Unknown Contaminantby Algernon97ChaptersIIIIIIIVIEight dreamers. They were not professional dreamers, of course. Prodreamers are highly respected ponies, who get paid very large quantities of bits for the simple act of recording their dreams so that other ponies can view them. Granted, the job itself isn't very simple. It involves thinking up a very complex, fantastic dream that most ponies would enjoy, and it has to be done subconsciously. A prodreamer needs to have a very creative mind, but they also need to have self-control when they're asleep. Very few ponies have what it takes to be one, though many would love to be one. After all, what could be more easy than recording a dream? Out of all of them, Pinkie was the closest one to being a prodreamer. Her mind created all sorts of fanciful ideas, often at breakneck speed. These ideas ranged from partying like there was no tomorrow, to caring for a particular pair of foals. Her dreams were quite vivid, but lasted only a few short minutes before her mind switched gears and started a new one. If she could have mastered subconscious control, she might have made an excellent professional dreamer. That is, if she had ever wanted to be one. Time Turner had very quiet, rather uninteresting dreams. Occasionally his mind would come up with a giant, fantastic adventure, but that was far too rare for it to make him a candidate for prodreaming. Much more often were dreams about scientific formulae, experiments, and other things that had to do with his position in the crew. Octavia, the Acheron's captain, had some interesting dreams. Her subconscious mind often conjured up majestic, sweeping symphonies, with her playing the cello in her own odd way, standing behind it and holding the bow in her hoof. These dreams were memories of happier times, back when most ponies still enjoyed her classical compositions. Before she had needed the bits that the company had offered her. The dreams of the second engineer, Berry Punch, were a very strange assortment. Several of her dreams involved a bottle of an alcoholic drink gnawing away at her head while she tried to pry it off. The rest of her dreams involved a little foal running around her house, or the many parties she used to go to. The only one that she could say she enjoyed was of an event where she and the foal competed in a giant race that involved pies, eggs, and a mad dash to the finish line against the first engineer. At least, she thought it was the first engineer. First engineer Applejack's dreams, in contrast to those of her co-worker, were very subdued, and mostly consisted of working in her family's apple orchards. She also occasionally dreamed about her family's gigantic reunions, or conversations with her little sister. Derpy Hooves' dreams often consisted of flying, something she rarely got the chance to do with her current occupation of navigator. Alternatively, she had dreams about her daughter, both good and bad. There was also a certain recurring dream involving the science officer, one that she wouldn't dare tell him about. The executive officer, Lyra Heartstrings, didn't really dream in cryo. She felt the prick of the needle go into her skin, closed her eyes, and woke up almost immediately. This made her a terrible candidate for prodreaming. The ship's doctor was a soft spoken mare named Fluttershy. Her dreams consisted of long nature walks and small chats with her friends. Oh, and there was the rabbit. Name of Angel. He was an angry little creature, and his dreams were of no consequence or importance. One essential 'crewmember' never slept, and even if it did its dreams would be nothing but a series of ones and zeroes. This was the computer, a clunky machine nicknamed 'Sparky'. Its primary tasks were to keep the ship on course, check the cargo every so often, and make sure the crew's cryo tubes didn't malfunction. Its secondary task was to monitor radio chatter going across the vast reaches of space. A particular message stood out from the rest of the endless stream of radio chatter that Sparky received. It had no intended recipient, and it repeated itself in a set pattern. The computer's circuits dwelled over this, before checking what it was supposed to do, according to company guidelines. And then, Sparky decided to wake everypony up. *** Lyra Heartstrings slowly opened her eyes. She saw the clear lid to her cryo tube lifting up and away from her. Like every time she had been in the freezer before, she felt like she'd just gone to sleep. Groggily, she placed a hoof on the edge of the tube, and lifted herself up to an awkward sitting position. Pulling at the edge just a bit more, she lifted herself over the edge and onto the hard, cold floor. Looking around, Lyra noticed that she was the first one up. She sighed. According to a little tradition, this meant that she had the dishonor of trying to get the ship's food dispenser to make something that didn't taste like ash. She took a careful step, stumbled, regained her balance, and made her way towards the large door at one end of the room. Perhaps, she thought, I can get to the mess before— "Hey, Lyra..." Lyra stopped at the door, and without looking back she said, "Yes, Pinkie, what is it?" "Ya got a really bad case of bed mane." "I had no idea, thanks for telling me, Pinkie." "You're welcome!" Lyra's horn glowed as she lifted the clear little card she had on a necklace up to the door. With a soft hiss, the door slid up into the ceiling, revealing a corridor just slightly taller than Lyra. When she heard a loud thump, she turned around to see what had happened. Time Turner had fallen out of his tube, and was trying to get back up. "I don't know how," he said, "the two of you can get out of these things so bloody quickly..." "Lots and lots of practice," Lyra said as she walked out of the room and down the corridor. As Pinkie helped Turner up, the rest of the crew started pulling themselves out of their tubes. When Octavia pulled herself out of her tube, she noticed a small, blinking yellow light in the wall in front of her. She frowned. Well, she thought, at least it isn't red. "Morning, 'Tavi." "Pinkie, you know I don't like it when you call me that, right?" "Sorry, Octy." Octavia lifted a hoof to her head. "OK, Tavi's fine. Just... Nevermind..." As Octavia walked out of the room, Pinkie said a cheery good morning to Berry Punch and Applejack, before moving on to another tube. "You know what I want to know?" Berry Punch asked, lightly jumping when she touched the floor. "Nope," Applejack said as she set her prized stetson down on her blonde mane, "Ah don't." "How come Sparky keeps this room so friggin' cold all the time?" "Because, Berry, that thing's got the brain of a sun-fried slug, an' you know it." "Right, I forgot about that..." The two of them soon wandered out of the room. Derpy Hooves woke up to a rabbit bouncing on her head. When she was just about to lose her patience at him, a pair of yellow hooves grabbed him and lifted him away from her. As Fluttershy scolded the rabbit, Derpy pulled herself up and out of her tube, stretching her wings as she hopped onto the floor. "Angel says he's very sorry about that, Derpy." I'm sure he does, Derpy thought. "You don't need to defend him, Fluttershy." "I wasn't defending—" Pinkie butted in, "Hey Derpy, Fluttershy, it's really, really, really cold in here, how about we all go to the mess-slash-cafeteria and get some breakfast, huh?" Derpy and Fluttershy looked at each other for a moment, and then followed the pink pony out of the cryo chamber, with Angel following them. *** The mess area was a small room in the center of the Acheron, with a table surrounded by a couple of couches that everypony crowded into. Striking up some happy conversations, the group ate the autochef's latest production as quickly as they dared. "What the hay is this even supposed to be?" Berry grimaced at the foul tasting substance she'd just put in her mouth. "The box said 'apple' something," said Lyra. "Ah take offense to the idea that this is sp'osed to be apple anything. It doesn't taste anythin' like apples," Applejack said. "Well, you'd know, that's for sure. And for the record, this 'tea' is most definitely not tea." Time Turner got up to fill his glass with a different drink. "It makes a mean cupcake, though. And I mean mean, like it'll kick you in the gut if you're not being careful and-" "Right, Pinkie, I think we all had one of this thing's cupcakes...Hey, you know what, I think we should talk about the bonuses." Octavia rolled her eyes. "Derpy, we've been over this. You and Fluttershy get what you agreed to get. There's no changing that." "Yeah, but everyone else gets more than we do. Heck, Berry and AJ make more than Fluttershy does." Derpy leaned over the table, her hooves crossed in front of her dish. Fluttershy continued eating her 'apple something'. "I don't really mind, it's just that—" Time Turner returned to his seat. "Octavia, Sparky wants to talk to you." Octavia, thankful for the excuse, got up and walked to the short, narrow hall set in the wall. Opening the door, she entered the small room, and sat down at the computer's interface chair. A small, black screen was set in the wall directly in front of her. Green letters soon appeared on the screen. "GOOD MORNING, OCTAVIA" Octavia never really understood why the computer did that. It always made her feel weird, the computer directly addressing her. She shook off the feeling and carefully, since it was a difficult task with hooves, typed in the question that had been nagging her since she saw that blinking yellow light. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew minus Applejack, Fluttershy, and Berry, went to the bridge. The Acheron's bridge was a cramped, small place that was only intended to be used in the event of docking and landing, and as such was one of the least comfortable places on the ship. Derpy sat down at her station, uncomfortably close to that of Time Turner's. She tried to ignore him and keep her wings folded down. Lyra pulled a bulky monitor in front of her. Examining the grid pattern on it, she said, "Contact Canterlot Control. Lets see if we can dock somewhere close to home this time." Pinkie Pie pushed a few buttons, searching the radio channels for the right frequency. Her face scrunched up in confusion. "Well, that's weird. They're not answering." Lyra squinted at her monitor's grid patterns. "You sure about that?" "Mmm-hmm." "Derpy, would you check our position? Maybe we're not facing the right way." The gray pegasus flipped a few switches, and rotated a small stick in the middle of her station's desk. On her monitor, a view of stars slowly changed to that of a giant, ringed planet. "Uh... I don't think we're home yet," she said, "the closest planet's some gas giant," she said. For a moment, silence lasted throughout the bridge. It was Time Turner who broke the silence, voicing what everpony was thinking. "Well, why the buck are we out of cryo and orbiting some gas giant?" In the engine compartment of the ship, Applejack and Berry Punch sat at their own stations, listening to the intercom. "Did you hear that?" Applejack asked. "Yeah," Berry said. "Ah'm tellin' ya, there'd better be a good reason for this. Ah've already missed Apple Bloom's birthday this year..." Applejack leaned over, grabbed a small flask from the floor. "Cider?" "Yeah-Uh, N-no, I'm..I'm fine." "Sure?" "Yeah...Yeah, I'm sure." Berry tried not to look at the flask, and tried to ignore the enticing smell of the beverage inside of it... *** The crew had gathered in the mess once again, only this time there was no cheerful conversation about the poor quality of the autochef's food. Octavia stood before the rest of the group, leaning on one of the couches. "I think by now you've all realized that we're not home..." "Yeah, care to explain that?" "What do you think I'm doing, Lyra? Now, as I was saying, Sparky has picked up a distress call from an off-world colony." The group erupted into a brief moment of conversation. "Settle down, settle down. Now, it just so happens that we're the closest ship to the colony in question. And that means we get the unfortunate honors of going down there to help the colonists out." "Uh, I don't mean to be a party pooper, but we aren't exactly a rescue ship," Lyra said. Fluttershy looked at Lyra like she'd grown a second head. "Well, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't just sit and not do anything. Why, I-" "Fluttershy," Octavia's voice was calm as she spoke, "I'd like to finish, if you please? We're going to have to go in regardless, because if we don't then the company won't pay us. That means no bonuses, and no bits." Derpy shifted uncomfortably. "Before we land, though, I thought you all might be interested in hearing the distress call, so I had Sparky make a hard copy of it." Octavia pointed at a small tape recorder sitting on the table. "I was wondering what that was for," Pinkie said. Octavia continued, "I'm going to warn you now, it doesn't sound good..." Octavia pressed a hoof onto the play button of the tape recorder, and the group all leaned just a bit closer to hear it. