay, I’m trying the ‘order:remove’ command I coded. Let me know how the metrics look.”

“Any time, now,” said Paneer, glaring at the monitors.

“I’m doing it!” The captured Sombra helmet stared at Lyra, implacable in its refusal to do anything mystical. “Fucking Luna ream my ass with a minigun, what the hell?” At least the damn thing could have smoked and whispered seductive imprecations like it had a half dozen times already today. On the monitor, the battle continued uninterrupted. “Paneer, what happened?”

Paneer pushed her mane out of her eyes with her flipper and scowled at the screen. “I don’t know! I see where you made the input, but it just ignored you.”

“Well, nopony’s wearing it. Did the signal go through to the other helmets?”

“It looks like it did. See?” She pointed at one of the graphs on the screen. “But nothing happened to them, either.

Lyra tossed her PipBuck on the table. “What are we doing wrong?”

“The helmet can’t exactly take itself off, can it?” said Paneer. She hopped out of her chair and lifted the helmet in her magic. “Let’s test it on me."

“Paneer, no!” said Lyra, plopping a force field between her apprentice and the helmet.

She pushed her face stubbornly against the implacable shield. “We gotta test this! You’re the one who knows how to code, and I’m the only other one here!”

“I can’t let you do it,” said Lyra, picking Paneer up and putting her back in her chair.

“Why? Because I might get hurt? Or killed?” She waved at the camera feed. “Just let me do this!”

Lyra looked at the helmet still hovering in the middle of the room. She looked back at the camera feed. Nothing on there but ranks of unislaves hurrying across the atrium. She nodded sharply at Paneer, who nodded back and levitated the helmet onto her head.

The helmet snapped down onto Paneer’s skull like a fat black tick. Behind the visor slit, her eyes glowed lambent green.

“Oh no. Oh no no no no,” said Lyra.

Paneer’s horn, poking through its slot in the armor, glowed feebly, sparks of raw magic dancing off it, and skittering across the floor.

Lyra entered ‘order:remove’ on her PipBuck.

Paneer did not remove her helmet.

Instead, she jumped at her. She landed on her back — her slight weight wasn’t enough to knock her down, but she raised her helmeted head and knocked it against the back of Lyra’s skull.

They both fell to the ground, rolling over and over. Lyra couldn’t get a grip on the helmet with her magic. She wedged her hooves under the edge of the helmet and pulled up, wrenching it free.

“I’m sorry! I’m Sorry!” wailed Paneer, burying her face in Lyra’s chest ruff.

“It’s my fault,” said Lyra, holding her close as they lay on the floor. “It didn’t work and it’s my fault. I’m so sorry. We won’t do that again.”

Paneer pulled back and looked up at her. “We have to, Lyra. We have to keep trying until they come to kill us.”

The door of Lyra’s workroom slid open. “Am I interrupting anything?” said Easy Money.

Lyra startled to her hooves as the door slid closed behind him. Paneer darted away to hide under Lyra’s cot. Lyra had given Vindaloo Little Macintosh for the battle, but her 10mm rested on the work table. She whipped it off the table with her telekinesis, activated SATS, and fired three shots at his head. He raised a shield with barely a flicker of glow from his horn, and the bullets ricocheted around the room. Lyra switched to magic bolts; they evaporated against his shield like smoke.

She gritted her teeth and summoned a serried row of her magical lyre wires. She didn’t know how to make those move, so she conjured them right through where his head was. He danced back before her spell was complete; one of the invisible wires sliced away a tuft of his forelock.

He slammed a force field down on her face and pressed her against the rubber nubs of the non-slip floor. “Are we done?”

“No,” said Lyra, struggling to breathe against the pressure of her force field.

Easy Money shook his head. His usual punchable smile slipped into a condescending frown. “Why not? What have you accomplished here? What did you gain by running away from me?”

Lyra didn’t respond. Just watched him. The force field against her face distorted his image.

“Let’s see. We know your son helped you. So I’ll be torturing him when I get back to Sawhorse. And you lead me to the Minutemare’s last hideout. We would have found them soon anyway, but following you brought us here that much faster. And of course, the caul spells you taught me gave us a way to get inside stables. So now your friends are all dead or dying. The Minutemares have cleared out most of the raiders in the area for us, so after this, we’ll tidy up Rarity’s pathetic little playhouse, and then we can focus on the alicorns.

“You’ve given Ponysmith his victory. You should be proud.”

Lyra shrieked and summoned a wedge-shaped shield in between his force field and her body. She wrenched the field aside, rolled away, and picked up her gun with her magic.

He slapped her down with another force field. “I’m sorry. Do you have a plan? I could just turn off your magic with my PipBuck, but it’s not worth the effort. It’s easier to keep countering you. You’re strong, but you’re no match for me.”

“What do you want?” said Lyra. Tears of pain and humiliation shot down her face as his force field bore down on her body, pressing her against the floor, making her bones creak. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

He tilted his head to one side. “Well, I have some free time. This battle’s essentially over. And I’m very upset that my work with you turned out so poorly. You helped us, sure. But I had such high hopes for you. You were going to be my greatest accomplishment — Celestia’s own student, turned into my faithful lieutenant.

“It’s a bit petulant, but can you blame me? How would you feel if your student turned her back on you?”

“Go away!” Screamed Paneer from under the bed.

