Firefly spat, and spat, and spat again. No matter her depth or quantity of expectoration, the acrid flavor of spent fuel lingered in her mouth. The stench was everywhere. Her mane felt gritty and sooty and her coat surely reeked of exhaust as well. At the very least, however, the mask was off. Humidity and heat only compounded the obstruction presented by the respirator’s filters. Having the blasted mask around her neck was far less aggravating than having it on her face. Finally free from the constraints of her filtered muzzle and the hellish heat of the Abyss, Firefly took a deep breath of the fresh surface air.

They had not even been below for very long, but the working conditions dictated fast rotations and quick work. More accurate sensors from the arcanology team had pegged the gas concentration even higher than they’d originally thought. Firefly wasn’t one to delve into numbers and formulae, but she knew enough to understand that breathing down there for too long meant certain death.

“Craziest thing I’ve ever seen and we’re sworn to secrecy,” Thunderlane muttered.

“Get used to it,” Sunburst snorted. “Once OGA gets their hooves in it, it’s buried and done. And if we spill, so are we.”

“Yeah well feel sorry for the poor bastards that are gonna be digging out the bodies,” Firefly said.

With not a Talon to be found, Firefly’s detail had been reassigned from guard duty to manual labor. Firefly was no stranger to getting her hooves dirty and any time spent not getting shot at was nearly as good as time off, but laying pipe and wiring fans and generators was not the R&R Firefly was planning on getting that day. The last several hours had been spent going in and out of the mine with loads of equipment and marching it in to assemble it by hoof in the absence of working machinery.

“Less bodies than fossils,” Eastwind corrected her. Despite her earlier apprehension, Eastwind seemed to have regained her usual demeanor. “These guys have been dead for longer than Luna’s been in power.”

Maybe thinking of them like old sea dragon bones and bits of petrified wood took the edge off? Firefly mused to herself. The chatter between arcanists had been of much the same tone. Scientific jargon was itself dry and uninteresting to Firefly, but their treatment of the excavation made it even more so. A mass killing was suddenly nothing more than another Tuesday at the lab.

“I’m no geologist, but don’t fossils normally take longer than that to form?”

“Well yeah by natural processes. When magic gets involved you get all sorts of weird timelines.”

“Still a shallow grave,” Firefly sighed. “Did they even start to get a count of how many were in there?”

“More than a hundred,” said Eastwind. “Less than a thousand.”

“So it was a massacre..." Thunderlane trailed off.

The four finally arrived at the pile of crates and equipment cases that served as a makeshift break room. Each flier took a seat, resting their tired and dirty hooves. The clink of canteens interrupted discussion until each flier had thoroughly drank their fill.

“Not much else it could be.” Firefly frowned. Upending her canteen revealed that it was empty. She made a mental note to pull refills from the ARC ship when they returned to CAP duty.

“So someone froze them all and left them in the Outer Rim?”

“Uh, hate to burst your bubble, but that purple glassy shit isn’t spell residue,” Sunburst cut in. “That’s liquified Crystal Pony.”

Thunderlane made an exaggerated face of disgust. “Gross.”

“The survey equipment from the Titan’s Keeper must have registered it as an aetherium vein,” Eastwind went on.

“Great,” Thunderlane grumbled. “Now I can’t get it out of my head that we’re running our ships on ground up Crystal Pony...”

“You’re welcome!” Sunburst nickered.

“As entertaining as that would be, it is impossible to confuse the two for anyone with a minor education in geology.” Atal chimed in from behind. “Geologically they have very different signatures. I suspect the drilling team investigated just as much in raw curiosity as they did the desire to locate a proper crude fuel source.”

As lead arcanist in the team, Atal was first off the elevator, leaving the rest of his subordinates to conduct the first round of unloading. The sorcerer-dragon was just as dirty and sooty as the rest of them, the ornate magical patterns that criss-crossed his scales uncharacteristically dull in the wake of dirt, exhaust, and hard labor. It was bad enough in her coat and mane; Firefly could only imagine the discomfort for a creature who could not so readily shed his coverings. With a friendly wave, he joined their circle, finding a seat next to Eastwind, directly across from Firefly.

