Verdant Song

by Mixolydian Grey

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Adventure, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe
Length: 42195

If they succeed in reaching Equus, they save the surviving colonists... But they also bring a ship full of irrefutable proof that griffons are carnivores and ponies are prey.

(BIG Important Author's Note: As of 5/30/15, the rewritten version has been posted. This is pretty much a new fic with the same premise and characters.)

It was supposed to be a mission of peace, a symbol of political unity. It was supposed to prove that a pony-griffon alliance was possible, that the two races could overcome their biologically-programmed notions of 'predator' and 'prey.' The Verdant Song could have been the end of their Cold War.

Whether by intentional sabotage or negligent miscalculation, the ship now limps through space, billions of kilometers from its destination. Without any hope of rescue or contact, the natural order of species prevails.

Some defy their instinct. They attempt to salvage what is left, avoid the merciless hunters, and bring the Verdant Song home.

If they succeed in reaching Equus, they can save the surviving colonists — but along with the colonists, they would bring home a ship full of irrefutable proof that griffons are carnivores and ponies are prey.

Published 2014-06-12 20:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2015-06-04 22:55:48 UTC

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. I

Lennox remained as still as he could, quieting the rustle of his suit. He held his breath as well, quieting every possible sound, even the trivial static of moving air picked up by the microphone in his helmet.

Kelantos knows, Lennox silently repeated to himself. He always knows.

If there was someone down the hall, he had to hear it first. In zero-g, a griffon could move almost soundlessly, save for the chance of bumping into one of the chunks of debris that hung in the air. But listening for the debris didn’t help much, because he could never be sure if it was just random currents from the air filtration system or if it was actually caused by some unseen threat.

The only sound he heard clearly was the stallion next to him. Solstice dug a hoof into the ruined door controls, prying out a cluster of tangled wires. He held them close to his helmet, trying to distinguish the colors of burnt rubber. “I have another one,” he mumbled into the silence. “An old stallion and a young filly lie unmoving in a puddle. Indoors.”

Even under threat of being found and killed, Solstice still couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Lennox balled his hands into fists, his blunted talons pressing into his palms through the gloves. “What are you talking about?”

“The scenarios,” Solstice said, rolling the wires between his hooves to separate them. “The first aid.”

“Your hypothetical scenarios.” Lennox made each syllable carry the weight of his irritation. He glanced down the hall both ways, watching for motion. If he couldn’t listen, at least he could watch. He stared off to his right, barely able to see the end of the hall even with his avian visual acuity.

“Yes, the ones you gave up on because they became too difficult.” Solstice found the wire he wanted and removed it from the twisted bouquet. He turned his attention to the exposed circuitry, pressing his helmet against the wall so he could look as closely as possible.

“Too difficult,” Lennox muttered. “I stopped playing along because they’re always irrel—”

A sharp clink sounded from somewhere down the hall. Lennox turned and grabbed a support bar on the nearest wall, pulling himself into the recessed area with Solstice. Adrenaline stirred in his chest. He sucked in a breath, holding it, trying to listen despite the pulse thudding through his head.

The sound replayed in his imagination, though it wasn’t a perfect recording. It was more like the blurry impression of a dream fading from memory in the seconds after waking.

But even as his memory faltered and he struggled to recall the sound, he realized what it was: just a shard of metal glancing off the wall. Just a piece of debris drifting through the air.

Even here on the command module, farthest from the impact, there were loose pieces of debris floating around. Here on the command module, he reminded himself, there is nothing left worth scavenging. No reason for anyone else to be here. And even if there was, Solstice still had the gun. They weren’t defenseless.

Solstice blew a puff of air into his helmet mic. Lennox flinched, squeezing the support bar as the hiss came through. Solstice was chuckling at him.

“You're jumpy,” Solstice said.

Lennox clenched his beak. His wings pressed against the inside of his suit, a reflex. “I have a valid excuse,” he growled. He wanted to spread his wings and fly down the hall, double check just to make sure. Perhaps something had moved that piece of metal, caused it to hit the wall.

They had always been careful, always planned everything out as if they were two chess grandmasters working together, but Kelantos was always ten steps ahead. He would know that they were finished repairing the engines. He would know that they were ready to move the ship. He always knew. Maybe the command module had nothing to draw the griffons, but perhaps Lennox and Solstice had drawn their attention.

Lennox breathed slowly, trying to soothe his frantic heartbeat. The restlessness was just adrenaline. Just a simple stress reaction.

There was more noise in the communicator than down the hall. It hissed as Solstice sighed, apparently not able to think of any more banter to harass Lennox with.

That was somewhat discomforting, if only because it marked a shift in Solstice’s personality. Lennox didn’t miss the irritating humor, but the frequency of humorous remarks was not the only thing that had slowed. Solstice should have been able to open this door in two minutes.

Initially, Lennox had thought to attribute it to stress, but that hypothesis didn’t hold up. Solstice had made it several months into this ordeal before the change, surviving through the most traumatic stresses… the asteroid, the rioting, the murder of the command staff…. The two of them had been fixing the ship for months and he had been mostly alright.

They were close to the end goal, now. All they had to do was set the ship on course and make sure it didn’t explode on the way there. Lennox needed his only ally to be focused and alert.

“Solstice,” Lennox whispered, not quite sure what he wanted to say. He should say something, though, perhaps gather more information, deduce the cause of Solstice’s somber mood and formulate some kind of solution. He let the name hang in their helmets for a while as Solstice silently continued to poke at the door controls.

Lennox exhaled slowly, watching little traces of fog cling to the inside of his helmet. His heart rate had slowed down to something much more reasonable, but as he spoke, it threatened to rise again.

“I have observed a change in your demeanor,” Lennox put a string of words together. It was haphazard and uncomfortable, but he continued anyway. “Will this change impair your ability to carry out our remaining tasks?”

Solstice sighed again. “I'm... tired.”

“We don't have much farther to go.”

“I never expected that getting here would be the problem. The problem is where we go next.”

“Yes,” Lennox said. It wasn't very likely that a drifting ship suddenly flaring to life would be easily missed. Even if he theorized with Kelantos completely removed from the situation, that still left about twenty other griffons wandering around who would kill them on sight. And if the ship suddenly flared to life, those griffons would know about Lennox and Solstice.

Solstice ripped out a dead circuit board, tossing it into the hall to join the other pieces of debris. They twirled and drifted through the air, suspended in zero-g like toys above a chick's crib.

That dark corner off to his right became more and more bothersome. Lennox risked a quick scan with his flashlight. There were flashes as the more reflective debris rotated, reflecting the light back for a fraction of a second. The hallways stretched outward like sterile white tubes, marred by soot, ribbed by thin bars for personnel to move in zero-g, and broken by hatches and doors, some sealed, some stuck half-open.

In the event that he and Solstice somehow managed to forget where they were, and in case they missed the first half-dozen signs, several giant orange arrows and accompanying text notified Lennox that he was, in fact, outside the bridge.

When they had first boarded the ship, Solstice had joked about the tactical wisdom of big, bright arrows pointing towards your command center.

“The scenarios helped,” Solstice said.

Lennox flicked off the light. “Elaborate.” The hypothetical scenarios were fantasy, imagination. Planning ahead was helpful, but his scenarios usually had nothing to do with the issue at hand.

“The worst thing you can do in a survival situation is to stop and think.”

“That’s absurd. The opposite is true.”

“Is it?” Solstice asked. “I didn't say it was good to rush into things without planning. Planning keeps focus. I said it was bad to stop. When you stop, you lose focus on the immediate task. You think about the future and how things might turn out in the end, and…”

“Hope is always an illusion, even if it’s likely,” Lennox said. “You can't reach out and touch the future.”

“Maybe. But you can't break the illusion unless you stop and look at it closely.”

That provided a sufficient explanation. The mechanical repair work early on was exhausting and required total concentration. Lately, there had been a lot of waiting as the computers ran lengthy diagnostic tests and calibrations. There had been plenty of time to think.

“Look.” Solstice sighed. “The logic games and hypothetical first aid scenarios help, okay?”

“Noted,” Lennox said, glancing back at Solstice. The stallion’s brow was furrowed, perhaps in concentration, perhaps in frustration. The corner of his mouth was turned down, a sign of any number of thoughts or emotions. There wasn’t enough evidence to form a conclusion.

The stallion’s scowl intensified suddenly. He slammed one of his hooves against the wall.

Lennox flinched as the dull thud echoed down the halls, like a gunshot on a clear night. He was too surprised to scold the stallion. Solstice had never displayed such… undirected aggression.

“Dammit, Lennox.” Solstice squeezed his eyes shut. “We checked the security systems. We're the only ones on the command module. No one followed us. They’re all… hunting. In engineering. We don't need to sit here in complete silence.”

As far as we saw, Lennox silently noted. The cameras don’t see everything. And while they had seen some of the griffons heading down to engineering in preparation for a hunt, Kelantos was unaccounted for. He could be anywhere. “Why risk it?”

“Because I can't… I don't think like you do and I need to talk, okay?” Solstice’s breath rasped in the comms.

Lennox raised an eyebrow. “You are talking.”

“Are you listening?”

“I am listening,” Lennox said, “but I don't understand.”

“You don’t have to understand. Just… humor me, please. The scenarios.” Solstice went back to work on the door control, searching for the power line to the airlock seal.

Lennox mulled over the idea for a minute. Aside from the soft sounds of a mechanic's hooves behind him, there was silence on the command module.

His instincts found this more alarming than comforting, subconsciously urging him towards greater alertness. Muscles tensed of their own accord, his wings pressing against the suit. It took a conscious effort to relax again. Old proverbs about forests quieting in the presence of predators came to mind.

Of course, this was no forest, and the dangers were not the dumb, nonsentient wolves and bears. The dangers here would either be the ship itself — not likely to be offended by conversation — or the other griffons.

“Did you ever think it strange that they never hunted us?” Lennox asked.

“Most of them don’t even know we’re alive.”

“‘Most,’” Lennox repeated.

Solstice seemed to chew on his next thought, trying to decide if he liked the taste of it before he spoke. “Kelantos let us get this far.”

Though the other wouldn’t see it, Lennox nodded. “The flock would rather stay out here than face whatever punishment awaits them back home. He wants to chance it, but can’t oppose the others.”

“Meaning that he won’t stop us until we’ve made the maneuver,” Solstice said.

Lennox thought on that for a moment before responding. “He can’t go against the flock,” Lennox said, thinking out loud. “He has to let us do everything. Then he can act like we were the villains all along, and bring out some kind of ambush or maybe that hunting party we’ve been looking forward to. He’ll be able to oppose their wishes and intensify their loyalty at the same time.”

They were doing the best they could to save the surviving hostages, but still, they were doing exactly what Kelantos wanted. Lennox couldn’t choose between awe or frustration.

“Well, in that case,” Solstice said, “we’re safe until we finish. And even then, he can’t chase us out into space.”

“Yes,” Lennox said. Solstice was right.

That’s what the suits were for. They would finish on the bridge and then traverse the exterior of the ship to find an airlock where they could enter again, somewhere safe and far from the griffons. The griffons didn’t have enough suits to give chase, especially not if they had to go all the way back to their habitat to find them.

“Sooo, how about a scenario?”

Lennox squeezed his eyes shut. “Only if it gets that door open faster.”

“I’m working on it. Old stallion and young filly unmoving in puddle.”

Lennox wanted to cross his arms or duck down or do something to hide, but the suit was so inflexible it was difficult to hold any position with his limbs tucked in. He kept a hand on the support bar.

“Your scenario is unimaginative,” Lennox said, trying to ignore the feeling of discomfort. He pictured the room with the two ponies lying on the floor, in some inexplicable puddle of water. “Even with such a small amount of information, it's easy to deduce the danger as environmental. The chances of them both falling unconscious at the same time for unrelated reasons are low. It was chemical or electrical. I would examine the scene before doing anything further.”

“And in examining the scene, you would find that there are no live electrical wires. The puddle covers the floor from wall to wall. You detect no chemical scents.” Solstice worked on the door as he spoke. He scraped away charred soot from a circuit board.

“Is the room well ventilated? Looking closely at the victims, can I determine if they are breathing?”

“The room isn’t airtight, but there’s no noticeable draft,” Solstice said. “Neither is breathing.”

“I’ll alert emergency services before doing anything else. Assuming that I don’t have to leave the scene to do so, I’ll pay careful attention to see if I feel any dizziness or similar symptoms.”

“Pegamedics are on their way. You feel fine.”

“Electrical, then, and there might still be current.” Lennox paused, searching the hallways once again. There was nothing out there. Kelantos might not come after them right away.

Lennox continued, slowly. Focusing on the scenario could distract him from his… anxiety. “I hypothesize that there is an electrical current in the water, but I can't say where it came from or if it's still there. The puddle itself offers no hints, as there are any number of reasons for water on the floor. I don't suppose that I'm carrying any kind of electromagnetic receiver in this scenario.”

“Do you carry electromagnetic receivers with you to the grocery store?”

Lennox rolled his eyes. “I'll get close to the water, holding out a rear paw just over the surface.”

Solstice smirked. “Don't slip. That's not very smart.”

“Don't have time to be smart. If there's a current in the water, I'll feel tingling. If my paw accidentally touches, the muscles will instantly contract up and away from the water, minimizing the shock. My wings will keep balance. A hand would submerge itself when the muscles spasmed.”

“Power in the controls, no power in the door,” Solstice mumbled.

Lennox glanced out of the corner of his eyes, coming back to the task at hand. Solstice had hardly moved, still holding the same bundle of wires. Lennox sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Have you accomplished anything in the last ten minutes?”

Solstice almost chuckled. “I’ve managed to irritate you. This is surely an accomplishment.”

“Take your flashlight apart and use the battery,” Lennox said, enunciating each word with a slight edge to it.

After a silence, Lennox looked back over his shoulder. Little bits and pieces from Solstice's flashlight tumbled through the air. Solstice already had the battery in one hoof and a mess of wires in the other. The battery wasn't all that strong, but the charge didn't need to open the door, just unlatch the internal locks.

Something grazed Lennox’s back with just enough force to be felt. It was a piece of the flashlight. He managed to resist the involuntary flinch this time.

Solstice was right… he was jumpy. Being this close to the end goal made it seem more stressful. They were going to bring the ship back from the dead after six months in the grave, lightyears from home, millions of kilometers from Verdence and the new colony, without contact or hope of rescue. It had seemed impossible at first, but once that passed from a faint hope to a tangible reality, he realized just how much was depending on them.

He had to remind himself that the only griffons posing a threat were almost a klick down the axis. This was when they had their most dangerous game, assuming their schedule didn’t change. They’d be distracted, exactly as planned. Further, there was a chance that the impending ship-wide disturbance would allow the pony to escape. That would be the first successful rescue.

A low clank signaled Solstice's success. Lennox turned as the stallion grabbed the door and slid it to the side, unlocked for manual control.

Solstice sighed in disappointment. “Another door? Really?” He moved into the small room between the doors, looking over the next obstacle.

Lennox gave a last glance around the halls and joined Solstice. “Perhaps,” he whispered, “if you find the two door system annoying, Equestria can start using airlocks with only one door. I'm sure the Griffon Republic would gladly assist in engineering this new technology.”

It was only after Lennox closed the door behind them that he realized just how small this airlock was. Neither could move very far without brushing against the other.

Solstice smirked. “Lennox, I'm rather uncomfortable with this. I don't think this level of intimacy is appropriate at the moment, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't pressure me like this.”

Lennox scowled. “Open the door.”

As best he could, the stallion hunched over the next door control. This one was intact. “Locked.”

“Is it the security chief’s lockdown? I may remember that one. If you could—”

Crunch. Solstice had a hoof through the control. He pried off the panel and grabbed a hoof-ful of wires as before. As these were not burnt, it was much easier to find the one he wanted.

“Captain’s lockdown,” Solstice said. “Now then, I believe you were about to be electrocuted.”

Lennox sighed. “I was not about to be electrocuted, I was about to experience a nonfatal shock.”

“Hm. I’m feeling generous, today. You experience neither.”

“If the water is no longer electrified, then the environment is no longer a threat. Unfortunately, the victims have probably suffered irreversible brain damage in the time it took me to stumble upon the scene, so I’m not sure why I’m bothering.”

“Not even going to try?”

“Fine, I’ll try,” Lennox said. “Is there an automatic defibrillator anywhere nearby?”

“Nope. Nowhere. Gotta do things the old fashioned way.”

“The success rate of CPR is dismal.”

“But it’s not zero,” Solstice said.

Lennox rolled his eyes. “Trying to alternate and save both would be futile. You've simply given me a choice between which life to save, but it doesn’t really matter because they’ll probably both die anyway.”

“It’s hypothetical.” Solstice shrugged. “Pretend you have a decent chance of success, and you have a choice to make.”

“I have no other information about either of the victims?”

“Correct.”

“Trying to save both will just get them both killed. I perform CPR and attempt to save the filly.”

“Isn't she a little young for you?” Solstice said without hesitation, snickering, as if he had expected that response.

Lennox closed his eyes and made a sound between a sigh and a growl. “Did you create this whole scenario just for that?”

“Why the filly?” Solstice asked. “Because she has more life ahead of her? More likely to recover?”

Lennox clenched his fist, pressing blunted claws into his palm until it hurt. “No. It has nothing to do with the filly's life. Her future potential is just as uncertain as the stallion’s. The difference in recovery is minor.”

“Why, then?”

“It's the public opinion,” Lennox said. “Try to save the filly, and you’re a hero. If she dies despite your help, you’re a hero and did the best you could. The stallion's death was an unfortunate, inevitable consequence. But if you choose to let a filly die to try and save an old stallion, you might as well be a criminal.”

Solstice laughed. “You're horrible at this! You nearly kill yourself to see if the water is electrified because you want to help, then you decide who to save based on what the public will think of you.”

There wasn’t time for a rebuttal. An electrical spark lit the airlock with a loud snap, and the second door slid open a moment later. Lennox watched the sensors in his helmet pick up a trace of ozone. Solstice glided through the door.

Lennox checked the first door. It wasn’t actually locked, just shut. Anyone could come along and do exactly what he and Solstice had just done. But they could seal both doors later, so it wouldn’t matter.

He made his way in and hit the airlock control from that side, sealing it shut, then turned towards the bridge.

Pale starlight from the windows in the ceiling lit the center of the room. Aside from the metal plates sealing off missing windows in the ceiling, the bridge was undamaged. On the opposite side of the room was another airlock, sealed shut. To his left and right were two sets of stairs, mirrored on the opposite side, all four leading to an upper ring that ran the circumference of the room.

There was no discernible motion on the bridge. No audible sound, either. And since the bridge was still pressurized, any sounds would be quite noticeable.

“Looks clear,” Solstice whispered after scanning the room a few times. He glided to a nearby control panel and reached out a hoof to touch it.

The computer systems greeted them with a crescendo of light. Screens lit up and speakers chirped out audio notifications.

A dozen computer stations came to life around the circumference of the main deck. For each one on the main deck, there was another on the upper ring. In the center of the room was a single massive console unlike any of the others.

Solstice grabbed a railing and pulled himself up to the second level, staring at the ceiling as he drifted up. “Those metal plates slam shut when the windows shatter,” he said, half thinking out loud and half talking to Lennox. “I don’t think there’s a manual override. Might need a new getaway.”

Those windows were their escape route. “I’ll take a look.” Lennox drifted to the center of the room, scanning the environment. He noted the lack of debris on the bridge. When the sapphire panes shattered, atmospheric pressure had scattered the pieces into space.

In emergencies, all bridge crew sealed their helmets and the bridge atmosphere was deliberately evacuated to prevent any pressure issues if the windows were to shatter. But whatever emergency had shattered the panes wasn’t one they saw coming. Lennox shook away memories of the mutiny.

All of the computers were still intact, though they certainly weren’t happy. Bright red and orange warnings flashed across nearly every screen. After satisfying himself that the bridge was safe, Lennox turned his attention to the central computer console.

The first thing on the screen was a warning about the windows. Some had shattered, the emergency systems had sealed them shut, and then the bridge had been repressurized. And just as Solstice feared, only the captain could override those controls and open the bridge to space. “Locked,” Lennox said. “We’ll have to find another way out.”

“See, this is what happens when politicians design emergency response protocols,” Solstice muttered. “The protocols end up making the emergency worse.”

“If we can get everything set before the griffons catch up, we can seal off the bridge, leave, and lose them in the crew quarters.”

Solstice hummed a discontented note. “We’ll be cutting it close. We’ll basically have to run towards the griffons and somehow sneak through them.”

There wasn’t another choice. Lennox suppressed a sigh and tapped the console, bringing up a readout on the ship’s status. The graphical display was a mottled series of red, orange, and yellow. It was supposed to be all green. Hundreds of warnings crawled along the side of the diagram.

“Hey,” Solstice said into the communicator, startling Lennox from his analysis. “What if, instead of the old stallion, there’s an alicorn princess versus the same filly?”

Lennox clenched and unclenched his fists. “Please shut up and let me save our lives.” He tapped a finger on the central console’s screen and brought up a number of diagnostic procedures. They’d already run most of these from computers on the engineering module, but apparently the bridge computers weren’t feeling very trusting. Lennox could understand why.

The stallion floated from station to station on the upper ring, coming into Lennox’s peripheral vision. “We won’t be pressed for time until we actually make the first maneuver,” Solstice said, bringing up more diagnostics on every screen he left. “Kelantos won’t touch us until we’re done, and the others won’t even realize what’s happening until the ship moves. We can relax a little.”

Solstice stopped at security, but instead of diagnostics, he scrolled through camera feeds.

“Time is not a resource to throw away,” Lennox answered.

“We’ve got a few minutes to wait on the computers. A few minutes to pace ourselves. Constant stress makes it hard to think.”

Lennox rolled his eyes. “Triage categorizes them in the same tier, but I must say alicorn because of value to society.”

“Mkay,” Solstice said. “New one. You have two victims… The first will likely survive, but only with treatment, and the second is one you’re personally close to, but is unlikely to survive even with treatment.”

“Personally close to?” Lennox repeated. “Clarify.”

“A family member versus a stranger.” Solstice continued scrolling through the feeds, paused on a view of some dark corner half a kilometer away.

The central computer beeped, commanding Lennox’s attention. The maneuvering thrusters were a mess. Dozens of unhappy warnings popped up under his beak. Damaged nozzles, low fuel, empty fuel… The thrusters that still functioned would be hard-pressed to maneuver the ship on their own and get it pointing the right way, and it wouldn’t do much good to fire the main engines if they weren’t aimed in the right direction.

“Take a look at the attitude controls,” Lennox said. He squeezed the edge of the desk.

The stallion was silent. He stared at one of SecCom’s screens.

It wasn’t a camera feed that had anything to do with attitude thrusters. “Solstice, focus,” Lennox hissed.

Solstice closed his eyes and shut off the feed. He tore himself from SecCom and slid down a few more computer stations. His breath rasped in the comms. He scanned over the helm controls. “It… okay, they’re damaged.”

“Back in engineering, you said they were fine.”

“No, the Kulzer Complex test said they were fine,” Solstice spat back. “The computer. The diagnostics.”

“Can we still work with this?”

“What else would we work with?”

“We could try to fix some of them.”

Solstice shook his head. “No. We would need another month.”

“A slower burn? It would be more stable.”

“No. It would take too long.” It would take too long was a nice way of saying that, by the time they actually got the ship home, the hostages would all be dead.

“It would take too long,” Lennox repeated, opening his eyes and staring at the diagnostic readout. “Then I suppose we must proceed with the original plan.” He rapped his fingers against the edge of the console. “And as for your hypothetical scenario… Two victims: family and stranger, the stranger more likely to survive?”

“Yeah?”

“Optimize the outcome. The stranger has the best chance of survival. The family member is likely to die with or without treatment. Therefore, I choose the stranger. Simply put, one death is better than two.”

It felt like minutes before Solstice spoke. “Well, I guess it is pretty simple to let them die when you’re only looking at numbers.” His voice was hollow.

“What else would you look at?”

Solstice closed his eyes. “That’s the sort of question where… if you have to ask it, you’ll never really understand the answer. You’ve never had a younger sibling, have you?”

“No. Try and explain.”

Solstice shook his head, but answered anyway. “Look at their faces. See the fear.” He grabbed the railing of the upper ring and glared down at Lennox. “Have you ever tried it? It’s traumatizing.”

“Why would I do that? So I can make a decision based on… on empathy?” Lennox said. “If you base decisions on empathy, you get stuck. It always happens. Your only criteria are contradictory. You want to save everyone, so you hesitate and you feel guilty and they all die.”

Solstice clenched his jaw. His chest moved, his breathing visible even through the suit. “They’re hunting right now, just like we expected. On the opposite side of the ship, as far from us as possible.”

