A hot shower, a non-MRE meal, and clean uniform did wonders for Firefly’s mood. She would have preferred to have spent the downtime after their last mission hitting the heavy bag or calibrating a fresh repeater on deck, but it seemed Admiral Flyleaf had other ideas. Firefly sighed and hoofed open the hatch to the admiral’s ready room.

She winced immediately. Brilliant natural light pierced her eyes, forcing them closed until she pried them open once again. The armored blast covers of the admiral’s ready room were conspicuously open, seemingly for the first time since they’d gone to war in all but name.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, Firefly’s gaze fell upon a massive mahogany table dominated the center of the compartment. Chairs were eschewed in favor of heavy cushions which would be more comfortable for a pony to sit upon; the table’s height was adjusted accordingly. The rest of the chamber adopted a spartan aesthetic. A block of lockboxes and a desk with an amanuensis tablet sat quietly by the entrance to the Admiral’s quarters, but nothing else occupied the floor. Upon the table sat a slide projector. Following the pointing of its lens, Firefly could see a slot in the overhead where a screen could be unrolled for presentation purposes.

Other members of Firefly’s strike team had arrived ahead of her. Sunburst and Thunderlane chatted quietly at the table and Eastwind stood with her back turned, gazing out into the brilliant blue astern. The hellstorm that had borne them on their return trip had finally dissipated, leaving nothing but clear sky for kilometers around. Firefly trotted toward the viewports.

Eastwind turned at Firefly’s arrival, offering a wan smile. “Somepony had their beauty sleep interrupted!”

Despite the gravity of their summons, Firefly cracked the faintest smile at Eastwind’s jest. “Sleep is for the dead!”

“Speak for yourself!” Sunburst half-scoffed, half-yawned. “I would’ve bought the XO a round just to get another hour of bunk time! One day you’re going to realize you don’t run on LACE fuel, gunpowder, and adrenaline.”

“Maybe when I’m old, Sunshine,” she retorted with a smirk.

“Aw, you do care!” Thunderlane laughed. “You’re going soft, abuelo.”

Eastwind nickered. “He hasn’t had his medicine yet. Not that we’d want him to have it on a ship full of nubile junior officers!”

“As if I needed the meds!” Sunburst swiped a hoof in the air dismissively. “I did walk off a cannon round to the neck back at Onyx! I’m spry and virile as the day I walked off Manehattan U’s campus!”

“Sunshine, that trick might work on the nuggets, but it won’t work on us. We were there, remember?”

“Just keeping you on your hooves, Windy!”

Eastwind wrinkled her nose in mock disgust and raised her right wing, pulling down her pinion feathers one by one until only the middle one remained. “I got gunfire and Crystal ponies back at Crystal Spire to do that for me.”

The squad erupted in laughter. For a moment, the weight of the operation seemed to lift. Firefly breathed slightly easier.

The clanking of the hatch drew all eyes to the newly opened portal. Typhon unit filed in, quickly followed by Rafale. On cue, the rear door in the ready compartment opened and Admiral Flyleaf stepped through. Silently, the Timberwolves rose to attention and saluted.

“As you were.” She ordered. “I apologize for curtailing your R&R, but time is at a premium. Let’s not delay any further. Typhon unit, have a seat. Special Agent Rafale, what can your team give us on Hecate’s intel?”

Roshina gave Firefly a nod of acknowledgment before taking a seat at the table. Grana, Khog, and Zaan followed suit. Even seated, the dragons towered over the ponies, the juxtaposition nearly comical were it not for the grim visages that adorned the faces of all. Only Rafale remained standing.

“Nothing yet.” Rafale began. “The amanuensis plates are heavily encrypted. But using the code header provided by Steelfeather and the Pyrium radio we recovered from the canyon, we were able to discover a Talon numbers station. Analysis of the codes transmitted revealed a sequence that can be used to enact decryption. We should have a solution within the next 48 hours.”

“Will that intel still be current?” Firefly asked.

“For the time being, yes. I believe we have a small window within which to act before Cindermane suspects that her sniper team was compromised. Fortis after all detected no radio traffic coming from Windwright’s team before or after the skirmish at Amore’s Rest. We also took great pains to mask our radio communications and radar signatures up to and after the battle.”