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. Is anyone ou—ere? This is the New Canterlot colony, emer— channel. We found something, in the ice... We found... —elp, repea— ...Unknown—Mayday may-...Mother of Celest—" What followed was an unholy shriek, the pony who had been speaking's screams and the sound of tearing flesh, and then only that horrid shriek until the tape ended. IIFor a few seconds, the group stared at the tape recorder in stunned silence. Finally, Applejack spoke. "What in the hay was that thing?!" "I don't know, and neither does Sparky," Octavia said, "but I feel rather confident in saying that it's why the colony sent a distress signal." Lyra leaned forward, placing her hooves on the table. "Well, even if we ignore... that, the fact remains that we're still not a rescue ship. This is a colony we're talking about here. We can't just land and take them all in. We've don't have anywhere near enough freezers for that!" "Yes," said Fluttershy, "but that doesn't mean we can't help them. We can give them food, medicine, and something to help, um...fight...whatever that thing is..." Lyra cocked an eyebrow. "Such as?" Fluttershy looked at the table, trying to think of something. "Incinerator units," Derpy said, "don't we have a couple of those somewhere?" "Yeah, Ah think we do. It'll take some time to find 'em, though." Octavia nodded. "Right, then. It's settled. Anypony else want to say something?" Pinkie raised her hoof. Octavia sighed. "Yes, Pinkie?" "Maybe we could make cupcakes for the colonists? That might cheer them up." "...OK, we can do that..." "I know it always cheers me right up, quicker than you can say-" Octavia stopped the pink pony from continuing. "Right, let's get on with it, then." The eight ponies stood, and walked to their respective stations in an uneasy silence. *** The crew piled into the cramped bridge again, sitting at their stations once more. Octavia turned her monitor on, and carefully examined the view of the ringed planet below. "Pinkie, can you see if anypony's still listening in down there?" Octavia flipped a switch, and her monitor changed to show one of the giant planet's moons. The pink pony hesitantly put her radio headset on, pressed a few buttons, and started talking. "New Canterlot colony, you there? Anypony there? Hello? He-llo? Anypony?" A brief burst of static, and then, in her earpiece, a tinny voice started talking. "Somepony's down there, alright... Uh, I can't really tell what he's saying, there's a lot of static-y stuff going on and it keeps cutting him off. He sounds pretty excited, though." "Great. I'm sure Fluttershy'll be glad to hear that. Derpy, I've calculated the course correction for us to land on the colony, would you mind double checking it?" Derpy carefully examined the outlined path when it popped up on her monitor. She made a few changes to it, and then keyed it into the computer. "Course laid in," she said, "ignite engines on my mark. Ten, nine, eight..." Outside, the Acheron's engines slowly came to life. As they warmed up, they gave off a purple and white glow. "...five, four..." The glow was a pure white now, slowly getting brighter and brighter as the engines heated up. "...two, one, mark." There was a dull roar and a blinding flash of light as the Acheron's engines came to life for a brief moment. The ship lurched towards the moon of the ringed planet. Their job done, the engines died down once more. On the bridge, Lyra watched a data readout on her monitor. "Course change successful. We're going in." On her screen, she could see the moon slowly get closer and closer. "Should be entering the atmosphere in a few minutes." In the engine compartment, Applejack and Berry Punch were checking the various readouts and data that the engines and the ship gave them. They braced themselves against their desks when they heard Lyra's announcement. Soon after, the ship began to shake violently as it entered the moon's atmosphere. On the bridge, the turbulence was just as strong as it was in engineering. As the ship buffeted its way through the atmosphere, something made a loud grinding noise, causing Lyra to flinch in her seat. "The hay was that?" asked Berry. Applejack looked over her readouts, and found a small line of text detailing the problem. "Landin' gear's just a bit rusty, it's going to need some oil when we dry dock. Nothin' we can do about it right now but hope it doesn't crack up." The bridge crew breathed a collective sigh of relief when they heard Applejack's diagnosis over the intercom. The turbulence vanished, and the ship started to sink through the overcast, gray sky of the moon. "Heavy cloud cover, going to be a bit tricky to find the landing area." Derpy's screen showed a miniaturized version of the landscape below, fading in and out as the ship sank through the clouds. The Acheron slipped out of the clouds, and glided over the rough, frozen landscape of the moon. "Should be coming up on New Canterlot any second now," Lyra said. Through the bridge windows, Pinkie spotted the small colony as it came over the horizon. "There it is!" She cocked her head to one side as the tinny voice in her ear started up again. "Yeah, we can see the colony right now... Wait, what? ...Uh, Octavia, he's telling us to go away." "Why?" "Yeah, why don't ya want any help anymore? ... I'm a what?... Hello? He hung up on me!" Meanie, Pinkie thought, insult me and my friends and then hang up without even saying good-bye. The rest of the ponies on the bridge were confused. As they got closer to the colony, their confusion only increased. The colony looked like a war zone. Instead of the worn, prefabricated buildings the group expected to find, the colony was a mess of charred wall remnants, debris, and smoke. "What in the name of Celestia happened here?" Lyra said. "We'll find out soon enough," Octavia said, "set us down, Derpy." The Acheron made a lazy circle over the remnants of the colony, kicking up snow and some of the lighter debris, before slowly setting down on a barely recognizable landing pad. As the crew shut down their monitors, Octavia leaned over to the intercom, clicking it on with her hoof. "Everypony OK down there?" she asked. "I'm fine, thanks for asking," Fluttershy said. "Aside from a spilled drink, we're fine," Applejack said. "Alright. Good. Uh, Applejack, have you found the incinerators yet?" There was a loud clang, and Octavia could just hear the faint sound of Berry Punch yelling about something. "... Yeah, we found 'em." "Bring them to the airlock. I'll be down there shortly." Octavia lifted her hoof from the intercom, and turned to the ponies that were starting to leave the bridge. "Time, are we going to need suits for this?" Octavia walked up to Turner's desk as he checked the readouts on his monitor. "No," he said, "it looks like they were well on their way to terraforming the place. I'd wear something warm, though. There's one heck of a storm going on out there." Octavia nodded, and started to walk towards the exit corridor. "Lyra, you're coming with me." "Oh, joy. I'll get my snow shoes." "Very funny, Lyra. Derpy, you're in charge while we're gone." Derpy gave a half-hearted salute as Octavia and Lyra walked down the corridor at the rear of the bridge. *** Octavia, Lyra, and Fluttershy stood in front of the massive doors to the airlock. Octavia passed thermal jackets and radio headsets to the others while they waited for their weapons to arrive. As Fluttershy put her jacket on, she started to rethink what she was doing. Maybe they don't need a doctor's help. Maybe they're just a little hungry. Or maybe there's a giant pony-eating monster out in the snow just waiting for the three of them to step outside and- "Hey Fluttershy, you alright? You look a little pale..." Lyra held out the medical saddlebags to Fluttershy. The yellow pony grabbed the bags, and put them over her jacket. "I-I'm fine," she said. Lyra shrugged, and glanced down the corridor on the left. She wondered what was taking Applejack so long to get the incinerators to the airlock. Eventually, she heard a faint clinking noise from the corridor, and sighed in relief when she saw Berry Punch turn a corner and walk towards them. Hanging by a strap around the second engineer's neck were a pair of bulky contraptions that looked like they were cobbled together with a few small containers and some large pipes. The purple pony lifted the weapons with one of her hooves, taking them off of her neck and letting them fall. Fluttershy flinched away from the cumbersome weapons as they clattered against the metal floor. "There you go," Berry said, "two incinerators, as requested. Sorry about the wait, but it took me a while to find the fuel tanks for these things." Octavia picked one of the incinerators up, flipping it over in her hooves and examining it. She looked at Berry. "How's it work?" Berry pointed a hoof at a series of straps sticking out of one side of the device. "You tie it onto yourself using those, and I'd make sure that the nozzle's a good bit ahead of you." Octavia and Lyra did so, following the engineer's instructions very carefully. "Once you do that, you flick this knob here," Berry tapped a red circle on top of the weapon, "which causes the flame to start up. Once that's done, all you need to do is bite down on this thing here," Berry pointed to a thin lever sticking up from the machine and leveling off roughly where a pony's mouth would be, "and it's bye-bye monster. Fuel gage is right there, on top of the thing. And that's it." Berry turned around and walked back to the engineering compartment. Octavia practiced biting the little lever until she felt comfortable with the incinerator. When she was satisfied, she spoke into her headset's microphone. "OK, we're all set here. Open the door, Derpy." The giant doors cracked open with a hiss, then slid open to reveal the inner chamber of the airlock. The three ponies stepped into the small chamber between the ship's hull and the frozen wasteland outside. While the inner door closed behind them, Octavia and Lyra twisted the little knob on top of their incinerators, and a small flame appeared under the end of the weapon's nozzle. After a moment, the outer door opened, and the group was immediately blasted with the frigid air and snow. "If you see mister Meanie