The griffons would take a pony down to the engineering crew quarters, one of the darker, more labyrinthine areas of the ship. The pony would be armed and told they could go free if they survived for twenty-four hours. None had. “And?”

Solstice breathed deeply, relaxing as he exhaled. When he spoke, it was in a clear tone, completely calm, sober, devoid of any of the anger he had just shown. “Nothing.”

He was always so bothered by things beyond his control. By all logical assessment, it was an absurd waste of biological resources. The victim of this hunt was irrelevant to their present task, and he could do nothing for their safety from here. Dwelling on those thoughts could only have negative outcomes: distraction, anxiety, internal conflict. There wasn’t any reason to allow this anxiety such a hold over him.

Solstice turned and punched the navigation console. It gave a short countdown for the maneuver. He still carried out the task, but he had hesitated. He had only decreased that pony’s chances of survival through his worry for them.

Why? What was the purpose? The equines thought it such a sacred thing, their friendship, their harmony. But it was such a… a handicap. Solstice couldn’t even survive without talking about nothing, without wasting mental energy considering hypothetical nonsense having no bearing on the mission at hand. He used to chat about home and forests and his friends back on Equus, used to tell stories about his colthood and his time with the ESA. He told stories about Holly, his sister, another crew member on the Song. Crew records listed her as dead, but they also listed Lennox and Solstice as dead, so there was doubt. He could give Solstice credit for pursuing priorities, but the work wasn’t without distractions. Lennox knew damn near his entire life story.

Solstice thought out loud. He used to talk to himself, speaking out loud the steps of mechanical tasks as if mumbling the words of an instruction manual. The words were already in his mind. Why vocalize them? It was almost as if he couldn’t even process the world around himself without regurgitating his observations back into the environment.

But Solstice smiled. At least, he used to. He smiled over stupid things. Silly things. When they weren’t in danger, when they could afford the time, he would just… goof off. He had a uniquely irritating ability to find amusement in the mundane, to violate all known laws of physics and createjoy from nothingness.

Lennox didn’t have an algorithm for that.

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. III

Eikon awkwardly shifted his grip on his spear and followed after the rest of the flock. As much as he would have preferred to opt out, it was necessary that he tag along, this time.

Kelantos needed to know how the flock behaved in his absence. He needed Eikon to gauge their loyalty. Kelantos had to wander around somewhere far away. He mentioned in the presence of others that he would be on the command module, but he gave no explanation. By giving no explanation, he invited suspicion and gossip.

So Eikon watched and listened, from Chemlab to engineering. Eight of the oldest, slowest, and least interested stayed back in their base. There were a dozen hunters, not counting Eikon. For this hunt, they picked an adult female, more or less randomly. White coat, red mane. If she had been well fed, she would have been a fairly average size. Eikon had noticed how thin she was, before the hunt started.

Phrygian had noticed as well, and he wasn’t happy about it. Or perhaps he was unhappy about something else, and his aggression was directed at anything that moved. Eikon kept a careful eye on him, always trying to keep that massive gray wingspan in sight.

Eikon flapped his wings, trying not to fall behind.

The mare probably hadn’t gotten far. Eikon had avoided attending the hunts as much as possible, but he could read surface hints and body language well enough. Usually the pony would become alert a bit faster. She had still been in a daze when they gave her a knife, told her the rules, and sent her off for her fifteen minute head start.

But now, that fifteen minutes was over. The griffons moved silently through the dark halls of engineering. A few broke off; the usual tactic had some going wide, surrounding the prey to prevent escape.

Eikon tried to keep as many as possible within sight, trying to watch and listen for any of the things they might only reveal in the absence of a distrusted leader.

But none of the griffons voiced dissent. He did not observe trust or contentment in their place, though. They had accepted the inevitable and persisted in the routine they’d fallen into, the future denied any attention, the focus on past and present. Right now, they didn't need a leader, and they weren’t likely to start needing one any time soon, so they had no reason to waste effort thinking about one.

Because there were none of the issues Kelantos was concerned with, Eikon had nothing to occupy his mind, nothing to distract himself from the prey’s inevitable suffering.

He tried to focus on the present, cataloguing the details. There wasn’t much new information to process, so he went over things he’d already noted to be sure nothing had been missed.

The griffons travelled light. Each had a spear, most had additional knives tucked in belts, and some wore pocketed vests. Most of the griffons left their belongings on Chemlab. A good sign, Kelantos once remarked. They still trust each other enough to leave things unattended.

But how much did they trust Kelantos? None of them had called him tercel for months; there was no need to. Of what use was a leader if there was no goal to be reached? The old honorific had been used as Kelantos delivered them from an immediate threat, but fell away as time passed. At present, there weren’t enough hints in their body language to piece together the thoughts within.

Phrygian was silent. He stretched his wings out, like a wide gray wall of feathers, giving a slow flap. His wingtips grazed the walls. After the hunt, perhaps. Eikon had a suspicion that Phrygian would be rather dissatisfied with their choice of prey this time, but that dissatisfaction would likely work out in Eikon’s favor… it would irritate Phrygian enough that he’d express some kind of sentiment, instead of the unreadable stoicism now displayed.

As Eikon scanned across the others, noting their appearance, listening for anything of interest, he made a horrible error… eye contact.

Dorian smirked, then gave a small flap of his wings, moving closer so they could talk quietly. The party was spread enough that they could whisper and only the nearest would hear. “Looking for something?” he asked.

“Not in particular,” Eikon mumbled, looking straight ahead.

Dorian drifted forward just enough to be in his peripheral vision, a reddish-orange blur right on the edge. “I am,” he said.

“And what might that be?” Eikon idly glanced over the length of his spear.

“Things of interest.”

“Have you found anything?”

“No, but,” Dorian smiled, “sometimes, finding nothing is something.”

Eikon sighed. “Of all the activities you could occupy yourself with, why must you choose to speak to me in riddles?”

“Are you nervous?”

Eikon finally glanced over at him. “Why would I be nervous?”

“The puppetmaster disappeared into the rafters above the stage,” Dorian whispered. “The strings have disappeared — not sure if they're still attached.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Eikon gave a subtle motion of his wings, putting a few more inches between them.

Dorian smiled.

Perhaps Dorian was just speaking in ambiguities, like a fortune teller, the vague statements interpreted more specifically than they were intended and giving the impression of accurate prediction. He hadn’t mentioned Kelantos specifically.

Was that the sort of thing Kelantos was worried about? Dorian wasn’t anything like the rest of them; his opinions probably weren’t even close to those of the others. He was an unknown quantity. And not only was the value unknown, but Eikon wasn’t even sure of the units of measurement.

“Are you ready?” Dorian asked, gesturing at Eikon's spear.

It was a very simple weapon. Not elegantly carved like the others, not any handmade components. He'd simply gone to the assembly labs and printed a fiberglass spear from a basic model, back when the fabricators were well stocked.

He hadn't trained with it, he couldn't throw with any modicum of accuracy, and he certainly couldn't stand up to any of the others in a sparring match. Worst of all, he couldn't tell if his inexperience was obvious or not.

“I suppose so.” Eikon really wasn’t.

Dorian smiled again. Eikon noted the confidence. Dorian was the only one who didn't use a spear. A long, thin sword was sheathed at his hip. A rapier, an ancient weapon that Eikon couldn’t recall ever seeing a griffon use. Not even Dorian, now that he thought about it. But it was a safe bet that Dorian knew how to use it, and it was probably not a good idea to test that theory in a sparring match later.

In the brief moments that Dorian had distracted him, Eikon lost track of three of the other griffons. He tried not to make his irritation apparent. They probably wouldn’t have let anything slip, anyway. This was a hunt, not a dinner party.

Another griffon broke off, but he saw this one. Rasmus turned down a hallway that seemed to spring up out of nowhere.

That one was one he should be watching. But Phrygian was still up ahead, proceeding in the same direction through a more central hallway. Phrygian was the bigger threat, but Rasmus was more likely to talk. Eikon gripped his spear harder. He hated having to make quick decisions like this.

Just as Eikon was about to turn into a side passage to keep with Rasmus, Dorian did exactly that, leaving without a word.

Eikon tried not to let his suspicion show. Now that he thought about it, it seemed that Dorian was another he should be keeping an eye on.

Kelantos hadn’t given specific names, just told Eikon to watch and listen and collect an impression of the flock’s attitude. Eikon had noted that within the flock, about half of them would passively go along with the other half, and within the second half were individuals about four times as cunning as they wanted him to believe. At the very least, they still thought he was part of the first half, and they should expect that he would be open to persuasion if one happened to be looking to stage another mutiny.

Eikon stayed with the main party as they continued their descent into the darkness. It was no use going after Dorian and Rasmus now; they would disappear.

The griffons had chosen engineering for its poorly lit, maze-like structure. It gave the prey places to run and hide, but ultimately, there were only a handful of ways back to the axis and the rest of the ship, and a few of them could easily cut off the escape routes.

There wasn’t anything back here to be concerned about the prey having access to. The incident had completely destroyed the aft bridge. The reactors and Alcubierre drive were still sealed off behind impenetrable security doors. The griffons had tried and failed to break in. If they couldn’t, no lone pony had a chance, least of all that frail little mare.

She probably hadn’t even gotten that far. A few times, the prey just… gave up. Sometimes they begged for mercy. Even after all the conflict, they still thought there was actually a chance of reconciliation…

Eikon suppressed a sigh. He might be able to avoid being near her when they caught her. But he couldn't look like he was trying to avoid her, else the others would be suspicious. And he couldn’t fail to watch Phrygian now that Dorian and Rasmus were gone.

He followed Phrygian to an area of engineering where one of the larger pieces of the asteroid debris had torn a hole through the ship. The outermost hull had been patched up, good as new, but the interior was scarred with a gash that cut through three or four decks. It was dark and twisted, like some kind of abyssal canyon from Tartarus, a cave of jagged metal.

Phrygian hung in the air at the edge of the topmost deck, looking down.

Eikon kept his distance. He caught sight of other hunters. Two… three… There were several on the other side of the gash. The mare must have gone down. But they hesitated.

Heads turned, glances were exchanged. Something was wrong.

A wave of vertigo came over Eikon. That happened sometimes in zero-g when the brain couldn’t quite keep its location straight, without gravity pulling on the inner ear. The artificial magnetosphere usually helped, but focusing on it only made things worse.

“Listen,” someone whispered.

Eikon heard it, now. He had thought it was just an air filter or some other machinery humming in the distance, some irrelevant environmental noise filtered out without a thought. But now that he focused his attention on it, he heard the rumbling beneath them.

He looked across and saw how the griffons seemed to stay in the same relative locations, but their formation moved within the halls, in perfect unison.

The ship was moving.

Or, it had been. Just as he realized what was happening, it stopped, but there was no mistaking what had just occurred.

He caught sight of Dorian and Rasmus across the gap. Dorian’s eyes twinkled in the faint light, opened wide in surprise. Eikon found subtle satisfaction in the knowledge that Dorian hadn’t been expecting that.

Phrygian growled something under his breath, then called out louder, “Forget the game. We have to stop her.”

Her? The mare? The aft bridge didn’t even exist anymore, and if it did, almost all of the essential systems were locked out. The engines could only be controlled from the bridge or with the captain’s personal authorization, a code that had been lost in the mutiny when most of the command staff were killed.

And even if she somehow had the codes, it would have taken hours to give and receive the maneuver information verbally through the intercom.

“It wasn’t her,” Eikon said, just as the others were beginning to move out.

Phrygian held up a hand, called out to the others to wait a moment. They did. All eyes glowed in the faint light as they turned to Eikon. “What?” Phrygian growled.

“The aft bridge is gone.”

“She must have found the captain’s authorization codes, then. Or maybe she knew all along.” Phrygian spread his wings. He and the others would bolt in a matter of seconds. There was too much at stake to discuss it before acting.

“She’s had thirty minutes at most to get a status report on the ship, its trajectory, the engines, and then verbally run through the calculations,” Eikon said. Phrygian stared at him. Eikon swallowed, his throat tightening. “This maneuver was set from the main bridge.”

He received a number of scowls. Phrygian gripped his spear with both hands, wringing the shaft as if he might be able to squeeze the truth out of it.

Phrygian glanced down, then back at Eikon. “There are enough of us to split up. There couldn’t be anything threatening enough on the bridge that it would take all of us.”

“Something significant is happening, and we don’t know what,” Eikon said. The words just sort of fell out of his beak. He probably should have stopped, but it was a little late for that. “It’s not just a distraction from the hunt; it might change everything.”

“Which is why only three or four should stay,” Phrygian said. He looked across the gap, noting the others. “Dorian, Rasmus, you’re quick and stealthy.” It wasn’t exactly a command, but the suggestion was strong. They nodded.

Phrygian turned back to Eikon. “You too.”

“Why me?”

“I didn’t even notice you until you said something.” Phrygian gave a faint smirk. Then he straightened up, gaze drifting into the hall behind Eikon, as if he were about to address the others.

Just as Phrygian opened his beak, the ship roared, drives rammed to full throttle almost instantly. The griffons crashed to the floor. Or, more accurately, the floor crashed into them. The entire lexicon of griffon curses was muttered among them.

Phrygian thrust the blunt end of his spear against the floor and stood. “To the bridge. Now.”

They took off.

To the bridge… where Kelantos was.

Eikon stood there, legs wanting to tremble as he realized what they might think. He forced himself to stand still, forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly.

By Gryphus and the Ascended, he’d just… He’d just sent Phrygian and half the flock after Kelantos. Who else was on the bridge? No one that they knew of. Maybe that griffon and pony that Kelantos suspected were still out there, but most of the griffons thought that was ridiculous, seeing no trace of those two. Eikon had noted subtle changes to engineering, here and there, things that the griffons hadn’t done. There were status readouts that changed for no apparent reason, but that could also be explained by glitches in the system.

They would think Kelantos had done it. He just eliminated the mare, the only other possibility.

If not for the visceral reality, his heart pounding in his chest, his trembling hands almost failing to keep hold of his spear, he could have thought it a dream. But he was awake, and this was real.

There were still too many unanswered questions. His mind swarmed with the questions, things he couldn’t answer from known hints. Who moved the ship? Where? Why? How had they repaired it enough?

He shook his head. If the ship was going anywhere but home, it didn’t matter. They’d still be adrift, just with artificial gravity. If the ship was going back to Equus, though…

The griffons couldn’t go home, not now. That road lead to death, punishment for their crimes. The flock had accepted that fate and had coped with it, with hunts and sparring and other recreation. The isolation hadn’t worn them away into complete insanity, yet. They knew they couldn’t go home, and had stopped any attempts to do so.

But Kelantos didn’t think like the rest. Maybe he had done it against their wishes, and Eikon wasn’t here to… Gryphus. Eikon inhaled sharply. Maybe the whole reason he was here watching them was because Kelantos knew they would react, and he wanted to know how. It was strange that Eikon would just randomly be told to go along with a hunt, and pay attention to loyalty, of all things…

And now he had just made Kelantos’ plans much more difficult. Their ship was set on a course for inevitable death, and the griffons had their prime suspect. Maybe there were some other survivors, as of yet unnoticed by the rest of the flock. Maybe that mare really had done this, and Eikon had just ruined everything.

He took a shaky breath, trying to decide what to do. The mare was inconsequential. If it was her fault, she had already done her damage, and couldn’t be a further threat. They could find that out and come back for her. All other roads led to the main bridge, possibly to Kelantos who was near that area.

Dorian crossed the gap with a flap of his wings and landed, taking a few more steps and stopping next to Eikon. “I was going to ask if you would finish the hunt or head for the bridge, but I suppose standing there and waiting for something to happen is a valid option.”

Rasmus was still on the other side of the gap.

“I’m thinking,” Eikon muttered.

“You don’t know what’s happening, do you?”

Eikon turned and glared at Dorian. Seeing the other’s smirk only irritated him further. “No, I don’t. Do you know something?”

“Regarding the ship? No. But I do know why you don’t know.”

“What?” Eikon spat. He was sick of the riddles and word play.

He saw the glinting tip of Dorian’s rapier drifting through a faint beam of light. Eikon gripped his spear tighter.

“You made the worst mistake an observer can make,” Dorian said, backing away. “You altered the system you were trying to observe.”

Dorian turned completely and surveyed the drop to the decks below. After a few moments, he looked at Rasmus and the two seemed to communicate something. They leapt down, using their wings to slow the fall.

Did he know? Eikon hadn’t kept it a secret, but neither had he made it obvious that he was acting as a set of eyes and ears for another.

Eikon clenched his beak. There weren’t enough hints. He couldn’t read Dorian. He hated when there weren’t enough hints to figure something — or someone — out.

But Dorian wasn’t the only question that needed answering. Eikon could go for the bridge. Whatever was happening to the ship was more important than those two. But Kelantos was already on the command module, supposedly. Eikon wouldn’t be of much help, there. Dorian and Rasmus, two of the most important ones to watch out for… they were right here, he had a perfectly valid reason for being with them, and recent events would prompt them to discuss things they might not normally discuss.

Eikon ran to the gap and leapt down after them.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. It was even darker down there. But he found them soon enough. Dorian and Rasmus had split up, each taking a different hallway. Eikon scowled. Of course they’d do that. He couldn’t just stalk one. Not only was his observation ruined, but he suspected that they’d probably double back and head for the bridge without him, or something.

Unless the mare was close by, in which case, they’d have to deal with her first. He didn’t particularly want to kill anything, but it might be a necessary tactic.

He tried to pick a hallway that looked like it would go between the two that Dorian and Rasmus had chosen. It led away from the gap, twisting around deformed rooms that hummed with machinery, ominous in the blackness the way a simple tree in the daytime became strangely disconcerting by night.

The drives still rumbled below all, though, an almost omnipresent noise occupying lower frequencies.

He heard a click, not far. Its sharpness stood out against the background noise. He quickened his pace as much as he could without fear of running into things. It was easy to avoid tripping if he spread his wings. It wasn’t as easy to avoid lacerations from all the debris that had fallen to the floor.

Coming to an area that was more or less where he guessed the click had come from, he stopped and listened. It could have just been things shifting across the floor as the ship made subtle alterations to its course.

He listened and tried to block out the whispers of the ship as machinery ebbed and flowed. There weren’t any other sounds quite like the click.

Just as he was about to move on, he held his breath and listened even more carefully. The machinery shouldn’t rise and fall like that, he realized. It should be a more constant hum. There was a faint periodic hiss of slightly oscillating timbre, roughly a second between each sound.

Something nearby was breathing.

When he looked again, he saw her. The mare had tucked herself into a pile of debris and was trying as hard as she could to be still and quiet. To her credit, Eikon would have missed her if not for the first sound that led him to pay more attention to this area.

She saw him and froze.

He gripped his spear. An image flashed through his mind. What if he missed, and she didn’t die right away? It was easy enough to end a life when it was analogous to flipping a switch, but when he actually stood there, spear in hand, and the visceral reality presented itself, it wasn’t quite so black and white. Death might be inevitable, but suffering was not. And Eikon, being a griffon of heightened perception, was terrified of pain.

He stared at her for a while. She didn’t move. Maybe she was too tired to run. Perhaps she thought that he was considering sparing her, and she was afraid of doing anything to change his mind.

If he could do it quickly, he’d have something to bring Dorian and Rasmus together with him. Even if he failed to do it quickly, that would still be accomplished. Even if he just shouted something out, they’d hear.

They should hear. His eyes drifted as he listened, turning his attention not to the mare but to the other griffons. Either they were silently hunting as usual, or they were gone. But they weren’t in sight, and with all the environmental noise, they probably weren’t within hearing range, either.

They had probably gone for the bridge, leaving him behind so he couldn’t ‘spy’ on them. He should have headed that way.

Eikon looked at the mare again. If not for the way her sides expanded and contracted with each breath, he could have thought her a statue, or a ghost. At the moment, she was helpless. Furthermore, she represented zero threat to the griffons.

“Most of us have headed for the command module,” he said. “There are two others who might still be down here. They’ll kill you on sight.” She watched him intently, but gave no sign of understanding. Eikon glanced down. “And I’d have to kill you if I was seen with you.” He turned and sighed, shifting his grip on his spear. “So try not to be seen.”

— — —

As Lennox initiated the burn, a brief countdown on the screen gave him time to put his rear paws and a hand to the floor, bracing himself.

The ship jolted as the engines flared, acceleration slamming upward with nine point eight one meters per second squared of acceleration. All the power of Equus’ gravity in an instant.

His legs buckled under rediscovered weight. Every muscle tensed. Just as he was regaining his sensation of up and remembering how to stand on his rear paws, some vital bone deep within the skeleton of the ship palpably crumbled.

There was a split second of weightlessness before before the engineering module slammed into the rest of the ship. The floor jumped upward, throwing Lennox’s legs out from under him as rumbling vibrated through his chest.

NavCom shrieked out a panicked trill. They turned off course. Numerical readouts flashed across the screen at a speed only machines could process.

A subtle bump pushed Lennox to the side as the reaction control thrusters kicked in, using what little fuel they had left to strain against the ship, trying to keep it oriented in the right direction.

He hesitated for a second, trying to pull breath into a tightened rib cage. Adrenaline lit fire to his veins, masking any hint of pain, clouding his perception. He listened to the wailing of the computers, barely aware of what they were communicating.

It reminded him of the launchpad accidents back on Equus. Those great white monuments to arrogance stood gleaming in the sun, spires that defied God and Physics, daring Gravity to hold them down. An eruption of smoke and fire would throw off the weight of their blasphemy for a time, but then the trajectory would start tilting. Even a passive observer’s heart rate would pick up, hints of adrenaline tingling through their stomach. Their mind would give up its prideful admiration of aeronautic dominance, its marvel at its own superiority. It would chant a new incantation: no, no, straighten out, get back on course, those cosmonauts have families. But the tilt would continue, heedless of prayers from those who know the names of gods only when their own devices have failed them. The rocket would burn and disintegrate. He was aboard one of those, now.

New audio notifications. The computer recalculated. It thought it would still be able to salvage the maneuver with an increase in fuel consumption. Groaning metal cast doubt.

Lennox pulled himself up by the railing and stumbled over to the security station, keeping some of his weight on the railing. The words of the Prayer of Supplication ran through his head… Great Gryphus divine, may we stand as monuments to your glory… He could almost hear his father’s voice from in the control room when the Vasari had tilted off course.

“Lennox,” Solstice said, his voice a pinched rasp. All he said was Lennox’s name. The tone conveyed the cry for help.

The ship’s maneuver was up to NavCom. Lennox couldn’t possibly be of any assistance to a quantum processor. He turned his attention to SecCom. The security cameras were a jumbled mess, but he found Solstice easily enough.

Solstice was on his back, his helmet shattered. From the way his right foreleg was twisted, it had to be broken. Dark blood matted his mint-green mane and stained the collar of his suit. Bits of glass and smaller drops of blood dotted the floor around him.

Kelantos stood over him, wings spread, regaining his balance.

“I see,” Lennox said. Stillness ached in his muscles; he wanted to run, to fight. His wings tingled.

The hallway was sealed off, though. There was no easy way for Lennox to reach them without exposing the bridge and the controls within.

SecCom didn’t have any defensive systems. It could open and close doors. Damn naive ponies. Brilliant idea, building a security system that didn’t actually secure anything. If he was creative, he could use SecCom to open a series of doors to the nearest airlock. But that would kill both of them.

Even if Lennox unsealed the bridge and went out there, he was unarmed and untrained. He’d just be another target. And until the Alcubierre drive kicked in and the ship was generating a warp field, set on a stable course home that wouldn’t require the careful ministration of a navigational engineer, Lennox was a vital asset and he needed to survive to make sure everything worked. Solstice had fixed the engines. His job was done.

The remaining time in the maneuver was running out. Lennox made one final glance over the options available. There was no reasonable course of action he could take to assist Solstice without risking their priorities.

Making his way back over to the navigational computer, his legs a bit more stable, he set his attention on the Alcubierre field generator.

He pulled up the Alcubierre controllers and simulators, borrowing some of NavCom’s quantum processor's power to calculate the warp field parameters.

A few warnings popped up, violations of protocol. Alcubierre field not to be engaged when ship is oriented prograde. In case of the statistically impossible event that an asteroid was in your way when the field disengaged, better to be traveling aft first. It would be easier to decelerate, absorb the impact, or fire the nukes. The Verdence system was much younger than Celeste, and still had many asteroids in the system that hadn’t yet been picked up by planets. There was a whole network of defense satellites in place around the planet Verdence.

NavCom gave him his numbers. A two week warp, assuming all available power was diverted to the Alcubierre drive.

