Login

Reach

by ToixStory

Chapter 4: Chapter 3: Like A Rolling Stone

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Starlight and Staten took the journey to Horizon by hoof. The borough was on the edge of Gracia, near the industrial districts and dockyards. Starlight, even growing up on Fel Street, had heard the stories. The cutthroats, dealers, and smugglers had been regulars for the cautionary tales that parents told their foals.

Dingy tenement buildings leered above them, dark against the night sky. Most were sagging and aging at a rapid pace. None of the construction crews that kept the downtown modern and edgy came to the district. A few rusty cars rumbled down the narrow streets while ponies in long trench coats and low hats walked by, not looking anypony else in the eye.

Starlight became very aware of her bright pink jacket and kept close to Staten. The professor himself hadn’t said much on their journey across the city, just looking back over his shoulder every once in awhile to confirm that she was still following him.

Eventually, they came to a stop under a neon sign that glowed in a language Starlight didn’t know. Drops of rain hissed as they fell on it, though most of the storm had stopped some time ago. The professor leaned against the brick building and looked around.

“Why did we stop?” Starlight asked.

“Just trying to get my bearings,” he answered. “It’s been awhile since I was last here, after all.”

“You’ve been to Horizon before?”

He nodded. “Once or twice. You would be surprised as to what kind of jewels can be found here if you look hard enough.”

Starlight eyed the ruined buildings around her. “You’d think they’d stick out . . .”

Staten shook his blue-green mane, sending drops of water everywhere. More specifically, all over Starlight’s face. She grimaced and spit out what flew in her mouth. “Are you done?” she grumbled.

“There’s a bar not too far from here,” he said. “We should be able to find a smuggler or the like there.”

“Is it that kind of place?” she asked.

The professor smiled. “You can search across this entire planet, but nowhere else will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

“Oh.” Starlight paused. “Can we go somewhere else, then?”

“Just keep your head down and you’ll be fine,” he told her, continuing down the street.

With a sigh, the young mare followed. They turned on a street lit up by more neon and gaudy signs advertising cheap mares. She shuddered a little. The decaying sidewalks, thankfully, were empty.

The only ponies they passed were two stallions garbed in black, matching outfits and smoking against the side of a strip club. Their eyes followed them as they went past, but didn’t do anything more.

When they had passed by them, Starlight leaned in close and whispered, “What was with them?”

“IS agents,” Staten said. “Not looking for us, most likely. They’ll be there to watch out for the corner mares. Pay them no mind.”

When Starlight looked back, though, they were gone. She kept close to the professor for the rest of the journey.


The bar turned out to be the imaginatively named “Horizon Cantina.” It was a fat little building with a faded brick exterior and a single door that led further inside. The windows on the outside had heavy iron bars welded over them.

Staten strode in while Starlight did her best to disappear in his shadow. The interior was dark and hazy with cigarette smoke. The patrons didn’t look up as they walked in, but kept leaning forward on the large bar in the middle of the room or in one of the booths.

They walked over to the far end of the bar where the smoke was heavier, but the ponies there were in lighter clothes and at least looked somewhat amiable. The professor took Starlight by the shoulder and looked her in the eye.

“I’m going to go look for transportation,” he said. “You stay right here and go nowhere else, understand?”

“I’m not a kid,” she said. “I’m twenty-four.”

He snorted. “Right, sure. Just don’t go wandering somewhere.”

Before she could say anything else, he left, leaving her to sulk. Starlight leaned against the dirty countertop of the bar and surveyed the place. She’d seen places with worse atmosphere on a few lousy dates, but the clientele here far more lacking.

There was a pony with an eyepatch and a row of empty shot glasses in front of him to her immediate right. He was shouting to a buddy next to him, even though they were less than a petra away from each other. A few patrons glared at him, but said nothing.

Starlight watched as the stallion eyed her and did his best to smile. She ignored him. After a minute of this, though, he grew bolder. He scooted down the bar and nodded to her.

“My friend likes you,” he said.

“Well, that’s great,” Starlight said.

He coughed. “I like you too,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

She perked up a little at the thought. The only ponies who ever seemed to buy drinks for her had been the fat, nerdy types, and that was more for favors than anything else. Favors that she tried not to think about in civilized conversation.

Before she could decide, however, Staten returned.

“Ah, sweetie, there you are,” he said, placing a hoof around her. He smiled at the stallion. “My daughter’s just turned twenty today! Doesn’t she just look so mature?”