McMeanmean, tell him I demand an apology." "Pinkie." "Oh, right, sorry. Going back to the colony's frequency now." Lyra rolled her eyes as Pinkie imitated a radio switching frequencies before the telltale click let her know that Pinkie had indeed switched her radio off. "Well...Good luck out there," Derpy said over the radio. Octavia took a deep breath, and started walking down the ramp, leading Lyra and Fluttershy into the desolate remains of the colony. IIIStrong winds whipped past the three ponies, blasting them with snow and ice. Octavia, Lyra, and Fluttershy slowly made their way down one of the white 'streets' that went between a row of squat, blackened buildings. The pathway was full of half-buried debris from some of the buildings, and had a thin layer of ash covering it. Even though the thermal jacket kept her from feeling the full force of the freezing wind, Fluttershy shivered as she followed the gray earth pony and green unicorn, folding her wings in just a little more than usual. The strangest thing about the cold was that her breath didn't cloud up like it did when she'd visited the Crystal Empire. Her mind pushed that thought aside when she looked around and saw the destroyed buildings around her. Memories of dragonfire and what it could do to a pony flashed through her mind, and she shivered a little more than she had a moment ago. Octavia tried not to let the cold wind bother her. As she walked by the decayed, rotting buildings, Octavia quickly glanced over them to see if anypony might still be in them. Secretly, she hoped she wouldn't see any movement in them. If a pony had been inside one of the shelters when it had burned... Octavia shook her head. Best not to dwell on that, she thought. Lyra nervously looked around the remnants of the colony. The unholy shriek from the distress call still echoed throughout her mind, and the fact that a few of the shacks looked like something had barreled through them, instead of collapsing in the fire, did little to comfort her. "I wonder what started the fire..." The green unicorn glanced at the little flame coming from under the nozzle of her incinerator, and then back to the destroyed shacks on either side of her. She had the distinct feeling that she had just answered her own question. Most colonies did have at least one incinerator, and it would only take one to start a chain reaction. Maybe whatever it was ran through some of the buildings after they'd attacked it. "We can ask the pony that Pinkie was talking to," Octavia said. If it weren't for the radio headsets, the ponies would have had to shout at each other in order to be heard over the storm. As it was, they still had to talk fairly loud. "He can tell us what happened." "You mean the pony who told us to go away before cutting off contact with us? He didn't really seem like he wanted to make some new friends..." "Lyra, he's the only colonist we've been able to contact. We're going to go search the area around the colony's radio tower and see if we can find him." Fluttershy looked at the crumbling shelters on either side of the group. The walls are just big enough for a pony to be hiding behind them, she thought. "Shouldn't we see if anypony's in the buildings?" she asked. "Fluttershy, we don't know if anypony's in them. What we do know is that somepony is near the radio tower. We'll check the buildings on our way back." Octavia stepped around a corner and spotted the radio tower through the snow and ice. "And there it is. Come on, let's go." Fluttershy was about to follow the two ponies when she saw something near one of the destroyed shacks. Unable to tell what it was at first, she squinted in an effort to focus through the white haze of the storm. It looked like... "There's... Somepony's lying in the snow over there," she said. Octavia and Lyra turned around. "What do you mean, 'there's somepony lying in the snow'?" Lyra asked. "Are you sure it's not just a rock or something? I don't think folks usually just go out and take a nap in the middle of a blizzard." "I'm sure that whoever it is needs help." Fluttershy made her way towards the shape in the snow. Octavia and Lyra quickly followed the yellow pegasus across the frozen wastes, trying to get in front of her in case it was something none of them wanted to meet. They all reached the shape at the same time. They stopped, and stared at the partially buried thing. Fluttershy had seen several violent, horrible things when she had been caring for animals. But what she saw went far beyond anything a predator would do to another animal. Her brain couldn't comprehend what it was seeing, it was so, so wrong. Octavia stared at the mass in front of Fluttershy, unable to believe what she was seeing. Lyra turned away, groaning and trying not to empty her stomach on the snow and ice. It wasn't the fact that a pony had been set on fire and the body had been left in the snow that disturbed them so much. It certainly had something to do with it, but what pushed them over the edge was how freakish, how wrong, the body looked. The body in the snow looked like some twisted science experiment that had gone horribly, horribly awry. There were too many hooves growing out of it, and something none of them could describe was breaking out of the back instead of a pair of wings. On the side of the unfortunate pony's charred head, what looked like the deformed, misshapen head of a completely different pony seemed to be forcing its way out, stretching and distorting the original pony's face into a silent, agonized scream. Octavia was the first to recover. She pulled an unresponsive Fluttershy away from the corpse, and slowly guided her away from the twisted thing. Stumbling along behind them, Lyra tried to regain control of her stomach. "Let's... Let's... Let's find that radio guy and get the buck out of here..." *** On the Acheron, Time Turner sat at his station in the bridge, watching the vital signs of the away team on his monitor. When he saw their pulses start to fluctuate, he reached over and flicked one of the many switches on his desk to the 'on' position, and grainy video feedback appeared on his monitor. Through it he could see Octavia, supporting Fluttershy as they walked through what was left of the colony. In the distance he could see the radio tower, though he couldn't figure out why Lyra kept wobbling all over the place as she walked. Maybe- "How're they doing?" Turner almost jumped out of his seat. He looked behind him to see a surprised pegasus holding a cup full of some sort of drink in her hoof. "Sorry, I-" Turner cut her off. "No, it's fine." He cleared his throat before continuing, "They're um, they're looking a bit sick for some reason. Lyra in particular. But I missed whatever it was. Good thing, too, because I've never seen Fluttershy look like that. I think they're going to the radio tower. Probably trying to find Pinkie's new friend. Did uh, did you want something?" Derpy shook her head. "Not really. Just, uh... Just... You want some hot chocolate?" Derpy offered the cup in her hoof to the science officer. Time Turner blinked. "What?" "Oh, well, Pinkie found a way to get the autochef to make hot chocolate. I don't how she did it, but it's really good and I was wondering if you'd like to- any, if you'd like any." "...Sure, just put it on the desk..." Derpy placed the little cup on the stallion's desk. She awkwardly made her way to her station as Turner went back to watching the feedback on his monitor. An awkward silence, for Derpy at least, followed. Derpy started to say something to the science officer, but before she could open her mouth, Applejack's voice crackled over the intercom. "Y'all might want to come down here. We've got a problem." *** The away team had finally reached the radio tower. It was a tall, ice-covered metal tower standing next to a run-down, but mostly still intact blue shed. The three ponies of the away team were sitting at the base of the hill, the storm raging around them. Octavia looked at her two companions. Fluttershy was still in shock, and Lyra looked like she was about to puke her guts out. "I'm going up there," she told them. Neither Lyra nor Fluttershy said anything. "Lyra, you stay here in case something shows up, OK?" Lyra slowly nodded her head, and then she started vomiting. While Lyra emptied her gut onto the ice, Octavia slowly climbed up the snow-covered hill. She hoped, for the sake of her sanity and that of the others, that whatever was in the radio tower was a normal, regular, scared out of his mind pony and not some insane scientist straight out of those trashy magazines her old flatmate used to read. That was if there even was a pony in the little shack. For all she knew, Pinkie's 'Meanie McMeanmean' was in one of the decaying buildings the trio had walked by on their way to the tower. She hoped that wasn't the case. Octavia was fairly certain that neither of the ponies with her was up to the task of searching the colony's burnt husks. Octavia stopped at the door to the shack. She glanced behind her to see how the others were doing. Lyra had recovered and was watching her, while Fluttershy just stared into the hillside. Octavia placed the incinerator's trigger in her mouth, took a deep breath, and pushed the faded door open. Inside, sitting on a small table, was an old, poorly maintained radio. But no mysterious radio pony. Octavia spit the incinerator's trigger out of her mouth. Can't say I'm all that surprised, Octavia thought. Looks like we'll have to- Wait a minute... What's that? Sitting on top of the radio was a strange little creature that Octavia had never seen before. It looked a bit like a dragon's claw that had grown a tail, its skin a dull, pale yellow. Octavia leaned back a bit, unsure of just what she was looking at. The creature crawled a little closer to her. Octavia started to back up, and reached a hoof up to shut the door. The thing launched itself off of the radio. For a brief second, Octavia saw it fly through the air towards her. Before she could slam the door shut, it had landed on her face. Darkness. Can't breathe, get it off, get it off, get it off... Her hooves desperately pulled at the creature, trying to pry it off of her head. Bony claws dug into her skull. The creature's tail wrapped itself around her neck. Something forced its way into her mouth, slid down her throat. I can't breathe... She stumbled backwards out of the shack, and she could barely hear somepony screaming at her before she lost consciousness. IVThe engine compartment of the Acheron was a rather quiet little place on the ship, and would have been considered a nice place to work in if it didn't constantly reek of oil and grease. Berry Punch and Applejack often said that it wasn't so bad once your nose got used to the smell, and that it was where the 'real work' took place. The rest of the crew did not agree with either of those statements. Derpy and Time Turner tried not to cough as they stood in the tiny room, waiting for somepony to tell them what the 'problem' was. Berry Punch was standing in front of a hole in the floor, the removed section of grating and Applejack's hat sitting next to her. Occasionally, she pulled a small tool out of the overturned stetson and hoofed it over to an orange hoof that reached out of the hole. "Well," Time Turner said, "what's the problem?" The purple pony pointed at a pile of small, green cards that lay next to her on the metal floor. "Some of the older circuits got overloaded when we landed. The alarm didn't even go off 'till smoke was coming out of the floor." Berry pushed a few of the cards over to Derpy. The gray pegasus picked up one of the thin pieces of plastic, turning it over in her hooves to see a large burn mark in the center