“How long do we have?”

“No more than seventy-two hours. After that, they will likely force a cipher rotation when they realize their communications have been compromised.”

“We will address that in due time, Special Agent.” The Admiral waved her on. “Please continue.”

“All that being said, I believe we have been able to glean some information from the format of the documents.”

Firefly leaned in. “What have we got?”

“Meta-analysis indicates that the information on the plates is military communique in a form consistent with Aquellian National Army documentation prior to the war. You all should recognize this.”

Rafale floated upwards with dainty flaps of her wings and pulled the projector screen from the overhead before floating over to the slide projector. She produced a bundle of slides from her saddlebag and flipped the projector on. The first image showed a photograph of glowing symbols on the surface of an amanuensis tablet, the same tablets that Firefly’s strike team had recovered from Amore’s Rest.

The symbol strings themselves appeared to be complete gibberish; a random jumble of numbers and letters in a mixture of both Aquellian and Equestrian script. Upon second glance, however, it was clear that the strings were arranged in a very particular manner upon the tablet. As Rafale cycled the slides and more of the text structure became visible, a realization dawned upon Firefly.

Firefly pursed her lips. “It’s an operations order. This must be Cindermane’s playbook.”

Admiral Flyleaf nodded. “Cindermane runs her outfit with military precision and leadership. It would make sense for her to pass down OPORD-style documents to her subordinates.”

“I think we all know what the final results of the decryption will be.” Sunburst muttered.

“Let me know the instant you have something.”

“Oui, Admiral.”

Admiral Flyleaf turned to Firefly. “What did we get from the sniper hide?”

Firefly waved her hoof to Eastwind. “Lieutenant Eastwind handled documentation of our findings after we returned. I think you’d rather hear it from her than me.”

“Lieutenant?”

Eastwind cleared her throat and spoke. “Scraps. Not much was left after deployment of explosive rounds and the grenade from Windwright.”

“What of Windwright’s crew?”

“Nothing of interest from her squadmates, Admiral. Windwright herself has a few scraps that look like ballistics calculations. The team cased the entire plaza and dialed in ranges for the Hushed Empress and the admin building. Rafale, the next slide of you will.”

The slide projector advanced under Rafale’s hoof, showing a spread of bloodied and crumpled personal effects from Windwright and her squadmates. Among them were several red-stained papers with numbers and Aquellian script scribbled upon them; the calculations to which Eastwind referred. Other knicknacks from her bags and splintered bits of weapons and personal effects from her squadmates made up the remainder of the evidence slides.

“Atal is looking over the batch on the Majestic for anything magical. Other than that, we’ve got nothing.”

Firefly raised an eyebrow. “That part you didn’t tell me about. I thought all Majestic crew were confined to quarters or split up around the fleet in different vessels’ brigs?”

“Essential staff were not,” Rafale answered in Eastwind’s stead. “The Majestic has unique lab resources not available elsewhere in the fleet. Any research that Atal would do would have to be done there while under armed guard. His team was allowed to remain so they could evaluate our findings when we had them delivered.”

The Admiral rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “Then I suppose there’s little else we can do but wait. I’ll have you returned to the Majestic under cover of brig transit. I can have you returned within the next couple hours.”

Firefly raised an eyebrow. “‘Brig transit?’ Please tell me that doesn’t involve actually ending up in the brig for the sake of appearances!”

The tiniest hint of a smile tugged at the Admiral’s lips, but was quickly extinguished. “No, not the literal brig. You’ll be confined to quarters but I’ll see to it that you’re provided with proper hot meals. It’s the least I could do for having you all put up with this charade.”

Firefly sighed. “Well, it’s better than nothing. Guess I could get a few hours of shut-eye while the eggheads sort this out.”

“Get some rest, Commander. You’ve earned it.”

Even as they approached the rendezvous point, Firefly continued to pace the cabin. Knowing that in a few hours she’d be stuck in her quarters for gods knew how long made it even worse. The restlessness burned in her bones, scratching at her stomach and sizzling in her joints like smoldering ash.