Minutes still remained in the current burn. Lennox queued the Alcubierre drive to activate as soon as the current maneuver was completed. He still needed to wait to make sure it came online.

A series of flashes on the security feeds grabbed Lennox’s attention. The griffons had reached the command module, and were making their way up the lower decks.

Nearer the bridge, Kelantos still stood over Solstice. The griffon’s back was to the camera. He was looking at something in his hand, but Lennox couldn’t see.

There was a new wound in the middle of Solstice’s stomach. Kelantos’ spear dripped blood.

Lennox clenched his beak.

He didn’t want to just toss aside Solstice like an unneeded tool, but he couldn’t risk fifty lives to save one. He’d already concluded that; why couldn’t he stop going over it? The question arose again and again, the challenge answered the same way each time.

He turned his attention back to navigation, forcing himself to focus on the objective. Getting home was all that mattered. Solstice would eagerly choose to sacrifice himself to that end.

The computer made small adjustments here and there, maintaining a mostly stable burn. It would correct the course with more accuracy as it neared Equus.

A circular band on NavCom’s trajectory diagram elongated, stretching out to an ellipse as the Verdant Song accelerated. When it reached escape velocity, the ellipse snapped open, tracing an arc from the Verdence system out into the galaxy, passing the Celeste system. The arc straightened and inched closer to Celeste, closer to being caught in the heliosphere where the solar wind would crush the Alcubierre field. They were just close enough to the edge of the Verdence system that the field would be able to form. It was almost fortunate that they hadn’t arrived closer to Verdence, because then they’d be stuck too far from the planet to get home, but also too close to Verdence’s sun to warp away.

With every second, it seemed more likely that the ship would be able to make the voyage. And with every second, Solstice lost blood.

At the security station, one camera feed still showed the stallion, lying on his back in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. “Solstice?” Lennox whispered.

The communicator still worked. Solstice was still alive. Lennox could see the stallion’s chest rise and fall, and he could hear the background noise. “Solstice?” Lennox repeated, clenching a fist.

“Your companion is incapacitated,” the griffon’s deep voice answered. “I don’t appreciate the assassination attempt.” Kelantos was still there in view of the same camera he’d been standing near. He stood still, holding Solstice’s communicator.

The other griffons continued their ascent. They were armed with spears, having been interrupted in the midst of a hunt, and not having time to go find more modern weaponry.

If Lennox still had claws, his palms would have bled as he squeezed both hands into fists. There wasn’t anything… no weapons, no security systems… Solstice had the only gun, but that was gone.

Lennox opened his beak to say something, but stopped himself. No words would change anything. Kelantos wasn’t an ally simply because he allowed Lennox and Solstice to work, choosing not to hunt them down. The griffons still would have killed them on sight. Kelantos was just trying to distract him, and he was allowing it to work.

Seconds left in the countdown. Lennox crouched down and grabbed the railing.

NavCom beeped. The pained cries of architecture pushed far beyond recommended limits ceased suddenly, the wounded ship enduring the last of the maneuver. As the audible rumbling cut out, the artificial gravity did as well, and Lennox was in zero-g again.

He threw himself across the room, towards the door.

A sudden dizziness swept over him. The Alcubierre field. He felt a pressure that was both inside and outside of his head. It expanded, severely disorienting for a moment, before it seemed to settle into place.

He reached the door. That was it. Checkmate. The game was over, and the only way out was to flip the board and scatter the pieces. Only the destruction of the ship would stop it, and even Kelantos wouldn’t go that far… not if it meant suicide.

Lennox slipped through the doorway and it slammed shut behind him, locking off the bridge until the captain personally unlocked it. Since the captain was dead, it was locked until a rescue party tore the ship apart.

Lennox pushed off of the sealed door behind him, coasting down the hallway. With Kelantos on the opposite side of the command module and the other griffons still a few decks below, he could escape if he was quick. If not — the ship would still arrive. Governments would still find it and figure out what happened, and possibly save the hostages somehow.

He came to a corner and stopped, grabbing a support bar. Something clacked on the ceiling above him.

Solstice’s pistol. It bounced off the ceiling and tumbled back in slow motion. Lennox reached out and grabbed the hoof band, tilting it around to investigate. Two shots left. How was this here? It couldn’t have drifted almost two hundred meters.

He peeked around the corner, instantly jerking his head back. Kelantos hovered in the air, holding Solstice in one hand and a spear in the other.

The wrong door. Lennox pressed back against the wall, heart instantly pounding. His eyes darted around. No — there was no mistake. The markings on the wall were correct.

How had Kelantos, carrying a limp body, gotten on the other side of the bridge that fast?

Lennox tried to quiet his breathing and listen. He slipped his hand through the pistol’s hoof band, gripping it in the awkward alternative way intended for fingers.

He had been watching Kelantos the whole time. Kelantos hadn’t moved from that spot. Had he learned to tinker with camera feeds? Did he plan this out, down to the exact spot where he would stand, and disrupt the cameras ahead of time? No, that wasn’t the best option. Kelantos always chose the best option…

“He tampered with the—” Solstice tried to cough out something to Lennox, but the voice cut off.

Kelantos had tampered with the security feeds? Of course. Swap the labels on the cameras, mix up the system…. All the hallways looked alike. No one would notice that hallway x had swapped places with hallway y.

Lennox hesitated. He glanced around the corner again, just long enough to register Kelantos in his vision. Kelantos had clamped a hand around the stallion’s throat.

Lennox reached out a hand to grab one of the support bars on the wall. A nervous finger slipped around and placed itself on the gun’s trigger.

“Your friend appears to be having some difficulty breathing,” Kelantos called out. “I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you started negotiating soon.”

It was just stalling. He was stalling, trying to keep Lennox in place while the other griffons approached. Kelantos wasn't actually a direct threat at the moment. If he was, he would be attacking instead of offering sarcasm.

Lennox let himself float into the hall, eyes darting around and picking up every detail in an instant. Straight past Kelantos was a door into the command module’s crew quarters. The halls in there were like a maze. Lennox could lose the incoming griffons in there, if he could get past this one first. He leveled the gun at Kelantos.

“Back up,” Lennox ordered. “Let go of the stallion. There will be no negotiation.”

Kelantos blinked. “Please note the hostage,” he said slowly. “Recall the location of a pony’s carotid artery, and note the location of my talons.”

“Your reflexes are not faster than bullets.”

Solstice wheezed as the hand around his throat slackened slightly. Flecks of blood fell away from his wounds, the globules wobbling until they spattered on the walls and floor. In zero-g, the blood didn’t run or drip, it just collected around the wound, held together by surface tension. There was a sheath of blood around Solstice’s chest and Kelantos’ arm, dark and shimmering in the light. It visibly expanded as Lennox watched. It had to be some deep puncture wound in his chest. Solstice would struggle to survive that even in a hospital.

“The sad thing,” Kelantos said, “is that you could have avoided this conflict and still gotten the ship home if you had listened to me. We could have avoided the massacre.”

Something made a noise behind Lennox. The other griffons. Kelantos ducked behind Solstice and flared his wings, advancing. They had him surrounded. The only way out…

Solstice struggled. Kelantos held a firm grip on him, and the stallion’s writhing was futile. He was helplessly pushed forward, a meat shield protecting the incoming griffon.

Lennox and Solstice briefly made eye contact. Not enough time to try and parse whatever the stallion’s gaze communicated.

Lennox fired.

Two pings echoed from the end of the hall as the bullets ricocheted at the far end. For a heartbeat, Lennox was afraid that he had missed. But both shots had hit their target and exited, a comet’s tail of blood droplets hanging in their wake. Kelantos released his grip, his eyes going wide.

Lennox kicked off of the wall behind and drifted forward, unable to use the wings still stuffed into that gods-damned suit.

Free of the griffon, Solstice drifted past, two new wounds added to the dozens his body already sustained. “Nice shot.” He tried to smile, then took a labored breath and whispered something more, but it was hard to discern words from the wheezing and sputtering. Holly’s name was in there somewhere.

If they had been in a safe place, Lennox might have been able to press a few meaningful phrases out of him. He continued past Solstice, grabbing a bar along the wall and pulling himself along at a greater speed.

Lennox glanced back briefly, looking for any pursuers. As he did so, claws latched into his shoulder, catching the flesh for a moment before momentum spun him and pulled him free. He left a handful of bloody feathers behind.

Kelantos growled.

The gun was empty and griffons were coming. Lennox couldn’t stop to finish the job. He grabbed the next support bars and threw himself down the hall, regaining speed.

The sounds of pursuers faded behind him as he darted through the twisting corridors of the crew quarters, taking advantage of every turn or maintenance tunnel that could possibly throw them off. The immediate pursuit had already lost track of him, and he’d be long gone before they could muster any organized hunt.

Several minutes later, Lennox ducked around a corner and waited, catching his breath in a small room of no consequence on the bottommost deck of the command module. After his breathing slowed enough to be quiet, he listened. All he heard was the ringing in his ears. He held his breath, straining to hear the slightest noise. The ship was soundless.

An airlock connecting to the central axis would be nearby. He could make his way to his little hideout and figure out what to do next. The wound in his shoulder needed to be cared for.

He looked around. Nothing organic moved, just the debris that hung in the air, tombstones to keep him company. The journey back to his hideout was quieter than it usually was.

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. IV

Eikon arrived near the bridge not more than a few minutes after the rest of the hunting party. The encounter with that mare hadn’t lasted more than thirty seconds, though it had felt like much longer. His mind had raced with the possibilities as he approached the bridge.

The engines had shut off while Eikon was en route, and he felt a momentary pressure in his head as the Alcubierre field engaged. The ship had finished the maneuver and was warping. The only worthwhile destination was Equus.

Out of the factions who desired to reach Equus, only a few had been in any position to execute it. The ponies kept prisoner down in chemlab had all been accounted for not more than a few hours ago, and even if one or more had escaped, they couldn’t pull off something like this in such a short time. Kelantos had the will and the capability, but he couldn’t oppose the desires of the flock so blatantly. The same went for the other griffons, though none of them gave any indication of a desire to reach Equus.

The most natural assumption was that Kelantos had decided to oppose the flock. It offered an explanation with the fewest new assumptions. Occam’s razor, Eikon thought. But Occam’s razor wasn’t a truth detector, it was only a guideline for estimation.

The remaining possibility was the presence of another faction: survivors on the Song who had remained undetected thus far. That explanation raised many more questions… but those questions had answers. How had they hidden? The Song was a big ship, and there were places the griffons did not go.

Upon reaching the bridge, the last hypothesis was confirmed.

A handful of griffons crowded around Kelantos, attempting to control the blood loss from one or more chest wounds. Kelantos was in shock, barely conscious.

Globules of blood broke away from the wounds and drifted like bubbles. Everything became soaked in blood; it went everywhere. The hastily improvised bandages, their hands, their feathers…

For a brief moment, Eikon observed the strangeness of his own calm. Kelantos had been shot. Eikon should have been moved in some way, but he found only the logical conclusion that the doctor would probably have everything under control, and that Eikon could do little to help.

His efforts would be best spent gathering information. He examined the surrounding area.

Doctor Theophanes was there. He had improvised bandages from the vest uniforms the griffons wore. But he hadn’t been hunting with the griffons. Also, a number of griffons were absent.

There was a stallion drifting at the end of the hall. He had lost so much blood from a chest wound, it formed a shimmering sheath around his midsection.

Motion flickered in Eikon’s peripheral vision and he turned. Dorian emerged from a doorway down the hall in the other direction, a small medical kit in hand. He noticed Eikon as he made his way towards the griffons. After handing off the kit to Theophanes, he flew over to Eikon.

“Theophanes was here first,” Dorian said. “Came up from chemlab when the ship moved.”

“Where are the others?” Eikon asked.

“Chasing a ghost,” Dorian said. “Theophanes claims to have seen Lennox.”

Eikon frowned. “The ship logs say he’s dead.”

“The ship logs say I’m dead. I wouldn’t put much faith in their accuracy.”

The last time Eikon had seen Lennox had been one hundred and sixty-five days ago, shortly after the incident that crippled the ship. Lennox and Kelantos had been talking, but Eikon didn’t overhear the words. Lennox had left Kelantos’ office and passed Eikon in the hallway, but Eikon didn’t know him well enough to pick up thoughts at a glance, and he wasn’t sure if the conversation had gone well or poorly. Kelantos was even more unreadable. After that, Lennox had disappeared. It was easy to presume him dead from the rioting. The griffons had been quite thorough.

As far as Eikon knew, Lennox’s only occupation on the ship was a sort of programmer. In the official database, he was listed as an officer of software development without any military rank. The role lacked routine duties and was called upon to deal with any issues or challenges that the original designers of the ship hadn’t already prepared for. There wasn’t any reason to believe that he would have been exceptionally prepared to deal with the fighting.

But the official records neglected a great many details.

“Who’s the stallion?” Eikon asked.

“I don’t know,” Dorian said. “You’re the one with the eidetic memory.”

Eikon glanced at the other griffons. Kelantos was still half-conscious and still bleeding, but had been thoroughly bandaged at this point. The griffons had arrived soon enough that he’d likely survive the blood loss. The real question was whether there was organ damage, but that wasn’t anything that Eikon could help with. Theophanes had the help he needed.

Eikon flew to the end of the hall where the stallion hovered, unmoving. Dorian followed.

The stallion’s helmet was smashed, and little bits of glass twinkled as they hung in a sort of sheet just a few centimeters above the floor. That suggested that the helmet was broken before the ship’s engines disengaged, and the inertia left the shards arranged in a horizontal plane. Kelantos had fought the stallion and subdued him before or during the acceleration.

Eikon reached out and gently lifted the stallion’s chin. He was completely unresponsive to the touch.

“Interesting,” Eikon said. “Note the marks here…”

There were claw marks around the stallion’s neck, the sort of red marks that came from pressure without piercing the skin.

If Kelantos had his claws around the stallion’s throat, there were only two reasons not to immediately kill the stallion. One: attempting to force the stallion to stop the ship. Two: another had been present and Kelantos needed a shield.

And if you took a hostage to hold as a meat shield, you held them from behind and likely faced the same direction. The marks were from the left hand claws, then… one on the stallion’s right and four on the left. Leaving Kelantos’ right hand free for a weapon.

A spear hung in the air at the opposite end of the hall. It could have drifted that far if Kelantos had dropped it. It could have been thrown. Eikon turned his attention back to the stallion.

Most of the stallion’s wounds were cuts, except for three major puncture wounds. Two in the chest had exit wounds in the stallion’s back, penetrating all the way through. The abdominal wound did not.

Eikon imagined himself holding the stallion in one hand and a spear in the other. There were only two good angles for stabbing with one hand… an underhand grip and an overhand grip. But stabbing lower would only make sense from behind. The abdominal wound was on the wrong side. And the higher wounds weren’t high enough. A stab from higher would have descended through the neck and shoulder area, killing in one thrust.

The evidence were entirely consistent with a scenario where Kelantos held the stallion from behind as a hostage or shield. The two of them had been shot by another.

“Which way did the others go?” Eikon asked.

Dorian pointed. “Theophanes said Lennox took off that way. The others followed. Through the crew quarters and then down to the axis.”

Another interesting detail, Eikon noted. None of the griffons had looked at the bridge, yet.

“Dorian!” Theophanes shouted from the other end of the hall.

Dorian muttered something before turning and flying back.

Eikon glanced over the griffons to see if he was also wanted. None of them were paying any attention to him.

He started to make his way to the bridge, spear in hand, but allowed his gaze to linger on Kelantos for just a moment.

Kelantos was conscious, though slightly delirious. His eyes moved… not with the lightning intellect of a chess master but with the same hollow fear that all creatures knew in danger. His chances of survival were fairly good at this point, at least as far as immediate survival was concerned. If he had been hit in vital organs, he’d already be unconscious.

Even still, Kelantos was mortal, and that realization struck all of them.

The airlock wasn’t far, but it was locked. Captain-ordered lockdown. The control panel wouldn’t let him do anything unless he gave the captain’s authorization code, which was long lost.

Eikon glanced down the hallway and shifted his grip on his spear. There was another airlock on the other side. He flapped his wings and took off, rounding a corner and heading for the other airlock to the bridge. It was dark, even to one with avian vision.

There wasn’t much reason to maneuver the ship again, once at warp. It was unlikely that any other survivors would hide near the bridge.

He eventually found the other airlock, a small alcove set into the wall.

The door control to this one was smashed open, with wires hanging out. A battery was tied in. This must’ve been how the stallion got on the bridge.

But the door was shut; Eikon couldn’t budge it, and there wasn’t enough power in the battery to unlatch the manual locks.

If he could somehow get this door open, he’d then have to deal with the next. It was, after all, an airlock. If the inner door was functional, he’d have the lockdown to deal with. But perhaps the other was broken as well…

And if it was similarly broken, he could get on the bridge and ensure that there wasn’t anything else planned for the engines.

He could shut off the Alcubierre drive, too. Stop the voyage.

He looked over the wires in front of him. While they were charred and damaged, it was fairly obvious which drew power and which opened the door. Two of them were bent upward from recent tampering while the rest bent down.

He rummaged in his pockets and withdrew a small flashlight. His heart beat faster as he unscrewed one end and slid the battery out.

There could be someone on the bridge, waiting. Someone who might attack. But if Lennox had been there, he had left, headed into the crew quarters. Could there have been others that had hidden themselves all this time? The Song was a big ship.

Eikon kept his spear close as he reached for the wires.

“What are you doing?”

Eikon spun, losing the flashlight and getting a clumsy grip on his spear.

Dorian should have smirked at Eikon's clumsiness, but he didn't. He just gave a cold scowl. “What are you doing?”

Eikon frowned. “Trying to get on the bridge. Making sure the engines won’t come online again.”

“They won’t.”

“How do you know?” Eikon slowly shifted his grip on his spear to something more natural and comfortable, more prepared.

Dorian’s gaze never faltered. He hung in the air, still, staring at Eikon. “Because the ship is already at velocity. It’s all warp from here on.”

Nausea churned in Eikon’s stomach. His wings tensed. “It couldn’t hurt to look.”

“It could.”

Was Dorian trying to stop him? Working together with Lennox? He still had his rapier sheathed at his hip… if this was a threat, it wasn’t one made too eagerly…

Eikon took a deep breath, trying to relax. If he just backed off, Dorian wouldn’t hurt him… he hoped. He knew too much, now, though. Dorian had revealed some intentions better kept silent.

Eikon held his spear in one hand and spread his hands in a sign of deference. “Okay. We don’t need to check, then.” His heart pounded, almost as if calling out. Eikon felt his rapid breathing pull at the muscles around his chest.

“I was sent up here to get you,” Dorian said. “We’re not worried about the bridge right now. It’s sealed off. We can’t get in.”

Sent by whom? “Okay. So what should we do now?” Eikon tried to breathe more calmly. Maybe the bridge was sealed off. Maybe it wasn't. But deliberately avoiding the truth was concerning.

Dorian shook his head and sighed. “You’re acting like I’m up here to stab you.”

Eikon hesitated. Wasn't Dorian up here, prepared for that? “Whatever gave you that impression?”

“I could ask you the same.” He glanced aside, then whispered, “Think about it. Think about the consequences.”

“You would be punished? None of the flock have killed another for—”

“No. The ship. The bridge.”

Eikon felt his eyes locked in place by Dorian’s hard stare.

“If we get on the bridge, we can stop the ship,” Eikon said.

“Which means that today will have changed nothing. Now, the alternative?”

Eikon frowned. If they went back now, told the others the bridge was sealed… It was deceit, it was one of the highest sins. But sometimes, an individual might choose a selfless sin, accepting their own damnation to secure a better fate for the group.

If he did nothing, the ship would arrive home. They had thought it impossible. It had been impossible, back when there were so many mouths to feed. But the mutiny that killed most of the crew had also been the very thing that allowed these stragglers, Lennox and the stallion, to fix the engines and send the ship home.

They all wanted to go home, but knew they couldn’t. Not because of the engines, but because of what they had done. These were crimes unforgivable. Eikon was as guilty as any of the others. If they went home, they would suffer the highest legal punishments. They had butchered and played games with the others, turned to savagery in their isolation. There was no going back after that.

But Eikon missed the sky. Even if he could only see it through bars, even if he only saw it once before being executed… He missed the sky. And there wasn’t anything left on the Song. They would eventually all die here.

“Well?” Dorian asked.

“If we do nothing, we go home,” Eikon said. “We’ll be punished.”

“We’ll be free,” Dorian said. He made a gesture toward the floor, the rest of the ship. “This is punishment.”

“You’d rather face justice back home?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Dorian said, menace creeping into his voice. He nodded towards the airlock.

“Right.” Eikon let his wings extend slightly, not sure if he should move or stay put until Dorian gave an order.

Dorian finally turned away, breaking his hard stare. Eikon felt that he could breathe again.

Dorian took a moderate pace, moving down the hall toward the elevator.

Eikon cleared his throat. “The others don’t want to go home, you know.”

“I see the same things you do.”

The others would rather stay out there than suffer whatever awaited at Equus. Dorian apparently wanted to go home, instead. That made three, that Eikon knew of. There were perhaps one or two more, but the overwhelming majority was violently in favor of exile.

“So why are you different?” Eikon couldn’t help but ask.

Dorian smirked again. “Because I’m surrounded by idiots and I can’t bear the thought of being stuck with them any longer.”

That was probably a joke, but Eikon was curious enough to pursue it as if it were serious. “You want to be executed just because you don’t like us?”

“You’re so sure of what awaits, aren’t you?” Dorian said. “You should throw the dice a few times before the end.”

“Wait.” Eikon sped up and moved ahead of Dorian, turning as he did so. “Have you figured a way to escape all of this? Get home without being held responsible?”

“No, I haven’t. We can make something up as we go along.” Dorian seemed to enjoy Eikon’s mild surprise. “I try not to think so far ahead because I’m desperately afraid that I might end up like you.”

Eikon glowered at him. “And by the way, you don’t need to threaten me.”

“Why? Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

— — —

The tunnel through the central axis was not the only way to travel from one end of the ship to other. Dozens of smaller hallways and little rooms twisted around the axis, an outer shell to house auxiliary systems and the motors that spun the habitats. Lennox had studied the schematics thoroughly, finding every passage that could be of use.

Through these, it was possible to avoid the griffons and travel from point to point without placing oneself in the center of a giant, brightly lit tube with no concealment whatsoever along its thousand meter length.

Smaller passages led from this network into the docked habitats, one of which allowed Lennox to avoid the main airlocks and enter the habitat he and Solstice had frequently made home.

As he descended through the decks, moving farther from the axis, the centrifugal inertia gradually became stronger. The gentle change was much more welcome than the shock of the ship’s acceleration.

Descending, the habitat’s systems became more dense, as well. The idea was that, en route, as much equipment as possible would be kept towards the ends of the habitats, because the ends had the greatest centrifugal inertia and would be most like Equus gravity. It was more difficult to create the rotational acceleration, but was regarded as worth it. Once landed, the upper decks allowed a lot of room to grow.

He and Solstice had set up base camp in the habitat dedicated to electronic manufacturing and satellite control. The plaque read, ‘EMSC.’ The crew had made the acronym pronounceable by appending a little more of the last word, resulting in the nickname, ‘emscon.’

It was the habitat the griffons were least likely to spend time on, as it was almost entirely useless en route and the vast majority of the fabricators had been depleted months ago.There wasn’t anything on that the griffons couldn’t find elsewhere with less effort. Most of the areas of the ship had some overlap in functionality.

That overlap was also the reason habitat emscon had a small hydroponics bay sufficient to feed a dozen or so passengers indefinitely. A dozen or so ponies, anyway.

Griffons were not biologically capable of surviving on vegetables indefinitely, a fact that seemed to have worked out rather unfortunately for the crew. They could for a time, but the they couldn’t digest or synthesize all necessary nutrients from plant matter alone. The synthetic ‘meats’ were a step up, but even after two centuries, the only way to make a perfect substitute was to use a real animal, something that made the equines very uncomfortable.

Lennox ate in silence, scanning the room to distract himself from the taste.

Faint light from other rooms diffused through the hallways and into his room. It was sufficient for him to see his surroundings. There was no need to turn on the light when he was alone.

Computers surrounded him, though these weren’t connected to any of the ship’s systems. This was a control room for artificial satellites around Verdence. At the moment, almost nothing was of any use whatsoever. The fragile transmitters and receivers weren’t even installed on the outside because they wouldn’t have survived atmospheric entry.

Lennox finished his small meal, all he had the appetite for, and stared at the other side of the room. The cutting edge of his hunger was gone, but he was still exhausted. He needed to rest. But he also needed to go find Holly.

The griffons would… actually, they wouldn’t prioritize her at the moment. They were after him. Which would have made a good motivation to get up and keep moving, if not for the fact that he knew he was safe here.