of the card's intricate patterns. Derpy put the little card back in the pile. "How bad is it?" she asked. "We're blind on A and C deck, and we've lost power on E deck," Berry said. Time Turner sighed and put a hoof to his head. "Wonderful..." A quiet clinking sound came from the hole. Applejack poked her head out of the floor, wiping some oil off of her face as she spoke. "We can fix 'er, don't y'all worry 'bout that. Just lettin' ya know 'bout it, that's all." "Right. Thanks, Applejack," Derpy said. She turned around, and walked out of the dim little room. Time Turner started to leave, but stopped, and picked up one of the damaged chips. He looked at the burn marks carefully. He carried the chip with him as he walked out of the engine compartment. With their crewmates gone, the two engineers went back to work. Applejack leaned back, returning to the small maintenance shaft under the floor. "Berry?" she asked. "Yeah?" "Somethin' ain't right. Acheron's an old gal, but she ain't old enough for her alarms to stop working." Berry leaned a little closer to the hole in the floor. "Are you saying somepony did this?" "Ah wouldn't say that just yet. But Ah think we need to start considering it." *** Pinkie Pie wandered about the long, dirty corridors of the ship, humming a little tune that she made up as she walked. The melody echoed softly throughout the dim metal hallway as Pinkie made her way around one of several ladders that led to both the upper and lower decks. She waved to Angel as the little rabbit hopped past her and into one of the air ducts on the wall. Pinkie walked by the bridge, peeking in through the doorway. Seeing no one there, she wandered over to her station, and put on her radio's headset. Flicking a small switch, she tuned the radio to the away team's frequency. Surely they wouldn't mind if she just checked in on them. Just to see how they were doing, that was all. "Hey, Pinkie?" Derpy walked into the bridge, stopping next to the pink pony. "See if you can contact the away team. I need to let Octavia know about our problem." "The circuit board thingy?" "Yeah, tha—wait, how do you know about that? You weren't in the..." Derpy glanced at the doorway, then looked at Pinkie. The pink pony shrugged. "I noticed it after we landed." "How did you—" Derpy shook her head "—on second thought, I don't want to know. Just... Just get Octavia on the radio. And let me have the headset whenever you get them, alright?" "Okie dokie lokie." Pinkie took off her headset and stuck it on Derpy's head. The pegasus blinked in surprise, before she adjusted the plastic device to a more comfortable position. Pinkie flicked a switch on the headset, and gave an encouraging nod to Derpy. "Octavia, you there?" Derpy walked over to the bridge's window, and looked at the raging blizzard outside. "Oh, thank Celestia," Lyra said over the radio, "I was about to start banging on the door. Listen, I need you to open the airlock now. And hurry, Octavia's life is at stake, we need to get her to the med lab." "Lyra? Wait, w-wait a minute, what's going on? What's wrong with Octavia?" Derpy turned away from the window. She looked at Pinkie. "They're in the airlock." "I got it, just lemmie know whenever they're ready." Pinkie was out of the bridge before Derpy could blink. The energetic pony's voice echoed out of the corridor. "Ready whenever you are!" Derpy stared at the door for a moment, then shook her head and returned her attention to Lyra's voice on the little radio. "Could you say that again, Lyra?" "Derpy, listen to me. This, this...creature's latched itself onto Octavia. Fluttershy thinks that if we get her into the med lab we can get it off of her. Right, Fluttershy?" "Yes, that's right. We need to get it off as soon as we possibly can." Derpy waved a hoof in the air. "Hang on a second. You're saying some animal's stuck on Octavia?" "Yes! Now open the door so we can get it off of her!" Derpy closed her eyes and sighed. There was protocol that was supposed to be followed if something like this ever happened. The company did have an extensive and thorough set of rules, after all. Derpy thought for a moment, and then she opened her eyes. "I can't." "What the hay do you mean, you can't?" "You both know the quarantine regulations," Derpy said. "But Octavia might suffer permanent injury if we wait that long. Please, open the door so I can help her," said Fluttershy. "I know," said Derpy, "but I can't risk letting some weird, freaky thing into the ship unless I know it's safe. That thing could be what destroyed the colony." "Derpy," Lyra said, "if you don't open this door right bucking now, I swear to Celestia I'm going to beat it down with my own bucking hooves, and then I'm going to tap dance on your bucking head! Open. The. Door." Meanwhile, at the airlock, Pinkie Pie was standing in front of the giant doors. She had been listening to the argument over the airlock's small intercom, and was starting to feel confused about what to do. She sat down to think about the matter. Pinkie tapped a hoof against her chin as she thought about the options she had. On the one hoof, she wanted to open the door to help her friends. Letting them in meant that Fluttershy might be able to help Octavia. And that meant that they'd all be able to get in the freezy tubes and go home. But on the other hoof, Derpy sort of had a point about...whatever it was that was on Octavia. Leaving the group outside for a while would let them see if anything bad would happen. But it would also mean leaving them out in a cold, harsh blizzard. Pinkie was still thinking about the issue when Applejack walked up to the door and used the override to open it. *** Derpy Hooves ran down the metal corridor that led to the medical lab. She had to jump over the little fluffball known as Angel, and for a moment she wondered why Fluttershy ever brought that irritating rabbit with her. Then her mind returned to the bigger problem. The captain of the ship had a parasite on her face. And since Applejack had violated the quarantine procedures and opened the airlock, Derpy figured that she had better see what the thing was and how Fluttershy's efforts to remove it were going. The gray pegasus turned a corner, and saw that most of the crew was standing in front of the windowed wall that let them see into the med lab. Lyra turned her head in Derpy's direction, and the unicorn's eyes narrowed. Derpy walked up to the group. She glanced at the room behind the thick glass. She could see Fluttershy and Time Turner standing on either side of a white slab, examining the comatose gray pony that lay on it. "Any—" Derpy was cut off by a green hoof slamming into her jaw. She stumbled backwards, lifting a hoof to her mouth. Applejack moved in between the gray pegasus and the green unicorn. "Lyra, Ah don't think beating Derpy up is going to do us any good here." Lyra stared at the pegasus sitting behind Applejack for what felt like an eternity, before she turned to look inside the med lab. Derpy slowly got back up, walked a little closer to the group, and sat down again. "Thanks." "Don't mention it," Applejack said. Derpy looked around at the ponies standing or sitting in front of the windowed wall. "Where's Pinkie?" "She saw that thing on Octavia's face and ran off," Berry said. "Didn't even say anything. She just ran to the mess." Derpy nodded, chalking that up to Pinkie being Pinkie, and looked at the ponies inside the sterile, white room behind the glass. She noticed that Angel had hopped up onto the small ledge in front of the window, and was leaning up against the glass. Inside the med lab, Fluttershy and Time Turner stood on opposite sides of Octavia's comatose body. With small surgical masks over their muzzles, the two ponies examined the creature on the captain's head. "What in the name of Celestia is that thing?" Turner asked. "I don't know," said Fluttershy. "It doesn't look like any animal I've ever seen." The creature was a deathly yellow, and it obscured all of Octavia's face. Bony claws were clamped around the gray pony's head, and a short tail had wrapped around her neck. In the med lab's light, Fluttershy could now see that there was a dull, unfocused eye just above the start of the tail. And even though the eye wasn't focused on anything, Fluttershy couldn't help but shake a little when she saw it. Time Turner cleared his throat. "Right. Let's put her in the scanner. See if it can tell us anything." Fluttershy walked over to a small panel of buttons on the adjacent wall, and pushed one. The white slab Octavia lay on slowly slid to the side, going into a hole in the wall that was soon sealed with a plastic cover. The two ponies stepped back, and looked at a video monitor on top of the scanner. "It looks like it's keeping her alive..." Fluttershy sighed in relief. At least the creature wasn't trying to kill Octavia. "Yes, but it's doing...something to her. Look—" TIme Turner pointed to a long tube-like appendage in Octavia's throat "—that's got to be there for a reason. And... Oh my Celestia..." "What?" "It's embedding that thing into Octavia's throat. See those little lines there?" Fluttershy looked at the monitor, and saw what Time Turner was talking about. "We need to get it off of her right now," she said. She pushed the button on the wall again, and the scanner opened up. The white slab slid out from the hole in the wall, and stopped in the position it was previously in. "Right," Time Turner said. He looked at the pale creature. "How do you want to do this?" Fluttershy looked at the claws of the creature. "I don't think we can just pull it off. It looks like we'll tear her skin off if we do that." "We could try to cut it off. Make an incision right about here"—Time Turner pointed just below a knuckle on one of the claws—"on each one of these, then pull the body and tail off." Fluttershy thought for a moment. "OK. Let's, uh, let's do that..." As Fluttershy picked up a scalpel, Time Turner moved a small wad of gauze to the incision area. Fluttershy took a deep breath, exhaled, and started to cut the bony claw. A small, green liquid dribbled out of the cut, and slowly the scalpel cut the digit off. While Time Turner tried to keep the creature from bleeding all over Octavia's mane, Fluttershy placed the small piece of the creature into a specimen jar. She noticed something odd about it as she dropped it in the glass jar. It had a second skin around the bone, almost like something was supposed to be between it and the outer skin. But for some reason, there was nothing there. "Fluttershy?" "Yes?" "We can't cut it off. This thing's tail tightened itself around Octavia's throat when we removed that claw. It's going to crush her windpipe if we try it again." Turner placed the gauze into a sample bin as he spoke. "Well... Then what do we do?" Fluttershy asked. "I don't know. It'll probably pry her scalp off if we try to pull it, and it'll choke her if we cut it off." Fluttershy glanced at the thing's eye. She frowned, then looked at Time Turner. "I'm going to run a test on this—" Fluttershy pointed at the bony claw in the specimen jar "—and the scanner's results to see how this...thing works. Would you mind, um, telling everypony what we found out?" Time Turner nodded his head. Fluttershy turned around, and walked over to a small computer sitting on a table in the corner of the room. She sat down, and started to go over the pictures that the scanner had produced. Time Turner looked at the strange creature on Octavia's face, then opened the door to the medlab. He removed his mask as he walked out of the lab, and closed the door behind him. As the door to the med lab closed, the creature's dull, lifeless eye slowly rolled in its socket until it was looking directly at Fluttershy.