The stallion returned the smile and grunted something in return before turning back to his friend. Starlight growled and threw off the professor’s hoof.

“I had everything handled just fine,” she said.

“Did you?” Staten leaned over and tapped an old corkboard hung up on the wall featuring a variety of wanted posters. One near the bottom had a yellowed picture of the same pony with the eyepatch, and a reward of one hundred thousand rounders for his arrest or death.

Starlight’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

“Anyway,” he continued, leading her way, “I believe I have found us a transport out of Gracia. For a low price, too.”

“Who is he?” Starlight asked.

“You’ll see.”

They started for the other side of the bar, but before they got too close, they found their way blocked by a crowd of ponies. Pushing their way toward the middle, they found that the crowd was ringed around two stallions sizing each other up and preparing for a fight.

One wore a black jacket over a long white shirt that complimented his wavy, copper mane and the roguish smirk that played host on his face. The other had on a plain maroon shirt and brown suspenders over his sandy brown coat and chocolate mane. He was smaller and more rugged, but in the way that a truck looked more rugged than a sports car.

They squared up and grinned at each other. The bartender, from within his labyrinth of mixes and cocktails, called, “Alright you two, break it up!”

The rogue looked up at the bartender while the truck took a swing at him. The blow connected with the stallion’s right cheek, and he stumbled a bit before catching himself. When the truck came in for a kick, though, the rogue was prepared.

He thrust his shoulders into the truck’s midsection, sending them both to the ground and with the rogue ending up on top. With a few powerful punches into the prone stallion, the fight was over. The patrons mumbled and went back to their drinks after rounders changed hooves.

“Well, at least he can fight,” Starlight said.

“Were you watching the same fight I was?” Staten asked. “He just got his flank kicked.”

She whirled around. “Wait, you’re saying . . . we got the loser?”

“Evenin’,” the stallion said in a husky accent, ambling up to them. He spat a mixture of saliva and blood on the wooden floor and grimaced at it. “Damn, must be losing my edge. You get the girl?”

Staten nodded. “Redington, meet my daughter, Starlight. Starlight, meet Redington, smuggler for hire.”

The smuggler extended a hoof and smirked. “Call me Red.”

Starlight stared at it until “Red” sighed and put it back down. “So you’re going to be getting us out of the city?”

“Just as soon as we get on outta here,” Red said. “You’re looking at the best smuggler in all of Teton.”

“Well, I hope your driving is better than your fighting,” she said. “How much is my dad paying you, anyway?”

Staten coughed. “I have half the money now in bonds and credit, and will give the other half to him when we get there.”

“Speaking of which,” Red said, glancing down at his bare hoof, “it’s about time we got out of here. Not a good idea to stick around the late night crowd around here.”

“Agreed,” the professor said, making his way toward the door. Starlight followed with the smuggler in tow. He took a jacket from a coat rack by the door and put it on. It was an old airframe pilot’s jacket, with the fluffy down collar around the neck and patches up and down the side. Starlight fought the urge to roll her eyes.

Once back outside, Red turned left. “There’s a garage down this way,” he said. “I’ve got the Odyssey parked down there, gassed up and ready to go. Just follow me.” He went on ahead of them, allowing Starlight to drop back with Staten.

“Why, again, can’t we just take an airframe? Or even a train?” she asked.

“Security,” he said. “The IS is going to be watching every station in and out of the city. The only places they can’t watch at all times are the roads, and a smuggler is the only one who can get us through any checkpoints we might come across.”

“Yeah . . . but him, really?”

“I have a good feeling about him,” Staten said.

Starlight snorted. “Like that helps.”

“Don’t be so quick to knock it.” He laughed. “I said the same about you.”


A few blocks away from the bar, the trio arrived at a monolithic concrete parking garage that was at least five stories high at first glance. Starlight whistled as she craned her neck up. “Your car is here?” she asked.

Red nodded. “Parking’s cheap here. Too bad about the neighborhood, though.”

Sure enough, as they walked up the ramp to the first level of the garage, they witnessed a couple ponies scurrying away from a car with stolen wheels in tow. Starlight drifted closer to the professor.

The smuggler led them up the wide ramps of the garage, warning them to keep away from the cramped stairwells that any civilized pony would take. His voice echoed through the around the low-ceilinged tunnels.

