Five Weeks: Mark Two
“I don’t like it.”
Verde Tin dimmed her horn, letting her magic keep the wrench she was holding in place and still so it didn’t accidentally turn the bolt while she had her attention elsewhere.. “The wrench?”
“Oh, yes, I am known for my long-standing hatred of ordinary tools.” She felt the expected prod in the flank from behind and grinned. “The machine, of course. This entire project. The test. The necessity. The whole damn thing. I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it, Zen,” she assured the mare, brightening her horn again and continuing to carefully rotate the pressure bolt. “In fact, I’m proud of you for not liking it. Nopony likes war and this pony certainly doesn’t like building some apple-bucking goddess-damned machine just so we don’t have entire cities vaporized. But it’s the world we live in and I, for one, am a really big supporter of not-vaporized cities.”
There was an exasperated sigh and a harder poke at her flank. “Astra when we’re in public. And that’s not the point.”
“Sorry… Zen.” Verde grinned at the annoyed sound. “So what is your point?”
“The test!”
The green unicorn sighed and carefully disengaged the wrench from the bolt before setting it down and looking back at her companion. Astraylzenika stood there with her white, red-streaked mane falling across her face, trying to glare through the curtain of hair without looking more cute than serious; Verde had to restrain herself from giggling at the zebra’s failure. At the suppressed giggle, Astra dialed the glare up a few notches and used a hoof to bat her mane out of her face.
“The test!” She repeated. “The only way to test the shield to failure is to build something that we can be sure will make it fail. And where’s that gotten us, huh? One new model of megaspell after another, more sophisticated, more efficient, more stages, more… more… ponypies! And then they’ll all get stolen again and we’ll have to run through the dance again and all the while, we…”
Verde ignored the familiar tirade, using her magic to gently grasp the grease-streaked goggles over her eyes and lift them up to rest on her brow, immediately clearing her vision and making her painfully aware that she had been transformed into a green-and-black zebra from all the streaks in her coat. She took a step back out of the innards of the machine and turned to face Astra fully. “You know it was never stolen in the first place,” she interrupted when Astra ran out of breath.
The simple observation deflated the ranting mare and she stepped close enough to nuzzle Verde. “Yes, I realize that it was never stolen in the first place,” she sighed. “I’m just so bucking sick of this already! I want to be out there, fixing it, killing something, just… doing something to make it all better or… or…” She deflated again. “…just, something. I hate being cooped up doing technical things while the war goes on. I followed you into this so I could change things and all I’m changing now is air filters.”
“Zen, you are changing things,” Verde assured her, returning the nuzzle. “This is going to change things. With a successful test, we can restore the balance, save lives, give ponies hope again.”
“Hope.” Astra pulled back from the nuzzle and chuckled bitterly. “The Mare of Peace hoofs over the framework for a weapon of mass murder to the enemy and we are still supposed to have hope. The Ministry of Morale follows the lead of a drug-addled monster and we’re supposed to have hope.”
“She’s not a monster. She’s…”
“My father being the brother-in-law to your mother is the only reason his memories aren’t being ripped out of his head by the Ministry for no crime other than being a zebra, Verde,” Astra growled before softening her tone and her eyes into something sad. “Hope is just one more casualty of the war. We should put her on one of those damn casualty lists like all the other poor souls being fed into the sausage machine.” She pointed a hoof at the machine. “Tell me honestly, Verde: can that thing protect more than one building at a time? Can it prevent the nightmare of a single sanctuary standing alone surrounded by a mass grave? Will it do a single damn thing?”
“It will.” Verde replied softly, stepping closer to nuzzle the distressed zebra again. “It will buy us time, precious time. All we need is time, and this will give us that.”
“What will time do for us?” But Astra leaned into the nuzzle, her cheek soft and warm against Verde’s own.
“For us? Nothing. For the ponies that need just a little more to give us hope again? Everything.”
Astra turned her head so they were nose-to-nose, her eyes a brilliant sapphire. “You know something.”
Verde grinned. “I always know something.”
Astra chuckled a little and leaned in, nuzzling and then stepped in more, Verde feeling the zebra’s muzzle burying in her mane. “You know secrets.”