IEight dreamers. They were not professional dreamers, of course. Prodreamers are highly respected ponies, who get paid very large quantities of bits for the simple act of recording their dreams so that other ponies can view them. Granted, the job itself isn't very simple. It involves thinking up a very complex, fantastic dream that most ponies would enjoy, and it has to be done subconsciously. A prodreamer needs to have a very creative mind, but they also need to have self-control when they're asleep. Very few ponies have what it takes to be one, though many would love to be one. After all, what could be more easy than recording a dream? Out of all of them, Pinkie was the closest one to being a prodreamer. Her mind created all sorts of fanciful ideas, often at breakneck speed. These ideas ranged from partying like there was no tomorrow, to caring for a particular pair of foals. Her dreams were quite vivid, but lasted only a few short minutes before her mind switched gears and started a new one. If she could have mastered subconscious control, she might have made an excellent professional dreamer. That is, if she had ever wanted to be one. Time Turner had very quiet, rather uninteresting dreams. Occasionally his mind would come up with a giant, fantastic adventure, but that was far too rare for it to make him a candidate for prodreaming. Much more often were dreams about scientific formulae, experiments, and other things that had to do with his position in the crew. Octavia, the Acheron's captain, had some interesting dreams. Her subconscious mind often conjured up majestic, sweeping symphonies, with her playing the cello in her own odd way, standing behind it and holding the bow in her hoof. These dreams were memories of happier times, back when most ponies still enjoyed her classical compositions. Before she had needed the bits that the company had offered her. The dreams of the second engineer, Berry Punch, were a very strange assortment. Several of her dreams involved a bottle of an alcoholic drink gnawing away at her head while she tried to pry it off. The rest of her dreams involved a little foal running around her house, or the many parties she used to go to. The only one that she could say she enjoyed was of an event where she and the foal competed in a giant race that involved pies, eggs, and a mad dash to the finish line against the first engineer. At least, she thought it was the first engineer. First engineer Applejack's dreams, in contrast to those of her co-worker, were very subdued, and mostly consisted of working in her family's apple orchards. She also occasionally dreamed about her family's gigantic reunions, or conversations with her little sister. Derpy Hooves' dreams often consisted of flying, something she rarely got the chance to do with her current occupation of navigator. Alternatively, she had dreams about her daughter, both good and bad. There was also a certain recurring dream involving the science officer, one that she wouldn't dare tell him about. The executive officer, Lyra Heartstrings, didn't really dream in cryo. She felt the prick of the needle go into her skin, closed her eyes, and woke up almost immediately. This made her a terrible candidate for prodreaming. The ship's doctor was a soft spoken mare named Fluttershy. Her dreams consisted of long nature walks and small chats with her friends. Oh, and there was the rabbit. Name of Angel. He was an angry little creature, and his dreams were of no consequence or importance. One essential 'crewmember' never slept, and even if it did its dreams would be nothing but a series of ones and zeroes. This was the computer, a clunky machine nicknamed 'Sparky'. Its primary tasks were to keep the ship on course, check the cargo every so often, and make sure the crew's cryo tubes didn't malfunction. Its secondary task was to monitor radio chatter going across the vast reaches of space. A particular message stood out from the rest of the endless stream of radio chatter that Sparky received. It had no intended recipient, and it repeated itself in a set pattern. The computer's circuits dwelled over this, before checking what it was supposed to do, according to company guidelines. And then, Sparky decided to wake everypony up. *** Lyra Heartstrings slowly opened her eyes. She saw the clear lid to her cryo tube lifting up and away from her. Like every time she had been in the freezer before, she felt like she'd just gone to sleep. Groggily, she placed a hoof on the edge of the tube, and lifted herself up to an awkward sitting position. Pulling at the edge just a bit more, she lifted herself over the edge and onto the hard, cold floor. Looking around, Lyra noticed that she was the first one up. She sighed. According to a little tradition, this meant that she had the dishonor of trying to get the ship's food dispenser to make something that didn't taste like ash. She took a careful step, stumbled, regained her balance, and made her way towards the large door at one end of the room. Perhaps, she thought, I can get to the mess before— "Hey, Lyra..." Lyra stopped at the door, and without looking back she said, "Yes, Pinkie, what is it?" "Ya got a really bad case of bed mane." "I had no idea, thanks for telling me, Pinkie." "You're welcome!" Lyra's horn glowed as she lifted the clear little card she had on a necklace up to the door. With a soft hiss, the door slid up into the ceiling, revealing a corridor just slightly taller than Lyra. When she heard a loud thump, she turned around to see what had happened. Time Turner had fallen out of his tube, and was trying to get back up. "I don't know how," he said, "the two of you can get out of these things so bloody quickly..." "Lots and lots of practice," Lyra said as she walked out of the room and down the corridor. As Pinkie helped Turner up, the rest of the crew started pulling themselves out of their tubes. When Octavia pulled herself out of her tube, she noticed a small, blinking yellow light in the wall in front of her. She frowned. Well, she thought, at least it isn't red. "Morning, 'Tavi." "Pinkie, you know I don't like it when you call me that, right?" "Sorry, Octy." Octavia lifted a hoof to her head. "OK, Tavi's fine. Just... Nevermind..." As Octavia walked out of the room, Pinkie said a cheery good morning to Berry Punch and Applejack, before moving on to another tube. "You know what I want to know?" Berry Punch asked, lightly jumping when she touched the floor. "Nope," Applejack said as she set her prized stetson down on her blonde mane, "Ah don't." "How come Sparky keeps this room so friggin' cold all the time?" "Because, Berry, that thing's got the brain of a sun-fried slug, an' you know it." "Right, I forgot about that..." The two of them soon wandered out of the room. Derpy Hooves woke up to a rabbit bouncing on her head. When she was just about to lose her patience at him, a pair of yellow hooves grabbed him and lifted him away from her. As Fluttershy scolded the rabbit, Derpy pulled herself up and out of her tube, stretching her wings as she hopped onto the floor. "Angel says he's very sorry about that, Derpy." I'm sure he does, Derpy thought. "You don't need to defend him, Fluttershy." "I wasn't defending—" Pinkie butted in, "Hey Derpy, Fluttershy, it's really, really, really cold in here, how about we all go to the mess-slash-cafeteria and get some breakfast, huh?" Derpy and Fluttershy looked at each other for a moment, and then followed the pink pony out of the cryo chamber, with Angel following them. *** The mess area was a small room in the center of the Acheron, with a table surrounded by a couple of couches that everypony crowded into. Striking up some happy conversations, the group ate the autochef's latest production as quickly as they dared. "What the hay is this even supposed to be?" Berry grimaced at the foul tasting substance she'd just put in her mouth. "The box said 'apple' something," said Lyra. "Ah take offense to the idea that this is sp'osed to be apple anything. It doesn't taste anythin' like apples," Applejack said. "Well, you'd know, that's for sure. And for the record, this 'tea' is most definitely not tea." Time Turner got up to fill his glass with a different drink. "It makes a mean cupcake, though. And I mean mean, like it'll kick you in the gut if you're not being careful and-" "Right, Pinkie, I think we all had one of this thing's cupcakes...Hey, you know what, I think we should talk about the bonuses." Octavia rolled her eyes. "Derpy, we've been over this. You and Fluttershy get what you agreed to get. There's no changing that." "Yeah, but everyone else gets more than we do. Heck, Berry and AJ make more than Fluttershy does." Derpy leaned over the table, her hooves crossed in front of her dish. Fluttershy continued eating her 'apple something'. "I don't really mind, it's just that—" Time Turner returned to his seat. "Octavia, Sparky wants to talk to you." Octavia, thankful for the excuse, got up and walked to the short, narrow hall set in the wall. Opening the door, she entered the small room, and sat down at the computer's interface chair. A small, black screen was set in the wall directly in front of her. Green letters soon appeared on the screen. "GOOD MORNING, OCTAVIA" Octavia never really understood why the computer did that. It always made her feel weird, the computer directly addressing her. She shook off the feeling and carefully, since it was a difficult task with hooves, typed in the question that had been nagging her since she saw that blinking yellow light. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew minus Applejack, Fluttershy, and Berry, went to the bridge. The Acheron's bridge was a cramped, small place that was only intended to be used in the event of docking and landing, and as such was one of the least comfortable places on the ship. Derpy sat down at her station, uncomfortably close to that of Time Turner's. She tried to ignore him and keep her wings folded down. Lyra pulled a bulky monitor in front of her. Examining the grid pattern on it, she said, "Contact Canterlot Control. Lets see if we can dock somewhere close to home this time." Pinkie Pie pushed a few buttons, searching the radio channels for the right frequency. Her face scrunched up in confusion. "Well, that's weird. They're not answering." Lyra squinted at her monitor's grid patterns. "You sure about that?" "Mmm-hmm." "Derpy, would you check our position? Maybe we're not facing the right way." The gray pegasus flipped a few switches, and rotated a small stick in the middle of her station's desk. On her monitor, a view of stars slowly changed to that of a giant, ringed planet. "Uh... I don't think we're home yet," she said, "the closest planet's some gas giant," she said. For a moment, silence lasted throughout the bridge. It was Time Turner who broke the silence, voicing what everpony was thinking. "Well, why the buck are we out of cryo and orbiting some gas giant?" In the engine compartment of the ship, Applejack and Berry Punch sat at their own stations, listening to the intercom. "Did you hear that?" Applejack asked. "Yeah," Berry said. "Ah'm tellin' ya, there'd better be a good reason for this. Ah've already missed Apple Bloom's birthday this year..." Applejack leaned over, grabbed a small flask from the floor. "Cider?" "Yeah-Uh, N-no, I'm..I'm fine." "Sure?" "Yeah...Yeah, I'm sure." Berry tried not to look at the flask, and tried to ignore the enticing smell of the beverage inside of it... *** The crew had gathered in the mess once again, only this time there was no cheerful conversation about the poor quality of the autochef's food. Octavia stood before the rest of the group, leaning on one of the couches. "I think by now you've all realized that we're not home..." "Yeah, care to explain that?" "What do you think I'm doing, Lyra? Now, as I was saying, Sparky has picked up a distress call from an off-world colony." The group erupted into a brief moment of conversation. "Settle down, settle down. Now, it just so happens that we're the closest ship to the colony in question. And that means we get the unfortunate honors of going down there to help the colonists out." "Uh, I don't mean to be a party pooper, but we aren't exactly a rescue ship," Lyra said. Fluttershy looked at Lyra like she'd grown a second head. "Well, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't just sit and not do anything. Why, I-" "Fluttershy," Octavia's voice was calm as she spoke, "I'd like to finish, if you please? We're going to have to go in regardless, because if we don't then the company won't pay us. That means no bonuses, and no bits." Derpy shifted uncomfortably. "Before we land, though, I thought you all might be interested in hearing the distress call, so I had Sparky make a hard copy of it." Octavia pointed at a small tape recorder sitting on the table. "I was wondering what that was for," Pinkie said. Octavia continued, "I'm going to warn you now, it doesn't sound good..." Octavia pressed a hoof onto the play button of the tape recorder, and the group all leaned just a bit closer to hear it. