Work Text:
Deep inside the airborne fortress of Arxia, in the waning days of Grayskull. A cavernous general purpose space shudders from a resonant series of impacts against the outer fortifications. Som dust and cobwebs shake loose from the roof. It patters across the tarpulin like a rainshower. Some arcane machinery hums away in it's low-pressure field, repelling the dust better than the tent that covers the workstations.
"How long do you think until they breach the ramparts," one chipper voice asks into the quiet. There is a low hum of activity under the tarp, as a pair of dogged researchers chip away at a problem amongst their equipment and workbenches. The other one sighs and grumbles something inaudible.
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Long enough, and that's all we need to know."
They went back to working quietly. The room shook and the detritus rain fell again.
"Do you think the failsafe will be ready?"
A gravelly sigh.
"Yes, like I said, they were finished hours ago. They are just combing for errors now and I doubt they will find any. And before you ask, again, yes the obfuscation spell will hold for half a millenium at least, it's already been deployed and measured."
A pause.
"I'm sorry," said the tired voice quietly. "I'm worried too."
"I know."
The room shook.
Some time passed, the room shook a few more times. At one point, a pool of water that had gathered on the tarpulin roof suddenly overtopped the crease that had dammed it, and splashed noisily onto the floor. Both scientists jumped and had to laugh nervously and hold on to each other for a little while, and then the next shudder came.
Until then it had been a tremor, just enough to be noticeable. This time it made the worktables thrum across the floor a centimeter or two and several machines beeped in consternation and aborted.
"Shit in the cunt! The final chemical series isn't done yet," the bright voice growled in frustration when all were still again. "That would be the ramparts," said the darker one at the same time.
"Well, that was our deadline. It's now or never!"
They looked at each other, and a strange mood came upon them. Her name was Encyclica, tall and beautiful. As they gazed into each other's eyes she straightened, regaining her regal bearing. He, whose name was Unther, was a small and knobbly man. "Now or never," he agreed as a crooked smile broke onto his face.
With unmistakable grace the princess of engineering stepped forward to her husband, and gathered him in her rubber-gloved arms. She had to bend nearly over to bring her face to his. "Let's make crazy science together," she exuded with sparkling eyes, and then he kissed her with passion.
Side by side they began collecting the last experimental data. They would go to the sheltered control room to collate it with their working model and to operate the experiment, but they wanted to check all the equipment at source first, especially considering the vibrations disturbing them.
Before the next tremor, the heavy blast doors out of the lab room squealed open a crack and a pale-faced orderly rushed inside. "Command priority orrdonance, highnesses," they panted as they snapped to a halt with a waver. The princess was still feeling euphoric about the imminent experiment, and raised an amused eyebrow at their transitionless change from rapid motion to standing at attention. "Go on, then," Unther groused with a wave of his hand, ever uncomfortable with any kind of ceremony. The orderly seemed dazed, dark circles under his eyes and a glazed look. There was a thin coating of very fine dust across his rumpled uniform.
"Ma'am! Orders as follows, proceed with plan Alfa Serena, report and hold at ready until encrypted command signal, ma'am!" He saluted mechanically and then his whole body tensed in anticipation. "Thank you, tell them we will be ready," the princess said with a warm smile. The orderly blinked at her.
Then they shot off like a wound spring and was gone out the closing gate.
"Doesn't hang about," Unther remarked and turned back to the work. The princess stared worriedly after the young soldier for a moment. Then a look of absolute desolation passed over her, and she sagged.
Unther turned to ask her if something was the matter when she did not move beside him. "Dearest," he said and urgently gripped her arm. She twitched and looked around as if woken from sleep. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she mumbled and looked back down at the floor.
He took her hands between his and turned her towards him. Then he reached up as far as he could and put a gnarled hand lacking it's pinky over her collar bone. He had to crane his neck to meet her teary eyes. For a moment they just stood there.
"It wasn't supposed to go like this," she whispered imploringly at him, as if asking for forgiveness. "It was supposed to be us princesses, not them. Oh!"
She huffed and rubbed at her cheeks and looked away.
"And you were supposed to vanquish the oppressors and repel the invaders and free the people, all while terribly well dressed and attended by a train of swooning worthies, followed by a long retirement with an unlimited research budget" Unther agreed sadly. Encyclica laughed bitterly and narrowed her eyes down at him.
"Oh don't you start with me now," she snarled. But his eyes were soft and she didn't last a breath. The princess dropped into a crouch to hug her man tight, as they wept for their world.
Then they wiped each other's cheeks and went back to work.
Less than an hour later, the data was collated; the model was recompiled and simulated; the machine was programmed and primed. Encyclica and Unther sat next to each other in the ratty old couch at the back of the control room. It had been there when they arrived so many months ago, when their stay was supposed to be temporary rather than terminal. Back then he had had the fond thought that it would still be there long after he and Encyclica had gone. Now, who knows? It might bubble away with the rest of the whole damn reality if things go really wrong, it might get vaporized in an uncontrolled exothermic reaction, it might be absorbed into a black hole, it might survive their insane forlorn hope experiment just fine only to get blasted to bits in a room to room firefight for the entire complex. It might even survive that and go on to be a fixture for the Eternian navy post that will presumably inherit the site – or indeed be discarded as unsavory then.
"Strange to think of a couch as a traitor to the cause," he mused out loud.
Encyclica looked at him warily.
"I agree."
He smiled wanly and shrugged. "Want to go over the last simulation output again? I don't think we have time to run one more."