“With the way Rafale was going on I thought they were never going to let you out of that hole, Atal.” Thunderlane nickered. “What kind of voodoo we got going on down there anyway?

“Even dragons need breaks,” Atal replied, his demeanor unfazed by dirt, grime, and danger, “not to mention the fact that we still have to finish venting the area of fumes. The last thing they need is a dead dragon on their hooves.”

“Go figure. How long are they gonna keep you?”

Atal clipped the respirator to the belt of his combat harness, exchanging it for a canteen. He took a deep, thirsty gulp before finally responding. “It’s difficult to tell. A full excavation of the entire site may take weeks.”

“Ouch.” Thunderlane grimaced.

Atal shrugged. “To be fair I won’t be on the ground for however many weeks it will be. They will likely be shipping it back to my lab at Topaz or in the interim the mobile lab on board the Majestic.”

“So while we’re getting shot at and freezing our asses off you get to sit in your cozy lab and go through magic fossils?” Sunburst said. Firefly shot him a dirty look, to which he replied only with a shrug of feigned innocence. Atal shook his head in dismissal.

“Were it so easy.” Atal sighed before taking another swig of his canteen.

Firefly’s ear twitched. A shade of dark seemed to have crossed Atal’s otherwise serene disposition. There was more, she was certain of it. “You don’t quite seem yourself, Atal. Everything all right?”

Atal looked past Firefly for a moment, staring into space for a moment before finally responding. “As a scientist, I try not to allow hunches and gut feelings to get in the way of proper analyses. But I’m going to be honest with you as a friend.”

The dragon leaned in as he spoke, as if letting them in on some great secret. “Something isn’t right about this place. I can feel it. I am sure you can as well.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s not one single thing,” Atal continued. “All the little things we dug up point to some uncomfortable conclusions.”

“The fact that this is a mass grave?”

“Not just a mass burial. Every single Crystal Pony here that we’ve dug up was killed in exactly the same way.”

“You mean to tell me this was a mass execution?”

“I have my suspicions. We found piled up armor and broken weapons near the edge of the substrate and the physique of these Crystal Ponies suggested they were all military.”

“What do you do when a captured unit is uncooperative?” Sunburst asked grimly.

“Lock them up?” Thunderlane’s attempt to lighten the circumstances fell flat as Firefly responded.

“Make an example of them.” Firefly growled. “Of course that begs the question..."

“Who were they fighting?” Eastwind finished.

“That’s the strange part,” Atal said, stroking his chin. “I can aetherically date these to about a thousand years ago. Lab tests will have to be done to give more precise numbers of course, but I am fairly confident of that date range given the level of preservation of the remains and the condition of the crystalline substrate. Of all the archives I’ve read on Crystal Empire history, there was no recorded conflict of such magnitude that Imperial soldiers would need to be deployed.”

“Sounds like a library trip might be in order...”

“That was the plan,” Atal nodded. “I have leads, but I am not certain enough of them to say much more until I have conducted further research.”

“What about Rafale? She has to know more than she’s letting on. Every question she asks is loaded. She has to know what’s really down there.”

“What’s to say she wasn’t looking for the fossils?”

“She didn’t bat an eye when we’d found them and she ordered further excavation instead of cleaning out what the drill had opened up. She’s looking for something else.”

“I cannot say anything. Rafale has not been entirely cooperative with my team, either. All we know is that we are to catalogue the fossils we find until we receive further orders.”

“Bitch,” Sunburst muttered.

Thunderlane had a million questions to ask, Firefly could see it on his face. But if the chief scientist was just as confused as they were, she wasn’t sure there was much more they could figure out on their own. What she did know was that everything went back to Rafale. The entire operation was just going to be one frustrating mess until she left.