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. Is anyone ou—ere? This is the New Canterlot colony, emer— channel. We found something, in the ice... We found... —elp, repea— ...Unknown—Mayday may-...Mother of Celest—" What followed was an unholy shriek, the pony who had been speaking's screams and the sound of tearing flesh, and then only that horrid shriek until the tape ended.
IIFor a few seconds, the group stared at the tape recorder in stunned silence. Finally, Applejack spoke. "What in the hay was that thing?!" "I don't know, and neither does Sparky," Octavia said, "but I feel rather confident in saying that it's why the colony sent a distress signal." Lyra leaned forward, placing her hooves on the table. "Well, even if we ignore... that, the fact remains that we're still not a rescue ship. This is a colony we're talking about here. We can't just land and take them all in. We've don't have anywhere near enough freezers for that!" "Yes," said Fluttershy, "but that doesn't mean we can't help them. We can give them food, medicine, and something to help, um...fight...whatever that thing is..." Lyra cocked an eyebrow. "Such as?" Fluttershy looked at the table, trying to think of something. "Incinerator units," Derpy said, "don't we have a couple of those somewhere?" "Yeah, Ah think we do. It'll take some time to find 'em, though." Octavia nodded. "Right, then. It's settled. Anypony else want to say something?" Pinkie raised her hoof. Octavia sighed. "Yes, Pinkie?" "Maybe we could make cupcakes for the colonists? That might cheer them up." "...OK, we can do that..." "I know it always cheers me right up, quicker than you can say-" Octavia stopped the pink pony from continuing. "Right, let's get on with it, then." The eight ponies stood, and walked to their respective stations in an uneasy silence. *** The crew piled into the cramped bridge again, sitting at their stations once more. Octavia turned her monitor on, and carefully examined the view of the ringed planet below. "Pinkie, can you see if anypony's still listening in down there?" Octavia flipped a switch, and her monitor changed to show one of the giant planet's moons. The pink pony hesitantly put her radio headset on, pressed a few buttons, and started talking. "New Canterlot colony, you there? Anypony there? Hello? He-llo? Anypony?" A brief burst of static, and then, in her earpiece, a tinny voice started talking. "Somepony's down there, alright... Uh, I can't really tell what he's saying, there's a lot of static-y stuff going on and it keeps cutting him off. He sounds pretty excited, though." "Great. I'm sure Fluttershy'll be glad to hear that. Derpy, I've calculated the course correction for us to land on the colony, would you mind double checking it?" Derpy carefully examined the outlined path when it popped up on her monitor. She made a few changes to it, and then keyed it into the computer. "Course laid in," she said, "ignite engines on my mark. Ten, nine, eight..." Outside, the Acheron's engines slowly came to life. As they warmed up, they gave off a purple and white glow. "...five, four..." The glow was a pure white now, slowly getting brighter and brighter as the engines heated up. "...two, one, mark." There was a dull roar and a blinding flash of light as the Acheron's engines came to life for a brief moment. The ship lurched towards the moon of the ringed planet. Their job done, the engines died down once more. On the bridge, Lyra watched a data readout on her monitor. "Course change successful. We're going in." On her screen, she could see the moon slowly get closer and closer. "Should be entering the atmosphere in a few minutes." In the engine compartment, Applejack and Berry Punch were checking the various readouts and data that the engines and the ship gave them. They braced themselves against their desks when they heard Lyra's announcement. Soon after, the ship began to shake violently as it entered the moon's atmosphere. On the bridge, the turbulence was just as strong as it was in engineering. As the ship buffeted its way through the atmosphere, something made a loud grinding noise, causing Lyra to flinch in her seat. "The hay was that?" asked Berry. Applejack looked over her readouts, and found a small line of text detailing the problem. "Landin' gear's just a bit rusty, it's going to need some oil when we dry dock. Nothin' we can do about it right now but hope it doesn't crack up." The bridge crew breathed a collective sigh of relief when they heard Applejack's diagnosis over the intercom. The turbulence vanished, and the ship started to sink through the overcast, gray sky of the moon. "Heavy cloud cover, going to be a bit tricky to find the landing area." Derpy's screen showed a miniaturized version of the landscape below, fading in and out as the ship sank through the clouds. The Acheron slipped out of the clouds, and glided over the rough, frozen landscape of the moon. "Should be coming up on New Canterlot any second now," Lyra said. Through the bridge windows, Pinkie spotted the small colony as it came over the horizon. "There it is!" She cocked her head to one side as the tinny voice in her ear started up again. "Yeah, we can see the colony right now... Wait, what? ...Uh, Octavia, he's telling us to go away." "Why?" "Yeah, why don't ya want any help anymore? ... I'm a what?... Hello? He hung up on me!" Meanie, Pinkie thought, insult me and my friends and then hang up without even saying good-bye. The rest of the ponies on the bridge were confused. As they got closer to the colony, their confusion only increased. The colony looked like a war zone. Instead of the worn, prefabricated buildings the group expected to find, the colony was a mess of charred wall remnants, debris, and smoke. "What in the name of Celestia happened here?" Lyra said. "We'll find out soon enough," Octavia said, "set us down, Derpy." The Acheron made a lazy circle over the remnants of the colony, kicking up snow and some of the lighter debris, before slowly setting down on a barely recognizable landing pad. As the crew shut down their monitors, Octavia leaned over to the intercom, clicking it on with her hoof. "Everypony OK down there?" she asked. "I'm fine, thanks for asking," Fluttershy said. "Aside from a spilled drink, we're fine," Applejack said. "Alright. Good. Uh, Applejack, have you found the incinerators yet?" There was a loud clang, and Octavia could just hear the faint sound of Berry Punch yelling about something. "... Yeah, we found 'em." "Bring them to the airlock. I'll be down there shortly." Octavia lifted her hoof from the intercom, and turned to the ponies that were starting to leave the bridge. "Time, are we going to need suits for this?" Octavia walked up to Turner's desk as he checked the readouts on his monitor. "No," he said, "it looks like they were well on their way to terraforming the place. I'd wear something warm, though. There's one heck of a storm going on out there." Octavia nodded, and started to walk towards the exit corridor. "Lyra, you're coming with me." "Oh, joy. I'll get my snow shoes." "Very funny, Lyra. Derpy, you're in charge while we're gone." Derpy gave a half-hearted salute as Octavia and Lyra walked down the corridor at the rear of the bridge. *** Octavia, Lyra, and Fluttershy stood in front of the massive doors to the airlock. Octavia passed thermal jackets and radio headsets to the others while they waited for their weapons to arrive. As Fluttershy put her jacket on, she started to rethink what she was doing. Maybe they don't need a doctor's help. Maybe they're just a little hungry. Or maybe there's a giant pony-eating monster out in the snow just waiting for the three of them to step outside and- "Hey Fluttershy, you alright? You look a little pale..." Lyra held out the medical saddlebags to Fluttershy. The yellow pony grabbed the bags, and put them over her jacket. "I-I'm fine," she said. Lyra shrugged, and glanced down the corridor on the left. She wondered what was taking Applejack so long to get the incinerators to the airlock. Eventually, she heard a faint clinking noise from the corridor, and sighed in relief when she saw Berry Punch turn a corner and walk towards them. Hanging by a strap around the second engineer's neck were a pair of bulky contraptions that looked like they were cobbled together with a few small containers and some large pipes. The purple pony lifted the weapons with one of her hooves, taking them off of her neck and letting them fall. Fluttershy flinched away from the cumbersome weapons as they clattered against the metal floor. "There you go," Berry said, "two incinerators, as requested. Sorry about the wait, but it took me a while to find the fuel tanks for these things." Octavia picked one of the incinerators up, flipping it over in her hooves and examining it. She looked at Berry. "How's it work?" Berry pointed a hoof at a series of straps sticking out of one side of the device. "You tie it onto yourself using those, and I'd make sure that the nozzle's a good bit ahead of you." Octavia and Lyra did so, following the engineer's instructions very carefully. "Once you do that, you flick this knob here," Berry tapped a red circle on top of the weapon, "which causes the flame to start up. Once that's done, all you need to do is bite down on this thing here," Berry pointed to a thin lever sticking up from the machine and leveling off roughly where a pony's mouth would be, "and it's bye-bye monster. Fuel gage is right there, on top of the thing. And that's it." Berry turned around and walked back to the engineering compartment. Octavia practiced biting the little lever until she felt comfortable with the incinerator. When she was satisfied, she spoke into her headset's microphone. "OK, we're all set here. Open the door, Derpy." The giant doors cracked open with a hiss, then slid open to reveal the inner chamber of the airlock. The three ponies stepped into the small chamber between the ship's hull and the frozen wasteland outside. While the inner door closed behind them, Octavia and Lyra twisted the little knob on top of their incinerators, and a small flame appeared under the end of the weapon's nozzle. After a moment, the outer door opened, and the group was immediately blasted with the frigid air and snow. "If you see mister Meanie McMeanmean, tell him I demand an apology." "Pinkie." "Oh, right, sorry. Going back to the colony's frequency now." Lyra rolled her eyes as Pinkie imitated a radio switching frequencies before the telltale click let her know that Pinkie had indeed switched her radio off. "Well...Good luck out there," Derpy said over the radio. Octavia took a deep breath, and started walking down the ramp, leading Lyra and Fluttershy into the desolate remains of the colony.