She tilted her head from side to side and pursed her lips, until she shrugged and sagged back onto the couch. "Not really. I'm too antsy, I just want the damn command signal so we can get this over with. We're just plan, what, three? Four?" "Three," Unther supplied quietly. "Yeah, we're plan three. Plan one went to shit, that's normal, but Mara might still make it right? Who knows? And maybe there's a plan four we don't even know about, it wouldn't be the first time you know."
Encyclica's voice grew a little shrill towards the end, and Unther grinned helplessly at her. They both knew that Mara was a forgone conclusion. Up close, She-ra can kill a battleship but she needs to get there. Her picket is a tidy starship, but it's not really a warship and it won't survive the Eternian navy's aerospace supremacy grid. She-ra wouldn't get close enough to the orbital line to be able to deploy, she'd be lucky to stay powered on long enough to execute the planetary move. Then she will fall back to the earth and rocks of Etheria like a turtle dropped by an eagle from great height. Whatever is left of Mara at that point will be crushed against the deck of her bridge in the collision, if the ship isn't disintegrated. And there's not a plan four.
So, plan three. Save what could be saved, hide Etheria in Despondos, or come what may.
The problem is, the moment She-ra falls, she will be forced to abide by it's arcane laws to find it's host in her new incarnation. And the Eternians are very clever lawyers, and have found the loopholes to appoint that one themselves. If they have access to She-ra, finding and extracting Etheria to start it all up again would be simple. The solution: pluck the baby out of her crib on the throne world and deposit her in a prepared abeyance chamber on one of Etheria's moons in the moment before the world is sucked out of the universe like a drop of water into a pipette.
In time, the facilitator will have repaired itself enough to reboot. Either it will be Mara's Light Hope, the spirit of the mysterious machinery of the ancients that the Eternians found and betinkered after having lain forgotten for untold millennia. That Light Hope is a friend and ally who will do her best to give Adora the agency and upbringing any child ought to have, given her peculiar circumstances. Or it will the admiralty's Light Hope and it will execute the standing orders. There is no way to know, and there is nothing more to say about it, so the husband and wife sit on the couch holding hands and stare vacantly ahead.
With imperceptible suddeness, a strange sense rises across Etheria. In the control room, Encyclica feels it first as a prickling discomfort, and shortly thereafter Unther feels it as an oppressive foreboding. "It's the Heart," she breathes with fearful awe.
Their clasped hands tighten painfully, but neither of them notice. They stand and go to be ready at their consoles, becase it can't be long now. As the terrible otherworldly presence of the heart pitches and rises, a resounding reverberation like a bellowing scream rolls around the world. When the world is not dissolved into ether, it is clear that Mara has interuppted the firing sequence. Then the signal comes in.
The signal to proceed is a mellow but unmistakable falling note, repeating every few seconds as the encrypted communication console flashes until it's acknowledged with the press of a button. Encyclica takes a fortifying breath and recalls some words of her dearly departed mother. "Dignity is never wasted by a princess," she tells herself and stands up straight. "Ready," she asks with an edge of steel and meets Unther's eyes.
"Ready."
"On three, then."
Without breaking their eye contact, they gripped their opposite handles that when turned simultaneously would energize the control surfaces and allow the programmed commands to execute.
"One," Unther began. "Two," they spoke together, nodding in sync.
"Three," Encyclica breathed as they turned the keys.
There was a muted, heavy thunk as the circuit powered. Displays lit up with scrolling data.
The scientists called out numbers and checks to each other, as they fell into routine practiced from simulations. It was all on track. Unther dared a wild-eyed grin of excitement as the hum from the machine suddenly pitched up and a deep resonant thrum came through the floor. "It's going," he called over then sudden din.
The hum warbled as the Heart shunted into ready-mode, and then with a bright flash the event horizon began to form. "It's going," Unther called again and laughed maniacally. "By the stars, it's beautiful," Encyclica called back with just as much glee. There wasn't anything to do for them now unless something went wrong, and even if so that would be at best a few minutes of interesting troubleshooting followed by death by unshielded bombardment. More likely was immediate death or something very strange and indeterminable happening, followed by death. The machine would execute it's program and it would turn out that they are within tolerances or that they are not.
They gorged on data.
"I don't think we're going to see any of the destructive scenarios," Encyclica shouted over the howling wind as she scrolled through a diagnostic feed. "All indicators are projecting stable!"
On cue, the light and the noise flashed off into perfect darkness with just the fluttering of some papers for just an instant. Then just as suddenly and far more violently, the portal slammed from existance at the origin point into oblivion and back again at the destination.
A very bright light of every color with a name and many others without rose out of nowhere and filled the world as Mara moved Etheria and took away the stars.
As the planet moved in an ineffable direction, the machine stuttered and warbled. For a moment a wailing baby could be heard in it's discordant notes. Then with a final trumpet call the portal shut off, it's work completed.
Most of the Eternian starfleet in orbit around the gigaweapon, was ripped apart in the eddies. But there were still thousands of Eternian soldiers on the surface with well-equipped bases, and several fire support craft were close in enough to survive the transfer. Arxia, with it's main power supply fried could do little more than stay afloat.
However, any modern military is only the tip of a long chain of supply. The last act of the Eternian expedition to Etheria was to grind itself into tatters against the sorcerers and deep dwellers in the dark hallways of the ruined command complex. The shell crumpled into warring scraps of bandits and the would-be resurgent claimants to the supreme command and title of Force Queen, and faded away into the sands of time.
What followed was a dark time for the Etherians. One day the halls of Mystacor would be built above the ruins of the ancient citadel, but for centuries you'd be lucky to find a sage in the haunted hallways there only mad enough to be unpleasant, rather than homicidal.