Verde smiled and returned the favor by nuzzling into the luxurious waves of the other mare’s silk-soft mane that smelled ever so faintly of mint. “Things are about to change, Zen,” she murmured. “They’re going to change dramatically and for the best. Mare Sparkle plans to commence the first trial of her induction formula by next month. A system for pinpointing megaspells in a city, in case the zebras choose to use one of those strange stealth cloaks of theirs, is ready to go online. I even hear rumors that…”
“Stalliongrad is relieved!” Both Verde and Astra jumped a little as the charcoal-grey stallion appeared in the workshop doorway.
“Beg pardon, Major?” Verde said as she and Astra disengaged, both turning to look at him.
The stallion, facing their concentrated interest, seemed to remember himself and the excited stance melted into the dignified calm of the professional soldier that seemed to live inside Major Pale Ribbons, ready to come out at the smallest excuse. Gold-flecked steel-gray eyes looked between the unicorn and the zebra before Ribbons decided that he’d made them wait enough.
“Stalliongrad is relieved,” he repeated. “General Manestein broke through the cordon just two hours ago. Reports are that zebra forces are staggered and General Derian is expected to arrive on their flank within the next two days with the object of pinning them against the Sea of Adanac and smashing them in detail.”
Verde blinked. “He… how?”
“He’s Manestein, that’s how.” Pale’s grin made him suddenly look like the relatively young soldier colt he was under the polished veneer of a professional officer. “Drew part of the siege forces away with a supply column that was totally empty, then drove the dagger into their bellies. Rumor is that he even managed to smash a headquarters division, although that’s probably wishful thinking. If Derian succeeds…”
“…that’s a full regional force broken beyond repair.” Astra whispered, her eyes gone dinner-plate size. “That’s… I...” Her face suddenly blossomed into a joyous look. “So by this time next week, we could be looking at victory on the near horizon.”
“Or something less pleasant,” Verde commented grimly. “I don’t mean to spoil this moment for you two, but what do you think people with stealth cloaks and megaspells are going to do if backed into a corner?”
Astra deflated. “Strike. Win before we can make good on the victory.” She paused. “Do you really think they would?”
“There’s no doubt about it, Corporal,” Ribbons said grimly. “This is holy war for them, a war to save the entire world from Nightmare Moon.”
Astra shook her head. “Save the world from Nightmare Moon… every time I hear it, it sounds all the more absurd. Honestly, what do they think she’s going to do? Love them to death? It’s like their brains are stuck forty years in the past when Nightmare was just the demon on Princess Luna’s shoulder instead of the now-adult adopted daughter of one of Equestria’s most admired scholars and scientists.”
Verde chuckled. “I could easily imagine her making a noble attempt to love the zebras to death… if that wasn’t what Aunt Silver Rose’s job. Cept I’m dead sure that Nightmare can’t make chocolate chip cookies even half as good.”
“It’s like a metaphysical impossibility.” Astra agreed.
Ribbons chuckled. “I take it your aunt is really nice.”
They both turned to look at him. “Pale, Aunt Silver Rose is really nice like water is slightly moist.” Verde informed him in absolute deadpan.
“Ministry of Peace then?”
“Mare Fluttershy’s right-hoof mare.” Astra confirmed. “Although I think that’ll change soon. I can’t imagine her hoofing megaspells over to the zebras will go over well.”
Pale shook his head and sighed. “What could she have been thinking?”
“That if everyone has megaspells, no one will.” Verde suggested, lowering her goggles and reaching for a screwdriver and box of high-amperage fuses.
“That… doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense if you’re Mare Fluttershy,” Verde told him as she turned and trotted into the cavity of the shield generator, selecting the proper fuse by feel and examining the terminals in front of her to decide the best placement. “Remember that she’s a healer, a veterinarian, compassionate and the Bearer of Kindness. She doesn’t think coldly or with the cunning that you’d expect of a soldier. Her world is simple: if there’s a wound, you unpack your first aid kit and heal it. Some wounds are worse and more complex but the solution is always the same: you heal the injury and relieve the suffering. Making it so that both sides could destroy each other, in her mind, created a situation of stalemate so that no more ponies or zebras would die or be hurt.”
She turned to look over her shoulder. “She was desperate and it was our failures, among others, that made her that way. I, personally, feel responsible for a situation where the Mare of Peace is driven to such desperation by the suffering around her that she recklessly gives Equestria’s enemies the means to destroy us.”
The silence behind her was surprised and then heavy. It wasn’t until she’d placed another three of the fuses that she felt the faint reverberations of Pale taking the first step into the generator. “I think that if we’re assigning blame, Tin, there’s a much more obvious target than soldiers like us.”
