MLP 40K: Trial by Fire

by Moosetasm

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 1: Introductions all around
Chapter 2: Embarkation
Chapter 3: Perils of the Everfree
Chapter 4: Timberwolves in Sheep's Clothing

Prologue

Connection 03%

Connection 10%

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Connection 81%

Connection complete, verifying credentials . . .

Credentials verified, welcome Inquisitor.

Warning: Death and dismemberment awaits all who attempt unauthorized access of these documents.

Load symbol of the Holy Equila

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than 10 millennia The Royal Pony Sisters, Celestia and Luna, have sat upon the Royal Throne of Equestria. They are the masters of Ponykind by the will of the Elements and masters of countless worlds by the might of Their inexhaustible armies. They are The Alicorn Princesses, writhing invisibly with power from the Age of Harmony. They are the Canterlot Lords for whom a thousand foals are sacrificed every day, so that They may never truly die.

Yet even in Their deathless state, Celestia and Luna continue Their eternal vigilance. Mighty battle-fleets cross the hatred infested miasma of the Everfree, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Harmonican, the magical manifestation of The Princesses' will. Vast armies give battle in Their name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst Their soldiers are the Equestris Saddelus, the Space Mareines, bio-engineered super equines. Their comrades-in-hoof are legion: the Equestrian Guard and countless system defense forces, the ever vigilant Alicorn Inquisition, and the tech-ponies of the Equestris Marecanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to Ponykind from Bipeds, Hateraticks, Non-Pony Equines, and far, far worse.

To be a Pony in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in a regime that is at least 20% cooler than any other imaginable. These are the tales of these times. Forget the power of science and technology, for the tech-ponies have forgotten so much, that it can never be re-learned. Forget the promises of peace and understanding, for in the Grim Darkness of the far future, or next Tuesday morning, there is only Epic Pony War. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of (s)laughter, clopping, and the gnashing of feasting Trolls.

Error, code corrupt, purging data feed.

End Transmission

* * *

Incoming transmission from Inquisitor Sophic Fortune on secure dragon-fire frequency.

Transmission is security coded magenta level, Princesses' eyes only.

Dear Princess Celestia,

As I enter my two hundred and fifth year, I cannot help but feel that I am losing my touch. I find that my mind is wondering often in my old age. In the last thirty years, or is it the last twenty years? No, Prickles, don't write that part. Or that part. What was I saying? Right, I have been noticing a steady decline in the quality and quantity of the work that I am able to accomplish. I hereby request that I be allowed to promote one of my agents to the rank of Interrogator so that I might have a successor for when I eventually fall and come into your eternal embrace. I hope that this request will meet with Your approval, for I find that my mind is wondering often in my old age.

Your Faithful Servant,

Sophic Fortune

End transmission.

* * *

Incoming transmission from Canterlot on secure dragon-fire frequency.

Transmission is security coded indigo level, Inquisitor's eyes only.

To my Faithful Servant,

Sophic, I am enthusiastic to hear that you wish to train another Interrogator for the Holy Alicorn Inquisition. I am sure that you are extremely proud of your previous five Interrogators, of which all have become productive Inquisitors and agents of Harmony in their own rights. On that note, I was indeed saddened to hear that your last student, Inquisitor Scisco, met his end at the hooves of hate and disharmony almost thirty years ago. You have my condolences.

After careful consideration, your request to elevate one of your agents has been approved by both Luna and myself. May your efforts with them be as successful as all of your previous efforts thus far.

I, Princess Celestia, hereby decree that the Inquisitor Sophic Fortune shall take on a new Interrogator student.

Sincerely,

Princess Celestia

End transmission. The Princesses Protect

* * *

Sophic sat in one of the many opulent looking chairs within her private quarters. The Inquisitor's suite looked like something somepony would find upon entering the residence of a wealthy, upper class pony. Imported curtains, made of the finest silks adorned armorcrys windows that beheld the glorious Luna-blessed night sky. The real expense had been designing the view so that the anti-aircraft cannons were not visible from the apartments. Starlight filtered in through the foot thick panes, illuminating the room in beautiful shades of twilight. Hints of lavender and lilacs wafted through the comfortably cool air as a result of the air treatment systems.