IIIStrong winds whipped past the three ponies, blasting them with snow and ice. Octavia, Lyra, and Fluttershy slowly made their way down one of the white 'streets' that went between a row of squat, blackened buildings. The pathway was full of half-buried debris from some of the buildings, and had a thin layer of ash covering it. Even though the thermal jacket kept her from feeling the full force of the freezing wind, Fluttershy shivered as she followed the gray earth pony and green unicorn, folding her wings in just a little more than usual. The strangest thing about the cold was that her breath didn't cloud up like it did when she'd visited the Crystal Empire. Her mind pushed that thought aside when she looked around and saw the destroyed buildings around her. Memories of dragonfire and what it could do to a pony flashed through her mind, and she shivered a little more than she had a moment ago. Octavia tried not to let the cold wind bother her. As she walked by the decayed, rotting buildings, Octavia quickly glanced over them to see if anypony might still be in them. Secretly, she hoped she wouldn't see any movement in them. If a pony had been inside one of the shelters when it had burned... Octavia shook her head. Best not to dwell on that, she thought. Lyra nervously looked around the remnants of the colony. The unholy shriek from the distress call still echoed throughout her mind, and the fact that a few of the shacks looked like something had barreled through them, instead of collapsing in the fire, did little to comfort her. "I wonder what started the fire..." The green unicorn glanced at the little flame coming from under the nozzle of her incinerator, and then back to the destroyed shacks on either side of her. She had the distinct feeling that she had just answered her own question. Most colonies did have at least one incinerator, and it would only take one to start a chain reaction. Maybe whatever it was ran through some of the buildings after they'd attacked it. "We can ask the pony that Pinkie was talking to," Octavia said. If it weren't for the radio headsets, the ponies would have had to shout at each other in order to be heard over the storm. As it was, they still had to talk fairly loud. "He can tell us what happened." "You mean the pony who told us to go away before cutting off contact with us? He didn't really seem like he wanted to make some new friends..." "Lyra, he's the only colonist we've been able to contact. We're going to go search the area around the colony's radio tower and see if we can find him." Fluttershy looked at the crumbling shelters on either side of the group. The walls are just big enough for a pony to be hiding behind them, she thought. "Shouldn't we see if anypony's in the buildings?" she asked. "Fluttershy, we don't know if anypony's in them. What we do know is that somepony is near the radio tower. We'll check the buildings on our way back." Octavia stepped around a corner and spotted the radio tower through the snow and ice. "And there it is. Come on, let's go." Fluttershy was about to follow the two ponies when she saw something near one of the destroyed shacks. Unable to tell what it was at first, she squinted in an effort to focus through the white haze of the storm. It looked like... "There's... Somepony's lying in the snow over there," she said. Octavia and Lyra turned around. "What do you mean, 'there's somepony lying in the snow'?" Lyra asked. "Are you sure it's not just a rock or something? I don't think folks usually just go out and take a nap in the middle of a blizzard." "I'm sure that whoever it is needs help." Fluttershy made her way towards the shape in the snow. Octavia and Lyra quickly followed the yellow pegasus across the frozen wastes, trying to get in front of her in case it was something none of them wanted to meet. They all reached the shape at the same time. They stopped, and stared at the partially buried thing. Fluttershy had seen several violent, horrible things when she had been caring for animals. But what she saw went far beyond anything a predator would do to another animal. Her brain couldn't comprehend what it was seeing, it was so, so wrong. Octavia stared at the mass in front of Fluttershy, unable to believe what she was seeing. Lyra turned away, groaning and trying not to empty her stomach on the snow and ice. It wasn't the fact that a pony had been set on fire and the body had been left in the snow that disturbed them so much. It certainly had something to do with it, but what pushed them over the edge was how freakish, how wrong, the body looked. The body in the snow looked like some twisted science experiment that had gone horribly, horribly awry. There were too many hooves growing out of it, and something none of them could describe was breaking out of the back instead of a pair of wings. On the side of the unfortunate pony's charred head, what looked like the deformed, misshapen head of a completely different pony seemed to be forcing its way out, stretching and distorting the original pony's face into a silent, agonized scream. Octavia was the first to recover. She pulled an unresponsive Fluttershy away from the corpse, and slowly guided her away from the twisted thing. Stumbling along behind them, Lyra tried to regain control of her stomach. "Let's... Let's... Let's find that radio guy and get the buck out of here..." *** On the Acheron, Time Turner sat at his station in the bridge, watching the vital signs of the away team on his monitor. When he saw their pulses start to fluctuate, he reached over and flicked one of the many switches on his desk to the 'on' position, and grainy video feedback appeared on his monitor. Through it he could see Octavia, supporting Fluttershy as they walked through what was left of the colony. In the distance he could see the radio tower, though he couldn't figure out why Lyra kept wobbling all over the place as she walked. Maybe- "How're they doing?" Turner almost jumped out of his seat. He looked behind him to see a surprised pegasus holding a cup full of some sort of drink in her hoof. "Sorry, I-" Turner cut her off. "No, it's fine." He cleared his throat before continuing, "They're um, they're looking a bit sick for some reason. Lyra in particular. But I missed whatever it was. Good thing, too, because I've never seen Fluttershy look like that. I think they're going to the radio tower. Probably trying to find Pinkie's new friend. Did uh, did you want something?" Derpy shook her head. "Not really. Just, uh... Just... You want some hot chocolate?" Derpy offered the cup in her hoof to the science officer. Time Turner blinked. "What?" "Oh, well, Pinkie found a way to get the autochef to make hot chocolate. I don't how she did it, but it's really good and I was wondering if you'd like to- any, if you'd like any." "...Sure, just put it on the desk..." Derpy placed the little cup on the stallion's desk. She awkwardly made her way to her station as Turner went back to watching the feedback on his monitor. An awkward silence, for Derpy at least, followed. Derpy started to say something to the science officer, but before she could open her mouth, Applejack's voice crackled over the intercom. "Y'all might want to come down here. We've got a problem." *** The away team had finally reached the radio tower. It was a tall, ice-covered metal tower standing next to a run-down, but mostly still intact blue shed. The three ponies of the away team were sitting at the base of the hill, the storm raging around them. Octavia looked at her two companions. Fluttershy was still in shock, and Lyra looked like she was about to puke her guts out. "I'm going up there," she told them. Neither Lyra nor Fluttershy said anything. "Lyra, you stay here in case something shows up, OK?" Lyra slowly nodded her head, and then she started vomiting. While Lyra emptied her gut onto the ice, Octavia slowly climbed up the snow-covered hill. She hoped, for the sake of her sanity and that of the others, that whatever was in the radio tower was a normal, regular, scared out of his mind pony and not some insane scientist straight out of those trashy magazines her old flatmate used to read. That was if there even was a pony in the little shack. For all she knew, Pinkie's 'Meanie McMeanmean' was in one of the decaying buildings the trio had walked by on their way to the tower. She hoped that wasn't the case. Octavia was fairly certain that neither of the ponies with her was up to the task of searching the colony's burnt husks. Octavia stopped at the door to the shack. She glanced behind her to see how the others were doing. Lyra had recovered and was watching her, while Fluttershy just stared into the hillside. Octavia placed the incinerator's trigger in her mouth, took a deep breath, and pushed the faded door open. Inside, sitting on a small table, was an old, poorly maintained radio. But no mysterious radio pony. Octavia spit the incinerator's trigger out of her mouth. Can't say I'm all that surprised, Octavia thought. Looks like we'll have to- Wait a minute... What's that? Sitting on top of the radio was a strange little creature that Octavia had never seen before. It looked a bit like a dragon's claw that had grown a tail, its skin a dull, pale yellow. Octavia leaned back a bit, unsure of just what she was looking at. The creature crawled a little closer to her. Octavia started to back up, and reached a hoof up to shut the door. The thing launched itself off of the radio. For a brief second, Octavia saw it fly through the air towards her. Before she could slam the door shut, it had landed on her face. Darkness. Can't breathe, get it off, get it off, get it off... Her hooves desperately pulled at the creature, trying to pry it off of her head. Bony claws dug into her skull. The creature's tail wrapped itself around her neck. Something forced its way into her mouth, slid down her throat. I can't breathe... She stumbled backwards out of the shack, and she could barely hear somepony screaming at her before she lost consciousness.
