Orange lights flashed through the view-slits of Baby’s armored windows. Lyra shifted him into reverse and slammed her hoof down on the gas. His tires squealed in the snow, skidding backward. The exploding mines lifted Baby into the air and slammed him down into the snow ten tails back.

“Everpony out of the car!” Lyra screamed, remembering her vision of Baby exploding. She kicked open the door and rolled into the snow, ears ringing. “Bon Bon! Bon Bon!” She turned around, ready to dive back into the car to save Bon Bon if need be.

“Bon Bon’s fine!” Vindaloo’s voice thundered across the snow. “Get clear!”

Lyra couldn’t see where Vindaloo’s voice was coming from, but she found some green pips on her EFS and ran towards those. She ran until the pips whipped around the compass dial and out of her sight. “What the heck?”

A pair of hooves grabbed her and tugged her down behind a low snowbank. Bullets whistled through the space where Lyra’s head had just been.

“Try a little less hard to get yourself killed!” said Vindaloo.”Fucking mines. We should have known!”

“Only mines,” said Lyra. “I’d have expected more.”

Blue Note’s voice came over the radio. “Road Warriors, this is Hot Wings. We have identified three snipers positioned over the command center door. You should have a clean shot at all of them. Marking locations on your PipBucks.”

“Something’s not right,” said Lyra. “Not enough of them are shooting at us.”

“Don’t jinx it,” said Vindaloo. She squinted down the scope of her anti-machine rifle. The rifle’s cavernous maw roared and flashed and somepony fell off the roof of the command compound.

“Hot Wings,” said Lyra, “This is Green Meanie. I’m seeing a large mass of neutral targets to the north on my EFS. What’s going on up there?”

“Unislaves. It looks like they lined them up between the front entrance and the prison and waited for you to deactivate them.”

Ignoring the rattling of her friend’s firearms and the noise of the bullets zipping overhead, Lyra looked at her PipBuck’s map. The three buildings of the Ponysmith’s compound lay in a triangle inside the outer fence — the prison/hospital on the northwest corner, the command compound on the southwest, and the steel mill/factory on the eastern point by the river and the railway. The road split in three ways from the front gate. Lyra had driven Baby through the fence south of the gate and made for the command center.

Pips representing several legions of deactivated unislaves ringed the prison in a west-facing semicircle — they might’ve lost their utility as soldiers, but they still made excellent speed bumps.

Even if Lyra were hard-hearted enough to try to drive through ranks of helpless ponies — she wasn’t — they would have gotten tangled up in Baby’s tires something fierce. The Minutemares would have been a sitting duck for the anti-machine rifles no doubt hiding in ambush all around the prison compound.

It was a trap. Ponysmith had guessed why the Minutemares might be here and made a gamble. If Lyra had stayed loyal to her son, she’d have gotten them all killed.

Ten tails away, a horrible metallic thump told her that something had hit Baby deep. Less than a second later, a blinding flash of light tore his chassis apart. A miniature mushroom curled up from Baby’s corpse.

Lyra’s body locked up; suddenly unaware of the cold, mentally somewhere between the present moment and the Bad Day. Were the power armor ponies charging at them across the snow centurions, or were they blue StableTec models? Baby’s flaming corpse lit the Ironworks compound as bright as day. Or was it autumn sunlight?

She tried to make sense of what was happening. The centurions, recognizing their mistake, had regrouped and were attacking from the north. The air shimmered above their vanguard, and a dozen blue alicorns dove down towards them, horns blasting. They each grabbed a centurion in their magic and pulled up, vanishing again before the centurions could target them.

The survivors turned and ran back towards the prison. Atop the command center, teleportation waste energy flashed twice behind the two snipers Vindaloo hadn’t taken out: a purple alicorn clearing the way for them.

“Come on!” yelled Vindaloo. Lyra could barely hear her over the screaming of the ponies in line for Stable 93. Vindaloo grabbed her and dragged her towards the stable entrance. “We need you to breach the door!”