Verde sighed and put the fuse down before looking over her shoulder at the hard expression on the soldier’s face. “We can’t do anything about Morale, Pale. The only thing we have control over is our own virtues, vices, achievements and failures. Stoking the old flame of hatred isn’t going to save a single pony life.”
“Putting a noose around that manic pink neck would,” he growled, although without the heat of deadly seriousness.
“My mother will deal with Pinkie Pie in her own good time,” Verde assured him, picking up the fuse again. “When you’re dealing with a tactile precognitive, you have to play a very long game and in this case, she’s playing it for very high stakes and we’re simply one of the pieces on the chessboard.”
“Pawns?”
Verde thought. “Rooks.”
“I’m… flattered?”
Verde chuckled. “True, they can only move in a straight line but they’re one of two pairs that can corner and checkmate the archbishop.”
“And the other pair?”
“Knights.”
“And the reason we aren’t knights…?”
“We’re soldiers, Pale.” She told him as she plugged the fuse in and reached for the next. “We receive orders and carry them out in a straightforward way. The knight’s path is indirect, convoluted, and complex.”
There was a moment of silence as he mulled this over. “Like you.”
She actually dropped the fuse in surprise at the comment. “Beg pardon?”
“Like you, Verde.” He met her eyes calmly when she turned to look at him. “And Astraylzenika. No children of the Fourth Triumvirate are…”
“The… what?”
“Fourth Triumvirate,” he repeated. “It’s the informal name we simple soldier ponies invented for your mother and two aunts. The First is, of course, the Three Sisters. The Second is Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie, the three Mares of the most powerful wartime Ministries. The Third is Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy.”
Verde eyed him. “Okay then. So what were you saying?”
“I was saying that no children of the Fourth Triumvirate are ordinary ponies. Astra here isn’t even a…”
“You’re one word away from me breaking my hoof off under your tail, Pale.” Astra interrupted him coldly. “I stopped being a zebra when the only family that loved me was the pony side.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Pale snorted… and then sighed. “No, that’s cruel of me. I take it back, Astra; you’re just as pony as anypony else. I just wish you wouldn’t be so Goddess-damned sensitive about being called stripey when ya look exactly like one.”
“Appearance deceive, Major Ribbons. But coat pattern is not where the zebra sin is.” Astra intoned in her best zebra accent, although Verde knew from long experience that the solemn intonation was being accompanied by a cheeky grin. “It is from religious moderation abstaining, and being cold to a little filly that wants your love, your approval, and some practical training.”
Pale banged his head lightly against one of the generator’s walls. “Verde, can I please throttle your cousin?”
“Go right ahead,” Verde responded in her best attempt at a disinterested tone, her position in the machine masking her grin. “But when she embeds you face-first in the generator, you get to remove the dents.”
She heard him mumble unflattering and inaudible things under his breath. “Anyway, the reason I’m here, beyond bearing good news about the war, is to get a progress report and deliver the latest orders.”
“I’ll know how much progress I’ve made when I start cycling power through it,” Verde told him, levitating the fusebox cover into place and holding it there as she began replacing the screws. “I believe, however, that the replacement of ordinary high-amp fuses with slow-burn ones should solve the problem of surge blowout without unnecessarily compromising the integrity of the secondary projection circuits. The cycling implements are still grinding out shavings from rough machining but the rotary shell is spacious enough that I don’t anticipate overheat. Those are the only remaining concerns; everything else works at 135% integrity to allow for slight overload in case it has to deflect multiple strikes in the first cycle.”
“I’m assuming that all of that is… good?”
Verde laughed as she carefully stepped out of the generator and began securing the access panel. “Yes, Pale. Sorry for the technospeak-dump.”
“You’re not sorry one damn bit,” he grinned. “You get jollies out of making my head hurt and you know it.”
“Well, yes, my most favorite simple soldier colt.” Verde levitated her goggles over to the work table. “While I’m powering up, talk to me about these new orders.”
“We’re going to need a suitable testing area for the Alishield Mark Two,” he said, gesturing to the machine with a hoof as he followed her up the ramp to the control console. “As such, headquarters wants the two of you plus an unnamed ‘special representative’ to head into the Changeling Barrens to discuss the matter with Queen Chrysalis.”
Astra paused midway up the ramp, looking at him. “They want us to go out there instead of just asking her to come here?”