If anyone came after him, he’d know. He had sealed doors behind him, not to lock them shut but to trigger alarms in his communicator. And if someone came, Lennox could lock the doors remotely and make for some escape path or hiding place. And even if the doors and sensors failed, Solstice could—

Lennox squeezed his eyes shut. No, the sensors wouldn’t fail. Solstice had built them. Solstice had always been the one to work with hardware, Lennox with software. Their complementary skill sets had allowed them to accomplish so much by working together. But it wasn’t enough, was it?

Lennox curled a hand into a fist as if trying to crush the smoothed claws within, then slammed it into the floor. A thud briefly echoed around him. The pain registered, dull and aching. He spat a curse, not from the pain but from something else. The pain was almost satisfying.

He relaxed his fist. Then, realizing that his entire body was tense, took a deep breath and relaxed all at once. Tension impaired efficiency.

Sitting around and doing nothing felt even more inefficient, but he couldn’t press himself to keep going for days on end without any break. With the griffons after him and away from Holly, he could afford a few moments.

Once his heavy breathing quieted to an inaudible level, he listened, trying to observe rather than process.

The ship had its quirks. Creaks and bumps here and there. Soft hums that came and went. They were distant and quiet. On the threshold of perception, he heard the ticking of Solstice’s watch, buried in a pocket in the discarded vacuum suit on the floor next to him.

He leaned over, rustled through the material to open the pocket, and retrieved the watch. Returning to his sitting position, he held it up to the faint light.

It glinted. The band was composed of gold links, the watch face a sort of granite black with streaks of lighter grays. The numbers were engraved in silver Romane numerals.

If he paid careful attention, he could feel as well as hear it. Like a gossamer metronome, it ticked out an almost-but-not-quite-perfect sixty beats per minute.

It was old, beyond obsolete. And though some of the old analogs were still manufactured as collectors’ items, this was not a replica. Lennox turned it over, saw the faint scratches around the edges. The manufacturer and the year were carved into the back. This was an authentic analog watch, well over a hundred years old, still functioning as if it were new.

It was truly an elegant piece of craftsponyship, but something of zero practical value. Its uncertainty was on the order of tens of seconds at best, woefully inferior to a digital timekeeping device.

Why would anyone take something this rare and valuable and useless on a mission like the Song’s? Equines were a sentimental species, and sentiment was not entirely unknown to griffons, but there was a difference between a sentimental reminder of home and a priceless historical artifact in mint condition being brought along on a dangerous voyage.

It almost seemed appropriate to hide it somewhere, to tuck it away and keep it safe in the manner of a dragon. But griffon tendencies made use of gifts, as a gesture of respect to the giver.

But it was much too large to fit around his wrist, and it felt like defiling a holy relic to remove some of the gold links from the band. He slid it into a pocket on his vest and sighed.

If he listened closely, he could still hear it ticking. A constant reminder of the passage of time. For every tick, the Verdant Song traveled one and a half astronomical units in normal space. And for every tick, the other griffons had an opportunity for unspeakable violence.

Something like thirty hostages survived in the darkest areas of the habitat the griffons claimed, Chemlab. Lennox didn’t know where they were or how many survived. He didn’t know how the griffons kept the area defended, or how he could get in undetected. He and Solstice had dealt with that issue over and over, not finding any satisfying solution to the various problems with the goal of rescuing the ponies. They opted to worry about the ship first because saving the hostages yet remaining stranded wasn’t much of an accomplishment.

The problem was always avoiding the griffons. Even if Lennox could sneak in, even if the ponies were still alive, the problem of getting out arose.

Just like the bridge.

Except, this time, you don’t have any allies to sacrifice.

He clenched his beak and squeezed his eyes shut.

It had been the only way out. They both would have died otherwise. Solstice was going to die either way; they couldn’t have escaped from that together, not with Solstice wounded so severely, not with an entire hunting party at their back. One survival was better than zero, wasn’t it?

Only if it results in more survivals later on. Only if he could somehow rescue the ponies down there, make his own life count for something, make Solstice’s death count for something.

If not, the Song would arrive in Equus space full of griffons and blood. If he failed here, then the return of the ship would destroy any chance of peace between the races. No diplomacy could recover from something like that. It might be better for Equus if the Song remained lost. Speculation and accusation was better than solid proof that one species had butchered the other.

He sighed. Solstice had been right. The worst thing you can do is stop and think. Success depended on momentum.

His legs protested as he stood again. But there was no more time for resting. Holly needed help, assuming she was still alive. In all likelihood, the griffons had already killed her. But he wasn’t about to go run towards them to reach engineering, so an alternative means of discovering her fate would be necessary. A room full of computers offered a convenient solution to that problem.

Even though most of the computer systems were permanently locked, there was probably some small hole he could squeeze through and gain access to ship-wide surveillance instead of just the surveillance for Emscon.

After dragging himself to his feet and slumping into a seat at one of the computer terminals, he set to work.

It took him roughly thirty minutes to find out that access to Chemlab would be nearly impossible without the captain’s authorization, but he could get into the main sections of the ship… the axis and the command module and engineering. Rather than continue to fight with Chemlab’s security, he opted to scan over the camera feeds he did have access to.

There weren’t many functional cameras through engineering’s crew quarters or hallways, but he did have feeds watching over the reactor controls and the Alcubierre drive. As they were the most structurally durable areas of engineering, they had suffered only minor damage, and the cameras there were still perfectly functional. The doors remained sealed, a nearly invincible barrier to prevent any kind of tampering with the most vital systems. That was reassuring… the griffons couldn’t break in and stop the ship through brute force.

Less reassuring were the feeds watching over the crew quarters. It was dark enough that most of the cameras had switched into an infrared mode.

Lennox traced over the most frequent path of the griffon hunters. It was almost impossible to track anyone on the ship; they didn’t leave prints or any noticeable disturbance; they just glided through the air. But finding nothing was finding something. The griffons were not currently hunting. Assuming they kept to their schedule, the engineering module would be abandoned for the next week.

He hadn’t really figured out how that would help, though. He could potentially set up an ambush of some sort, use everything at his disposal to tip the odds in his favor, but even a handful of the others would be too many to fight directly. Lennox was no warrior.

Even so, there might be something floating around down there that would spark an idea. He flipped through camera feeds.

Engineering was the largest of the modules, mostly because of the reactors. But it was also the most dense… The engineers weren’t nearly as claustrophobic as the other passengers, and engineering lacked gravity for about two-thirds of the voyage. There were tiny hallways that twisted around each other, linking storage and arcane machinery like something between a ball of knotted yarn and an anthill. If there was anything left that the griffons hadn’t already found, it would be in engineering.

One of the feeds gave a brief glimpse of light around a corner. He tried to find another feed showing the hallway it came from, but none gave a good view.

Could be a lost computer tablet or something. It wasn’t far off from the griffons’ usual paths, so it could have just been something they dropped, or something they found hidden but then tossed aside when they found how useless it was.

He left that feed and searched through some others. There was a lot of maintenance equipment left floating around. Small cleaning robots and the like. Nothing useful, of course, unless one got very creative.

He found a small room with a working fabricator and made note of its location. It looked like it was out of raw materials, but that was easy to fix. If you weren’t picky about what came out, you didn’t need to be picky about what went in. A chunk of scrap metal could become your next longsword. Guns needed to be a bit more precise, though. This was one of the “brute force” fabricators… fit for larger items, precise to a millimeter or so, not the nearly microscopic precision of some of the others.

After flipping through the rest of the active cameras and finding nothing of interest, he went back again. Perhaps Holly had left the engineering section. But it was also possible that he had simply missed her. With so many of the cameras disabled at the moment, it was possible that she was between working camera ranges.

The unidentified light from earlier was gone. It wasn’t likely that an inanimate object would hang in the air, still for a minute, and then suddenly accelerate without cause.

He flipped through the feeds, trying to build a mental picture of the nearby decks to anticipate where it would end up. Just as he was narrowing down on the possible locations, he came across a small mare drifting across the field of view, horn aglow in the infrared.

If not for the recording and rewind capabilities, he would have thought it a hallucination. Holly had actually survived a hunt and escaped.

The griffons must have left her behind when they ran for the bridge.

When they had reached the bridge, they would have found Kelantos and Solstice, maybe caught a glimpse of Lennox… Depending on how thoroughly they wanted to catch Lennox, they would probably split off into two groups. One to continue pursuing Lennox, one to attempt to take care of Kelantos. Eventually, there would be a third… one to finish that hunt. Her twenty-four hours weren’t up, yet.

She was on the opposite side of the ship, though. And to get to her, Lennox would have to go through the axis or the hallways around the axis. If the griffons were still chasing him, he’d be putting himself right in the heart of their search.

Holly had time to hide. Assuming she was resourceful enough, it wouldn’t be that hard, especially if she could make it to one of the habitat modules. The main issue with being hunted was that you were constantly surrounded. But if she was alone for a while, she had all kinds of possibilities open to her. She could disappear and scrape together enough supplies to survive.

Of course, if he found her and they worked together, they’d likely have greater chances of success. He couldn’t have moved the ship without Solstice.

But Solstice hadn’t ever been hunted. Holly might try to kill Lennox on sight, and no amount of explaining could change her mind… He was a griffon, after all. After an experience like that, there was no telling how she might react to him.

And, admittedly, he wasn’t particularly approachable or… friendly.

If he went out looking for her but she hid from him, he’d be endangering himself. He might end up pinned between her and a flock of griffons. Conversely, if she was looking for help and he wasn’t there, she would be endangering herself.

Lennox frowned. It was a classic situation in game theory. The almost aptly named stag hunt.

Two players. Each has two choices: hunt a stag or hunt a hare. A successful stag hunt rewards each player with two points, but the stag hunt is only successful if both players choose that option. If one hunts the stag while one hunts the hare, the stag hunter fails, getting zero points, and the hare hunter only earns one point. If both hunt hares, they each earn one point.

It was a game of social cooperation versus safety. Working together meant greater rewards, but you never knew if you could trust the other to contribute, and if you go it alone, you fail. There’s always the safe option: hunt the hare… but with low risk comes low reward.

Of course, in the game theory version of the problem, each player knows nothing of the other’s true intent… it’s a game of chance.

He watched her for another minute, trying to read some hint of her thought processes. She was panicked. The way she looked around and wandered that she clearly had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do.

But, to her credit, she had managed to pull a light source out of thin air, and every once in a while, she’d stop, close her eyes, and it would grow a little bit brighter.

After a few iterations of that, it was bright enough that the cameras didn’t need to use the infrared mode, and they switched back to optical mode, giving full color.

White coat, red mane, mint-green eyes and magic aura. The sibling resemblance was strong.

Optimize the outcome. The family member is likely to die with or without treatment. Simply put, one death is better than two.

The math said stay. The math said it wasn’t worth the risk. Choose the hare. Play it safe. Optimize the outcome.

But it wasn’t a matter of one point versus a chance for two or zero. How many points was Holly worth? How many points was a promise to a dead stallion worth? Game theory actually did have numbers for those, concrete numerical values assigned to define the value of life, rough approximations to allow for quick assessment of cost and benefit when intuition failed. Only the highest levels of authority used them. Only the generals and senators, the theorists and advisers who knew nothing of the frontlines, who had never walked among the battlefields and seen the bloodshed.

I guess it is pretty simple to let them die when you’re only looking at numbers.

Solstice had prioritized the fate of the ship over himself and his sister. Solstice had chosen the mathematical option in a case where it truly was the better option, where thirty lives were pitted against one.

That problem was mostly solved. The ship was on route. There wasn’t anything to be done for the other hostages. But for Holly… Lennox had promised to find her and take care of her. A griffon’s promise. Griffons did not take promises lightly.

But it was still math. There were still possibilities and consequences and a best course of action to be calculated. The griffons were hunting for both Holly and Lennox, though Lennox was temporarily the priority. Leaving his hiding place would be a huge risk.

There wasn’t any guarantee that she would even be willing to talk to him, let alone work alongside him.

But judging from her behavior, it was highly likely that she needed help to survive. She couldn’t choose the safe option.

Lennox curled his fingers around the pocket containing Solstice’s watch. Damnit, Solstice… This wasn’t game theory anymore.

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. V

Holly wasn’t sure how long she had been laying there, curled up on the floor somewhere in the engineering crew quarters. It could have been hours, but more likely just minutes.

Whatever stimulant she’d been injected with still tingled in her veins, keeping her heart rate a few dozen beats per minute faster than it otherwise would have been.

At some point, the fake gravity tapered off and vanished. Then she felt the magnetic fields shift. A second one materialized, centered not far from her, and then expanded to an area larger than the ship. After reaching its fullest extent, it intensified, as if she had been staring at a full moon that suddenly flared into a midday sun. She felt a pressure on her horn until she had readjusted to the new fields.

The ship was warping. But to where? Who was piloting it?

The griffons had gone to the bridge. Whatever was happening couldn’t have been planned. At least… not planned by them.

But as far as she had gathered from brief moments of consciousness, the other hostages were the only surviving crew. There weren’t any ponies running around that might save them. Were the griffons fighting each other? Or were the hostages wrong, and someone actually had survived and avoided them long enough to set the ship on a course for somewhere?

That griffon… the reddish brown… his silhouette had been like a shadow in a dream. He didn't know what was going on. He said the others had rushed for the bridge. They hadn't planned it. But had he even been real, or was he just some figment of an exhausted imagination? Now she was alone in silence, thoughts remaining without an answer.

She opened her eyes and looked around. It was still dark. Nothing had changed there. But maybe, with the Alcubierre drive online…

Closing her eyes again, she took a deep breath and focused. She felt her heartbeat pounding like she’d just sprinted, even though she had been lying still for a while. Most of the sweat in her fur had dried, except for some patches still damp that tingled in the cool air.

The stimulant was still there, and the magic inhibitors as well… a stiffness in her mind, like limbs fallen asleep from pinched blood flow.

But even through the inhibitors, she also felt the new electromagnetic field, the ship’s own sort of heartbeat. The ebb and flow brushed against her horn just like the magnetosphere of Equus.

She probed the currents, listening for vibrations in the visible light spectrum. Ripples radiated outward where she touched the fields, but she struggled to grab hold of any of them. She pushed slightly, bending the field around her horn.

For a minute, she just held the fields there, slightly warped. She felt and listened more carefully, trying to find that one vibration, the resonant frequency of her magic… a mint green, same as her eyes.

It helped to visualize how the waves sat in the electromagnetic spectrum when she had first learned. A set of training wheels, really. She had always struggled with magic. It took years to become proficient with the basics: light and motion. Motion of metallic objects, anyway. The gene for gravitational telekinesis didn’t run in her family. The gene for unicorns didn’t even run in her family. She would forever be stuck with only electromagnetic manipulations, but right now, she struggled to manage even that much.

It was right there — roughly five hundred and sixty terahertz, plus harmonic frequencies — all of the energy she needed was vibrating in the air around her. All she needed to do was grab ahold of it.

Finding herself unnecessarily tense, she took a deep breath, relaxed, and closed her grip.

A faint light pressed on her eyelids. She opened them to find a feeble mint-green glow enveloping her horn. It barely lit more than a few meters of the surrounding area, but it was better than nothing.

She tried leaning into it a bit more, squeezing tighter to gather more of the energy, but couldn’t intensify the light. It would have to do. There was no way in Tartarus she’d manage telekinesis or anything more elaborate for now.

Photokinesis always had been the simplest of spells. Once the fields were properly placed, the photons just streamed out without much effort. All of the energy was there already.

The griffons were gone. The area around her was silent, though that wasn't much comfort, seeing as the griffons were usually quite stealthy.

Had the ship’s movement had drawn all of the griffons away, or did some remain?

She gently pushed against the nearest flat surface, picking a direction at random and just coasting that way. She needed to move, even though she wasn’t sure where. Everything looked the same. But at least it was quiet.

When she came to a corner, she dulled the light, peeked around, then once satisfied that there was no one there, she let the light back to its full but weak strength and proceeded onward.

Hydroponics was a good idea. She could hide in a hydroponics bay somewhere. Some were still functional. They’d have necessities for survival.

But then what?

Her hoof grazed a wall and scraped off particles of what seemed like dirt. She sucked in a breath, realizing that it probably wasn’t. No dirt on the ship. Plenty of hunts, though…

Those griffons could come back and kill her at any moment. Food supplies weren’t the highest priority at the moment.

She didn’t have any weapons, and she doubted that she would be able to find any. The only weapons on the ship had been locked up in an armory which the griffons had apparently gotten to. They didn’t use them for hunting, but they had rifles and guns and other weaponry that must have come from there. The armory was probably empty, leaving only improvised options, which she probably couldn’t find, create, or use effectively.

The markings on the walls gave a vague sense of direction, which would have been helpful if she could decide which direction to take.

One of the habitats might be safer in the long term, but that would mean getting closer to the axis first. And if the griffons hadn’t gone too far, she’d run into them. Heading deeper into engineering would get her away from the hunting party, but then she’d be right where they would expect to find her.

But maybe she was wrong about the survivors. She couldn’t think of a good reason for the griffons to move the ship. It was in the middle of nowhere. Any other destinations would be equally remote, or they would be back at Equus. And if the griffons arrived at Equus, they’d probably just be shot down. And they knew that.

Unless they planned to use the hostages as… hostages. Their ransom: pardons for their crimes.

In that case, at least they wouldn’t kill her… right away…

But if there were others out there, other ponies who might be able to help, and might be able to use her help… she had to find them. Or at least find out if they were out there.

She decided on the habitats, turning around and following the arrows back to the central axis. Engineering was too damaged. It would be too hard to find a computer system with recordings or surveillance.

As she pushed herself up through the decks, she slowed her progress, listening more and more carefully.

Maybe it was her heightened awareness, or maybe there was something out there. Either way, she started hearing things she hadn’t heard a few decks down. Tiny, faint scrapes and taps, so far and so quiet it was hard to pinpoint the location.

She dimmed her light, peering around a corner. It was too dark to see the end. She listened. There was a series of taps, from the end of the hallway coming towards her with frightening speed.

She involuntarily pulled back around the corner and sucked in a breath, extinguishing her light completely.

Holding her breath, she listened. Her ears rang in the silence, straining so hard to hear sounds that they created their own.

Griffons don’t hesitate, she remembered one of the ponies saying. If there was a griffon right there that had seen her, he would have struck already.

She brought up her light again, finding the vibrations more easily this time, but still unable to make it much brighter.

What scared her the most was that a griffon could be that quiet if he wanted to.

And he would have seen her… her light would’ve been unmistakable to avian vision. And even disregarding their vision, her magic—

She instantly dropped the spell. Celestia, what was I thinking!? They could feel the ripples when she used magic!

But even as she nearly broke down into tears over her own mistake, she did realize something of comfort. She was even more sure that there weren’t any griffons around… The ripples may not reach more than a dozen meters or so in any direction, but they would alert anyone that felt them.

With a sniffle, she wiped away a tear and continued on, in the darkness this time. Slowly, carefully, she listened as intently as she could and used the faint emergency lights to guide herself.

By the Diarchs, that was stupid. That kind of carelessness would get her killed. She took a shaky breath.

It was a mistake. It hadn’t cost her. She wouldn’t make it again.

There were noises up ahead. She held still, listening. It was probably just more tapping… the debris on the walls. She squinted into the darkness, seeing some kind of motion up ahead.

A griffon silhouette passed in front of one of the emergency lights.

She flinched, almost shrieked. It was all she could do to avoid making some kind of noise.

The shadow hadn’t been her imagination. She’d been dealing with her imagination for hours… the little motions in peripheral vision, the incorrect recognition of inanimate objects as ponies or griffons. She knew what her imagination looked and felt like, and that hadn’t been it.

He hadn’t seen her. He couldn’t have. Otherwise, he’d have come at her. He went across the hallway, perpendicular to her intended direction.

He might have been after her. Might have been there for some other reason. But just as quickly as he had appeared, he vanished, and was now nearby and dead silent.

Holly almost held her breath. There was a griffon right up ahead. She couldn’t just sneak past him.

She turned halfway, looking behind. A lot of these hallways connected in many places. He could end up behind her.

Down the hall where she first saw the silhouette, to the side where the griffon had gone, she heard the subtle rush of wings flapping a few times, then going quiet.

Very gently, she put a hoof on the nearest railing and leaned herself to the side, gaining a slightly better angle to look down the path the griffon had taken. She pulled herself forward, moving as slowly as possible to avoid making any sound. She kept careful control of her breathing.

The griffon wasn’t far beyond that intersection. He was there, hanging still in the air, barely visible in the dim light.

He’s listening, she realized, resisting the urge to suck in a breath.

With a gentle push, she guided herself back the way she’d come. There might be a small room or something she could hide in.

Her pulse thudded in her ears, defeating any attempts to listen for more wing movements.

She didn’t need to listen, though. He followed.

The griffon moved back to float in the air just in front of the light that had given her the first glimpse of him. He stared at her. His beak parted slightly.

A spear rose up from the shadows as he shifted his grip and raised it to throw.

Silence didn’t matter anymore. She gave a short cry and flailed her hooves for any solid surface. One of them contacted, and she flew off, retreating in the opposite direction.

She reached out with her magic and pulled a light source together. It was a little stronger than before. The panic strangely helped her focus on it. She focused it into more of a beam, directed ahead.

At every opportunity, she turned a corner. She didn’t hear him. She could only look. Sometimes he was there, rounding the corner behind her, following with spear at the ready, and sometimes he wasn’t there. Not seeing him was scarier.

A light shone up ahead. Something still functional. A small machine room of some sort. And if it wasn’t too damaged, the door…

She threw herself inside and slammed her hoof on the door control. It slid shut, and she pushed it again, more carefully, locking it.

Not wasting any time, she moved further into the room. There were consoles and screens. Some kind of docking coordination system from when the ship was being assembled. It had started from engineering. That meant that she was near one of the aft cargo bays.

She stopped for a moment, putting a hoof on the back of a chair. It spun around. The seat was covered in dried blood. There was more under the desk. She looked away.

“Diarchs,” she whispered to herself, choking out the word past a lump in her throat. Her vision blurred with tears.

They treated ponies like animals, like the non-sentient seals they hunted out on the ice plains or the dumb beasts in the mountains. It was like they didn’t even notice that their prey would bleed and scream. They didn’t even notice that the ponies would beg for mercy.

It was a cruelty that defied logic. She could keep asking how? but there was no answer. And it shouldn’t be a surprise. There were other examples throughout history. This kind of thing just kept happening over and over, and now she was witnessing it first hand.

A small part of her almost wanted to go back and open the door just to be done with it all. To get it over with quickly. Probably less painful that way.

She cried.

By the time she recovered and regained the ability to put coherent thought together, the fur on her face was soaked with tears. Her eyes were sore and a pressure pressed behind her eyes.

The door thudded. She turned. Another thud — not a mistake. He knew where she was and he was trying to get in.

“No,” she muttered to herself. Thud. She screamed it, “No!”

It wasn’t a strong door. This wasn’t an airlock. It moved a few inches, and then talons reached around the edge and forced it open all the way.

His stare was harsh in its emptiness. There was nothing there. His eyes were just sensors for locating prey. If he squinted, it was because of the sudden change in light. She knew that begging was pointless.

He had his spear in hand again, and raised it over his shoulder to throw. As his hand shot it forward, Holly reached out into the magnetic fields around them.

Luna save me. It wasn’t metallic. It was plastic or fiberglass or something she couldn’t grab.

The spear left his hand, crossing the distance in a fraction of a second.

Holly squeezed her eyes shut and reached out for something, anything. Something metal shot out of the corner of the room and intercepted the spear, snapping it in half and sending little shards across the room like shrapnel.

She opened her eyes and stared, hardly able to breathe.

The griffon was still in the doorway, his claws raised to attack. He hadn’t lunged right away… maybe he was assessing her abilities.

Holly grabbed the metal again, and brought it in front of her. It was a solid metal wrench. She hadn’t realized how heavy it was just moments ago. It wavered as she nearly lost her grip on it.

She tried to make that waver look like a gesture. “Go!” she shouted. “Get out of here!”

His eyes continued to scan her. He was as frightened as he was merciful.

The wrench was heavy. Telekinesis was nothing like photokinesis. This took conscious effort, and she was tired. If he came at her, she might not be able to swing it with any real force.

And he could probably feel her loose grip on it in the electromagnetic fields. He wouldn’t be fooled.

For a minute, they just stared at each other. Then, he lunged.

She shoved the wrench with her magic, but it hardly budged. She couldn’t move it with telekinesis.

So she grabbed it with her teeth.

The ceiling was low enough that she could reach out a hoof and kick it. She ducked underneath his claws and swung.