“Guess you had the right idea, Commander,” Sunburst yawned. He stood from his jump seat and stretched out in the cabin. “After we touch down it’s back to quarters for us! You’d think with all the shit we did for her, the Admiral would let us off the hook!”

“Sounds like abuelo missed his naptime!” Thunderlane nickered.

“Yeah well my ass just got dragged through a hellstorm, a dead city, a sniper duel, and the admiral’s inquisition, so forgive me if I’m not all sunshine and rainbows at the moment!”

“Bureaucracy,” Khog snorted. “If you’ll recall, you all are technically still prisoners.”

“And you aren’t?” Eastwind raised an eyebrow. “As far as I know, all combat flier units in the Majestic’s battlegroup were placed on lockdown.”

“One of the perks of being foreign SOF!” Khog guffawed.

“You gotta be shitting me. Lucky bastard.” Eastwind facehoofed.

Roshina elbowed Khog, immediately shutting him up. “We may have certain privileges in terms of moving about the ship, but that does not make us more privy to the Admiral’s plans. We were just as surprised as you when we were collected for our... interviews.”

“Yeah welcome to being part of an expeditionary force that isn’t also an intel apparatus,” Sunburst sneered, leaping at the opportunity to get back at the dragon. Khog growled at the clear jab. “There, there, Red. I’ll be sure to share my brig gruel with you when we get back to the ship!”

“Majestic Control, this is Fortis,” the copilot’s detached voice idly wafted to Firefly’s ear. “Requesting permission for landing approach.”

There was a beat of silence before the copilot repeated himself. “Majestic Control, this is Fortis requesting permission for landing approach. How copy, over?”

Firefly could not hear the words from the other end of the radio, but it was clear they were not in agreement. The copilot’s demeanor went from detached to angry to puzzled in the space of a few seconds.

“Can you say again? There’s static on the line and I believe I misheard.”

The display was repeated. “What do you mean permission denied? You have the manifests. What the hell is going on?”

“Warrant Officer Husker? Patch me in.”

The copilot nodded and flipped a few switches on his control panel. A burst of static filled Firefly’s ears before an unfamiliar voice came on over the airwaves.

“I say again, permission denied, Fortis. You are not authorized to land.”

“Did they not get the memo?” Firefly whispered to Husker, making sure to leave her microphone muted.

“Majestic Control, by order of Admiral Flyleaf, auth code cloud-niner-zero-zero-one-five-alpha-echo-two, you are to prepare to receive us.”

“Stand by, Fortis.” There was indistinct chatter in the background, followed by the shuffling of hooves and clothing. All of it was curiously close, as if it were done via patch-through rather than the ship’s plug-in hardware. At the same time, static continued to pulse over the line, making it difficult to discern anything else that was being said in the background.

“Proceed to landing stack on zero-four-four, Fortis.”

“Understood, Majestic Control. Fortis, out.”

Firefly’s eyes narrowed. “Something’s not right. They should have known about our arrival ahead of time. Why would they put us in the stack? And why was the signal so bad so close to the Majestic?”

The copilot shrugged. “Mix-up? These sorts of things happen. Especially with all the insanity of the last few days. It might just be one last batch of C-SAR birds coming home to roost. Maybe somepony just hasn’t gotten to proper maintenance on the Big M’s radios.”

Firefly gritted her teeth. She supposed the copilot was right. But it still didn’t sit well with her.

“Wait a second.” The feeling in the pit of her stomach returned as she realized the static continued long after the air boss’ radio had clicked off. A series of short and long bursts played out, marking it clearly as code. “Do you hear that? There’s something in the static!”

The copilot’s muzzle scrunched in confusion at first. His eyes quickly popped open in surprise. He grabbed a pencil and began writing down the incoming message. Firefly followed along, but before he’d finished the transcription she’d already put the pieces together.

S-E-N-D-H-E-L-P-V-A-U-L-T

“Send. Help. Vault.” She recited aloud.

“Husker, get me the Admiral. NOW!”

“Aye, ma’am!”

“Firefly, what’s happening?” Eastwind stood, a look of concern shadowing her face.