“Hey, Atal!” All heads turned to the Abyss as a lone earth pony shouted over to Atal. “They need you back in the Abyss pronto! The techs found something!”

“Duty calls,” Atal said as he rose. He nodded quickly to Firefly. “Enjoy the rest of your break.”

“We’ll have to talk later,” she said. “I’m no egghead, but this is a welcome change from picking flak out of my haunch.”

“Commander Firefly.”

Firefly’s coat stood on end at the familiar voice. How had she snuck up on them like that? Firefly heard everypony coming thanks to senses honed by years of combat experience, but somehow, Rafale had managed to bypass all of it. Thankfully, Eastwind had a much cheerier greeting than Firefly was initially planning.

“Agent Rafale,” Eastwind declared with mock pomp. “Come to send us back into the Abyss already? We weren’t due to come off break for another thirty minutes!”

Rafale’s deadpan delivery could have been taken as comedy in any other context. “I am not so callous as to short change you for the sake of a few more fossils dug up this hour.”

“She’s a laugh a minute,” Sunburst said out of the corner of his mouth.

“So what brings you to our little corner of the break room?” Eastwind continued.

The “corner” was less a corner than one hastily organized cluster of crates out of many, all of which had been repurposed as gathering places for details on break during the excavation of the Abyss. Rafale’s arrival was puzzling to Firefly, as while they were near the Abyss, they were neither the most obvious nor the loudest. Rafale clearly had a purpose.

“I was merely inquiring as to the status of my teams.”

“Hon,” Firefly scoffed, “for a REIN operative, you’re a terrible liar. Why are you really here?”

Firefly’s words hung in the air like frosted breath in arctic chill. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thunderlane’s jaw drop. Sunburst bit his lip. Eastwind shook her head. Firefly noted their reactions, but never broke eye contact with Rafale. She was no Skywind. She held no power over her in administrative or personal influence.

Rafale paused for a moment, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Firefly struggled to read her, pick out chinks in her operative mask, anything that would make her more pony than machine. But whatever flicker of empathy Firefly thought she saw was gone when Rafale spoke again. “Then I will make no further pretense. Commander, I must have a word with you.”

“How much trouble am I in?” Firefly snorted.

If Rafale was bothered by the snark, she didn’t show it. She wordlessly turned on her hoof and trotted away, pausing only when she had traveled out of earshot. She turned back to Firefly, fixing her uncomfortable gaze upon her. Firefly sighed and shook her head. To her teammates she gave a quick glance of acknowledgement before joining Rafale.

“That much, huh?”

Rafale ignored her question, instead proceeding directly into her own questions. “You have served with Sunburst and Eastwind since the end of the war, no?”

“Rude much?” Firefly growled. “Don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to. You’re the one who read my file; you and everypony else with brass bars, leaves, and birds. What’s the matter? You think I’m a troublemaker? Bad example for the troops? Loose cannon? If you do, save your breath. I’ve heard it all.”

“Answer the question, si vous plait.”

“Celestia’s tits, Rafale, the least you could do is not treat me like a damn foal!”

“A simple yes would suffice.”

Firefly grumbled unintelligible curses as she brought her hoof to her forehead. Rafale was impenetrable. Through gritted teeth Firefly grumbled a response, “Yes.”

“And this Lieutenant Junior Grade Thunderlane, he was assigned to you about six weeks ago?”

Firefly paused. Why was she asking about Thunderlane if this was supposed to be about her own history? Firefly’s response was guarded, purposely casual and appropriately vague. “The kid? Yeah, he’s our rookie, though that’s changing pretty quick. Made ace two weeks in and isn’t showing signs of stopping.”

“Care to explain why prior to your deployment with Task Force Paladin you had no fourth flight member?”

Firefly rolled her eyes. This again? “We’re allowed to personally vet our new trainees and evaluate both their skill and their team chemistry. If they don’t pass muster, we send ‘em packing. Needless to say, no one passed muster.”

“Curious. Your previous record suggests integration was not an issue.”

