Unknown Contaminant

For 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.