“Nothing good,” Firefly said grimly. “Husker, patch in Typhon and Timberwolf flights. They need to hear this, too.”

“Understood,” he said as he manipulated the switches. “Eidolon Control just checked in. You’ll have the Admiral on the line shortly.”

Clothing and hooves shuffled before a click indicated that somepony else had patched in. “This is Eidolon Actual. Give me a SITREP.”

“Admiral, this is Wolf One. We have a problem. The Majestic has been compromised. It’s the Talons. They’re here.”

Firefly could hear the pause in the Admiral’s breath as she carefully considered the new revelation. “How do you know?”

“Fortis just intercepted a message being sent via horse code over the Majestic’s carrier frequency.”

“Is this legitimate?”

“Aye, ma’am!” Husker interjected. “Sorry to butt in, but I kept listening in on the signal and there’s an auth code attached. It matches that used by the lab crews.”

“The Talons must be after the artifact!” Thunderlane exclaimed.

“How did they get control of the ship?” Flyleaf asked.

“Easy, thanks to the Admiral’s lockdown,” Roshina growled. “The Majestic is on a skeleton crew. Everyone has been moved to other ships while the Eidolon’s marines run security. All that needed done was to eliminate the small detachment, cut communications, then seize the bridge and engineering. Once they have those, the ship is theirs.”

Though Firefly could not see her, she could easily visualize the Admiral’s consternation. A stifled snort of vexation confirmed her predictions but was quickly lost in the follow-up chatter. Perhaps it was for the better. Firefly didn’t have time to moderate a policy debate in the midst of the newly unraveling crisis.

“The mole is still one step ahead of us,” Sunburst growled. “The team must have been smuggled in with the ambulances. Bastards!”

“What do we do, Commander?” Thunderlane looked to Firefly.

She paused and took a deep breath. The Talons had struck her ship. Her home. Her crew. Every strike had been closer to her and Firefly would no longer allow it. “If the Admiral will have me, I have a proposal.”

“Speak.” Flyleaf said curtly.

“Lock and load,” Firefly said. As she spoke, she donned her harness and reached for her repeater on Fortis’ gun rack. “Kill the attackers, rescue any survivors. We’re taking back my ship. Admiral, I don’t want to overstep my authority, but I need additional forces.”

“I can give you command of the Eidolon’s remaining marines. Do with them as you see fit.”

“No,” she countered. “I need a specific team. Pull Galatine unit out of lockdown and have them follow us in.”

“Why Galatine?”

“They’re the only ones I trust. No offense.”

“None taken. I’ll have it done.”

“Husker, Apricot, slow your approach and keep us out of the stack. It would put us right within range of the Majestic’s AA guns.” Firefly leaned into the cockpit as she spoke. “We’re still BVR so milk that for all it’s worth. We need time to let Galatine catch up and to cobble together a plan.”

“Understood, Commander.”

Turning back to the cabin, Firefly pointed to Rafale. “Rafale, get in touch with the rest of your team on the Eidolon. I need every bit of SIGINT you can pull for this. We’re flying blind right now and I need to know what’s going on on my ship!”

“Understood, Commander,” she nodded and adjusted the dials on her radio. “My team will work on cracking their comms.”

“Without beginning or end, the ring stretches into the infinite.”

The mad shuffle and frantic orders and conversation stopped. All eyes turned to Roshina. The dragonness had stood quietly while Firefly was barking her orders. Her eyes gazed into the bright blue outside the portholes, a blank look upon her face. Morosely, she continued.

“The snake consumes its tail and the cycle continues anew.”

Firefly trotted over and placed a firm hoof on her shoulder. “Hey! The cycle ends with us. We’re going to beat them. I’m not going to let them win!”

She quickly tapped the ouroboros tags within her uniform jacket and the corresponding tags on Roshina's chest with her hoof. Firefly turned around before Roshina could offer a response, but out of the corner of her eye, she could detect a faint smile in response.

“Everyone, suit up! No time to lose!”

Author's Notes:

All held the finite and infinite as unrelated. None could foresee that the history of the two would become one.