Lyra stared blankly at the thick metal bottlecap-shape of Stable 93’s door. How could she…? But no, it was only a steel security bulkhead. She looked back. Toddler Bean watched her from his father’s back, needing her help. She was failing him again. She gathered some unexploded landmines from the snow and pressed one against the door, holding it in place with a force field. The blast, directed away from Lyra and her friends, tore the door apart. She followed the Minutemares inside, into the darkness, and away from Bean.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

They moved through the command building killing ponies and destroying automated gun turrets.

“We need to be thorough, and merciless,” Crispy has said, back at Hagsgate. “Just assassinating the Ponysmith won’t be enough, because somepony else could take over for him. We have to ruin as much of their operation as we can. Records, computers, even staff.”

Bon Bon laid her ears back. “We… We are to murder the staff?”.

“I’m not expecting you to, Bon Bon,” said Crispy. “And most of them will probably be shooting back at us, whether they’re trained soldiers or not. That’ll make it easier. But even if they’re unarmed, they’re complicit in the Ponysmith’s atrocities just by working for him. If you need to pull the trigger, and you have any doubts, think about Stable 114.”

They worked in two teams — Vindaloo covering the corridors, supported by Ivory and Bon Bon, while Lyra led Crispy and Rotgut in clearing the rooms. Lyra had salvaged a large number of the unexploded mined from outside; it was much easier, when they came to a room with red pips, for her to activate one, toss it in, close the door, and shield Rotgut and Vindaloo while they cleared out any survivors than it was to have a shootout with every single cluster of lightly armed staff.

At the first big cross-corridor, they met an attempted ambush. It would have worked better if they hadn’t been able to hear the talking and rustling of the ambushers from around the corners; better still if Vindaloo hadn’t found a way to bypass the ambush through a series of connected rooms off to the side.

Lyra kicked a crate out into the hallway with an illusionary Crispy around it — Illusions always worked better if there was something real to back them up. A single rocket lanced across from the left side of the intersection to the right, straight through Illusionary Crispy. The ponies on the right side of the corridor seemed to interpret this as an attack by Illusionary Crispy and opened up with everything they had. Most of that fire went to the ambushers on the left side. Judging by the screams some of that wildfire hit home. Then Vindaloo and Rotgut came out behind the ambushers on the left side. Lyra put a shield around Real Crispy and they waded out into the corridor firing. A few minutes later, the shooting was over.

“Scientists. Staff,” said Vindaloo, mentally counting the bodies as she reloaded her anti-machine rifle. “Not a single soldier. They were convinced we were going for the prison.”

Vindaloo was right. White coats. Black uniforms. Few weapons heavier than a 10mm pistol. Lyra felt ill with guilt at the massacre, but it was too late for doubt. She’d chosen her side. She was a Minutemare now. She needed to stick with them.

“They might have more firepower closer to the command center,” said Crispy.

“Lure us into a false sense of security by throwing away the lives of his noncombatants? That does sound like the Ponysmith,” said Vindaloo.

“Makes sense,” said Crispy. “We might want to try an indirect approach, then. Do you see anything on the PipBuck’s floor plan?”

Lyra scraped a hoof across the floor, regretting having ended up in the kind of world where ponies thought these sorts of sacrifices reasonable. A grated section of floor wobbled under her hoof. “Um, guys?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭
`
The floor vent led straight down into a corridor running east-west through the command center. The route eastward, deeper into the compound, was blocked by a locked door.

While Lyra hacked the RoanCo GuardBoy keypad lock, Vindaloo put her ear to the door. She whacked her on the shoulder. “Hey. Lyra. Listen to this.”

“Sir… I’m sorry, sir,” said a stallion’s voice from behind the door. His voice was nasal, his tone apologetic and defiant at the same time. “But I told you, I can’t do anything about the helmets. Yes… yes… I know sir… I don’t… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I told you we were only using them, not controlling them. I warned you that anycreature else with the skill and resources could figure out how to do the same thing!

“Yes… sir. Sir. No. If you’ll please listen to me? Yes, I can jam their signal. But I’d have to jam ours, too. And the unicorn volunteers would just stand there. Like they are now!