Sophic shifted uncomfortably in the stiff yet elegant piece of furniture. There was a time in the aging unicorn mare's career, which she couldn't really remember now, when everything she owned had been purchased solely for utilitarian purposes. A century ago she wouldn't have purchased anything for looks alone, but now she had appearances to keep up. Especially since her mind was beginning the long spiral towards senility. Pity looks don't do anything for my back, she silently griped.

As she shifted again in another futile attempt to make herself comfortable, Sophic's long mauve mane fell into her eyes. A manicured hoof brushed the offending strands out of her aquamarine eyes and she reread the Princess' reply. It was displayed on a holo-projector that was very old and thus of top quality. It produced an image that amazingly remained in focus for well over fifty percent of the time. It sat, with its plethora of snaking cables, upon a recaf table that had been carved out of a single block of Tartarian quartz. The table must have cost whomever had gifted it to her a fortune. She wished she could recall whom had given it to her, though she might have even gotten it for herself for all she could remember.

Looking over the transmission caused her to feel a wide variety of emotions. Firstly, there was pride at the Princess' compliments. Being allowed to train an Interrogator was an honor reserved for those Inquisitors who were very successful at the job. She knew some Inquisitors whom had never had the honor. Many had served and died without the chance. And now here she was pushing half a dozen. She would have felt more pride if she could actually remember everypony she had trained.

There was only mild anxiety over choosing who she would elevate. She already knew which pony would be receiving the honor. Her other agents probably already knew as well. That didn't mean that everypony would take it well. Especially the choice themselves. That pony was the most unwilling servant of The Princesses she'd ever met. But they were also extremely dedicated and capable. Such a paradoxical pony, that one.

Anxiety shifted to regret as she continued to read. She was reminded of what had happened thirty years ago. The name Scisco echoed in her mind. That wasn't the only thing she felt as her mind tried to reach into the past. The memories that her brain processed were fuzzy at best, like looking out of a dirty window, but the emotion that was associated with it felt red and raw. She hoofed the rune to deactivate the holo-projector.

Sophic's horn began to glow as she absentmindedly lifted a data-slate from the reflective table surface. As she looked at the slate a frown creased her features. Why did I never submit this? She thought to herself. She could feel the emotion making ripples near the surface of her consciousness as she hesitantly hoofed the replay rune on the device. The time/date stamp which prominently displayed itself was from thirty years ago. Regret became guilt as she watched the playback. The grainy image and the tinny sound caused the synapses of her ailing mind to fire and she began to relive those harrowing moments.

She felt as if the room was growing darker as the past unfurled itself on the tiny display. The shadows grew longer, the ambient sounds hollow, like in those tunnels so long ago. The smells of mold and rot, overlaid with the acrid smell of freshly burnt cordite. The constant patter of dripping water. The sound of weapons fire. She closed her eyes and held a hoof to her head as the sensations and emotions came, unbidden, to her.

"Your orders, Inquisitor?" The booming voice from the recording made her involuntarily jerk in the chair.

Both in the past and the present, she answered.

"Purge. Everything."

* * *

"Your orders, Inquisitor?" The booming question had issued forth from the mountainous mare in the suit of Space Mareine power barding. She towered easily head and withers above the rest of the team, her ancient and ornate ceramite armor colored a light grayish mulberry with moderate sapphire blue borders and moderate violet and brilliant rose highlights, the renowned colors of Saint Twilight Sparkle. She carried a massive bolter strapped to her forward right pauldron. The massive slab of dull grey metal had a belt feed that led back to the pony's ammunition saddle, the front was dominated by a massive barrel. With but a tap of her hoof she could cause a stream of the holy explosive projectiles to issue forth to purify the enemy. Her name was Radiant.

Sophic Fortune looked like Tartarus. Her normally well styled mane was disheveled, and sported a variety of dirt clods and bits of root, there was dirt, grime, and blood in her normally pristine coat. She was running on a mixture of adrenaline and combat drugs. She had taken a las bolt to her left thigh, just to the side of her cutie mark, causing her to trot with a pronounced limp. At least the thing had self cauterized, a bleeding wound would have most likely incapacitated her by now. She knew though that the instant that she stopped moving she would drop from fatigue, shock, or both. They had fought their way into the bowels of the city, down from the undercity and now into these caves. They were so close to their goal now, Sophic could taste it. It tasted like impending vengeance. They had tracked the cultists to this final warren. Nopony would escape their wrath. She had made a promise.