After a while, Starlight’s legs began to burn and she found herself wheezing under her breath. Staten didn’t seem to be in much of a better shape, but they both managed to keep up with the silent smuggler.

Some time later, they arrived at the very top level of the garage that was open to the night air above. Moonlight guided them across the otherwise unlit surface until they reached the far end, near the edge of the platform.

Starlight stopped for a moment when it became clear exactly which vehicle they were heading toward. Not a sports car, not an off-road utility vehicle, heck, not even a sedan. Instead, just a great, big . . . RV. The ugliest part of an ugly house put on four tiny wheels, painted off-white with a dull brown stripe going around it. The thing sagged and looked to be on the doorstep of death itself.

“What a piece of junk!” she cried.

“Hey, this piece of junk has gotten me from Sethton to Gracia and back,” Red snapped, whirling around. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts. I’ve made a few special modifications myself. But, we’re a little rushed, so if you two will just get on board . . .”

He made a scene of opening the thing’s door and bowing for Starlight and Staten to get on. Before she did, Starlight noticed the name Odyssey etched into the side of the RV in sloppy red paint. She rolled her eyes.

Red tried to put a hoof on her shoulders and help Starlight up, but she threw him off and got in the vehicle by herself.

Inside, there wasn’t much to see. There were two plush seats in the front for a driver and passenger, a recliner to one side of the midsection, and across from that, a small kitchen table with wraparound couch. A bathroom near the back and a door leading to what Starlight assumed would be a bedroom completed the look. Starlight wrinkled her nose and took a step back from the whole thing.

“Where are these ‘modifications’ you were talking about?” she asked.

“Hey, I know she’s rough on the inside,” Red said, “but under the hood, she is one pretty lady.”

“Sure.” She sighed and shifted her bag to her other shoulder. “Is there at least somewhere I can put this?”

Red cocked his head toward the bedroom. “Throw it back there.”

Starlight, grumbling the whole way, walked on the thin carpet toward the rear of the RV. She refused to even think of calling it the Odyssey; it wasn’t deserving of such a name.

She opened the door to the bedroom and prepared herself for the worst. To her surprise, however, she found that the back bedroom was clean, if only because it was so sparse. Between two whitewashed walls were only a bed and a nightstand with a lamp and alarm clock on it, making the room the first part of the RV acceptable to her senses.

There was a sliding window at the back overlooking the city below the parking garage, and Starlight took the opportunity to look out it after setting her bag on the bed. The lights of downtown Gracia shined over the dullness of Horizon and reminded her that the city wasn’t always bad.

That idea was cut short, however, when she looked down. At the bottom of the parking garage were four police cars, their lights flashing in the gloom. They paused for a second, then started up the ramp.

“Uh, guys?” she asked, emerging from the bedroom. “Is it usual to have police come around here?”

“No, they usually stay away from these places to keep all the criminals contained or whatever,” Red said. “Why?”

“Well, they’re here now, and in force.”

Staten, sitting in the passenger’s chair, started. “It must be the IS,” he muttered, then turned to the smuggler. “How fast can you get us out of here?”

“Woah, woah, you didn’t say anything about being wanted,” Red said. “I don’t do fugitives. Especially not for the money you gave me.”

The professor shook his head. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” he said. “This isn’t just the regular police, but Intelligence Service agents. They’re going to seize this RV of yours too, and I don’t want to imagine what you’ve hauled in this thing.”

Red opened his mouth, then shut it and thought for a second. Without a word, he stuck a key in the ignition and started up the RV. The engine sputtered and coughed for a moment, then roared to life.

“You two might want to buckle up,” he warned.

Staten did as he was told, but when Starlight looked down at the other seats, she noticed none of them actually had a way she could restrain herself. In the end, she sat behind the kitchen table and hoped she could hold on.

The smuggler backed out of the parking space and set the RV in gear, heading down the ramp through the garage. The air seemed to stop moving inside the RV. Everypony clutched their seats and tried to look calm.

It didn’t help that the farther they went inside the parking garage, the lower the ceiling became until the top of the RV almost scraped against it. Still, the ride was normal until they got to the third level. Driving up on the opposite side of them were three cop cars with big searchlights. They were shining them into every vehicle in sight.

“Get down!” Red hissed.

Starlight threw herself down below the table and Staten ducked underneath the console. Red drove right on by the cop cars, keeping a neutral expression on his face. Even though his hooves started to shake, the police paid the RV no attention and let it pass.