Without the benefit of friction or gravity, she changed her own momentum as much as the wrench’s, not delivering a very powerful swing. But the griffon had his own momentum to add, and for an instant, kinematics worked in her favor.

There was a crunch and a grunt. Broken ribs, temporary diaphragmatic paralysis.

The wrench would slow her down too much. She had to trust that the blow would be sufficient to buy her time. She let go of it and pushed off the floor, sailing through the open doorway.

She fled again, slower. She was tired. She couldn’t keep this up for very long. There had to be a place to hide somewhere, someplace close that he couldn’t get into.

Every hallway looked like a possibility, but none of them looked like good ones. Too many of the doors were already sealed shut, and she did not have time to open them.

Her eyes caught a shadow — another griffon. Her breath caught in her throat. She tried to reach out with her magic again, hoping to find something else she might be able to throw. There wasn't anything. Nothing to throw, no energy left to run.

But this one flinched when he saw her. While the other had assessed momentum and calculated an attack vector, this one remained in place, one hand holding a railing, the other… empty. No weapon.

“Holly,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. He wasn’t shouting. “Solstice sent me.”

“Solstice?” He was alive. And he knewwhere she was. She barely managed to grab hold of a railing and stop herself before slamming into the wall.

“Yes, him. You’ve met.”

She kept her distance, holding place on the wall at the top and center of a T-shaped hallway. He didn’t move, remaining in the side passage.

His eyes examined her as she did the same to him. This new griffon looked just like the rest. His feathers were varying shades of gray, wreathed in shadows as he held himself out of the light. The eyes glinted. He had yellow irises like a cat or a hawk or a wolf or any number of other carnivores that came to mind.

And he just hung there, waiting. Griffons don’t hesitate, she recalled again. She wanted to believe him. She wanted more than anything to be able to put her faith in something that promised to protect her.

“You have ten seconds to prove that Solstice sent you,” she whispered, glancing back towards that little docking control room she’d left behind. She had heard a good deal about a few of Solstice’s griffon coworkers. If it was a griffon Solstice knew, she might recognize the name and remember Solstice mentioning him.

He rolled his eyes and faintly growled in annoyance.

Is that Lennox?

He reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a watch. No — not just any watch. There was no doubt.

Gryphus is the god of pragmatism, she remembered Solstice joking. Griffons didn’t carry analog watches. And they wouldn’t go through the trouble of stealing Solstice’s to try and catch her; they would just catch her. They didn’t need deception.

“Are you Lennox?” she asked.

“Unfortunately. Is this sufficient?” he gave the watch a gentle shake, then put it back in his vest. “Because we really need to leave here right now.”

“You’re bigger, though,” she said.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The one who was chasing me. He’s small. And he may have some broken ribs.”

“You only met one of them? That explains how you survived.” He shook his head. “No, no, there’s more than one down here.”

“Chasing me?”

He glanced down the hallways. “Among other things.”

That’s what he meant. An unfortunate time to be Lennox. “Diarchs,” Holly whispered.

“How’s your magic?”

“I can move things, but… I can’t fight them.”

“Great. Reach into this bulkhead right here,” he said, tapping the wall. “There’s a wire with electric current. Sever it.”

“Okay,” she said. She listened to the fields. There was a buzzing, the electrical current. She grabbed the wire in her magic. It wasn’t a very big wire. She should have been able to snap it. “I can’t… What is it?”

“Lights. Never mind. Come on.” He didn’t hesitate. He just took off and she struggled to keep up.

Lennox was silent for a while as they put some distance between themselves and the advancing griffons.

He wouldn’t have waited if he wanted to slit my throat, she reminded herself. He would have just done it right away. He couldn’t be working for them, because he wouldn’t do something so inefficient if he was.

Then a hand was on the back of her neck. She gave a short shriek.

“Shh!” Lennox hissed.

“I’m sorry…”

“Apologies are noise,” he whispered, right in her ear. “Listen.”

There were thumps nearby. Talking.

Lennox shoved her toward the nearest open doorway in a direction away from the griffons. They both ducked inside, tucked themselves into the corner. Lennox had a knife in hand.

They waited until the talking they heard in the distance faded away, until the area was silent.

Lennox leaned out into the hallway and glanced around. It seemed clear.

“Where are we going?” Holly asked. “Where’s Solstice?”

He gestured. “One thing at a time. Habitat E. That way.”

— — —

They had been traveling in silence for some time, finding a way to the central axis that didn’t involve running a griffon blockade. The cramped passages of engineering gave way to the equally cramped passages around the axis. Except now, instead of twisting around at right angles, they twisted around to fill a cylindrical shell.

There wasn’t much farther to go, and it seemed that they had avoided the griffons entirely. It was dead silent, except for the distant humming rumbling of the motors that spun the habitats.

She couldn’t stand it any longer. She needed to talk to someone just so she wouldn’t go insane… a distraction or something.

“How’d you do it?” Holly asked, keeping close behind him so she could whisper almost inaudibly and still talk.

“What?” Lennox briefly glanced back at her.

“How did you move the ship?”

“With the engines.” Lennox quickened his pace, flapping his wings. Holly struggled to keep up.

“Please explain to me how you and my brother were able to repair the ship, noting how you compensated for the lack of ponypower and other abnormal challenges.” She gasped for breath.

“There were others,” he said.

“Who?”

He slowed down enough to read the label on a door as they passed it. Still on the central axis, not quite to the habitat, yet.

“Some crew,” he said, mumbling no louder than the sound of hand and hoof on the railings. “They were killed.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Solstice and I finished without them. We set the ship on course. Everything vital is sealed off. The griffons can’t really stop it. Anything else?”

“Can you tell me what you’re planning next?” Holly asked.

“Save the hostages.”

“Is that what Solstice is doing?”

“No.”

Holly frowned. “Where is he?”

“The highest deck of the command module,” Lennox mumbled, sounding slightly more irate. Though, that was perhaps the default state for him, given what Holly had seen so far.

“Is that where we’re going?” she asked.

“No.”

“Where are we going?”

“I already told you. Habitat E.” He grumbled something under his breath. “Are you done making noise?”

“Are you done dodging my questions?”

He was silent.

She wasn’t even quite sure she could trust him. But he had the watch, and he fit the little pieces of information Solstice had given her about him. He wasn’t allied with the other griffons, and he probably wasn’t trying to harm her.

Even so, the old ‘enemy of my enemy’ phrase had never seemed a complete truth. Maybe he wasn’t outright harming her, but he could still have some kind of nefarious intent, and his refusal to answer basic questions was starting to make her nervous.

“Hey,” she said, letting her voice rise in volume. She reached out a hoof and grabbed a railing, holding herself in place. The momentum swung her around in a little arc, but she moved back and positioned herself in the middle of the narrow hallway.

He stopped as well. He didn’t turn around or look; he just kept staring ahead. His wings shuffled slightly, then settled against his back. The angle and the darkness obscured his face. “Yes?” The tone was irritated.

“I’m not sure I trust you.”

He exhaled sharply in a rough approximation of a chuckle. “Thanks for sharing.”

“Just where are we going?”

“I already told you. Habitat E. Emscon. The lower decks.”

His fingers impatiently shifted their grip on the railing. Fingers without claws? she noted.

“Can the interrogation wait until then?” he asked, turning his head just enough so that she caught the glinting of his eyes, and those yellow irises…

“You don’t seem to have any trouble giving stupid answers to my questions right now. Why not the real ones?”

“Stupid answers don’t take effort. I’d rather devote my attention to staying alive,” Lennox said. “If that’s alright with you.”

She grit her teeth. “I’m not moving from this spot until you tell me where my brother is, where we are going, and what we’re going to do next.”

He took a deep, slow breath, making an effort to relax and failing. She could see the tension in his back, at the base of his wings and in his shoulders. “I can keep moving either way,” he said. “It’s your choice whether to follow me and enjoy my protection or take your chances.”

“But you won’t.” She glared at the back of his head. “You came to get me for some reason. Obviously you want me for something. You’re not just going to leave me twenty minutes after you find me.”

“Perhaps I have changed my mind.” His wings shuffled again, uncomfortably twitching before nestling themselves back into place. He spoke softer, with a carefully restrained irritation. “Solstice’s current location is the command module’s highest deck. Our current destination is habitat E’s lowest deck. Our next action is undecided at this time, but will work towards the goal of saving the hostages.”

“Why aren’t we—”

“No more questions right now. We’re going to Emscon right now. You can ask questions when we’re away from immediate danger.”

He started moving again, not even waiting for her reply. She clenched her jaw and followed.

“Is Solstice in danger?” she couldn’t help but ask.

He inhaled a deep breath that hissed past his beak, then muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?” she asked. “Was that a prayer or something?”

“To Gryphus.” He said, irritation in his voice like a mad dog on the edge of its chain, just barely held back. “For patience.”

“Oh, is he the god of patience? Let me know when you’re done, because I’d like a word with him as well.”

Lennox stopped suddenly, spinning around and facing her for the first time since they met. His eyes burned with little fires, his brow pulled into a scowl.

For a moment before he spoke, she feared that he might strike her.

“Listen to me,” he said, voice low and harsh. “I promised your brother that I would keep you safe. There is no logical reason for me to do this; I won’t gain anything from it. It’s purely for his benefit.

“I have almost died numerous times thus far to keep that promise. This task is already difficult enough. Stop doing everything in your power to make it worse.”

She had lost sight of the danger, hadn’t she?

It was already certain that he wasn’t intending to kill her, or he would have done so already. It was also certain that he was working against the other griffons, and he was allied with Solstice in some capacity. Maybe he was a bit shifty, but without him, she’d still be lost on engineering. Maybe she could have run for a while, avoided the hunters, but she couldn’t defend herself for the full twelve hours.

He turned and took off again, and she had to pull herself along on the railings as fast as she could manage, just to keep up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Shh.”

— — —

It was always a bit strange moving from the zero-g axis onto the rotating habitat modules. At the top of the habitats, there wasn’t much centrifugal inertia to provide the artificial gravity, but one could faintly detect the spinning. Descending through the habitat always caused a very mild dizziness if you went too quickly. It had something to do with the coriolis effect. Holly wasn’t well read on the details; she just remembered the important parts that were relevant. The gravity increased as she and Lennox descended through the decks, heading away from the axis, and once they settled on a single deck for a few minutes, the dizziness went away.

So this was their hideout. Emscon was the electronics and satellite habitat, intended to construct artificial satellites for communication and navigation before deorbiting and joining the settlement, where it would continue to function as a control station. It was almost useless while they were in transit, since the fabricators had been almost completely depleted to repair the ship.

Lennox led her through the area, making sparse comments about things to be aware of. One of the hydroponics bays still functioned; there was food in there. There was a nearby lounge which provided a suitable sleeping area, and was preferable to travelling down a few more decks to the crew quarters.

He noted the security measures he and Solstice had implemented. There were cameras and motion sensors everywhere, and they didn’t miss anything. There were numerous routes to escape though or places to hide in if the griffons came after them. Weapons were lacking, but improvisation helped with that. Several hallways made for convenient traps if airlocks were opened.

It seemed that he had things under control enough that he could afford to answer some questions. After she had something to eat from hydroponics, she decided it would be a good time to accost him.

“Hey,” she said, startling him from whatever he was doing on the computers.

He flinched, then sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“We’re safe now, right?” She took a few steps closer. “Safe enough?”

“If this is your idea of safe, I’m curious as to how much it takes to genuinely frighten you.” He glanced at the computer screen, then sighed and reclined in his seat. “If you’re here to ask questions, ask.”

She found a seat of her own at a comfortable distance. It wasn’t until she sat down that she realized just how much her legs ached, just how tired she was. Now that she had satisfied her hunger, she wanted to sleep. But these questions needed answering.

“I remember the asteroid,” she said. “I remember the missiles we fired to destroy it, and the superheated dust cloud we hit. I remember losing four habitats, but everyone was evacuated to the emergency shelters before the impact. A few days passed… there was a bunch of arguing… Some griffon wanted to run an investigation to look for a saboteur, because it couldn’t have been an accident.”

“Kelantos.”

“Huh?”

“That’s his name,” Lennox said. “Kelantos is the griffon who started the mutiny.”

“Anyway, I remember him arguing with the captain,” she continued. “I guess he was still upset that the ship was captained by a pony. And I remember that the pony and griffon engineers refused to work together. At some point, a riot started, and I hid in my quarters. I don’t remember how long it was, but eventually, the griffons came around, and…” She swallowed. Her throat was tightening up, she couldn’t speak clearly. Her mind replayed the scene in vivid detail. “I was… captured.”

They were both silent for a while as Holly tried to regain her composure.

Lennox broke the silence. “That wasn’t a question.”

She gave a faint smile. That sounded like something Solstice would say. Though, Solstice would have meant it as a joke.

“I don’t remember much after that,” Holly said. “I woke up two or three times with some other ponies that had been captured by the griffons. We were allowed to eat a little bit. They kept giving us some kind of drugs to put us in comas.”

“Thiopental. Ketamine. Propofol.”

“Are those the names of the griffons who did it?”

Lennox snorted. “No, those are the names of the drugs they used. Some of them, anyway. I’m not sure what the exact combination is.”

“Well, my question is… what happened after that? How long was I held hostage?”

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “It’s been roughly six months since the accident with the asteroid.”

“What?” she asked in disbelief.

“After that one riot started on the engineering module, two days passed. Kelantos and some other griffons forced their way into the briefing room and demanded that the captain take a certain course of action. She refused, and he started to leave. One of the other griffons got into a fight with a security guard, things spiralled out of control, and the griffons took over the ship within a few hours. You were captured at some point during that.”

Holly shrank into the seat as she listened. It was just… horrible. Everything had spiraled out of control. It was supposed to be a mission of peace. “Was it about the conflicts on Equus?” she asked.

“No, as far as I can tell,” he said. “It was disagreement over the captain’s decisions, frustration with the situation, and just… tension and pressure that reached a breaking point.”

“And what happened after that?”

“Most of the crew were killed. About thirty griffons ran around the ship like savages, and about fifty ponies were captured at the start. There are probably only about twenty ponies left at this point. Twenty two griffons, last I checked.”

“You haven’t mentioned Solstice,” Holly said.

“Solstice and I were working on the engines when no one else would. When the riots started, we hid and waited. There’s not much to tell about that.”

“You two repaired the engines. That’s worth mentioning.”

He rolled his eyes. “No, we didn’t. We finished the job that the entire engineering crew started. It would have taken the whole crew a month, but with the food supplies and the escalating conflict, progress slowed to nothing.”

“Still,” Holly said. “You accomplished a lot.”

“Not enough,” he mumbled, turning back to the computer and giving it his full attention again.

She waited for him to say more, but no other words came. She wanted to ask about Solstice again, but… he seemed like he wanted to be left alone and she didn’t want to bother him if he was working on something important.

Emscon had its own answers to tell her. Wandering around gave her glimpses of the accident… the ponies here had evacuated to the command module and come back after the impact.

Emscon told her of the efforts to repair the ship. There were fabricators still running, half formed computer chips and other parts for engineering still sitting on glowing glass trays, the printing arms hovering above them like hungry statues frozen in stone, waiting for more material to work with.

There were questions that the cold metal couldn't tell her, though. But… they could wait. Not that they weren't important…. She wanted to know where Solstice was. But she also didn't want to upset the only griffon she'd met in the last six months who hadn't tried to kill her.

Six months. Such a long time to be asleep, adrift. A half a year… So much could have changed…. By this point, the Song would have only just gotten through the initial establishment of the colony. They probably wouldn't have even gotten word back to Equus yet.

It was so strange, being cut off from the world for so long. Once they broke from Celeste and lost radio contact with Equus, it was like nothing she'd ever been through before. Even lost at sea on Equus, you could contact somepony somewhere. Satellites dotted the sky at dawn, like little stars that peeked above the horizon, moved to the other side, and dipped down again in a matter of minutes. She had never been so out of touch with home.

But now there was this. Not only had she been cut off from Equus, but now the crew, the passengers… the only friends she had known for the last three— no… Nine? Had it been nine months? Asleep for six… Lennox and Solstice had been at this for six months?

Lennox hadn’t mentioned Solstice much. But if she was being entirely fair, Lennox didn’t mention anything much, unless she went through a lot of effort to draw out the answer. She wanted to believe that he told the truth, that he wasn’t hiding anything. It was concerning.

Especially considering the number of ponies that had died… Diarchs, please let him be okay… If he made it through the earlier fighting, he probably knew how to hide and stay safe. He was probably working on something on the command module. Maybe that’s why Lennox was on the computers. They could be working together on something involving ship systems, but Solstice needed to be on the command module to have access to the computer hardware.

He was probably lonely. She was.

As her walk led her into an observation lounge and the only comfortable furniture within decks, she felt everything rushing up on her at once.

She remembered faces… during the rioting…. A handful of them had died, then. Most probably died after her capture. Six months. She didn't know how often the griffons hunted or when she had been awoken. Three times she was awoken and ate with the other hostages, each time fewer of them were present.

Most of them, she didn't know. Her only friends had been killed in the accident or at the start of the riots. She cried then. She cried now, throwing herself onto the couch and sobbing into the cushions.

She had never been this alone. But she was too tired to act at the moment, and more than anything, she just wanted to cry herself to sleep. As soon as she woke up, she would go find Solstice. She didn't care if he was on the other side of the ship.

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. VI

Theophanes had only just awoken when Eikon arrived in the chemlab habitat's medbay. After bringing Kelantos back from the command module and contenting himself with the conclusion that his patient wouldn't bleed to death, he had slept for a time while the others pursued Lennox and the escaped mare.

Kelantos rested, too. Eikon stood in the reception area of the medbay, trying to decide what to do while he waited for Kelantos to wake up, watching Theophanes sort through books and office supplies that had been scattered across the desk and floor when the ship moved. The sudden acceleration had made a mess of anything loose, throwing it all horizontally.

A number of griffons had returned to the habitat after a few hours of pursuit without any sign of Lennox. Most thought that Theophanes had been mistaken, that Lennox had died long ago. Rasmus and a handful of others had gone back to engineering to finish the hunt… they had been some of the first to break off, several hours ago. Some had even come back to Chemlab after giving up on that search as well.

Theophanes picked up a book and smoothed out the bent pages. “Are you hard of hearing?” He glanced up from the book for a moment, just to give Eikon a look that seemed to express annoyance and mild surprise.

“I heard what you said. He’s asleep. I'm just thinking.”

“Ah. And that takes so much of your concentration that you can't leave while doing so.” Theophanes carefully closed the cover and looked over the book, making sure he hadn't missed any of the bent pages, then turned and placed it back on its shelf.

“You place books as Sisyphus rolls his boulder.”

Theophanes gave a short, quick exhale, a sound not quite meeting the minimum requirements to be considered a chuckle. He turned and looked for his next book.

They were more sentimental than practical. The doctor tidied with the slow precision of a museum curator. Each book lifted from the heap had his full attention for a moment as he straightened crumpled pages and frowned at dents in the covers.

“Any idea when he'll be up and walking again?” Eikon finally asked.

“If I tell you, will you go away, or will you just ask more stupid questions?” Theophanes grumbled, flipping through the pages of another book. He sighed and closed it, then set it on the desk instead of the shelf. “What does 'up and walking about' mean? Quadrupedal? Bipedal, like the traditional dueling stance? Does flying count? How about zero-g? Each is a different question with a different answer.

“Were we on the surface of Equus, I'd say a week to leave his bed, two to wheel himself around, and maybe four to limp around. Months before it becomes easy.”

“And in zero-g?” Eikon asked.

Theophanes gave another sigh. “When will he be capable of locomotion in zero-g? Stupid question. An object in motion stays in motion…. Force equals mass times acceleration…. He can move himself now; the question is, ‘how fast?’”

“I see.”

“Is your question answered? Are you done here, now?”

Eikon shifted his stance, feeling light on his feet. “I'm curious about another thing…”

“You are more persistently annoying than any disease I know. I’m sure you can find answers in the computers, and they can probably answer more quickly and with more accuracy than I can.” Theophanes plucked another book from the mess. “And with more patience. I’m busy.”

Eikon remained, receiving an annoyed scowl for doing so.

“Would you prefer that I am direct?” Eikon asked.

“Please, by all means! Ask so you can leave.”

“What did you see on the bridge?”

“Exactly what I’ve already described,” Theophanes said. “You see these books here? A lot of psychology texts. I know about the tricks the mind plays, the little glitches in recognition and the delusions that build up as the mind tries to explain what it thinks it perceived.”

“Knowledge of biases does not make one immune.”

“I never said it was so. But you asked me what I saw, or what I remember seeing. I have told you. As for what was actually there on the bridge? I heard Kelantos growl Lennox’s name. I saw Kelantos clutching at the air. Delusions in shock? Perhaps. But there was other evidence.”

Eikon nodded. “The stallion’s wounds.”

“I wish I had gotten a chance to take a closer look.” Theophanes sighed. Some of those who had abandoned the search for Lennox had done so in favor of a meal that had presented itself on the bridge.

Theophanes glanced at Eikon as if assessing some apparent quality. For a while, he hesitated, visibly troubled by an internal debate. He reached for another book off the floor. Instead of placing this one on the shelf, he placed it on the desk in front of Eikon.

It was huge. If they had been lower in the habitat, it would have been too heavy to lift in one hand. The Carnivore's Prerogative. “Philosophy?” Eikon set the book on the desk between them. “The others are scientific and medical. Reading material?”

“You're telling me it's not practical,” Theophanes said. “You should read it. Philosophy isn't so impractical when it changes how you define ‘practical.’” He closed it and left it on the desk, then turned and reached for another item on the floor..

Eikon reached for the book.

“Wait,” Theophanes said. A moment later, he handed Eikon a small electronic book reader. “I hope you didn’t seriously think I’d leave you responsible for taking care of one of my books.”

Eikon took it and briefly inspected the device. “How long have you had this?”

“It's almost as old as I am.”

Eikon turned it over once more, flicked it on to make sure it worked, then turned it off and put it in the largest pocket of his vest.

“Hopefully you'll be able to read the whole thing before you die, with enough time left over to decide that you disagree with everything in it,” Theophanes said.

“Why read it if I'll just disagree?”

The doctor shook his head. A sad smile curled at the corners of his beak. “Stupid question. In order to disagree, you need a reason. It forces you to think through your own ideas. The hunter cannot test himself against empty wilderness; he needs prey to hunt. In the conflict, he sees himself reflected.”

“A question must be asked for you to know that you know the answer.” Eikon was no stranger to the old sayings.

Theophanes nodded, his sad smile taking on a hint of genuineness. He opened his beak to say something, but promptly closed it, his eyes shifting to focus on something behind Eikon.

Dorian rushed into the room. He looked from Eikon to the doctor and back. “Is Kelly awake yet?”

Theophanes shook his head.

Dorian's eyes fell on Eikon. He scowled. “Follow,” he said, then turned and left.

Whatever the issue was, it was urgent. Eikon nodded a farewell to Theophanes, thanked him for the book, and then chased after Dorian.

“What's going on?” Eikon asked once they were out in the hall. He had to move quickly to keep up.

Dorian stared straight ahead, scowling. “Phrygian and Rasmus just went through the hall muttering about going to the bridge. They're on their way up, now.”

“What are they planning to do?”

“Something stupid, I'm sure.”

Eikon and Dorian took an elevator after the other two. Phrygian and Rasmus had done the same. In the brief respite, Dorian gave a few terse pieces of information to give Eikon a better idea of what had happened.

Regardless… Lennox and the mare were lost. Rasmus and Phrygian were angry. Those two griffons thought to try something clever, like perhaps breaking into the bridge where Eikon had failed, and using SecCom to track down their quarry.

And of course, while there, why not shut off the Alcubierre drive?

While Dorian and Eikon remained close enough behind Phrygian and Rasmus to know they were close behind, they didn't actually catch them until they were at the airlock to the bridge.

Phrygian glanced at them and said nothing, returning his attention back to the door control, smashed open, with wires hanging out like the tangled roots of a small plant.

“Were you two following us?” Rasmus asked when he saw them. He didn't have a spear with him, but he straightened his spine and scowled at them, slightly spreading his shoulders in a subtle nonverbal indication that he was probably armed. He did have one of those utility vests, like almost all griffons, and it was quite likely that there was a knife or something hidden in there. Not that he really needed a metal knife, because Rasmus had talons sufficient for mining iron.

“Yes,” Dorian answered.

They stared at each other, each trying to work through hypotheses of what the other might want and what they might do to get it. Phrygian ignored them all.