“No… I know I always say to try turning it off and then turn it back on again. But that’s not going to work, in this case. Sir… No sir, I don’t think you’re stupid. Yes, I know you’re a doctor. Yes, sir. I… uh… All right. No, I’ll try and think of something. Goodbye, sir.”

Then the sound of a forehead hitting a terminal. “Dakoblith!”

Vindaloo gave Lyra the nod. The door slid open. Vindaloo hurried in with a pistol in her mouth.

“I surrender,” said the stallion, raising his hooves in the air. He was obese, middle-aged, brown with a shaggy reddish mane going thin on top. He wore a lab coat with a name tag that read ‘B. Mash’. VIndaloo pushed her pistol against his snout, dimpling his nose.

“You work with those helmets! Tell me why I shouldn’t cap you right now, you slave boss scum,” said Vindaloo, voice muffled by the 10mm.

B. Mash glared down the barrel of the gun as though being threatened at gunpoint were an everyday experience for him. “Um, because it’d be a waste of your ammo. Clearly, I’m no use to Ponysmith. I can be useful to you, though. I basically run this place.”

“Yeah?” said Vindaloo, “Who are you? The janitor?”

“Bitch,” said B. Mash, “I’m tech support.”

Vindaloo glanced sideways at Lyra. Lyra nodded so hard her brains rattled.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The lights went out, and they came up through the floor grate in the midst of Ponysmith’s control room. The muzzle flash of automated turrets brought the only light.

“Oh hi!” said Button Mash over the command center PA. “Guess who, boss? Bet you wish you’d treated me better, now huh?”

Crispy went in first, straight up through the grate, and through a folding table covered in maps. He split the table in half with his head. Lyra went in right behind him, shielding the gap in his breastplate. His shotguns hammered out a screen of buckshot, reducing the unarmored personnel in the room to smears of chunky red paste. But his main role was to draw fire. Bullets sparked off his armor and the shield in front of him as Lyra lined up shots with SATS. She put one of Little Macintosh’s enchanted .50 rounds through the butt of a centurion who was still facing the room’s front door and kneecapped another.

That centurion rolled into his fall and rounded on Lyra, He swung an assault rifle towards her. Before he could fire, a deafening thump sounded from behind her and his armored faceplate caved in.

Vindaloo had entered the room.

In the chaos of darkness and gunfire, screaming and muzzle flashes, it was all Lyra could do to keep track of Crispy and keep his front shielded. While SATS allowed her to find targets in the dark, she was worried she’d pick the wrong armored kneecap and take out Crispy by mistake. She evaluated her targets carefully, and so only got off a couple of shots before a burst of rifle fire danced across the floor towards her in PipBuck-assisted slow motion.

She rolled out of the way, under a bank of control panels. Rotgut fired his assault rifle, killing the centurion who’d been targeting Lyra. He went down, and the room fell silent. That had been the last of them. The Minutemares had triumphed.

Rotgut whooped. “Talent supersedes, you motherfuckin’ sons of…” The back entrance to the control room slid open. Two magic bolts converged on his head, slicing his skull in half.

Ponysmith charged into the room. Fully armored, red bull’s horns glowing with violet magic, he terrified Lyra so much that she barely registered the bronze-armored centurion who came into the room behind him.

Lyra drew her power together. She tried to think which spell would be best to stop Ponysmith, but before she could a telekinetic grip ripped her out from under the control panel and slammed her against the floor.

“Why are you here?” screamed Bean’s voice. The bronze centurion yanked her up into midair. “Why aren’t you at the prison?”

“Bean?” said Lyra, eyes wide with confusion. “Why aren’t you in prison?”

At the edge of Lyra’s vision, Vindaloo, face dripping with Rotgut’s brains, whipped around towards Ponysmith, trying to aim her anti-machine rifle at him. But in the close confines of the control room, he was on her too soon. He raised a massive crimson-armored hoof and brought it down on her back. Lyra heard a gut-wrenching crack, and Vindaloo fell to the ground, motionless.