Easy Money leaned down over Lyra. “I like her. She has spirit. It’s a shame I have to kill her. I tell you what — let’s make a deal. Remember that thing I promised never to do to you? Well, you’re not my type. But your son is very handsome. At least, he is right now. Maybe not when I’m done with him.”

He dismissed his shield and kicked the 10mm pistol over to her. “Shoot yourself, and I won’t make him my toy. And as a bonus, I’ll take your apprentice over for you. She’ll be in good hooves with me.”

Lyra scrambled to a sitting position and grabbed the pistol with her magic. She aimed at him. He smiled at her, eyes tolerant.

The cot rattled as it flipped to one side and bounced off the wall. Paneer rose into the air, mane waving as if underwater, eyes glowing. Overglow shone from her horn.

Easy Money sighed theatrically and slammed her against the wall with a force field. She fell in a heap on the floor. "No time for that, foal. You can find your special talent later."

“You bastard,” growled Lyra.

“It’s not my fault. I told you to kill yourself, and you deliberately disobeyed me. Look what you’ve done by resisting me. Look at the damage you’ve caused.”

Lyra looked at the pistol lying on the floor. It was worse than Easy Money knew. She’d started her life with so much promise. The only thing of value she’d ever built had been her family, and now that was gone. Her husband had left her — why? — her son had become a fascist. She would only hurt him more by continuing to resist.

She’d let the wasteland make her a killer. What was one last murder on the way out?

She picked up the gun and entered SATS. It gave her 95% to hit her own head.

“I’m sorry, Paneer.”

She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun boomed loud in her ears.

She felt nothing. Saw nothing but darkness. Heard nothing but a faint ringing tone.

Who knew death had been so easy all along?

She noticed she was still breathing. She opened her eyes and tried to make sense of what she saw.

A glow the color of Paneer’s magic tinted her vision green. Paneer hung in the air again with her eyes glowing. Lyra’s pistol still pointed at her own head. Easy Money stood slacked-jawed, a red 10mm hole in the middle of his forehead: Lyra’s bullet had ricohetted of Paneer’s shield and hit him in the face. “Mother,” he said. “What have I done?” And then he fell down.

Lyra rushed over to Paneer. “Are you all right? Are you all right?”

“My first kill,” said Paneer, falling to the ground with a thump. Then she gasped. “Oh my Harmony, my cutie mark!” A glow encompassed her hips and faded to reveal a pony skull, facing the viewer, with a rose blooming in the center of its forehead.

“Whoa,” said Lyra.

“It’s so beautiful!” gasped Paneer.

“Are you hurt?” said Lyra.

“Nope,” said Paneer, staring joyously at her own butt.

Lyra looked hesitantly at Easy Money’s corpse. They’d beaten him, but it didn’t matter — he’d said the battle was over, and she and Paneer were only safe in here until one of his centurions stopped to open the door and see how their commanding officer was doing. They’d failed to hack the Sombra helmets, and now they needed a plan to escape the stable alive.

Then she noticed something: the corpse wasn’t a corpse. He was still breathing. Unconscious, brain-damaged, probably a vegetable for life, but still alive. She rushed over and grabbed his limp foreleg. His PipBuck reported that his head was at 0% condition, but he was still logged in.

She navigated to the Unislave control program. It was still active. Where was the command to make them remove their helmets?

“Oh. I’m an idiot.” That was why her code hadn't worked. There was no such command. Why would Sombra have included that in the design? These helmets were never meant to be taken off, except in death. No wonder ‘order:remove’ hadn’t worked!

She bit her lower lip and scanned through the other commands. ‘Halt’ and ‘Hold Fire’ ought to buy the Minutemares some time. And because Easy Money was in command of this legion, he had the option to override his subordinates and issue these commands to the whole army.

So she did that. It took less than a minute for two confused centurions to show up at her door.

“We surrender,” said Lyra, kicking her pistol over to them and holding her hooves in the air.

“What happened to him,” said one of the centurions, helmeted head tilting to one side as she looked at Easy Money. His head was arranged so the wound faced away from them, and Lyra had cleaned up most of the blood.

“He just collapsed,” said Lyra. “He’s still breathing.”

The centurion stepped into the room, and her head came off as Lyra’s monofilament string cut through her neck. The other centurion staggered back, firing the dual combat shotguns mounted to his battle saddle. Lyra raised the shield spell she had ready and opened a firing port in it so she could blast magic bolts through it.

Her bolts only made dents in his thick armor, and she could feel her shield starting to give way under the concentrated assault of two fully automatic drum-fed shotguns.

She was starting to worry when the centurion’s left knee exploded in gore and shrapnel. He went down. Crispy, resplendent in Field Marshal Fizzlepop’s purple power armor, leaped on him to hold him down. Vindaloo rushed over, Little Macintosh in her mouth, almost as big as her whole head. She pressed the muzzle to the joint between the centurion’s helmet and his neck armor and fired.

“You’re alive!” said Lyra, checking up and down the corridor for red pips on her EFS before going out to greet them. Pips crowded the display, but most were a neutral brown. “The unislaves! They stopped fighting?”

“You took your time,” said Vindaloo, emptying spent brass from Little Macintosh. “Where’s my daughter?”

Max Level

New Perk: Important Wizard. Any further experience you gain is divided amongst members of your faction.

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