Eikon felt his heart rate rising. He and Dorian should have worked out a better plan than stop them. Direct, physical conflict was out of the question, and Eikon wasn't quick-thinking enough to come up with something clever on the spot. Maybe Dorian was clever enough, but he had chosen to bring Eikon, hadn't he? He expected Eikon to do something.

“Why?” Rasmus asked. “Don't trust us to be responsible with SecCom?”

“I don't much care what you take pictures of,” Dorian said, smiling and placing a hand on his chest in an imitation of some flattered maiden. “But I did notice that you neglected to bring us with you, which seemed odd, since we were the ones last here.”

“I thought it was odd that you said the bridge was sealed and that was that,” Phrygian mumbled from the alcove as he sorted through the wires. “Lennox got in.”

He tried to say the name evenly, but struggled. The disdain was not hidden at all. If Lennox could get in, surely we can. The tone said what the words didn't.

“Lennox also left it,” Dorian said. “Lennox sealed off parts of engineering so we can't even get close to the reactors or the A drive. He sealed off the bridge, too. And Gryphus knows what else he's done to it. Are you sure there's atmosphere on the other side of that door?”

Phrygian paused, staring. The information regarding the airlock and the bridge atmosphere would have been displayed right there, had the screen not been in six or seven pieces floating around the hallway. But he didn't stop. “Pressure holds it shut.”

Eikon had forgotten. A pressure difference would push the door into its frame, where a mechanism locked it in place. It could still be opened a few centimeters, but it wouldn't let you open it fully when there was a massive pressure difference on either side… just in case one of the doors was stuck open.

The corner of Dorian's beak twitched. He was thinking.

If Rasmus and Phrygian got on the bridge, not only would they be able to stop the Alcubierre drive and strand the ship again, but they would discover that Dorian and Eikon had been deceptive. Historically, the usual punishment involved permanently crippling injuries. And considering how the griffons had upheld the laws of the Republic regarding other crimes, he couldn't imagine them being particularly accepting of such a damaging deception.

Those two couldn't be allowed on the bridge, but they had to think that it was their own failure, not because they were stopped. It had to be done in such a way that they wouldn't try again later when Dorian and Eikon weren't around to stop them.

He thought to mention that they should be busy chasing Lennox, but in a way, this was contributing to that goal more than running around the ship could. SecCom had access to cameras everywhere. The local security stations only had access to their local networks… each habitat was separate, and engineering, and the command module, and the axis.

“Are you trying to get to SecCom?” Eikon asked.

Rasmus snorted. “Among other things. There's, you know, the A drive and all that.”

Nothing else had worked. Eikon took a risk. “You want to be stranded?” In his peripheral vision, he saw Dorian's warning glare.

“You'd rather just fly into the judgment of an entire planet?” Rasmus asked. His tone dropped to a menacing rasp. “Because I wouldn't. And I don't think many of us would. I'd rather live a little longer out here than die shortly after setting foot on solid ground.”

Phrygian offered no disagreement.

“Why are you so resigned to the idea that they'll execute us?” Eikon trod carefully. Only questions, he told himself. Socratic method, almost. I won't press any competing ideas — just questions.

Rasmus spread his palms. “They won't let us free by any definition. Maybe we'll be locked in prison forever instead of killed outright. Does it matter?”

“The Song is a prison,” Dorian mumbled.

“And we are the wardens.” Rasmus smiled as he scored a point, only growing more sure of his opinion. Clever wordplay and twisting of analogies always seemed to count for more than the actual logic of the debate.

Then Rasmus seemed to realize that Dorian and Eikon actually disagreed with that idea. Dorian had screwed it up, Eikon realized. Revealed us. Eikon hadn't been the one to slip. Of course, with his luck, the only time he did everything right, he still failed.

Dorian frowned.

Realizing his error?

“If you two are trying to send the ship home, you're betraying us as much as Lennox,” Rasmus said. Again, Eikon saw the subtle spread of the shoulders and hands and talons, the nonverbal indication that he was confident he could defeat them in a fight. But this time, Eikon noticed a stiffness in the pose. Rasmus really had some kind of injury around his midsection… bruises and perhaps broken ribs. In zero-g, without the weight, they wouldn't be much of an issue, especially once the adrenaline started flowing.

Eikon didn't have any weapon besides his own talons. Perhaps I can throw Theophanes' book hard enough to knock him out, he thought with a sardonic twist at the corner of his beak.

Dorian committed to the attack. Too late to back out. “Staying out here is suicide.”

“In the same way that living as a hermit in the wilderness is suicide,” Rasmus said. “Suicide from old age.”

“Chronic disease,” Dorian said. “Once the meat runs out.”

Rasmus shook his head. “We've got six good months left, and then a year after that before we really start to suffer. If it gets to be too much, there are plenty of airlocks still functional.” He glared at Dorian, eyes wide. “But maybe you're impatient. Shall I show you to the nearest?”

“Can you see any chance of going home and avoiding the two punishments you mentioned?” Eikon asked, trying to take his side of the argument into something a little less aggressive.

Rasmus started to shake his head again, but stopped. He wanted to say no out of stubbornness and instinct, he had already decided that he was right; he wasn't still refining the opinion. But he also hated to respond reflexively. “Equestria will demand our imprisonment or execution,” he finally said after a moment's thought. “That much is inevitable.”

“To fight against the inevitable is to blunt one's talons against rock,” Dorian said.

Rasmus nodded. Another old griffon aphorism.

“But the inevitability is only the demand,” Dorian said, crossing his arms and relaxing slightly. He hadn't even matched Rasmus' score yet, but somehow was content that his victory was assured. Eikon couldn't see to the end of the debate, but that one comment was hardly enough to win over the other.

“And what will the Republic do when it gets that demand, hm?” Rasmus asked, arching his eyebrows for a moment before returning them to their scowl. “Turn around, bend over, and take it up the rear.” He concluded the statement with an obscene gesture.

Dorian frowned. “They have refused them before.”

“One time in twenty, perhaps. And only when Equestria gave them the choice. There was a famine when we left, did you forget that?” Rasmus' tone gradually rose in intensity. “Because the ponies don't like it when we build slaughterhouses and farms for meat, even if it's only dumb, nonsentient beasts. And so they bribe us, and pressure us, and do everything they can to convince the Republic to put restrictions and regulations on the industry to prevent it from becoming an industry. The Republic lets them tell us we're not allowed to have food. You think they'll refuse a request for a handful of criminals?”

“The Republic's leaders are out of touch with the common griffon, and—” Dorian said.

“Damned right.”

Dorian clenched a fist and continued, “And many of those leaders would choose personal benefit over national. Many of us on the Song have many friends among them.”

With the exception of Eikon, who had avoided anything more than handshakes and photos, and Rasmus, who probably avoided even those.

It was sometimes easy to forget that most of them were scientists, most of them prominent in their fields. Kelantos was a pharmacologist, Theophanes a surgeon, Dorian an electrical engineer, Eikon an entry-level nuclear engineer. Phrygian worked in the cargo bays, but on the Song, everyone was a cosmonaut. Even Phrygian could integrate with the best of mathematicians.

Eikon spared a quick glance at Dorian, though he wasn't sure why. As always, Dorian was unreadable. Did he really think they could rely on personal connections with politicians to avoid the equine demands for justice? Or was this just a ploy to make Rasmus think it was possible?

There were other issues, of course…. They couldn't just ask for pardons and be granted them, especially with a nation of ponies and half a nation of griffons against them. But it could be a start.

Rasmus was thinking it over as Eikon was.

Phrygian straightened up, turning to them to speak. Eikon tried to quickly throw together a flowchart of possible statements and responses, anticipating whatever Phrygian was about to bring to the debate.

“I need a battery,” Phrygian announced.

It took a second for Eikon to realize what he had said. “A battery?”

“The door,” Phrygian said. “The motors need power. Power line is dead and I'm not inclined to go poking around damaged electrical lines.”

“Don't have one,” Rasmus said.

Eikon had the old electronic reader. It was probably old enough to still have one of the lithium ion batteries you could pop out. Probably enough to at least unlatch the door's inner mechanisms and let them open it by force.

Phrygian looked at Dorian. Dorian shook his head, and then Phrygian's gaze turned to Eikon.

Eikon gave no answer, hoping Phrygian would incorrectly assume that to be a no.

“If you have one, give it to me,” Phrygian said. His massive gray wings flicked twice, once to set him in motion towards Eikon, and a second time to stop, a meter away.

Hoping to find some indication of how to proceed, Eikon glanced at Dorian, but the other gave no such indication.

The hesitation apparently angered Phrygian. “Give me whatever battery you're hiding. I'll give it back. Undamaged, if not uncharged.”

Eikon slowly slipped a hand into the pocket of his vest and retrieved the reader. Phrygian took it, looked it over, then took off the back cover and removed the battery. He took it back over to the door.

“A firm enough demand can't simply be ignored,” Rasmus said, his eyes following Phrygian's hands before darting back to look at Dorian. “The entire nation of Equestria will be ready to declare war over this.”

Dorian smirked. “I suppose if a frightened, starving pony is enough to incapacitate you, one of their warriors must be an unthinkable horror.”

“You know they'll be outraged, and you know their herd mentality. And you know that the threat of war is the biggest reason why the Republic won't openly oppose them on any big issues, because the physical capabilities of a warrior have nothing to do with the nuclear weapons they might use.” Rasmus glared at Dorian. “Maybe if this were a small incident, the Republic would keep us against some irritation, but this is the Verdant Song we're talking about.”

In the news for years during its construction. The only thing anyone talked about during its departure. Talk shows, news interviews, blogs, forums, the talk of academics and peasants, business professionals and senators… The whole planet had been watching, and they would watch again.

Dorian closed his eyes. Admitting defeat? Eikon wondered.

There was a clank inside the door. Phrygian smiled.

Rasmus rushed forward to help him force it open. Phrygian ignored him, instead taking the battery in hand and returning to hover a meter in front off Eikon. He took the parts of the reader from where they tumbled in the air and reassembled it as it was before, handing it back to Eikon.

“I have an agenda, and it does not include harassing you,” Phrygian said. “But get in my way and I will move you out of my way. You're welcome to assist me, if you wish, or leave if you don't.”

While Phrygian had been talking, Rasmus had been at the door, trying to push it open. He succeeded with a scrape and a thud. Eikon's heart leaped into his throat and started beating out a frantic tempo. He and Dorian had said that the bridge was sealed. If that next door was unlocked…

They all went to look.

The next door was shut, same as the first. The controls on this one were intact and active, though. Sealed by order of the captain. Captain's authorization code necessary to unlock. Just like the airlock on the other side of the bridge. No manual release existed for that lock, and all of the wiring would be on the other side, not in the airlock itself. Short of tearing through a meter of the hull, they were locked out.

Eikon breathed again.

“The way is shut,” Dorian observed in mock amusement. “Just as I said. Imagine that.”

“You never tried to open the first door,” Rasmus said. “We did. And succeeded.”

“Bravo, good sir!” Dorian exclaimed. “You emerged victorious in a battle of wits against a slab of metal!”

Rasmus opened his beak, probably to say something about how Dorian had been defeated in that same battle of wits, but stopped himself as he remembered the last thing he said…. Dorian had never tried.

“I don't suppose that anyone found the captain's authorization and neglected to tell me,” Phrygian growled.

“Lennox probably has that,” Dorian said.

Eikon knew that one was made up. The codes were lost months ago when most of the command staff were killed.

“You're suggesting that I find him in order to find him,” Phrygian said.

Rasmus put a hand on the bulkhead and rapped his talons against it. “Well, I guess SecCom is out for now. But as for the A drive… Could we just decouple engineering? Wouldn't need Lennox, I don't think.”

Phrygian shook his head. “I wasn't trying to shut off the A drive.”

“What?” Rasmus scowled. “Since when? You said you would.”

“A month ago, I think any of us would have said that. A temptation unseen is an easy thing to deny,” Phrygian said. “Obviously, fixing the ship wasn't as impossible as we thought, and I didn't really think about it when it was an impossibility.”

“What, now you're curious, now that the ship is on route?” Rasmus asked. “Want to see the gallows before you believe that hooves can tie knots?”

“If you'd like to stay out here, there are plenty of airlocks still functional. Shall I show you to the nearest?” Phrygian gestured down the hall.

Rasmus narrowed his eyes, grumbled something under his breath, and flew off.

— — —

Holly woke up suddenly, instantly coming to awareness of where she was and what was going on. She sat up and listened for a minute, hoping that she hadn't been startled awake by some danger. But all was calm and quiet. She still felt tired, though it was more of a lethargic tiredness than a physical exhaustion.

She wandered out into the hall, listening to a faint clicking sound coming from a doorway nearby. Peeking around the corner, she found Lennox still sitting at the computer where she'd left him, still typing.

How long had she slept? She glanced around until she found a clock. Six hours. That was reasonable. For her… not for him. Six hours just sitting there?

She still needed answers from him, but didn't really have the energy to ask them. She passed the doorway and kept wandering, her steps slow.

Eventually, she reached an airlock sealing off a stairwell. Crew quarters were down a few levels. Maybe a hot shower would make her feel better. She tapped the control and the first airlock door hissed open.

A half an hour later, she returned to the hallway outside Lennox's computer room. She dripped occasionally, and was a bit cold, but the shower had been hot and she felt so much better now that she was clean and had experienced a small catharsis.

She had cried a lot. For the crew, for the ponies back home, for the hostages, for herself…. So much was going wrong…. It was overwhelming. But they might be able to turn things around. Maybe? She tried not to focus on the negative things, instead looking for small, simple things that gave her some comfort. There had been a delightful peppermint-scented soap. It was amusing, in a disturbing sort of way, that the ship could be in such a sorry state and yet still have peppermint soap and hot showers readily available.

She took a few tentative steps into the room with Lennox.

He looked as if he hadn’t slept. His eyes were bloodshot and… was that a drop of blood on his beak? She froze in the doorway.

He gave her the briefest glance, just confirming that it was her before he turned back to the screen. There wasn’t annoyance or anger there, just a question and an answer.

She thought to just leave him alone, but she wouldn’t ever sleep soundly if she didn’t know for sure. “Lennox,” she said, voice soft.

“Yes?” He didn’t look.

“Have you been awake for the last six hours?”

His typing paused for a second as his eyes darted to the corner of the screen. “Apparently.”

Her next question came hesitantly. “May I ask what you’ve been doing?”

“You can ask whatever you want. The real question is whether or not I’ll answer.”

Holly lifted one of her front hooves, about to take a step back and leave. But she stopped herself. She needed to know, and she wasn’t going to accept this nonsense anymore. “Answer,” she said.

“I’ve been reviewing system diagnostics,” he said. “I attempted and failed to gain access to the security systems on Chemlab. I attempted and failed to reprogram some of the cleaning bots. I successfully managed to find enough of the right materials to get the fabricators to make me a new pistol.” He tapped a pocket of his vest. “Then I stopped to eat. I sat here and stared at the wall for half an hour. Then I closed my eyes and listened to the ship for half an hour.”

“You stopped to eat… what, exactly?”

He rolled his eyes. “Approximately fifty grams of chopped carrots. Approximately one hundred grams of lettuce. A handful of small, crunchy, spiced grain products. A mixture of artificial flavorings, spices, and high fructose corn syrup in a small pouch that was labeled, ‘salad dressing.’ A quarter-pound portion of synthetic meat.”

Realizing that she had been holding her breath, Holly allowed herself to exhale. “Synthetic,” she said.

He reached up a hand and brushed his beak, catching that stray drop of blood. He glanced at his hand, then wiped it on his vest. “Are you interrogating me because you don’t believe that it wasn’t real meat?”

She shifted uneasily. “I haven’t exactly had very good relations with carnivores lately.”

“Understandable,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, there are several more pieces in a refrigerator in the nearest kitchen. Perhaps their perfectly identical fabricated appearance, oversaturated color, supernatural resistance to rotting, and their taste will be more convincing than my word.”

“I don’t need to check.” Her stomach churned with the mere thought of it. “I believe you as far as this instance goes.”

He raised an eyebrow, not missing the implication.

“But have you ever hunted?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say eaten a pony.

He closed his eyes. “Before you ask me a question, consider the possible answers. Do not ask the question if you are not prepared to cope with each possibility.”

The breath caught in her chest. That was about as close to an admission as he could have gotten. She wanted to undo the question, just forget about the whole thing. She didn’t really want to know. As long as he didn’t go after her, it didn’t matter right now.

But would he? Given the situation…

“On the edge of Cervidae,” he said. “Deer.” He looked down, eyes tracing over his claws… Blunted claws, she noticed. On both hands. She’d only seen a few other griffons who had done that. Most blunted only one hand to use on touch screens and fragile equipment, keeping the other talons sharp as a cultural thing. “It was ten years ago,” he mumbled. “Much has changed.”

She frowned, feeling a little guilty for so harshly suspecting him of recent murder. He was right…. Ten years was a long time, and that past wasn’t really relevant at the moment. At first, she was uncomfortable knowing that he had murder in his past, but she gradually realized that if he could remember it so well, it wasn’t a frequent occurrence. And he did seem to display a hint of regret.

Some part of her felt guilty; another felt cautious. A third was hostile, reminding her that he still hadn’t told her everything she needed to know.

He still hadn’t explained what had happened to Solstice. She hadn’t even seen any messages from Solstice. Lennox had been silent. No radio communication. Nothing. Solstice would have at least said something to her.

“Lennox,” she said, whispering, finding it difficult to breath. “Can you just tell me just one thing? An honest answer? The complete answer?”

His eyes darted over her. “One question. One complete answer. As long as you don’t do something stupid afterward.”

The clues came together. Answering her questions would cause problems. Solstice would be disappointed if they went to him. He wasn’t in danger right now. Lennox had made a promise… not set out on some kind of joint objective, but had rescued her on his own… with Solstice’s watch, and no real explanation of what had happened.

Holly raised her eyes to meet his gaze. “What happened to Solstice?”

Lennox just scowled at her, silent. The room was so silent she could hear their breathing. Just when she was afraid that he wasn’t going to answer, as another question rose in her throat, he spoke.

“Solstice and I decided that getting the ship back to Equus was the highest priority. We set the ship on course yesterday. Kelantos was there. Solstice fought him. Kelantos won. He held Solstice in front of him as a shield, blocking the only escape while other griffons came up from behind.”

No, Celestia, please, her mind kept repeating as he spoke, as if her mental chanting might somehow touch the hearts of the gods enough to move them to remake the timeline of events in her favor.

“I had two choices. One: stay there and fight off twenty griffons with two bullets, certain death. Two: escape and keep my promise.”

He had to leave Solstice behind… Solstice must’ve told him to save her… He chose to be left behind so that—

“Is he alive!? If you left him, you don’t know for sure!” Her pulse thudded in her head. Veins tingled just like when she had been chased. And that sinking nausea… The fear.

“Twenty griffons,” he said. “Not a minute after I left.”

“But you didn’t see! You don’t know for sure, do you!?”

“I know that he was bleeding severely, and I know they didn’t stop to give him first aid.”

“How can you be so sure? How can you know? If he’s still there, and if we hurry, maybe we can—”

“I know.”

“Damnit, Lennox, how can you be sure?”

He clenched his fists. “Because I shot him.”

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. VII

Dorian growled and clicked off his comm.

“Well?” Eikon asked.

“It’s been twelve hours since Theophanes thought he spotted Lennox,” Dorian said. “No sign since then. Lennox has had enough time to crawl the length of the ship twice. Even if he was here, he’s disappeared by now.”

Eikon frowned. “They really don’t think he’s worth catching?”

“Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth the effort of combing through the whole ship to find someone who may not even be there. But that’s not particularly solid logic, since he is a potential threat. I don’t know.” Dorian sighed as they came to a stop at a crossroads of sorts, the connection between one of the habitats and the axis.

They had scanned through the entire command module. They could have been more thorough, checking every single corner, every container, every door, but there was just too much to go through. With only the two of them, it would have taken a week to search everything. They had to settle for a cursory glance. If they could at least ensure that he wasn’t on the axis, they could rest assured that he was cornered somewhere. The axis was terrible to search, though. It was dark and there was more environmental noise than on the command module.

The wounds on the stallion should have been proof that Lennox was out there, but the first griffons to give up the hunt had consumed the body and the evidence was gone. Dorian believed it, but that gave only four griffons, two of which were not fit to search for him. Convincing the others at this point was near impossible… the only proof remaining was locked on the bridge in SecCom.

“Lots of hiding places on Emscon,” Eikon mumbled, looking over the airlock door.

Dorian squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his brow. “Hard to search without the whole flock.”

“Only hard to search and find a single griffon,” Eikon said. “At this point, he’s had enough time to disappear. But he’s had some kind of hideout this whole time. And the stallion was with him, too.”

“They would have covered their tracks.” Dorian shook his head.

“I don’t think there was any reason to,” Eikon continued. “We never went after them. We never knew they were there.”

“You think they stayed in one place?”

Eikon nodded. “With an elaborate web of contingencies planned out. It’s most likely that they had a handful of main places to stay which were easily defended or easy to escape from. And they would have stayed long enough that we’d see some sign of their presence.”

“The only viable long term shelter would have to be far from the places we normally go,” Dorian said. He looked over Emscon’s airlock.

“If we can find some evidence suggesting that searching all of Emscon is worth the effort, the others will come.” Eikon flapped his wings, moving over to the airlock’s control.

It wasn’t locked. Lennox was smart enough not to lock it. That would make the hiding place too obvious.

Dorian thought for a minute before answering. “A cursory glance. I suspect that something else is going on that’s occupying the flock’s attention. I’d like to head back to Chemlab soon.”

They passed through the airlock without trouble and began to descend through the decks of Emscon. They encountered no obstacles on their way down. None of the doors on the upper decks were sealed, and there didn’t appear to be traps of any sort.

Dorian was quiet, for once. A welcome change.

Eikon devoted only slight attention to him. He observed Emscon, watching for any details that might prove useful. He also noted the details that weren’t there. The lack of obstacles was interesting.

It was foolish to leave one’s hideout undefended, but it was equally foolish to make the defenses obvious. The farther down they went, the slower they progressed, until they stopped entirely. Dorian motioned to a room and they moved inside, out of the hallways. They were only three decks down, out of twenty-five main decks plus some additional areas that didn’t fit neatly into layers.

“There are cameras up ahead,” Dorian said, scanning the room to make sure there weren’t any in there, as well.

“There were cameras behind us, too. There are cameras everywhere.”

Dorian leaned over a computer, staring at the screen from an odd angle. “Did you see how they were positioned?”

Eikon replayed the last few minutes. Photographic memory was rather useful on occasion. There wasn’t anything strange about the position of the cameras they had passed. But the ones they had just avoided…

“The ones up ahead are watching for anything entering the habitat from this direction,” Eikon said.

“Coincidence?”

“Not proof.” Eikon shook his head.

“Here’s more not-proof,” Dorian said, still standing over the computer terminal. He held up his left hand, letting his claws rest on the screen. “Someone didn’t follow the screen cleaning rule.”

Eikon went over to look for himself. There were a number of smudges on the screen with clean lines traced through them, a pattern that griffon computer users knew all too well. The skin of declawed fingers would graze the screen and leave a mark, and the claw nubs themselves would end up tracing clean lines through the smudge.

“Lennox blunts the claws on both hands,” Eikon said. “And there’s just enough smudging on the screen to tell the hands apart. There were only a dozen or so who blunted both hands and none of them worked on Emscon.”

“Could have come here after the accident,” Dorian pointed out. “Not normal work schedule.”

Eikon flexed his own left hand, feeling the talons prick the skin of his palm. “None of our flock are clawless.”

Eikon turned and surveyed the rest of the room. It was a small fabrication lab, just two fabricators and two corresponding computer stations to control them. In case of any issues elsewhere that engineers on Emscon would provide a solution for.

“I don’t see anything to suggest that this was their base of operations,” Eikon said. “In fact, quite the opposite.” He drifted to the far end of the room, his eyes running over the fabricators.

“No food, no water,” Dorian said, glancing over the computer once more before drifting to the center of the room. “Just a place Lennox happened to stop by.”

Only three levels down, though. What else might await? The flock hadn’t been on Emscon in a long time. If Eikon were to choose a hiding spot, this would be high on his list.

But the cameras were an issue. If Lennox was watching, and he saw them, he’d know to move on and hide somewhere else. They couldn’t just charge in. “He’ll hide somewhere else if he sees us,” Eikon said.

“So, assuming he’s here, we can’t let him know that we know,” Dorian said. “But we can’t just ignore Emscon. If he sees us explore the rest of the ship but conveniently ignore this habitat in particular. He'll know we’re deliberately avoiding it.”

He could figure it out either way. But they still couldn’t just run down through the decks looking for him. “Is there any way to—”

Dorian’s gaze drifted. He tilted his head up slightly, alerted by something. Eikon listened.