IVThe engine compartment of the Acheron was a rather quiet little place on the ship, and would have been considered a nice place to work in if it didn't constantly reek of oil and grease. Berry Punch and Applejack often said that it wasn't so bad once your nose got used to the smell, and that it was where the 'real work' took place. The rest of the crew did not agree with either of those statements. Derpy and Time Turner tried not to cough as they stood in the tiny room, waiting for somepony to tell them what the 'problem' was. Berry Punch was standing in front of a hole in the floor, the removed section of grating and Applejack's hat sitting next to her. Occasionally, she pulled a small tool out of the overturned stetson and hoofed it over to an orange hoof that reached out of the hole. "Well," Time Turner said, "what's the problem?" The purple pony pointed at a pile of small, green cards that lay next to her on the metal floor. "Some of the older circuits got overloaded when we landed. The alarm didn't even go off 'till smoke was coming out of the floor." Berry pushed a few of the cards over to Derpy. The gray pegasus picked up one of the thin pieces of plastic, turning it over in her hooves to see a large burn mark in the center of the card's intricate patterns. Derpy put the little card back in the pile. "How bad is it?" she asked. "We're blind on A and C deck, and we've lost power on E deck," Berry said. Time Turner sighed and put a hoof to his head. "Wonderful..." A quiet clinking sound came from the hole. Applejack poked her head out of the floor, wiping some oil off of her face as she spoke. "We can fix 'er, don't y'all worry 'bout that. Just lettin' ya know 'bout it, that's all." "Right. Thanks, Applejack," Derpy said. She turned around, and walked out of the dim little room. Time Turner started to leave, but stopped, and picked up one of the damaged chips. He looked at the burn marks carefully. He carried the chip with him as he walked out of the engine compartment. With their crewmates gone, the two engineers went back to work. Applejack leaned back, returning to the small maintenance shaft under the floor. "Berry?" she asked. "Yeah?" "Somethin' ain't right. Acheron's an old gal, but she ain't old enough for her alarms to stop working." Berry leaned a little closer to the hole in the floor. "Are you saying somepony did this?" "Ah wouldn't say that just yet. But Ah think we need to start considering it." *** Pinkie Pie wandered about the long, dirty corridors of the ship, humming a little tune that she made up as she walked. The melody echoed softly throughout the dim metal hallway as Pinkie made her way around one of several ladders that led to both the upper and lower decks. She waved to Angel as the little rabbit hopped past her and into one of the air ducts on the wall. Pinkie walked by the bridge, peeking in through the doorway. Seeing no one there, she wandered over to her station, and put on her radio's headset. Flicking a small switch, she tuned the radio to the away team's frequency. Surely they wouldn't mind if she just checked in on them. Just to see how they were doing, that was all. "Hey, Pinkie?" Derpy walked into the bridge, stopping next to the pink pony. "See if you can contact the away team. I need to let Octavia know about our problem." "The circuit board thingy?" "Yeah, tha—wait, how do you know about that? You weren't in the..." Derpy glanced at the doorway, then looked at Pinkie. The pink pony shrugged. "I noticed it after we landed." "How did you—" Derpy shook her head "—on second thought, I don't want to know. Just... Just get Octavia on the radio. And let me have the headset whenever you get them, alright?" "Okie dokie lokie." Pinkie took off her headset and stuck it on Derpy's head. The pegasus blinked in surprise, before she adjusted the plastic device to a more comfortable position. Pinkie flicked a switch on the headset, and gave an encouraging nod to Derpy. "Octavia, you there?" Derpy walked over to the bridge's window, and looked at the raging blizzard outside. "Oh, thank Celestia," Lyra said over the radio, "I was about to start banging on the door. Listen, I need you to open the airlock now. And hurry, Octavia's life is at stake, we need to get her to the med lab." "Lyra? Wait, w-wait a minute, what's going on? What's wrong with Octavia?" Derpy turned away from the window. She looked at Pinkie. "They're in the airlock." "I got it, just lemmie know whenever they're ready." Pinkie was out of the bridge before Derpy could blink. The energetic pony's voice echoed out of the corridor. "Ready whenever you are!" Derpy stared at the door for a moment, then shook her head and returned her attention to Lyra's voice on the little radio. "Could you say that again, Lyra?" "Derpy, listen to me. This, this...creature's latched itself onto Octavia. Fluttershy thinks that if we get her into the med lab we can get it off of her. Right, Fluttershy?" "Yes, that's right. We need to get it off as soon as we possibly can." Derpy waved a hoof in the air. "Hang on a second. You're saying some animal's stuck on Octavia?" "Yes! Now open the door so we can get it off of her!" Derpy closed her eyes and sighed. There was protocol that was supposed to be followed if something like this ever happened. The company did have an extensive and thorough set of rules, after all. Derpy thought for a moment, and then she opened her eyes. "I can't." "What the hay do you mean, you can't?" "You both know the quarantine regulations," Derpy said. "But Octavia might suffer permanent injury if we wait that long. Please, open the door so I can help her," said Fluttershy. "I know," said Derpy, "but I can't risk letting some weird, freaky thing into the ship unless I know it's safe. That thing could be what destroyed the colony." "Derpy," Lyra said, "if you don't open this door right bucking now, I swear to Celestia I'm going to beat it down with my own bucking hooves, and then I'm going to tap dance on your bucking head! Open. The. Door." Meanwhile, at the airlock, Pinkie Pie was standing in front of the giant doors. She had been listening to the argument over the airlock's small intercom, and was starting to feel confused about what to do. She sat down to think about the matter. Pinkie tapped a hoof against her chin as she thought about the options she had. On the one hoof, she wanted to open the door to help her friends. Letting them in meant that Fluttershy might be able to help Octavia. And that meant that they'd all be able to get in the freezy tubes and go home. But on the other hoof, Derpy sort of had a point about...whatever it was that was on Octavia. Leaving the group outside for a while would let them see if anything bad would happen. But it would also mean leaving them out in a cold, harsh blizzard. Pinkie was still thinking about the issue when Applejack walked up to the door and used the override to open it. *** Derpy Hooves ran down the metal corridor that led to the medical lab. She had to jump over the little fluffball known as Angel, and for a moment she wondered why Fluttershy ever brought that irritating rabbit with her. Then her mind returned to the bigger problem. The captain of the ship had a parasite on her face. And since Applejack had violated the quarantine procedures and opened the airlock, Derpy figured that she had better see what the thing was and how Fluttershy's efforts to remove it were going. The gray pegasus turned a corner, and saw that most of the crew was standing in front of the windowed wall that let them see into the med lab. Lyra turned her head in Derpy's direction, and the unicorn's eyes narrowed. Derpy walked up to the group. She glanced at the room behind the thick glass. She could see Fluttershy and Time Turner standing on either side of a white slab, examining the comatose gray pony that lay on it. "Any—" Derpy was cut off by a green hoof slamming into her jaw. She stumbled backwards, lifting a hoof to her mouth. Applejack moved in between the gray pegasus and the green unicorn. "Lyra, Ah don't think beating Derpy up is going to do us any good here." Lyra stared at the pegasus sitting behind Applejack for what felt like an eternity, before she turned to look inside the med lab. Derpy slowly got back up, walked a little closer to the group, and sat down again. "Thanks." "Don't mention it," Applejack said. Derpy looked around at the ponies standing or sitting in front of the windowed wall. "Where's Pinkie?" "She saw that thing on Octavia's face and ran off," Berry said. "Didn't even say anything. She just ran to the mess." Derpy nodded, chalking that up to Pinkie being Pinkie, and looked at the ponies inside the sterile, white room behind the glass. She noticed that Angel had hopped up onto the small ledge in front of the window, and was leaning up against the glass. Inside the med lab, Fluttershy and Time Turner stood on opposite sides of Octavia's comatose body. With small surgical masks over their muzzles, the two ponies examined the creature on the captain's head. "What in the name of Celestia is that thing?" Turner asked. "I don't know," said Fluttershy. "It doesn't look like any animal I've ever seen." The creature was a deathly yellow, and it obscured all of Octavia's face. Bony claws were clamped around the gray pony's head, and a short tail had wrapped around her neck. In the med lab's light, Fluttershy could now see that there was a dull, unfocused eye just above the start of the tail. And even though the eye wasn't focused on anything, Fluttershy couldn't help but shake a little when she saw it. Time Turner cleared his throat. "Right. Let's put her in the scanner. See if it can tell us anything." Fluttershy walked over to a small panel of buttons on the adjacent wall, and pushed one. The white slab Octavia lay on slowly slid to the side, going into a hole in the wall that was soon sealed with a plastic cover. The two ponies stepped back, and looked at a video monitor on top of the scanner. "It looks like it's keeping her alive..." Fluttershy sighed in relief. At least the creature wasn't trying to kill Octavia. "Yes, but it's doing...something to her. Look—" TIme Turner pointed to a long tube-like appendage in Octavia's throat "—that's got to be there for a reason. And... Oh my Celestia..." "What?" "It's embedding that thing into Octavia's throat. See those little lines there?" Fluttershy looked at the monitor, and saw what Time Turner was talking about. "We need to get it off of her right now," she said. She pushed the button on the wall again, and the scanner opened up. The white slab slid out from the hole in the wall, and stopped in the position it was previously in. "Right," Time Turner said. He looked at the pale creature. "How do you want to do this?" Fluttershy looked at the claws of the creature. "I don't think we can just pull it off. It looks like we'll tear her skin off if we do that." "We could try to cut it off. Make an incision right about here"—Time Turner pointed just below a knuckle on one of the claws—"on each one of these, then pull the body and tail off." Fluttershy thought for a moment. "OK. Let's, uh, let's do that..." As Fluttershy picked up a scalpel, Time Turner moved a small wad of gauze to the incision area. Fluttershy took a deep breath, exhaled, and started to cut the bony claw. A small, green liquid dribbled out of the cut, and slowly the scalpel cut the digit off. While Time Turner tried to keep the creature from bleeding all over Octavia's mane, Fluttershy placed the small piece of the creature into a specimen jar. She noticed something odd about it as she dropped it in the glass jar. It had a second skin around the bone, almost like something was supposed to be between it and the outer skin. But for some reason, there was nothing there. "Fluttershy?" "Yes?" "We can't cut it off. This thing's tail tightened itself around Octavia's throat when we removed that claw. It's going to crush her windpipe if we try it again." Turner placed the gauze into a sample bin as he spoke. "Well... Then what do we do?" Fluttershy asked. "I don't know. It'll probably pry her scalp off if we try to pull it, and it'll choke her if we cut it off." Fluttershy glanced at the thing's eye. She frowned, then looked at Time Turner. "I'm going to run a test on this—" Fluttershy pointed at the bony claw in the specimen jar "—and the scanner's results to see how this...thing works. Would you mind, um, telling everypony what we found out?" Time Turner nodded his head. Fluttershy turned around, and walked over to a small computer sitting on a table in the corner of the room. She sat down, and started to go over the pictures that the scanner had produced. Time Turner looked at the strange creature on Octavia's face, then opened the door to the medlab. He removed his mask as he walked out of the lab, and closed the door behind him. As the door to the med lab closed, the creature's dull, lifeless eye slowly rolled in its socket until it was looking directly at Fluttershy.