There was an audible sigh of relief from the all three of the ponies in the RV once they had gone past. Red accelerated a little bit and zoomed down the ramps toward the exit of the garage.

Starlight watched out the front window for signs of an empty road ahead and freedom, but her heart sank when they came in sight of the exit. Two police cars guarded the entrance, and four stallions stood around them. They stared at the oncoming RV through reflective sunglasses, and held up their hooves to stop.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“The only thing there is to do,” Staten said. “Go on through it.”

Red smirked. “I like the way you think, old stallion.”

He slowed the van down until he was almost at a stop near the exit gates, but then, when the officers approached the RV’s door, the smuggler slammed on the gas and drove right through the police cars. The bulkier RV’s front smashed aside the cars with a grinding and crunching sound of steel on steel.

The surprised police officers jumped out of the way and the trio in the RV were free on the open road. Red gunned it down the street toward the highways leading out of the city.

“Starlight, go check for followers,” Staten instructed. “I have a feeling we’re not out of this yet.”

She scrambled into the bedroom and peaked out the rear window. Sure enough, flashing lights were coming from the parking garage. “They’re on to us!” she yelled back.

She was thrown off her hooves and fell onto the bed when the RV lurched forward. Instead of falling onto a soft mattress, however, whatever she hit felt solid and hard. Curious, she threw off the blanket to find that the center of the mattress had been hollowed out.

Inside, there were a variety of weapons ranging from pistols to rifles and everything in between, including a dozen or so grenades. There were also piles of ammo for all of them.

Starlight’s eyes widened as she looked at one that she thought to be a folded-up anti-material rifle. Before she could say anything, she was thrown against one wall when Red steered the bulky RV around one corner.

A grenade flew through the air towards her and Starlight cried out. She caught and bounced it on her hooves before she realized the pin was still in. She let out a sigh of relief. Then, the RV turned again and Starlight slammed against the bed.

To her horror, she looked down and realized that, somehow, she had managed to wrench the pin out in the last turn. She clutched the grenade to her chest to keep the lever from extending while she looked around for a place to put it.

Her eyes alighted on the window at the back of the RV.

While the smuggler continued to swerve the vehicle in and out of traffic, she scrambled up on the bed while keeping the grenade against her chest. She hung on to the edge of the window before wrenching it open.

The RV turned again and Starlight’s heart stopped as she lost control of the grenade and watched the lever extend out. Reacting as fast as she could, she grabbed it out of midair and slung it out the open window.

Outside, the grenade landed on the street just before the lead cop car that had been following them drove over it. The grenade exploded and sent the vehicle spinning out of control until it stopped, facing sideways and blocking the road. The cars that had been following behind it slammed into the unfortunate officer, further blocking off the road.

Red let out a whoop. “Great shot, kid, that was one in a million!”

Starlight let out a sigh and laid back down on the bed while the RV climbed up a ramp and onto one of Gracia’s outgoing highways.


Some time later, as they passed over the suburbs that lay in the swampy grasslands surrounding Gracia, Staten stepped into the bedroom.

“You did good back there,” he said.

Starlight laughed. “An accident, I can assure you.”

“Even so, we are now on our way without the IS. We might just be able to make it after all.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“To Serenity Valley,” he said, “and the cities of Skyhall and Amperdam. I believe you’re familiar with them.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. “That’s a long way.”

“Yes, but we’ll make it one way or another,” the professor said. “We have to. Now, would you like to come to the front of this vehicle and watch as we get on the Red Road for the first time?”

Starlight nodded and followed him up to the front seats. Looking through the massive front windows, she watched as the highway climbed up a hill and merged with other freeways and sideroads from all over the Greater Capital Area to become the Red Road, the massive highway that connected Teton from coast to coast. She had read about it in books before, but never actually seen it.

They crested the hill and Starlight’s breath caught in her throat. There, on the other side, was the massive raised highway that stretched on toward the horizon. Cars of every size and make plowed the dozens of lanes on each side in a never ending flow of traffic. Streetlamps as tall as the parking garage lined it and lit up the boggy surface that had worn black over millions of tires.

Far off in the distance, over grassy knolls and rolling hills that marked the outer reaches of Gracia, the sun had begun to rise.

The Odyssey drove on toward it.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4: Have a Cigar Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 6 Minutes
Return to Story Description

Login

Facebook
Login with
Facebook:
FiMFetch