He shrugged. “Those are the orders.”
“Odd ones,” she responded as she joined Verde at the panel, assuming her normal position at the right side while Verde handled the left. “According to what I hear, Chrysalis is usually more than happy to get away from her kingdom and visit Canterlot.”
“The changelings only have one monarch, dear,” Verde remarked, slowly rotating a power control knob to keep the electrical feed into the generator gradual. “I imagine that as the only Queen, Chrysalis has too many responsibilities to just pick up and take a vacation whenever somepony needs to talk to her.”
“That’s why the Goddesses invented bureaucrats,” Astra grinned, moving levers to start raising blast shields around the now-glowing machine. “Both to give us hicks some flank to kick and so nice shapeshifting mares can hang out at the Apple Bay Spa instead of presiding over a thousand miles of dust.”
“How did they end up that way, anyhow?” Pale trotted over to rest on a low bench at the back of the platform, watching them work. “It’s not like there’s been any reason to keep them out of Equestria proper since, like, twenty years ago.”
Verde rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Pale… the westernmost flank of Equestria is pretty damn important and being given responsibility for protecting its entirety is enormously prestigious and an amazing gesture of trust. I’m sure the changelings were given the Barrens because of the warm relationship between Chrysalis and the Dual Thrones, not despite it.”
“So giving them a wasteland is an honor.”
The touch of skepticism made Verde turn and fix the lounging stallion with a dim look. “It’s not a wasteland, Pale, any more than the plains around Appleloosa are. Hell, can you imagine trying to fight this war without iron, tin, aluminum, copper, and the coastal rock farms?” She turned back to the controls, flipping a switch to close the first set of breakers in the circuit. “I can’t believe you’re not aware of any of this.”
“I’m a simple soldier colt, boss.” Pale pointed out, his grin audible. “You’re the brains of the operation and your cousin over there is the femme fatale.”
“What the hay is a femme fatale?” Astra demanded.
“A spook that gets her intelligence through the block and tackle of convenient stallions.” Pale was clearly trying not to laugh.
Verde heard hooves on concrete as Astra turned to stare at him. “Pale Ribbons, are you hitting on me?”
He laughed. “You kidding? Verde would dropkick me to the moon and keep my stallion bits as a trophy. I’m trying to make up for being a jerk about your stripey-ness by being flattering, ya knob.”
Astra chuckled. “Well, don’t quit your day job, soldier colt. But thanks for the effort.”
“Anytime, kid.”
“Kid?”
“I’m older than you, Astra, by a lot. Besides, you’re always gonna be the rookie, at least until we get some other over-eager patriotic zebra mare to make eyes at our commander.”
Verde sighed and closed the next set of breakers. “You sure get mouthy when you’re bored, Pale.”
“Boss, when you grow up with eight sisters, being mouthy is a form of self-defense.” He informed her merrily. “It stopped me from throwing myself in despair from the top of the silo dozens of times over.”
“Yeah, well, cut it out. We’re about to start the main feature and I want someone to gaze upon my works, mortal, and despair.” Verde closed the final set of breakers and the floor began to vibrate subtly as a low rumbling whrrrr came from the generator apparatus.
“Initial rotations are looking nice and clean,” Astra reported, examining the panel of voltmeters and other monitoring equipment. “Peaks and valleys are smoothing nicely and the stable flow from utility-feed translation into the capacitors for the projection array shows no anomalies.”
“Fantastic,” Verde smiled as she looked over her creation. Standing thrice the height of a pony and looking all the world like a trio of grain silos laying in a row on their sides, the next version of the Alishield was already looking wonderfully promising. “OK, nudge the revolutions into deflection range and let’s see how it handles that.”
“Yessir,” Astra responded instantly, reaching up and rotating a dial several clicks to the right. The rumbling whrrrrr started to gain a higher pitch when abruptly, a tolerable rumble morphed into a high-pitch whining that bore a horrible resemblance to a hoof being scraped loudly over a chalkboard. Before it could deafen them, Verde popped a quick sound bubble spell into place around them.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Pale commented.
“I tend to agree. Astra, what’s the problem?”
“I think I’ve got a vibrator—shut up, Pale—in the upper rear right side,” Astra reported. “It’s scraping against the rear generation rotator and making that Goddess-awful noise.”
“Is it impacting operation?”