It came from below. The walls and floors of the ship generally did a reasonable job at blocking sound, but sometimes you could hear conversations on the other side. Eikon laid down carefully in the low gravity and pressed an ear to the floor. Dorian did the same.

Two voices shouting back and forth. A brief exchange. Probably two decks below. One low and masculine, the other pitched in a female range. This was an abnormal event. If those two were always that loud, they would have been caught long ago. Recent acquaintances, then? The mare was still missing. Lennox must have found her.

“Fighting?” Eikon whispered.

Dorian smirked. “External threats might help them work out their differences. We could do them a favor.”

Eikon’s heart rate quickened. They could get him now, while his guard was down. “They’re distracted. He won’t be watching the security feeds. Now would be a good chance…”

“No. Not yet.” Dorian stood and stared out into the hall. “We need the others. If he’s distracted, we can use the time to get the rest of the flock before he has a chance to check the security recordings. And before we go, we’d best set up some motion sensors or something, to make sure he doesn’t leave.”

— — —

As long as you don't do anything stupid afterward, Lennox had said, a condition for answering her question. Perhaps he should have explicitly defined 'stupid.'

Lennox muttered curses to himself.

He couldn't have kept it a secret. She would have found out what happened to Solstice eventually. And he didn’t particularly want to keep it a secret, but he couldn't have risked telling her at first, or else she wouldn't have followed him as far as she did. They would never have escaped and found their way back to Emscon.

Waiting hadn't been a mistake. He wasn't quite sure where the mistake had been, or if there had been one. Perhaps all possibilities led to this outcome.

“I am trying to help you!” he called out, following her down the hallway he thought she’d chosen. They were climbing the decks again. Each level higher made him a little dizzy, and while the gravity was still enough to run, his stride had to change to a leaping gallop of sorts.

Perhaps the mistake had been in allowing her to roam free.

She shouted back from up ahead, “Stop following me!”

Could she not see that he was trying to keep her safe? She had trusted him as far as Emscon, which was a lot further than she trusted any of the other griffons. She had to know that he wasn't allied with them, at least. Surely, that conclusion must have occurred to her… “I made a promise to protect you,” he said.

“From what!?”

If he hadn't been breathing so rapidly, his next exhale might have been an irritated sigh. “From anything. From mechanical failures. From the griffons who are currently still looking for us.”

“You’re a griffon!”

Damn it.

Her voice grew more distant with each reply. Despite how tired she must have been, she could still move rather quickly. She probably didn’t even need his help, if she could run like this.

“Can we talk, please?” he said between panting breaths.

Her voice was muffled in the distance, and he couldn’t quite make out the words, but the response resembled, “Go to hell!”

It was becoming very difficult to will himself to pursue her. He was tired. The elevators were mostly locked down, and they had to take stairs.

She probably didn’t even need his help. He kept thinking that, but he knew it wasn’t entirely true.

Even though she could outrun him, she couldn’t hide as well as he could. She didn’t know what parts of the ship were safe. Which hydroponics bays still functioned. Where the griffons usually went. She would learn quickly, but only if she survived the first struggles. One mistake could spell total failure. Picking a bad hiding place… stumbling into the others… using magic in the wrong place at the wrong time…

She wasn’t a survivalist. She was a danger to herself and anyone allied with her.

Lennox slowed to catch his breath. Even if he could catch her… what then? Grab her by the neck and force her to be safe? Any of the mistakes that might get her killed on her own would get them both killed if he kept her around.

Holly Ilex was a botanist. Not a mechanic or an engineer, not a programmer or a systems operator. She was a botanist on a spacecraft. Any skills she might have couldn’t possibly outweigh the burden of preventing her from getting killed. She was useless.

“Holly,” Lennox called out. “If you keep running from me, you will be alone.”

There was no reply.

“Holly?”

His wings involuntarily twitched as he listened to the echoes of his own voice. They had just engaged in a shouting match on the upper decks of Emscon, which was far closer to the axis than he wanted to be. It was almost as if he had been throwing stones at a hornet’s nest without knowing, then suddenly realized what his target was, with a rock already in midair.

Not being at any kind of computer station, he couldn’t check the security cameras. And the motion sensors linked to his comm were positioned around the mid decks. They’d already passed them. There wouldn’t be any warning if the griffons came for them right now.

He kept moving, picking up his pace. There were small noises ahead of him… taps, thuds, reverberating back through the tunnels.

Just as he caught up to them, rounding a corner, he felt a pressure in his head and sudden dizziness. Holly was there, horn glowing. Her murderous eyes glared at him.

A little shard of metal carved through the air between them, drawing a line of separation. It whistled from the speed.

“I told you to stop following me,” she said, panting.

“Despite how wise that may be,” Lennox said, eyeing the metal, “This is not a safe place to be. You need to come down to the lower decks. I promised Solstice I would protect you.”

“And then you killed him. No…” she blinked. Her eyes glistened, reflecting a wavering version of her horn’s glow. “You murdered him.”

“Not intentionally.”

“You didn’t mean to shoot?” She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. A tear fell loose and darkened her fur. “It was an accident?” Her voice was so choked, the words came out almost entirely as breathless consonants.

Lennox clenched a fist at his side. “His death was not the goal.”

“But, for your own survival, it wasn’t too steep a price.” A tear fell from her other eye, matching the first.

“Damn it, Holly!” Lennox shouted. He rose up, standing bipedal, hands clenched into fists at his sides. His voice echoed through the halls, and somewhere in his mind, there arose a suggestion to remain calm and whisper. That suggestion was snuffed out. He squeezed his fists. If he still had claws, they’d have pierced straight through his palms. “I did not want him to die!”

His wings flared suddenly of their own accord, spurred by the fire inside. Holly flinched, and her horn glow flashed. An involuntary reflex in response to being startled.

A tingling chill carved across his abdomen. Where the cold had passed, warmth and pain spread in its wake.

She hesitated just long enough for her mouth to fall open. She released the bloodied metal and fled.

Lennox put a hand to his stomach. It came away damp. He didn’t look. He zipped the front of his vest and pressed his forearm across the outside, holding it against the wound. He let himself fall back to what would have been a quadrupedal stance, if not for the arm across his stomach.

There was no more doubt. Only a mathematical assessment. He was entirely justified in leaving her to her own devices. Let her fight for her life. Let the other griffons come for her. She might take one or two of them with her!

He took a shaky breath. This was one of the more painful injuries he’d sustained in the last months. How deep had she cut?

It wasn't that bad, he realized, looking down. It hurt, but nothing was spilling out through the cut, besides blood. He'd live.

There was only a mathematical assessment. He closed his eyes. Only that damned little voice, calling out the premises of deductive reasoning in mockery of his best interests…

Griffons honor promises. You are a griffon. You promised. Therefore, you will honor that promise.

…even though it ran contrary to any sense of realism or tactics or self-preservation.

He clenched his beak and started moving, keeping pressure on the wound with one arm, using his other and his wings to move. He muttered curses both griffon and pony as the pain dulled.

She was going to get him killed. He accepted that with a certain detached surrender. It almost didn’t even matter.

In his mind, he saw Solstice again. The brief shared glance before he shot.

He pressed his wound harder, clenched his beak so tight it felt like it might crack.

He remembered the look on Solstice’s face as the watch hung between them.

Lennox was tired. He sighed and paused, staring at the space where Solstice had almost been… where he would have been, if he were still there. Where he should have been.

I couldn't save you. Lennox thought to whisper the words, but didn't, knowing it would be swallowed in silence. Solstice was dead. Gone. There was no ambiguity there. Ponies and griffons and dragons may have believed all kinds of things about death but there was a set of simple, scientifically verifiable facts that Lennox found both profoundly comforting and profoundly troubling.

The voice is a sound wave, a vibration. The air carries the vibrations. The tympanic membrane catches on, vibrated by the air. The vibrations trigger nerves, the nerves message the temporal lobe, and the temporal lobe processes and recognizes the signals as voice.

The brain starts to die minutes after the blood flow stops. The nerves and tympanic membrane take a little longer, but they, too, die. They decompose into dirt and rot, no more alive than the lunar basalt that made the ship.

Whether or not there was anything else that lived on… the mechanisms for perceiving and understanding speech were destroyed.

If Solstice still was, he could not hear in the way that he had.

If Solstice still was, he could not bleed or suffer or feel any kind of pain in the way that he had. Those mechanisms of perception were gone as well.

“I couldn’t save you,” Lennox spoke into the dark, finally whispering the words out loud. Not for Solstice to hear. Solstice was no more. But his sister still drew breath, still ran through the corridors with some desperate hope of survival. And though it was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep, a goal costly and far out of reach, a task of dubious reward…

“But I will protect her for you,” Lennox spoke into the dark. Not for Solstice to hear. Not for Holly to hear. For himself — an affirmation to spite the blood that seeped through the cloth of his vest, leaving a sparse trail of red droplets in his wake. A goal to work towards. He needed a goal. Something to keep him moving… the worst thing you can do is stop and think.

Though he moved slowly, he did not have to travel far to find her. Apparently her crisis of faith had started not long after his. He passed a maintenance closet, paused, listened. She cried faintly within.

His free hand went for the door control, then paused.

Perhaps she was near because she wanted him to find her. But there was also the possibility that she had another shard of metal, perhaps a larger one, and in light of that possibility he concluded that it would be unwise to surprise her again.

He knocked. Three knocks, gentle, evenly spaced, using his knuckles. The blunted claw tips would have resembled a hoof too much.

There was no response. He knocked again, only subtly louder. Again, there was no response.

He touched the door control, and it slid open.

Just a storage room. Shelves against the three walls, netting across to hold things back from falling. A piece of metal vaguely resembling a circular saw blade rested on the floor. Had she been planning to…? No. Not important.

She was tucked up under a shelf where he couldn’t see. He heard a sniffle.

“Holly,” he said.

She sniffled and rustled under the shelf. “Go away.”

“Firstly,” he took a deep breath, feeling the wound sting as the skin stretched, “that really hurt.”

After waiting for a response that didn't come, he continued, “Secondly, we need to go back down., This is far too close to the central axis to be safe. All of the security measures are below us.”

Another moment of silence stretched out when he was finished speaking. She didn't move for a while, until finally her tiny little voice asked, “Why are you still here?”

“I've already told you. Would repeating myself make a difference?”

She gave no response.

He sighed. “We’re about fifteen decks closer to danger than we need to be.”

“Does it even matter?”

He flinched. He wasn’t even quite sure why that made him flinch. Perhaps it was the sheer unexpectedness of it, the total lack of rationale behind it. Does it even matter? How could that question even be answered? The mere act of asking the question in the first place was a rejection of the answers, answers that were so implicit and obvious that he struggled to put them to words.

He’d asked himself the same questions. Did it matter? Why bother? Because ponies needed help? Why help them? Because it’s the right thing to do? What reason is there for doing the right thing? Because it’s right? Because it is?

All reasoning led in circles. This was the sort of troubling question that had probably plagued Solstice.

But puzzling over existential angst could wait until this was all over. That much was clear and mathematical…. He needed to focus on the present. Whether or not his goals could be deduced from objective logic and determined to be right, they still felt right.

“There are others still in danger,” he said. “We need to help them. Being in danger ourselves won’t advance that goal.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

He shrugged, though she probably couldn’t see. “I’m sure there’s some way you could contribute.”

“Everypony I cared about…” Her voice cracked and cut off and she couldn’t finish the sentence. …is dead, she might have finished. What’s left to live for? “Leave me alone,” she sobbed instead. “Go.”

Lennox opened his beak to protest but thought better of it. She probably did need time to process things, as inefficient and dangerous as it might be. Pressing her to keep going might actually be harmful. But waiting here with their guard down might be harmful as well.

He patted the pockets of his vest and found the knife. At least he had a weapon of some sort. And he knew where he was… this was just a storage closet in a hallway near a lot of other hallways that gave numerous escape routes. If anything came, he could take her and run back down, and they’d pass through doorways that could lock behind them and delay the griffons.

What was a reasonable danger? An hour? Two? The Verdant Song was a big ship, and the griffons would take a long time to search the whole thing. They’d start at the command module and work their way down towards engineering, probably paying attention to the axis before the habitats.

“I’ll be in the hall,” he said. “Keeping watch.” When she gave no response, he exited and shut the door behind.

His wings flared. This wasn’t logically sound by any means. But, then again, neither was she.

— — —

Dorian cursed repeatedly, pacing back and forth in a lounge. Eikon had pulled up a camera feed from the great hall so they could watch from here, without being near the others.

The griffons were dueling. Not sparring, as they had been for the last day or two, but dueling, in the traditional way. They used their hunting spears, mostly. Blood was drawn. It wasn’t a fight to the death, of course. That would have been a terrible waste. It was a fight until one yielded. Most yielded with a blade at their throat. Some took a few hits, first. But none were stupid enough to fight to the death.

Eikon wasn’t sure who had started it, but he had suspicions about who would win. It would go on for a few days, perhaps, occupying most of their attention. One would emerge champion. Eikon wasn’t sure what would happen after that, because this contest wasn’t just a test of strength, it was a contest to determine a leader.

Kelantos had only awoken briefly, and certainly didn’t have the strength to seize control. The flock was choosing a replacement for him, and in the meantime, the most immediate threat to them was going unchecked. Kelantos hadn’t been able to formulate any sort of plan, yet. He was probably watching the duel from the medlab, just as frustrated as Eikon and Dorian.

Phrygian was one of the duelists at the moment. Probably one of the most likely to win. He parried his opponent’s thrust and leapt forward, throwing his weight into the other. He spread his wings and gave one huge flap, just barely lifting his feet off the ground while the other tumbled.

“Surrounded by idiots,” Dorian muttered. “Lennox is probably planting explosives all over the place. He has all the time he needs to prepare and pick us off, one by one.”

“He might be too busy trying to deal with the mare,” Eikon said.

“Which irritates me even further, because this is the perfect moment to do something. But instead, they’re all in there playing gladiator.” Dorian stopped his pacing next to Eikon and waved a hand at the screen.

Eikon scanned over the flock. Most were present in the great hall to watch the duel. Theophanes and Kelantos were missing, along with two or three others. Those present had spread themselves around the perimeter of the great hall. Some sat at the tables they’d moved to the corner. All were attentive. The only noises from the flock were quiet mutterings.

“Lennox isn’t even the only concern,” Eikon said. “They’re ignoring everything that matters.” None of the others had even mentioned the ship’s voyage home. It was almost as if they were pretending it wasn’t happening.

But then again, what could they do? The Alcubierre drive and the sensitive parts of engineering had been sealed off for a long time, completely inaccessible. They’d tried and failed. The bridge was sealed off as well, now. The only way to stop the ship was to do something that would destroy it. They weren’t suicidal, they just… “To fight against the inevitable is to blunt one's talons against rock,” Eikon mumbled.

Phrygian’s opponent tried to stand, but couldn’t get past the flurry of blows. All he could do was lay on his back and parry. But he extended his spear too far. Phrygian stepped closer, batting the other’s spear aside, brought his blade to his opponent’s neck, and his opponent yielded.

“I can’t think of a good way to interrupt this,” Dorian said. “We’ll just have to wait.”

Eikon couldn’t, either. There were plenty of ways to interrupt it, they just weren’t good ways. Anything involving deception would backfire. They couldn’t invite Lennox to do something to prove how much of a threat he was. Any attempts to publically convince them would likely result in ridicule and reduce the success of future attempts. They still had no solid proof, but they couldn’t risk being seen by Lennox. “It’ll be over in a few days.”

“He’ll win.” Dorian nodded toward Phrygian, who held his spear above his head in triumph.

“What do you think he’ll do first afterward?”

“Gather resources. Prepare to go out in a blaze of glory, lighting up the sky on Equus like a meteor. Something pretty.” Dorian sighed. “When was the last time you spoke to Kelantos?”

“He was awake when we arrived back from Emscon. I told him what was going on. He thought over things, but didn’t seem to reach a conclusion. Why?” Eikon turned to study the other’s expression.

Dorian’s brow furrowed in anger and thought. “Phrygian knows he’s going to win this. Look at him.”

Eikon did, for only a moment. Phrygian’s pride was clearly apparent in the way he carried himself. Eikon turned his attention back to Dorian.

“Conspiring some way to prevent him from doing so will make him a rival and an enemy, rather than an annoyance,” Dorian continued. “If we allow him to win, there may be ways to capitalize on the situation.”

“How?”

Deep thought spoke through Dorian’s features. He was still working out the details. But then his scowl softened and the corner of his beak turned up in a half-smile. “You know I don’t plan that far ahead.”

— — —

Nearly two hours passed in silence before Lennox became far too anxious to stay there any longer. He knocked on the door of Holly’s closet, opened it, and found that she had crawled out from under the shelf and sat on her haunches in the middle of the floor.

“Are you ready to go back down, yet?” Lennox asked.

Her gaze dropped away a bit at a time. First to the wound on his stomach, then to his feet, then to the floor. Her irises were rimmed by red cobwebs and dried tears crusted the fur beneath. Without a word, she stood, keeping her eyes on the floor. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, her voice no more than a breathy whisper.

“I’m not sure that’s a valid response to the question, but I’ll assume it’s a concession of some sort,” Lennox said, turning and glancing down each hallway. “Come on.”

Her hooves clacked softly as she followed him down to Emscon. Other than her hooves, she was quiet, a welcome change. She didn’t pester him with questions. Apparently she’d learned that she wouldn’t like the answers.

But in a strange way, it was disconcerting, as it had been disconcerting when Solstice had gone quiet.

He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. They made most of trip in silence, until he spoke up. “Aren’t you going to ask, ‘what now?’”

“I guess,” she mumbled.

“As I may have mentioned, the ship is en route to the Celeste system and will arrive in one to two weeks. I’m confident that the griffons won’t be able to stop it without destroying everything, and I don’t expect them to try that,” he said, slowing his pace just slightly so that they’d have more time to talk before arriving on deck four. Solstice always liked to walk when he thought. If Holly did as well, employing that tactic might provide some subtle benefit.

“Because we don’t have to worry too much about the ship itself,” he continued, “our priority at the moment is the hostages the griffons have somewhere on Chemlab. I’d like to say the goal is to ‘rescue’ them, but I’m not quite sure what that means. It’s not like we have anywhere safe to put them.

“What can we do against such reckless hate? I’m just a botanist and you’re a programmer.”

“Actually, I started the voyage as the second officer of navigational systems. When the first was killed, I was promoted to first officer of navigational systems. Though, at this point,” he added, mumbling, “we’re probably so far down the command hierarchy that you can call me Captain Lennox.”

She gave no reaction to the sarcasm.

“We’ll figure something out,” he said. “There’s a chance they might stop hunting.”

“Why would they? What difference does it make?”

“I know Kelantos is still alive,” Lennox said. He internally winced just after the words came out, realizing that he had basically just told her that Solstice had died for nothing. “Barely,” he added. “Too wounded to do anything physical. But he can still play chess from a hospital bed. He won’t let them kill any more ponies because they need the hostages as bargaining chips when we arrive at Equus.”

“So don’t provoke them!” she finally raised her eyes to look at him, picking up her pace a bit to walk alongside him. “If nopony else is going to die, we should just leave them alone!”

“Imagine a situation on Equus. Let’s say a terrorist takes a hostage in an airport. He holds the hostage in front of himself, backing toward a plane. He intends to get on the plane and escape. The police try to negotiate and convince him to release the hostage.”

“This is completely different! This is like a terrorist on a plane taking a hostage to head toward the police.”

Lennox shook his head. “Not the point. The point is: would the police actually trade the hostage’s life for the terrorist’s freedom?”

No, of course not, was the answer. She didn’t state the obvious, but she understood. The griffons could never trade away the hostages. As soon as the ponies were gone, they were just like any other homicidal criminals. They’d be shot down. The griffons would only be safe as long as they had the hostages, and they couldn’t trade them away and expect negotiators to keep their promises.

“The closer we are to Equus, the more dangerous it is for the hostages,” Lennox said. “If the griffons realize they’re going down no matter what they do, they’ll just kill the ponies.”

“I thought griffons hated the inevitable or something. You just surrender.”

Lennox snorted. “Yes, when a goal is impossible. They have two. One is to survive, and the second is to damage the enemy.”

“Oh.”

“Like I said, the griffons need the hostages for Equus. They can’t afford to kill them in transit.”

“Are you sure? I mean… Maybe some….”

“That’s part of the reason why I haven’t tried anything, yet,” he said, starting to descend the stairs that took them to deck four. “That, and I haven’t figured out how to get to the hostages without being killed, myself. I’m not even sure what I’d do if I could get there.”

They came to the bottom of the steps and stopped. He hadn’t even figured out what to do at this very minute. He’d pretty much determined that Chemlab’s security systems were inaccessible and the effort was futile.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Hm?”

Her eyes leapt around, from floor to his wound to his eyes. “How badly did I cut you?”

“You could’ve sliced into organs or severed a major artery, but all you’ve caused is superficial damage to the surface.” He unzipped his vest to reveal a fair amount of dried blood, crusted and almost black. “The selection of weapon was adequate, and I applaud the improvisation, but the depth of the cut was ineffective. Three out of ten. Try harder, next time.”

“Diarchs, Lennox, I’m sorry.”

“That’s Captain Lennox to you, doctor.”

“Come here.” She turned and started down the hall, and as she did so, Lennox caught sight of the faintest hint of a smile. It was a small, fleeting thing, and it vanished as soon as he noticed it. But in the heart of a blizzard of despair, one could be grateful for the warmth of a candle.

Solstice had said something like that, once. Lennox wished he had truly understood it then.

He did as she asked. She led him through the hydroponics bay and into a small kitchen that serviced the Emscon habitat. There were two commercial grade ovens, three sinks that were each three times as large as they needed to be, and a refrigerator the size of a small vehicle.

Holly retrieved a cloth from a cupboard and wet it in the sink. She beckoned him over, holding the cloth in her mouth.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Give me that.” He held out a hand to take the cloth, but she turned her head.

“I hurt you. I should take care of it,” she said, her speech surprisingly articulate despite the cloth held in her teeth.

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of it myself.”

“That’s not the point.”

Not the point? How the hell could that not— No, she was right. Or at least, she was right when he tried to model her perspective. The act had far more significance to her than it did to him. To him, it was nothing more than an item on the to-do list. To her, it was reconciliation.

If this would make her less likely to run again, the plan had his full support. It could only cost him a few minutes standing there being annoyed. Nothing he wouldn’t have gone through, anyway.

“Can’t you use your magic?” Lennox asked, taking a hesitant step forward and lifting himself to stand bipedal, a hand on the edge of the sink for support.

She let the rag drop out of her mouth, catching it in a hoof. “I don’t have the gene for nonmetals.” She sighed. “If you really don’t want me to, I won’t.”

“I wouldn’t want to miss this great opportunity for some exciting team building exercises.”

He said it with such sardonic glee that one could almost have mistaken him for Solstice. Perhaps that same comparison occurred to Holly. The cloth that was meant to wipe away blood instead wiped away tears.

She cried. It took a few minutes for her to calm down. Lennox said nothing, an uncomfortable knot in his stomach occupying his attention. It wasn’t from the wound.

He had meant to be humorous. Humor was the solution to much suffering. This was not his intention.

But she did not seem as upset as she had before. Once she had collected herself again, she apologized profusely, retrieved a different cloth, and set to cleaning his wound.

In the Shadow of Verdence, pt. II

Lennox tightened his grip on the upper level’s railing. A glance at the pilot’s display showed that half of the maneuvering thrusters were malfunctioning. The remainder were frantically attempting to compensate for the ship no longer being shaped the way it was supposed to be.

Stars panned and twisted across the overhead windows. The twisting rotation had not been intentional. With so many massive sections not just damaged, but missing, all of the maneuvering calibrations from the start of the voyage were hopelessly inaccurate.

The blinking screen next to him flashed calculations and trajectory predictions, numbers scrolling across as it determined and implemented corrections. Lennox watched and waited, with little else to do but hope.

The bridge shifted as the thrusters fired at a different angle, trying to correct the maneuver.

Pangs echoed from deep within the ship, metal straining against metal. He squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn’t even the actual acceleration; this was just a turn to face the right direction.

A jarring vibration nearly shook Lennox off the railing, and the bridge promptly went silent and weightless. He sucked in a breath. If the central axis were to snap in half, it would probably feel something like that.

Lennox released his grip, fingers throbbing. The stars drifted by, now translating without any rotation. The pilot’s display was optimistic. He breathed again. The computers had managed to compensate, and the ship was rotating as intended. When the ship was close to pointing in the correct direction, the thrusters would hopefully come back online to cancel the angular velocity. Then they could accelerate in that direction and begin the journey home.

