Chapters
-
"Admiral, meet Delta," Felicity said, the first to break the silence. She walked along beside the plant, close enough that she could be near her the whole way. Someone had to be close enough to protect her. For whatever good it would do them."I am... friendly to meet you," Delta said. Her whiplike tail flicked through the air behind her. But Felicity wasn't sure the admiral would even understand equine body language. Maybe some of these scientists would.One of them was the first to break the silence.…-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity had never made a high-gravity launch before. Equestrian ships just didn’t work that way—with control of gravity and mastery of acceleration, it was easy to keep the passengers of a ship comfortable all the way outwell.The Varch’nai had no such technology—or maybe they did, and they just didn’t care to use it. Why bother, when the real bodies of every crewman were secured in stasis, and their puppeted remotes could just be insulated from the sensory impact of acceleration until it was…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
"We're going!" Felicity shouted, directly at the screen. Of course she wasn't sure if Escape Gear would even be able to hear her. Was Manny transmitting her words, the way he had before? Now that she thought about it, there was probably something to that idea. Harmony could interpret what she said, and transmit her words in another form. "Manny, can you send a message with pheromones? We should tell the custodian ship we're friendly in a language they understand!"There was a long pause, long enough that…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity followed the honored expedition of strange plants through the remains of the Custodian ship. The vessel seemed so small from the outside, with each deck barely as wide as service passages on a human or pony ship. That size was deceptive, though—from the inside, the space seemed vast.As they got closer to their destination, they saw other plants swimming up and down from different directions, like the circulatory system of a living creature. The boundary was fuzzy here, with some sections of…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity needed no magic to sense the fury around her. She would've known it even if her scent-organs were destroyed, and she were trapped in a clear jar. The native life might not have any knowledge of positioning, but she saw their body-language. The way they withdrew, tightening around the scaffold.She saw pulses of motion pass along their body, like waves. Were those thoughts, as it considered what to do with her?Delta withdrew again, far tighter than Felicity herself. This was the effect of absolute…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Felicity was no diplomat, no scientist, and no soldier. She had been a little of all three to accomplish this task.It was about a month before the moment finally came. It happened aboard an orbital station, one sent all the way from Equus. It would be the first of many as the network grew—a temporary home for the plants who died after becoming part of the network, once Harmony was established.Felicity didn't understand how that process worked, but she didn't really have to. She knew the important part:…
-
84.8 K •
-
-
Vera pulled into her old house on the edge of downtown St. Agnes about an hour later. She rumbled to a stop in the old garage, smelling of biodiesel and rust. She kicked the service bay door open with a boot, and it wasn't long before one of St. Agnes's citizens came rumbling in on a tractor, engine choking and sputtering to a halt.She worked for the next few hours, fighting away her pain with a hard diet of sweaty labor. Keeping her hands busy helped banish the pain of betrayal, at least until the sun…-
21.7 K •
-
-
Vera's next few days went about as well as she might've expected. She had decent business from the town's farmers, dusting off whatever salvage tractors and other hardware they could find for the upcoming harvest. Not all the news she gave them was good, of course. Sometimes a replacement part could be made in one of St. Agnes's two forges. But on the "newer" tractors, it was more often the brains that went out. There would be no more useful replacement parts shipping in from China or anywhere else…
-
21.7 K •
-
-
It was possible, though it turned out to be less necessary than she might've expected. She gave the remedial dive that weekend, and two of her students had their ponies ask her for dive-computers of their own. That pattern repeated itself in the following weeks. And some of her more frequent customers already had Equestrian devices of their own that would serve the same purpose, even if they weren't exactly designed as dive-computers.Vera didn't just salvage the rest of the season, but things became even…
-
21.7 K •
-
-
Bennie and Roderick arrived at the dock early that morning, in that silly pink minivan covered with rust-spots. Vera watched them from the dock, leaning against the railing to help support her weight.She could've sworn that every time she saw that old beater Bennie found some way to make it crazier. Were those seats zebra-striped?Bennie practically leapt from the passenger-seat, crossing straight to her. "Hey Vera. How're you feeling?"They exchanged cheerful hugs. Her eyes settled on the fish that circled…
-
21.7 K •
-
- Previous 1 … 61 62 63 … 222 Next