“Not that I can see. At deflection rotation, the generators are still converting utility power in a stable manner and the variable frequency drivers are arresting any possible surges. Still, we can’t have a generator that’s so deafening that the operators would be incapable of hearing orders, much less obeying them.” She looked over to the controls Verde had been at. “Test the emergency cutoff?”
“Might as well.” Verde reached a hoof up and flipped open the emergency cover before mashing the red mushroom-shaped button. For an instant, the screeching whine of the braking mechanism was a solid wall of sound, the air displaced by the emergency stop actually making Verde step back, and then it ceased.
“Good.” Verde smiled. “Basic operation works well. Spins up gradually and with the exception of the loose piece, it’s solid.”
“So what now?” Pale asked. “Gonna take it apart and put it back together again?”
“Now I make repairs and check the imperatives,” Verde replied, opening all the breakers and de-powering the machine as Astra reset all the controls back to their default startup state.
“The imperatives?” He asked as she turned and trotted down the ramp, grabbing a screwdriver and her goggles as she went.
“Yeah, the part of the thing that makes it so much better than its predecessor,” she told him, slipping on the goggles as she circled her project, watching as the blast shields lowered at a command from Astra. “Obscure type of rune, really delicate to inscribe but scarily powerful when you get it right.”
As she unlocked the armored door leading to the cover, she felt the stallion staring at her. She ignored it, floating the screwdriver over to unscrew the heavy cover and exposing a half-dozen exquisitely-cut jewels glowing softly like smoldering embers with the spells they contained. She took a moment, carefully examining them for cracks or flaws that may have been caused by the first power-up, before lighting up her horn to examine the most critical part: the integrity of the imperative runes, which glowed a fierce electric green in the presence of her horn.
“How rare is being able to use these… imperatives, Verde?” He asked in a queer voice.
“Virtually unheard-of,” she replied, satisfying herself that the first jewel was safely intact. “Why else do you think I’m doing this myself instead of having one of Mare Applejack’s many engineering minions do it?”
“I’d just assumed you were obsessive,” he admitted as she focused her attention on the next jewel. “Which, by the way, you are. So what do the imperatives do?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute; this is very delicate and I need my full concentration.” There was a slight fuzzy distortion in the second iteration of the imperative on the second jewel and Verde began to gently caress it with tiny pulses of magic, carefully sharpening the inscription and restoring the tiny hook on the end that had faded too much for her liking. Satisfied, she took advantage of Pale’s obliging silence to check the last four; finding them correct, she lifted the panel back into place and began retuning the screws.
“So what do these imperatives do?” Pale asked.
“Are you familiar with rune-based magical engineering?”
“Nope.”
“OK, then the long and the short of it is that runes are a set of instructions for magical energy being channeled through a physical object,” she told him, swinging the ponderous door shut and locking it. “Normal runes cause the magic to do a particular thing every time magic is fed into it, sort of like a computer program. They do the job but are inefficient, letting much of the energy go to waste in exchange for being impossibly stable. Imperatives, on the other hand, force all of the magic to obey certain conditions and be used in certain ways, and they harness all of the magic without any waste. But they’re insanely unstable and the slightest inscription error will cause the magical energy to be focused into the object the flawed imperative is placed on, causing an explosive reaction eerily similar to that of a giant balefire bomb.”
“And you’re putting them on a shield generator?” He demanded, aghast.
“Yeah, that was Aunt Scarlet’s reaction too,” she chuckled, pulling the access panel that would let her get to the tiny flaw in the dynamo array from the generator. “But as you noted, Major, I’m one of the only ponies that can pull it off.”
“Super. I’m in a room with a mini-megaspell,” he sighed. “You’re one helluva crazy pony, Colonel Tin.”
“I’m doing work and Astra is providing moral support to family; why’re you in the room with the mini-megaspell?” Verde pointed out, using the screwdriver to check the tightness of the screws attaching the cowling to the dynamo structure.
“Macabre fascination,” he replied instantly. “If you’re going to blow up the world, I’d at least like a front-row seat.”
“Blowing up the world happens in another eight days; today is all about preventing the world from getting blown up.” She leaned out of the generator to give him a cheeky grin before ducking back in, lighting her horn to bend the cowling back into its proper shape after being rubbed against the revolving generator coils had distorted it.
“So in a week, you’re going to blow up the world.” Pale paused to absorb this. “Isn’t the Mark Ten a little weak for that?”