"Purge. Everything." Sophic managed between wheezing breaths and gritted teeth. Radiant nodded in acknowledgement and advanced into one of the side tunnels to cleanse the inhabitants of their wicked existences.

When the Space Mareine had vanished from sight, a red robed figure approached her and spoke in the mechanical timbre of a vox speaker. "Sophic. Your vital signs -"

"Are fine." She said, cutting him off. "Now give me another shot of stim so I don't pass out." A grasping mechadendrite with a wicked looking needle atop it snaked from his robes towards her. "If you inject me with a sedative, Hypodermic, I swear on The Sisters I will shoot you." She felt compelled to add a small wave of her glowing plasma pistol.

"The thought never entered my cranial cogitators." Hypodermic lied as Sophic saw him rotate out a blue sedative vial for a red stim vial. The mechanical limb grasped her roughly by the neck and painfully injected the stimulants directly into her carotid artery. Her vision swam in redness for a moment as her system struggled to adapt to the cocktail of fresh drugs entering her system. "You realize that I am recording these events so that when your heart explodes I will not be blamed." She would have found the comment funny if she had thought he was joking.

"Where's Devoid?" She asked as her mind entered a state of hyperawareness brought on by the combat drugs. She hadn't seen the sneaky stallion since they had entered this latest set of tunnels. She waved off Hypodermic before he could answer. "Never mind, shifty colt prolly got ahead of us somehow." She mused. She had given up trying to keep track of Devoid ever since he had somehow outfoxed that entire company of pony-hunters on Sineigh Prime.

Sophic was suddenly struck by a blinding headache. She stumbled forwards, one hoof to her head. All she could smell was intense light. Her sight was assaulted by a cacophony of sound. She could feel how wrong this place smelled, taste the fiery sensation of magical energy rippling across her eardrums. As her senses merged and split, Sophic realized her talent had activated. She would be shown the proper way to go, finally.

When Sophic's sight returned to her eyes, she felt her body moving forward of its own accord. The tunnels continued to move past in a blur. The dark stone, the steel strut supports all looked the same, but somehow she knew where to go, knew where everything was leading her. She was only vaguely aware that it was her glowing horn that was dragging her down the tunnel. She heard the distinctive bark of Radiant's bolter and the screams of those unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of it echoing from off in the distance. Hypodermic was galloping after her as fast as his mechanically enhanced limbs could take him. Somehow he was starting to fall behind.

And then the tunnels ended. Her horn then dropped her unceremoniously on the damp floor.

As she stood, she surveyed the massive cavern before her. The ceiling was lost to both distance and darkness. Near the center of the open space were braziers set in a rough border around an intricate circular design that had been carved into the stone floor. As she moved further into the chamber she began to pick out several shadowy forms. A quick glow of Sophic's horn and her plasma pistol hummed to life and the hiss of the accelerator coils boiling the moisture from the air informed her that it was ready to fire. The shadows resolved themselves into the forms of several dozens of cultists, all in various states of dismemberment.

And in the center it them all, was him.

"Scisco?" She breathed.

* * *

"NO!" Sophic screamed as she magically hurled the data-slate through the air.

Her holdout laspistol was drawn in an instant and the only indication that she had unloaded the weapon at the offending device was a rapid staccato of noise not dissimilar to rapidly popped packing wrap in the hands of a bored foal. The smoldering tablet ricocheted off of the wall with a sharp clatter that caused her to flinch. Her teeth were clenched and grinding slightly as she stared, eyes wide and pupils fully dilated, at the smoking remains of the slate. As she hyperventilated the smell of burnt metal and glass assaulted her nose and made her eyes water. Or would have had tears of rage not already been streaming down her face.

And then the estate's alarms began to go off. She turned her tear streaked face towards the doorway through which security would be entering her suite. As her heart rate returned to something approaching normal, she let out a shuddering sigh. She didn't look forward to explaining this to the Twins. Oh, they were going to love her explanation for this.

Her features drooped as she sighed again. A perfect end to a perfect evening.

Chapter 1: Introductions all around

The ancient tunnels were oppressively dark. Tracks squinted his eyes in a vain attempt to see more than the ten hooves of dim lighting provided by his plasma pistol. The darkness mocked his pitiful attempts at observation and responded by actually reducing the radius down to five hooves. He would have used his horn to light the way, but he was already almost at his limit carrying both the weapon and trying to reduce the weight of the tech-pony slung across his back.