A wordless howl of loss filled the air. Crispy slammed into Ponysmith, his weight knocking them both to the floor. Ponysmith’s bull’s horn’s flared with violet light, but Crispy raised his head and slammed it down against Ponysmith’s face, breaking his concentration.

“You abandoned me! Again!” howled Bean, his voice trembling with grief and rage. He shook her in his magic. “Why didn’t you try to rescue me?”

Worry for Vindaloo and the rending metallic crashes from Ponysmith and Crispy pounding each other’s armored bodies into oblivion fled to the back of her consciousness as Lyra tried to process this. If there was an ambush at the prison… and Bean was here... that meant… “You tried to trick me!”

Lyra pushed at Beat with her magic, steadying herself in his grip. It was easy. Was she that much stronger than her son? “Well it’s good I didn’t because you would have killed me!”

“I hate you!” screamed Bean! “You’re not my mother anymore!”

“Well, you’re still my son! And you’re grounded!” She drew power to her horn, but even as she did, she didn’t know what she’d do with it. Little Macintosh? Magic bolt? Those wouldn’t hurt him much through his thick front armor. Mono-molecular lyre strings? That would probably kill him.

Bean grabbed for Little Macintosh, trying to rip it out of Lyra’s grip. Lyra, startled, pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the armored cone around Bean’s horn, causing his magic to falter. Lyra pulled together the strongest shield she could and slammed him against a bank of monitors. Broken glass glittered in the golden light of her magic.

With Bean stunned for at least a second or two, she turned her attention back to Crispy and Ponysmith. Their armor suits were wrecked, dented in dozens of places where they’d butted heads or beat each other with steel hooves. Every motion shrieked with the sound of twisted metal and bent gears. One of Ponysmith’s horns had broken off; it was full of wires and circuits inside. Raw magic crackled around the edges of the break.

What?

Lyra saw a place where the base of Ponysmith’s helmet had buckled and torn away from the ballistic fabric that connected it to his neck plates. A trickle of blood rolled down bare fur.

Lyra grabbed that bent edge in her magic and pulled. Ballistic fabric ripped. Metal screeched and tore. The red helmet came away, trailing wires that connected to the scarred forehead of an earth pony.

Ponysmith glanced sideways at her, eyes full of hate. Crispy’s armored face slammed down on his, caving in his forehead.

Bronze flashed in the corner of Lyra’s vision. She looked in time to see Bean fleeing out the way he’d come in. She raced after him, only to stop in the doorway and turn, hooves dancing anxiously beneath her.

Bon Bon was already up through the floor grate. Lyra saw her glance over Rotgut, see that he was beyond help, and hurry to Vindaloo’s broken body.

Crispy’s power armor bloomed, and he wrenched himself out of it, tearing his skin in several places where warped metal plates tried to hold him in. “Vindaloo! Vindaloo! No!”

Bon Bon held up a hoof. “Non! Do not touch her! She is alive, but her back is broken!”

Ivory's voice came over the PA. “Button Mash decoded their radio communications for me. Reinforcements are on the way down from Liberty Tree. Looks like you took out Ponysmith, but his XO put out the call, and it’s a pretty short train ride. We all need to get out of here.”

“I can’t feel my hind legs,” Vindaloo moaned.

“We need time,” said Bon Bon. “Vindaloo is badly wounded. I will need to prepare her to be moved!”

“Bean,” said Lyra, her mental calculus bringing her inevitably to the worst possible conclusion.

“Yes! Go! Get him!” said Crispy. “Stop the reinforcements if you can. I believe in you.”

Bon Bon glanced up from Vindaloo’s form. “I love you. Hurry. Aller avec harmonie."

Lyra found her way out the back corridors of the command compound and stepped into a cold night lit with flames — mostly from the north, where alicorns circled over the prison, trading fire with the centurions trapped inside. She looked around for Bean — her EFS helped her locate him; a single red pip heading for the towering blast furnace of the steel mill.

Max Level

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