“Yeah, which is why I’m gonna make a Mark Twelve,” she told him as she closed the panel and started securing the bolts. “Well, that should take care of the problem. Now to test the fast-start system.”
“Like, flood the entire thing with more juice than it can handle in the hopes that it’ll power up instead of blow up?” Pale deadpanned.
“What’s the matter, Pale? Afraid of a little shrapnel?” Astra snickered.
“You kidding? With an adorable face like this? It’d be a tragic loss to the world if it got damaged.” Pale returned as Verde bolted down the main generator access and trotted up the ramp.
“Just make sure to duck and cover, most favorite simple soldier colt,” Verde grinned. “I’m not sure of how big it’ll go up if it does and it’s easier to deflect debris with a smaller shield.”
Pale eyed her. “Out of curiosity, isn’t the entire point of fuses to make sure it doesn’t blow up?”
“Are you being an idiot or just a pain in the flank?”
“If those are my options, I’ll go with… pain in your flank.”
“Astra, kick his flanks when we’re done, won’t you?”
“With pleasure.”
“Why did I let you convince me to hire her?”
“Because you were still harboring delusions that I needed a nice piece of flank in my life, and thought you could fill the role,” Verde turned so she could give him a toothy grin. “Now hush, and watch this.”
This time, the power-up procedure was much more simple, but also significantly more hazardous. Instead of a gradual, measured, filling of the individual pieces with electrical power, all the breakers were closed at once and the generator went full-power instantly. At least in theory. Verde nervously hoofed the black mushroom button on the opposite side of the panel from the emergency stop, took a breath, let it out, then pressed it.
The lights promptly went out.
“I’m watching, and I don’t see nothin’.” Pale commented brightly after a moment. “At least it didn’t blow up.”
Verde sighed. “Of course there’d be too much inrush for the main generator feed to handle. Astra, could you please...”
This time, the ground-shaking snarl of the generator spinning up actually did knock them off their feet and the entire workshop suddenly glowed with the power of the suddenly fully-spinning generator mechanism. Verde pulled herself to her hooves using the control panel as leverage. “It’s not supposed to be doing that, Astra!”
“No kidding, cousin!” Astra shouted back as she braced herself and leaned over the fine controls to examine the voltmeter. “Spikes all over the place and we just installed…”
“…slow-blow fuses,” Verde finished as the snarling took on a pulsating whining sound and a red light began blinking rapidly where the projection array activation switch was located. “…oh bollocks…”
Although she didn’t say it much louder than the sound of the shaking generator, Astra seemed to hear her just fine because she threw Verde a sharp look and followed her gaze towards the activation switch. “…tell me that’s not the projection array.”
“…it is.”
“…tell me you didn’t wire up the entire system at once.”
“…”
“…ground level.”
“What?” Pale demanded.
“Ground level!” Astra shouted. “Get to bucking ground level!”
Verde didn’t give Pale time to respond or Astra time to shout him into action, grabbing them in telekinetic bubbles and dragging them with her as she galloped down the ramp, hearing the howling build to a fever pitch just as she got below the slightly elevated apparatus and used the telekinesis to force her companions down.
There was an audible klunk as double-pull breakers as long as her foreleg all dropped at once, an automatic mechanical response to the dangerous build-up of energy in the generator, and enough hornpower to deflect any megaspell Verde Tin had ever heard of flooded the shield projection array.
Oddly enough, considering that the resulting shield was meant to blink into existence fast enough to form a solid wall of energy between a city and an incoming megaspell-tipped missile, the prismatic colors of the shield seemed to slowly sweep outwards from the crackling array that had been raised above the generator itself to make sure a complete seal was created. The solid wall, its leading edges supernaturally sharp and its force irresistible, first struck the blast shielding and sliced it away equal to the base of the generator. Then came the consoles, shoved aside into a building hoard of debris which were quickly joined by the concrete of the raised control platform, the monitoring equipment around it, the bare beams of the ceiling—and then the ceiling itself. Walls didn’t even buckle so much as they folded into the gentle curve of the shield and were propelled along with the rest of the mismatched tide. And with that wall went the gargantuan 1-gauge energy wiring that gave the entire construct its power… and just like that, the shield that had disintegrated a 2-foot thick rebar-reinforced Ministry of Wartime Technology test bunker vanished as if it had never been, leaving almost neat piles of everything that once composed that bunker—and three stunned soldiers, now being bathed in natural sunlight.