“My previous record was during wartime. I didn’t have a choice then. Now I do and I have high standards.”

“Noted,” Rafale said. Her eyes flicked upward for a moment as if she were reading from some invisible script. “Your combat record is extraordinary. Multiple stars of all shades. Legion of Merit. Purple Heart with multiple stars. And of course the piece de resistance, the Sovereign Order of Celestia Invictus.”

The color drained from Firefly’s face. Why did she have to mention it? Why was everyone mentioning it? Why did it keep coming up? Firefly kept a stiff upper lip, but she could not mask the subtle quaver that began to creep into her voice.

“Medals mean nothing,” she rasped. “I just made sure I got out alive. Nothing more, nothing less.”

In spite of Firefly’s best efforts, Rafale saw her opening and pressed harder. “I find it extremely curious that you hold the highest award for bravery in the Equestrian military and yet nopony you are deployed with seems to know about it.”

“What’s it to you?” Firefly snarled back.

“It is nothing to me, personally.” Again, Rafale’s response was like a wall of ice. Firefly’s outrage burned mightily but ultimately fizzled against her unflappable defenses. “It is, however, relevant in making accurate assessments of character.”

Firefly bruxed her teeth. Rafale was firmly in control of the conversation and there was nothing she could do. Rage would do nothing, nor would violence. Finally Firefly took a deep breath and spoke. “Stop wasting my time, Rafale. If you’re going to say something to me spit it out.”

“Do you trust me, Commander Firefly?” Rafale’s inflection changed ever so slightly, the faintest hint of warmth creeping into an otherwise frigid disposition. Simultaneously, the perpetual physical chill that surrounded her seemed to lift.

Firefly’s reply was wary and completely incapable of concealing her surprise at the sudden change in tone. “Strange words coming from somepony with a home agency built on lying.”

“You may not trust my agency, Firefly, but that says nothing of the pony standing before you.” Rafale’s personal defenses remained up, but the chill in the air had yet to return. “I ask again. Do you trust me?”

Rafale’s response was confusing. Why would anyone from REIN ask if Firefly, of all ponies, could trust them? No one trusted REIN. No one. Most anyone who wasn’t in the shit would trust Firefly, either, but for different reasons entirely. Logic clearly made her question moot.

But body language said otherwise. Rafale had purposely opened up a vulnerability and subjected herself to criticism. Her flippant dismissal of the usual intelligence operative deflections and the fact that the frigid hell that followed in her wake had retreated clearly spoke the opposite.

There was a long pause as Firefly scrutinized Rafale’s face. Her deadpan expression remained. The same smileless mouth. The same unflinching muzzle. The same icy eyes that drilled into Firefly’s skull and dissected her bit by bit. But somewhere in those eyes was a faint flicker of something that wasn’t all deception and dismissal.

“No, I don’t trust you.” Firefly finally said. “I don’t trust you to talk to my team when we’re on R&R. I don’t trust you not to shaft us in front of Skywind.”

“Then I shall turn my attentions elsew--”

“I’m not done.” The outrage had subsided, leaving only a terse murmur as Firefly continued. “I saw that you weren’t afraid to get in the shit with the rest of us. I saw you lead your team in by example and not ordering them to what could potentially have been their deaths while you stayed idly behind. I may not trust you with friendship, but I trust you as a soldier.”

“Merci, commander,” Rafale said, seeming to barely acknowledge her response. “This has been most enlightening.”

Firefly sighed. Was that it? Yet another waste of her time, effort, and friendship. “Can I get back to my break now?”

“Oui.”

Without waiting for proper dismissal, Firefly spun on her hooves and began to trot back. She stopped only when Rafale cleared her throat close behind. “Can I help you?”

Rafale stepped close, closer than Firefly was comfortable with, close enough to whisper in her ear directly. “I can say this and only this. There is more going on than you can see right now. You may not understand it, Firefly, but I trust you to do the right thing when the time comes.”

