Unknown Contaminant

The 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.