There was dead silence for several seconds before Pale turned to look at Verde. “I’m impressed, boss. But will it deflect a megaspell?”
“Buck off, Pale.”
“Bucking off, boss.”Alyosha Cartwright:
Really wordy, and the way you've phrased it means you don't get to do commas. Dialogue, sure, but how about "If it wasn't for his relation to your mother [or somesuch], my father would be [horrible terrible badness]!"
Kay Moore:
That's weird way to put it... "get to" do commas? You phrase it as if commas should be a goal of mine and a privilege to be enjoyed.
Anyway, how do you like the rephrase?
Alyosha Cartwright:
Well, the way you had it meant putting in commas to let the reader pause would make the thing grammatically incorrect. In that case, it WOULD be a goal, because letting the reader stop to think in mid-sentence would help lessen confusion.
here, it's a similar problem. Saying that lengthy "brother-in-law to your mother" makes us mentally conjure a family tree and go "wait... so... huh?" and that distracts from the more important issue - that family connections are keeping this guy away from torture.
Kay Moore:
Fine, how would YOU express this? Thus far, revising it has made it LESS clear instead of more. In both versions it's extremely clear to me, both because I know and by taking the words at face value.
Alyosha Cartwright:
Its clear to you because you authored it. It might disorient others. I gave my suggestion in the initial comment, and if you prefer your way then that's the way it should be. Never take my advice simply because I gave it. You have to actually agree with me.
Kay Moore:
Well, I did precisely what you suggested and you said that made it worse. So I'm asking you for ideas, again.
Alyosha Cartwright:
It's a touch wordy. And there's really not going to be any fixing that simply because it's your style. Which, I'm inclined to say it's fine being hopelessly wordy like this - the one change I would make now is changing "for no crime other than being" to "simply because he is."
If it makes any sense, think of all the concepts here being brought up as provisions in a legal document, establishing and excepting each other. The sentence is already weighed down with words, and then that last little bit - the audience has to think in the affirmative for the rest of the sentence, then negative for the crime, and right back, because the "other than being" creates a whole new subconstruction and holy fuck this doesn't make sense even to me.
So, uh, consider revising. And... call it done there, whichever you end up going with.
Alyosha Cartwright:
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but this is actually very, very similar to the actual Fallout timeline. Was that intentional? In Fallout, Anchorage was occupied by the Chinese from 2066 to January 2077, and then the US counterattack stormed across the Gobi and was mere miles from Beijing itself by late October. And, although I personally think Vault-Tec was responsible for the war (Chinese surrender means the Vault Experiment is a bust) it had to be tense as all hell all through that summer because... well, what would WE do if the Chinese were miles from Washington?
Kay Moore:
I know nothing about the Fallout timeline so if it matches, it's not intentional. This was actually meant as an analogy to a "what if " scenario that would have taken place shortly after he surrender of the 6th Army at Stalingrad. In short, General Erich von Manstein (General Manestein, see what I did there?) came up with a plan to draw the Red Army after the a feigned retreat while a massive force was gathered at Karkhov and when the Reds took the bait, the flanking force was to pin them against the Sea of Azoz and destroy them. Hitler refused to try it because of his unwillingness to temporarily surrender territory to win a larger victory, but here I pretend that such a plan was put into place and succeeded in the way that von Manstein hoped. It's not QUITE like the Fallout canon in that a counterattack isn't in the works and thus the Zebra capital isn't threatened, but it's a game-changer because Zebrica has a smaller population and the destruction of an entire army is crippling; the end is essentially inevitable absent another game-changer... like Equestria being obliterated by nukes/megaspells.
Alyosha Cartwright:
I think you gave a brief synopsis of that before, and I think it's great that you're using real-world strategy and war logic to write this thing. I'm kinda bummed that I've given myself a story involving the goddamn Enclave, but I can't really do anything fun with them because they're so limited in number. I can't have wars and shit. Just "let's go take that building over!" "k."
Kay Moore:
It's much harder to work in big battlefield action involving like 10 people. *sympathetic smile* But yeah... I had to invent a plausible reason for the war to suddenly go nuclear and what I came up with was the zebras being cornered by circumstances and pressing the big red button. Since I'm a what-if history junkie, especially around the era that FoE Equestria is in (developing tanks, aerial weapons, nukes, computers, etc very analogous to WW2 era), and fanon says that there's a Stalliongrad, my mind jumped to the proposal by Erich von Manestein. Because I could ponify Karkhov as "Colthav", I made that part of my headcanon too and sent Aastra and Verde there to watch General Ruby Pommel (like Erwin Rommel... I'm horrible, aren't I?) play daredevil for the win.