“Listen here and listen good!” Instantly, Firefly hooked one leg around Rafale’s front right leg, pulling her in. She jammed her free hoof squarely into Rafale’s ribs and looked her dead in the eye. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Rafale, and I don’t know why you’re including me in it, and I don’t care. Do what you want with me. I already know I’m nothing to your kind.”

A fire burned in Firefly’s eyes and a beastial rumble lofted the words from her throat. “But if you hurt my team -- my friends -- I swear...”

Each word was punctuated with increased pressure to Rafale’s ribcage. “I. Will. END. you.”

A faint flush of color peppered Rafale’s cheeks, surely a twinge of embarrassment at being caught entirely off guard. But just as suddenly as it set in, it vanished, leaving the familiar stony face of the unflappable REIN agent. “Noted. Enjoy your break, commander.”

Frustrated, Firefly let her go with a guttural snarl. There were far more questions than answers now and it seemed that it would only get worse from here. Firefly continued to grumble unintelligible curses under her breath as she trotted back to her seat.

“Yo, jefa!” Thunderlane called out, trotting up to meet her. “What was that all about?”

“Usual OGA shit, kid,” Firefly grunted. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure about that? You looked like you were about to beat the shit out of her!”

“I was.”

Thunderlane appeared taken aback, just as much from Firefly’s words as by her completely deadpan expression while delivering them. He cocked his head to the side for a moment, confused, before finally uttering, “Harsh.”

Sunburst remained on his crate, but Eastwind immediately stood upon Firefly’s arrival. She looked Firefly up and down, a scowl crossing her as she stepped up to her wingmate. Firefly flinched as Eastwind’s tender hoof came to rest on her shoulder.

“You know that thing you do where you worry me?” Eastwind said, her snark mixing with genuine concern. “You’re doing it again!”

“Now is not the -- ”

The sudden blare of the elevator klaxon drew all eyes to the entrance of the Abyss. Grinding gears echoed from the belly of the earth, finally crunching to a halt as the lift platform topped out. A pair of earth ponies hastily dropped the gang plank with a loud CLANG. There were no flames, no smoke, and no sound of explosions or other disastrous events, but with the sheer alacrity with which the crew acted, it would have been difficult to tell there wasn’t.

“Wait.” Firefly squinted at the elevator. “That’s Atal’s team..."

Sure enough, the sorcerer-dragon and his gaggle of ponies and griffons filed off the lift platform. Their arrival was just as hasty as Atal’s prior departure; indeed no one had bothered removing their respirator before working to drag the large and conspicuous crates off the lift. With hardly a word, the arcanology team split off into pairs and began dragging the crates off the lift. Though they rapidly disappeared behind the bulk of the Keeper it was apparent that they were heading toward the landing pads.

“Well those guys are certainly in a hurry..." Thunderlane mused.

“Commander Firefly!”

“Rafale?” Firefly was now more puzzled than annoyed. Something had changed in the intervening time; something big. “What the hell is going on?”

“Come with me.”

“This appears to be the safest route back to Topaz.” Roshina pointed a claw at the blue pencil marking she had just drawn.

“A travel time of four days is unacceptable.” Rafale shook her head immediately. “Find us a faster route.”

The last hour had been a blur. One moment Firefly had been picking soot out of her teeth and the next she was aboard a corvette arguing with Roshina and Rafale over map coordinates. The ARC ships of Timberwolf, Manticore, and Hydra were already airborne, hovering two thousand meters above the oasis on full combat alert. Firefly could see them floating nearby out the portholes of Rafale’s corvette. Rafale revealed few details about their mission, but from what Firefly was able to gather, there was cargo that needed to be taken back to Topaz ASAP and no one could agree as to how to get it there.

“You want fast?” Firefly traced her hoof over the map, outlining another route to the north. “We head north until we hit Nopony's Land. Then we head east, hugging the mountains until we clear this entire range. After that we book it straight back to Topaz.”