He drifted back to the computer. Most of the reaction control thrusters towards the rear of the ship were unresponsive. They showed on the screen as blinking red points across the back half of the ship’s vaguely dumbbell-like shape.

A mess of warnings populated the screen, as well as the promise that future attitude control would be more precise. So long as nothing else broke off, exploded, or depressurized, or—

“How does it look?” Solstice floated over next to him.

“It looks about as good as it sounds.” Lennox tapped the screen, scrolling to another page of reports and skimming through them. There wasn’t any actual damage yet, but things bent and creaked that were not designed to bend and creak. The coupling between the axis and the engineering module was weakened.

“The lurching means it’s working!”

“That wasn’t lurching; that was shearing. Metallic shearing is not the sound of success.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of sarcasm?”

“No, Solstice, I have never heard of sarcasm.” Lennox scanned over the status reports again, as if looking them over again might change what they said. “Diagnostic on the Alcubierre drive encountered an unexpected error.”

“Error with the diagnostic or with the drive?”

“Diagnostic.”

Solstice hummed. “Can you feel it?”

“What, the magnetic field?”

“I can’t. My sister’s the only unicorn in the family.” And the rest were all earth ponies, as Lennox had heard several times. Earth pony magic didn’t interact with EM fields directly. Only the unicorns and pegasi manipulated it. Griffons could only sense it.

The Alcubierre drive never truly shut off. When it wasn’t warping, it projected a subtle magnetosphere around the ship to mimic that of Equus. It allowed ponies to use their magic and prevented griffons from experiencing deep space disorientation.

Lennox could feel the magnetic field the way one might feel the temperature of the air. It was only noticeable when something was wrong.

“The passive field is there,” Lennox said. “It feels like it always has.”

Solstice shrugged. “Okay then. It’s working.”

“Griffon magnetoreception isn’t exactly on par with an EMF probe.” They would just have to hope for the best. Lennox glanced down the line of computer stations. His eyes caught SecCom, the security station.

A dozen screens scrolled through the endless eyes watching the ship. Nothing moved in the command module, but that would change soon enough. Hopefully they’d be done and gone by then. “We need to hurry,” he muttered. The motion of the ship would have alerted anyone on board… They’d have a dozen or so angry griffons on them in about fifteen minutes or so.

A short electronic ping echoed in the room.

“Thrusters again, hang on.” Solstice wrapped a front leg around the railing.

Lennox latched onto the railing as well, glancing back at NavCom to see a colorful diagram of the reaction control thrusters, the ones about to fire in bright green.

The groan of the ship’s structure was more of a screech this time as the thrusters fired and twisted the weakened metal. The rail shifted in his grasp, pushing against his inertia.

After a moment, the computer shut off the thrusters and sent out another audio notification, this one a chirrup at a different pitch.

Lennox glanced up. The stars above were still. He looked at NavCom’s reports. “NavCom says we’re lined up,” he said, skimming the data. Solstice gave no reply. “We can fire the main drives.”

“Lennox.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Something on the cameras.”

Lennox’s eyes darted to security. A kaleidoscope of changing video feeds showed a sequence of near-identical hallways interspersed with larger rooms. Two of the feeds flickered but showed no movement. “I don’t see it.”

“I’ll check.” Solstice went over to SecCom and began scrolling through the feeds, looking more closely.

“Diarchs,” Solstice said, not more than a few moments later. “He was following.”

Lennox glanced over the stallion’s shoulder and saw.

Kelantos wasn’t a particularly large griffon, and his feathers were an unremarkable pattern of different shades of brown. The spear he carried had a much more imposing presence. It was his hunting spear, an ornately designed weapon of wood, a rare material on the Song. The tip was as much a small sword as it was a spear head.

He glided through the halls almost aimlessly. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular.

“The doors are locked,” Lennox said. Solstice already knew, but it felt comforting to say the words.

“For how long?”

“Until we open them. The bridge doors are a solid thirty centimeters of lunar basalt, same as the hull.”

Had the hull not suffered numerous breaches, that might have been comforting.

Solstice shook his head. “I’m not worried about him getting in.”

Lennox gave a small growl as he realized what the stallion meant.

Their escape route was cut off. The windows sealed, impossible to open or break. They’d have to go back through the command module, somehow slip past the griffons. The terrible thing about a spacecraft was that no matter where you went, you were cornered.

There were no supplies on the bridge. It was just this one room: the first floor and an upper ring. Only computers and seating, plus a few desks retracted into the walls and floor. They might find some little gadgets stuffed into desk drawers, some calculators and communicators, the oxygen masks that were at every workstation in case of atmospheric issues, but nothing substantial. The command module’s hydroponics bay was decks below.

If the griffons got there before they could leave… A handful just had to keep watch outside the bridge; Lennox and Solstice would die of dehydration before the Song was halfway home.

“See how close the other griffons are,” Lennox said. They would have been alerted to the ship’s motion already, when it rotated to face the intended direction.

Solstice switched to the cameras in the engineering module, searching for the hunting party.

Engineering was dark, but the cameras could compensate, giving a slightly blurred black and white image. One feed clearly showed a mare running through the halls, their victim for this hunt.

Lennox saw the stallion’s eyes go wide. He saw the stallion’s abrupt gasp, and the sudden arrest of all conscious motion. Solstice froze in place, staring at the screen. He had found his sister.

“The drives,” Lennox said. “Now.” The sooner they finished on the bridge, the sooner they could try to help Holly. We’ve never stopped a hunt, he remembered, and he knew Solstice was thinking the same thing. “We’ve never piloted a three hundred thousand tonne spacecraft before, either,” he mumbled.

Solstice produced a chip from a pocket on his suit, pushing it toward Lennox. “Listen, I—” He seemed to change his mind mid-sentence, as Lennox caught the security chip.

Solstice unsealed the front of his suit and pulled his foreleg out, his snow-white coat almost the same color as the suit. He wore an old analog wristwatch — or at least, what races with wrists would call a wristwatch.

Lennox scowled. “What are you doing?”

Solstice slipped the watch off and nudged it. It touched Lennox’s chest and lost most of its momentum, hovering in the air just in front of him.

“I’m giving it to you for safekeeping,” Solstice said. “I’m about to do something stupid and I don’t want it broken.”

“If it’s so valuable, how about you keep it, so you have good reason not to do anything stupid?”

Solstice shook his head. “If we both stay here, we’ll be able to finish the maneuver but end up trapped on the bridge. If I go and you stay, I can engage Kelantos. You’ll still be able to finish on the bridge just as well by yourself. If I can take him out, we’ll have a better chance of escape. If I fail… you’ll be trapped on the bridge just like option one.” He put his forelegs back in the suit as he was talking.

Lennox glanced up at the ceiling, making one last futile effort to see some kind of weakness. They couldn’t break the sapphire panes. Not unless someone on the bridge had hidden an impact rifle under their seat cushion.

He growled a concession. There was no other good option. Solstice would go. Even if there was a better option, Lennox probably couldn’t have talked him out of it, anyway.

“So, now that you know what I’m doing, please take care of my watch,” Solstice said, taking the pistol from his belt and securing the band around his fetlock. He adjusted it so his hoof rested comfortably above the button trigger. “Consider it a gift. You might need it.”

A gift. The significance of the word struck him. He would have explained griffon gift giving customs if they had the time. Gifts were expected to be useful. Gifts could never be denied. Something useless was a burden and an insult. Griffons took things too seriously and there wasn’t time for that at the moment.

Solstice turned just slightly, glancing at Lennox. “Promise me that you’ll look for Holly.”

Lennox opened his beak to respond, but it seemed to catch in his throat. A thought arose, an urge to just say yes, just do whatever could help. It was hasty and impulsive. A second thought, like a warning scrawled in blood, reminded Lennox that it was only a feeling, only a sensation, that going out of his way for one individual might endanger the rest.

But he had listened to a great many stories about Holly, and somehow, that made it different. Kin selection, he told himself. A psychological drive to protect those who are familiar. He wanted to explain it away as some known phenomenon… But that wasn’t a good explanation at all. Kin selection applied to relatives, not interracial acquaintances.

He couldn’t explain the logic behind the urge to help, he could only describe the experience.

A tingle in the abdomen, a lightness like flying. The dragons used to call it einfühlung; the griffons used to call it empatheia. It was just a hormonal cocktail of cortisol, oxytocin, and others. It was only a chemical reaction, and it shouldn’t have mattered.

Lennox reached out a hand and took the watch. “I promise you, Winter Solstice, by—”

“Don’t call me Winter,” Solstice said, forcing a smirk. His request had been answered, he didn’t need to hear the rest. He grabbed the railing and flung himself to the lower level.

Lennox started again, speaking softly into the comm, “I promise you, Solstice, by Gryphus and the Ascended, I will find Holly and ensure her safety or knowledge of her fate.” He stuffed the watch into a pocket and turned back to NavCom.

“The ship takes priority over individuals,” Solstice said as he left the bridge, “And if it comes down to it, Holly over me.”

Lennox jammed the security chip into its port at the navigational station. It was essentially a one-time use captain’s authorization. The virtual clearances were processed and recognized. The main drive controls were unlocked and ready to receive input. He typed in a command and let NavCom run its calculations.

NavCom chirped, presenting the results of its math. Lennox flexed his hands, trying to release the tension. Tension impaired efficiency.

— — —

It was all vaguely familiar, like waking from a vivid dream, needing a moment to recognize the surroundings and remember where one had been sleeping. Holly passed through the ship, not entirely sure if it was dream or reality. Rooms, doorways, hallways, lights and noises, the forces of push and pull. Voices spoke around her, voices spoke within her, the dreams and reality blending together into a hallucination of half-truths.

She remembered the stallion, one of the other hostages. At some point, he had told her something very important. Either when they were first captured, or in the brief moments of consciousness where they were allowed to eat… The coma, she remembered. The griffons used the fabricators in Chemlab to produce some kind of tranquilizer or anesthetic or something. She’d been asleep for a long time.

She couldn't remember when or where she had talked to the stallion, but she remembered what he said. She needed to remember. The griffons didn't know. They hadn't heard. They couldn't be allowed to know. She had to tell somepony who could help, somepony who could stop the griffons and save the ship. The stallion had not had time to give her any specifics… she wasn't even sure there was anypony out there left alive. She'd been asleep for so long, unaware…

Thoughts and memories bubbled up from her unconscious mind, replaying the ship's fate in reverse. She remembered the mutiny and the fighting and being captured. Before that, the arguments and the accident that couldn't have been an accident. Sabotage. There was— No. She needed to focus.

That stallion gave her the captain's authorization code. No explanation of how he knew, but he did. Somepony must have told him; it was impossible to figure out. It wasn't a password, it was an algorithm, a simple linear function based on time, so the valid password changed by the minute. Three digits of Shor's constant times the minutes in the MET, plus a constant, a large integer. The integer was probably random, but Holly tried to pretend it was somepony’s birthday. That made it easier to remember.

She had to find somepony who could help. She had to wake up and fight through this blur.

Through blurry vision, she caught sight of orange marks on the wall. Engineering module. The walls moved past her. She was peripherally aware of forces acting to move her.

Griffons, she realized, as a stray claw scratched her skin. She tried to run. She struggled as hard as she could, forcing muscles to contract and expand with all of the willpower she could muster, but the only results were small twitches.

Sleep paralysis, she thought. That was a small comfort — it wasn't uncommon to hallucinate strange images and sensations. It wasn’t uncommon to struggle to distinguish dreams from reality during an episode of sleep paralysis. The scratch, the ship… they could be explained as hallucinations. The alternative was too terrifying.

But usually, in her experience, sleep paralysis rarely lasted more than a minute or so. And yet, this continued for a time that felt like ten or fifteen. She perceived hall after hall passing by. The universe was a dull blur, from beginning to end.

She felt a pinprick, not a claw but more like a needle. Something that poked deep, then withdrew.

Over the next minute, the haze lifted. The thudding pulse in her skull was like a metronome beating out a reference point to which all things could be compared.

Engineering. Griffons. Stimulant. This was a hunt.

The griffons faded away, disappeared. The halls became dark. But not a blurry dark… a precise dark, defined by clear angles in the orange glow of emergency lights too dim to illuminate the room, only bright enough to give you a reference to orient yourself and avoid running into the walls. Her vision was coming back, but it was too dark to be of use.

Holly tried to run, but there was no force to hold her hooves to the floor. She floated just close enough to touch a wall, and pushed off of it, coasting down the hall. If not for her frantic breathing, she would have been silent.

The griffons were gone, waiting, not far. The words came to her… “You have fifteen minutes before we start,” she remembered a griffon saying. A large one, with huge gray wings. “If you avoid us for twenty-four hours, we will call off the hunt.”

How much time had she lost in the time it took her to actually become alert?

“No,” she mouthed to herself, throat too dry to make a sound. The word kept repeating in her mind. No, no. This couldn't be happening.

But here she was, alone in this dark maze, the crew quarters for the engineers, a few decks above the reactor. It was abandoned. The other hostage ponies had explained the state of things. The moments of consciousness between episodes of drug induced catatonic sleep were brief, but they were enough to give feverish glimpses of reality.

She was in the hunting grounds. This is a hunt. This can't be happening. It repeated, as if part of her mind was trying to figure out a solution while the rest struggled just to accept the reality of her situation. You are being hunted. This has to be a nightmare.

They had given her a knife. She tasted blood from where that gray griffon had shoved the handle into her mouth. He could have slit her throat with it, but instead, he gave it to her to make things interesting, to make a game of it.

But the knife was gone. She must have dropped it in her panic at some point.

She needed to hide. The ones who hide survive the longest. Twenty-four hours. She had to survive for twenty-four hours. That wasn't forever. It could be done. But no pony had ever done it.

She looked around, fighting hard to not hyperventilate. Her eyes strained in the dark. She tried a small light spell, the only thing she really had the concentration for, but it brought only a few useless sparks from her horn and a strange numbness.

The magnetic field was there, though. She could feel it. The Alcubierre drive's passive mode projected a miniature version of a planetary magnetosphere. It was right there, and she could feel it, but couldn’t seem to reach out and touch it.

The griffons weren't stupid and they had access to at least five or six medlabs full of pharmaceuticals, plus the chemlabs. She must have been given some kind of magic inhibitors.

Only a few emergency lights were working, mostly just lighting the corners where hallways intersected. Holes were torn in the walls in places, carved out by the chunks of debris that had plunged through the hull. The outermost portions of the hull had been patched up, sealing in the atmosphere and blocking the stars, but the internal damage remained.

Engineering took the most damage from the impact, but almost everyone had been evacuated… Solstice worked in engineering. She could try to find him. He'd help. He'd know what to do, if he was still here. She had lost track of him for a while before being captured, and hadn't heard anything from anypony since then. Of the hostages that knew him, none could say what had happened to him.

She came to another wall, frantically scraped her hooves against it, thrust off in a new direction.

Was there any way to survive? The griffons could be anywhere. A spear could materialize out of nothingness, impale her on the spot. She looked around, trying to be observant, trying to be cautious and aware, but every corner looked like an ambush and she couldn't know for sure until she was only meters away.

It was easy to restrain from screaming. With her throat so dry; her vocal cords probably couldn't produce anything more than a rasp. Her throat was so tightly constricted with tension and fear, she probably couldn’t have choked out any noise at all.

Shor’s constant. The mission time. Somepony needed to know. Somepony had to help. She couldn't be alone.

There were thumps and rumbles behind her. She turned; the hallway was empty. If there was anything in her stomach, she would have vomited from the terror.

Then she felt a jolt of vertigo. Her mind playing tricks? She grabbed one of the railings and felt its tug.

The ship was moving.

Were the griffons taking the ship somewhere? Or had some ponies fixed it?

There were thumps and rumbles in the other direction that froze her in place. She heard a voice in the distance, but couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined. But if it was real, they weren’t far off, and she had been heading towards them.

She flailed her hooves without thinking. Her hoof on the railing propelled her back the way she'd come.

More thumps, more rumbling, but this time it was different… omnipresent. The whole ship rumbled.

Then the floor started moving upwards.

A dream. It had to be a dream. She almost sighed. It was just a nightmare. One that would end and be over. She'd wake up and the hunt would never have been anything more than a night terror. The ship couldn't be moving, not at this point. The engineering module was ruined. The engines couldn't propel it. They were still stuck on the edge of the Verdence system, trying to figure out what to do.

But the floor continued, unhindered by her logic. It suddenly gained speed and slammed into her hooves, knocking her off balance.

The distinctive clack of hoof on metal was loud enough to be heard over the rumbling all around. She heard curses in the distance… griffon voices. For sure, this time, not just her imagination.

She froze, lying on the floor. Maybe they wouldn't see her in the dark… no, they were griffons, their vision was enough. She was the one who couldn't see.

That was it. She'd made a noise, loud enough for them to hear, much louder than the rumbling all around. They'd be on her in moments with spears and talons.

It was dark and she couldn't see where to go. Everything looked the same, and there was probably a griffon in every direction.

She laid on the floor, tucking in her limbs into a feeble curl, and waited.

Just as she was reconsidering her plan to give up, she heard the click of claws on metal. This can't be happening, this has to be a nightmare, please let this be a nightmare. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, turning her reeling thoughts into a prayer, an incantation to ward off the evil spirits bearing down on her. If she was quiet, he might not notice…

Her mind raced with all the possible ways she might die in the next few moments. Her suicidal heart thumped so loudly she could hear it. The universe was fear.

— — —

“Seal the bridge,” Solstice whispered as soon as he was in the hall. Lennox did so without a word. The doors sealed shut behind Solstice, locking him and his prey out of the bridge.

Kelantos may have been the leader of the mutiny, may have been an intellectual force that could rival the greatest chess masters, but he was alone at the moment. He was vulnerable.

At one time, that might have bothered Solstice. Days ago, weeks ago… he would have been too suspicious to do anything. He and Lennox would have talked about it and speculated. Lennox would have been too wrapped up in recursive consideration of plots within plots to actually act, for fear of doing something imperfect, for fear of the slightest mistake, as if anything less than perfection would be a gap in the armor wide enough to ensure their defeat.

Maybe there were other griffons, hiding. Maybe Kelantos had some kind of trap set, or a new weapon or something.

At one time, Solstice might have wondered about that before acting, found a satisfactory answer before making a move to counter it. He might have thought to lay low and wait, to plan an ambush or just wait to see what Kelantos would do. Solstice would have scanned the chess board, not making a move until he saw every possible plan his opponent could have.

But this was an opportunity for an early checkmate. The risk was worth it.

Solstice grit his teeth and pulled himself down the hallway, pistol strapped around his fetlock, hoof poised over the trigger. The griffon responsible for the mutiny was right around the corner. The griffon who murdered the captain and the command staff, the griffon who started the hunts which even now threatened Holly… That sociopath was right there within Solstice’s reach. It would be just the two of them. No untouchable hunting party, no security systems, no traps… just Solstice and Kelantos, alone.

Given that opportunity, how could he not take it?

His heart beat faster in anticipation. He had been emotionally ready to do this for six months. Now he had the chance. Maybe Kelantos was plotting something, creating some kind of trap, but it didn’t even matter. If that was the case, Solstice would fight his way through it. No more waiting. No more watching ponies die.

A meter back from a sharp turn in the hallway, he grabbed a railing and stopped himself. He peeked around, carefully.

Kelantos had his back turned. Quiet wingbeats propelled the griffon away from Solstice, to the other end of the hall. His feathers fluttered like pale brown leaves, obvious against the ship’s sterile white. The blade of his spear glinted.

Why carry a hunting spear and not some more effective weapon? The question popped up in Solstice’s mind, unbidden. It was a habit to question everything Kelantos did.

Solstice reached his gun forward, but stopped himself and pulled back. It was a clear shot, but too far away. He only had a hoof-ful of rounds to use. He couldn’t afford to waste any on shots that were likely to miss.

Kelantos reached the end of the hall and turned a corner. Solstice followed.

There wasn’t much cover in the halls. Solstice felt exposed, gliding in a straight line in the open air. The only things to duck behind were the corners where other halls intersected. In a firefight, almost the whole deck would be a no-pony’s land where there was nothing to hide behind.

He would just have to use that to his advantage.

If Kelantos had a spear, Kelantos had either a melee weapon or a one-shot ranged weapon with a very obvious motion preceding its launch. If Kelantos kept it close for melee, Solstice just had to stay back. If Kelantos threw it, all Solstice had to do was watch for and avoid that one strike.

It would feel like a hunt, but with Kelantos as the prey. Like the end of a hunt, when the prey looks upon the predator and realizes there isn’t anywhere to run, that instant where the prey knows that they are going to die and only a divine miracle could save them. He wanted Kelantos to feel fear.

Solstice grabbed a railing to stop himself at the next corner. Even through the padded suit, his hoof clinked against the metal. His other hoof held his gun at the ready, the band around his fetlock bracing it while the tip of his hoof hovered over a button trigger. He almost hoped that Kelantos had heard him, almost hoped that the griffon would come around the corner so Solstice would have a clear point-blank shot at him.

He counted to ten, waiting and listening. There was a faint bump farther down the hall. Kelantos might have turned down another hallway. Solstice leaned his head around the corner.

There was a thud, an impact, one felt as much as it was heard. Kaleidoscopic patterns of random colors ebbed and flowed around his vision. For a moment, he was blind and deaf except for hallucinated colors and the ringing in his ears, and he was numb except for the pressure in his skull.

He felt distantly aware, as if watching his body take action without him. Shock, he thought, hoping that recognizing it would make it easier to handle. Adrenaline.

Kelantos appeared like the avatar of a deity manifesting suddenly. Solstice fired.

The recoil left a numbness in his foreleg and pushed him back a few centimeters. His vision was blurry. An eye stung… he reflexively reached up a hoof, but it met the helmet… and the edge of a gaping hole in the helmet.

Kelantos batted his other hoof, using some blunt object to knock the pistol off and away from him. The blow cracked against his foreleg and spun Solstice around.

Solstice reached out and grabbed for one of the railings, wrapping his foreleg around it and stopping his spin, but sending a jolt of pain up his leg with every movement. A bone must have broken. He sucked in a breath, grinding his teeth.

Blood collected over his left eye, the surface tension forming a tumorous globule in zero-g. It lost a few drops every time he moved. He squeezed that eye shut and squinted through the other.

Kelantos hovered in front of him, apparently uninjured. The gunshot had missed, and Solstice couldn’t see his gun anywhere in his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see anything well enough. He swung his good hoof, not reaching far enough for the blow to connect.

The momentum of his swing carried the rest of his body, shifting his broken leg. He winced in pain, grunting curses, glancing at Kelantos so he could anticipate and brace for the impending blow.

Kelantos released one of his weapons, a solid metal maintenance wrench. It tumbled away. He brought the other weapon, his hunting spear, closer.

He must’ve picked up that wrench just for the initial blow… Because stabbing wouldn’t cause that kind of disorientation, because Solstice could have gotten off a shot. Stabbing wouldn’t have broken the helmet…

Solstice glanced upwards. His helmet gaped where the wrench had come through, and cracks stretched away from the hole like threads of lightning.

That’s why he broke the helmet. Kelantos didn’t have a suit. Lennox or Solstice could have gone to an airlock, evacuated the atmosphere, and… Diarchs damn it all. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. He had been so angry, he had just wanted a fight… Well, here was his fight.

The ship rumbled around them. It had been rumbling, Solstice realized. On a low throttle, almost unnoticeable. Lennox testing things.

The rumbling intensified. The floor shot upwards, as if gravity had been flicked on with a switch. Solstice cried out as his injured foreleg caught on the railing. He crumpled to the floor, the injured leg splaying out to his side at an unnatural angle.

Kelantos stumbled, flapping his wings. He landed upright, standing bipedal, trying to use his wings and spear to keep balance.

Solstice glanced down at the communicator in his helmet. “Lennox,” he said, not even sure what to ask for, just hoping that Lennox would find something. Lennox always found something, some clever software exploit or a secret in the ship’s design, a distraction, a maintenance robot…. There had to be something nearby.

Lennox must have heard. The communicator was still on. There was background noise from the other end. Solstice was about to say something else when Lennox responded. “I see,” he said. A simple declarative statement.

Solstice squeezed his eyes shut. If he thought he had the time, he might have apologized to Lennox for anything he might’ve done to offend the griffon… He might have taken some time to say how much he appreciated Lennox’s help. Something, anything, just to get some kind of reaction so he wouldn’t be alone. Some part of Lennox enjoyed Solstice’s company; Lennox couldn’t have gone through all this struggle just because it was mathematically a good decision.

If he had the energy to speak, Solstice would have said that it was okay, that he wasn’t angry, that he didn’t feel betrayed or abandoned. But it was too late for that.