Alyosha Cartwright:
This is getting... long. I'll just say I really like what you're doing here, and if you'd like to talk further about the war history and your modifications to FOE canon, let's do it in a site PM.
Kay Moore:
I agree! I'd love to PM you about this because I love talking to you and we don't get to do it often enough. :) Send me a PM telling me about how life is for you and asking me to stroke your ego?
Alyosha Cartwright:
Yeah, like... is any of this crucial to the story? The story goes down a totally different road and fucks around with Changelings for awhile, so why tell us this now? I'd take this out, find a better and shorter (less informative) segue into the following conversation, and only bring it up when (if) it becomes important.
Kay Moore:
It's already important, vitally so. Nothing about the story makes sense unless it's established that A. the zebras are warring with Equestria because of Nightmare Moon and B. this is irrational because Nightmare Moon is reformed and quite friendly. Since Nightmare herself appears in the story in a chapter or two, establishing that she's a totally different pony now strikes me as something that needs to happen before she appears. Introducing her and THEN laying out that she's not the same pony as before would be very... awkward to attempt.
Alyosha Cartwright:
Oh, look, another comment that's similar. I already addressed this one in the above - how about that conversation with the zebras out in the desert? There's characters who would be inclined to actually argue over the war and convince the OTHER that their way is The Truth. The audience gets to watch. The audience is amused.
Kay Moore:
That will happen as well. But the part where the audience needs to know this comes before they meet the zebras. Where else can I put this?
Alyosha Cartwright:
I'm sorry? Where exactly in the story is it CRUCIAL for the audience to understand this? It's fanon - the readers expect the details of the world to differ slightly from their interpretation. If they don't, they're idiots. You can talk about Luna and not explain this fully, and then have the characters explain their way out of it with the zebras. That actually makes sense because you can hear the zealotry straight from the zebras' mouths. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but nothing happens between here and there that NEEDS Luna/Nightmare knowledge. It's okay for the audience to not know the entire life story of a character the minute they are talked about on-screen.
Alyosha Cartwright:
I feel like there could stand to be some kind of descriptiony bit here, about where they've ended up. Rather than just going straight to dialogue.
Kay Moore:
Since it was already stated where they ended up ("below the slightly elevated apparatus"), I didn't think of restating it.
Alyosha Cartwright:
Well, like... where are they? What's happened to THEM in the explosion? The cliche would be to be stained by dirt and dust, and the token glasses-wearing character would have them all messed up. A little description could lead to a more compelling image, but it's alright without.
Kay Moore:
Well, they're literally crouched under the rim of a tall concrete pad that the generator was placed on. The way the accidental discharge worked is that it hit everything in a hemisphere pattern... and the three of them are under the bottom of that hemisphere. Thus, they're essentially standing at one end of a military compound right next to a generator on a concrete pad, and the entire bunker scattered in every direction from them. Since the shield wave struck nothing before it swept over their heads, they're totally unharmed and not even dusty. As before, if you can suggest a way to express this, I welcome suggestions.
Alyosha Cartwright:
Well, just... details What you could do is reword the thing so that it's actiony and light on the technical stuff (more emphasis on running away, the sounds and lights and feelings of trying to run for one's life) and then have them stand up and third-person describe the scene like Verde would. She can tell from clues what's basically happened. Describe the rubble and the aftermath, and then close on the dialogue.
Kay Moore:
I'll do what I can, but there is literally no action to describe that hasn't been described.
Alyosha Cartwright:
Then it's probably fine as-is. The ending comes just a little too abruptly for my liking, but it's on you to decide how much (if any) description you want to stick in here to pad it more.
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Zero comments?
This story reflects a keen and dedicated mind, yet it receives little attention
Anyway, yes, I agree with your friend that the current version might come over as "wordy", and I admit that it requires full brain power to read, but that is a quality and should be encouraged.
So, storywise, you have interesting characters and a detailed setting of your own. Were the ponies aware of the zebras' true motives back then?
I can only applaud the usage of realistic warfare in a story. As a GM, I try to make my own settings so real that they could be parallel worlds, thus I enjoy rich storytelling. I look forward to reading the other chapters whenever I have free time.