“Yes it is fast,” Roshina said. “But also dangerous. This route skirts the zone between the battlegroups. We’ve already received reports of skirmishes breaking out between Paladin CAPs and Talon scouts looking for an exposed flank. I’d rather not attract attention if we can avoid it.”

Firefly’s eyes darted over the map once again. The Titan’s Keeper was marked near the center of the southwest quadrant of the map. To their northwest and northeast were wooden chips respectively emblazoned with the emblems of the Majestic and the Ward of the Empyrean, indicating the relative positions of the fleets that had moved on after the seizure of Azura. Their options were twofold: take Roshina’s southwest route, which would keep them safely in Alliance territory, or skirt the battle zone in the interest of shaving off travel time. Neither seemed to please Rafale.

Rafale scrutinized the map, taking in Firefly’s suggestion before shaking her head again. “I do not have capital ships available to escort us. Going through Nopony's Land is not an option.”

“Then we are at an impasse,” Roshina said. “We could attempt stratospheric overland flight due east, but that would advertise our presence to every Talon radar in the region. We’re fast, but not fast enough to outrun artillery and missiles.”

Stratospheric overland flight, or “going strato” in flier parlance, was the perennial third option. Over long distances, going strato in an airship was very fast and efficient, but felled by one fatal flaw. Stratospheric flight meant zero radar masking, meaning any ship traveling overland had nowhere to hide. If they went strato, they’d have every radar aimed gun and missile trained on them until they made it back behind Alliance lines.

Firefly looked to Roshina. “I doubt it if Rafale wants a strato run in any route we lay out.”

“No.” Rafale shook her head. “This needs to be done quietly if possible.”

“Told ya.”

“I’m sorry, Agent Rafale, but with your parameters, I’m afraid we have no truly satisfactory options,” Roshina finally said. “You can have it delivered quickly or delivered safely, but not both.”

“Wait a minute..." Firefly tapped her chin. Quickly grabbing a pencil, she moved to a spot in the eastern mountains and circled a set of coordinates. “Roshina, do you remember scouting this pass just before we hit Azura?”

“Yes. I also recall that we abandoned it because it was not large enough for any of the capital ships.”

“Capital ships, no. But what about ARC ships?”

“It might be a tight fit, but I believe it’s possible.”

Rafale’s brow furrowed ever so slightly. “That is still within the boundaries of Nopony's Land.”

“If you want to be anal retentive about it, yes,” Firefly sighed. “But the mountains give us a huge radar mask. If we stay low and move quick it saves us two days and keeps us off radar. Nopony will know we were there. That is what you want isn’t it?”

Rafale’s eyes flicked back and forth, her muzzle wrinkled ever so slightly, and her hoof tapped on the deck as though she were peeling apart every conceivable tactical scenario that could occur en route. Finally she looked to Firefly.

“Fine. Commander Firefly, you will lead Timberwolf, Manticore, and Hydra teams through the canyon with the cargo. Commander al-Majed, I want Typhon unit to screen them from the north and be ready on QRF duty. If any Talons attempt to cross the line, terminate them.”

“Understood. I will brief my team and depart immediately. Safe journey, Firefly!”

“Same to you.” Firefly nodded in acknowledgement as Roshina strode out the hatch. Now only Firefly and Rafale remained, aside from the ARC crew. Firefly trotted up next to Rafale, giving the map one last glance before addressing her. “So are you going to tell me what’s in the box?”

“That’s classified.”

“No shit,” Firefly spat. “No need to be patronizing. My unit has the clearance.”

“That may be true,” For the first time since they had met, Rafale sighed, drawing a double take from Firefly. “But now is neither the time nor the place.”

There was a beat of awkward silence before Firefly could muster a reply. “Didn’t we discuss this ‘trust’ thing already?”

Rafale gave her a sidelong glance. “I promise I will explain soon. But right now time is of essence.”

“A promise?” Firefly raised an eyebrow. “Are you feeling all right, special agent?”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing,” Firefly said as she trotted to the hatch. “I’ll go brief my team. We’ll be under way in ten.”