Strands of his soaked raven-black mane hung limply in front of his crimson eyes, impeding his already poor attempts to see. Tracks could feel the dampness sucking the heat right out of him through his coat. His royal-purple fur had gotten drenched at some point during the panicked retreat through this brickwork labyrinth and the cold clamminess of the air around him wasn't about to let it dry anytime soon. He was even denied the normal body warmth of the individual draped over his back. More machine than pony, Hypodermic was both as heavy and as cold as the air around them, maybe even colder, and was threatening to drive Tracks straight into the waiting arms of hypothermia.

Tracks continued his painfully slow trot through the umbral passages when his ears perked up at a sound that drove a spike of terror directly through his heart. The sound was peculiar in its own way. It cut through the ever-present drip-dripping and the echoing of his own hoof-falls like Saint Pinkie Pie through a sweets buffet. One wouldn't normally consider such a cute chirp to carry with it a feeling of impending doom, but Tracks felt more than confident that the bowel clenching horror he felt was justified.

His feelings were vindicated when a small spherical ball of foal-blue cuteness emerged from a side passage. Tracks was fairly certain that he failed in his desperate attempt to not shriek like a little filly as the creature's adorable compound eyes locked onto him. It made another chirrup and danced its way through the air towards him on four thin, membraneous wings. Only when it smiled, revealing an absurd amount of tiny razor-sharp teeth, would any laypony realize the mistake they had made assuming the innocence of the globular manifestation of cuteness.

Tracks used his magic to swing the archaic, and thus of good quality, plasma pistol to face the monstrosity. The movement seemed exaggeratedly slow to Tracks. Everything he perceived had taken on a sluggish quality, like something immersed in axle grease, or like an action scene in those new, poor quality holo-pictures. The devilish creature, known to Tracks as a parasprite, was fluttering its way towards him with an inexorable lethargy. As he lined up the weapon's crosshairs with the monster he tightened his magic's grip on the triggering mechanism.

"Whirrrrrr-click." Stated the device. Tracks stared at the empty plasma pistol with a mixture of disbelief, hatred, and growing dread.

There were suddenly more chirps, trills and warbles as the radius of Tracks' vision cruelly increased to reveal swarms of the little horrors cordoning him in the tunnel. Time remained slow and he was able to appreciate every moment of terror that he felt at his impending demise. That it would be at the hooves of a thousand tiny mouths did less than nothing to improve his mood.

The swarm advanced cheerily. He screamed before they had even begun to feed.

* * *

Tracks woke up to his dimly lit room, his heart pounding like an infernal drum in his chest. His breathing was fast and sharp. Only after several moments, once he had tried to slow his exhalations, did he realize that he hadn't stopped screaming. As he changed the timbre of the sounds he was making, from a wounded howl down towards more of a gasping wheeze, he tried to focus on familiar objects in his room in a vain attempt to calm himself down.

There, the lamp, the hideous multicolor lamp on his nightstand that was a gift from Free Fall when they had visited that glassworks in Vitrum Hive. The chronometer next to it read 03:00, painfully early, in a ruby-red glow. On the wall, his trusty old holo-viewer, all it ever needed was good sharp hoof to the side to fix it whenever it acted up. His utilitarian and relatively unused dresser. On top of it the sleek, new, barely operative sound system that Able had gotten him when he had accidentally smashed his last one. Opposite the dresser was Devoid's old desk and chair set, made of real wood, from a real forest somewhere. His holster and the plasma pistol given to him by Sophic, his mentor, dangled from the backside of the chair. Then there was the dark, looming shape sitting on his desk in a predatory fashion...

Tracks quickly hoofed the activation rune on the appalling lamp, causing the silhouette on the desk to resolve itself into the form of a jet-black stallion with a shock-white mane. The lean figure's cat-yellow eyes were regarding him with impassiveness. The aptly named, and not just for his appearance, Devoid was perched on his desk like a rapacious feline who was stalking a mouse. Tracks knew the black unicorn was well over a hundred years old, but countless juvenat treatments left Devoid's body looking like it was somewhere in its thirties.

"Bad dreams?" Devoid asked, utterly lacking in the sarcasm and rhetorical tones Tracks felt should have accompanied the words. Devoid had tilted his head to the side and seemed to be studying him like he was some kind of bizarre insect.

"What tipped you off?" Tracks had tried, and failed, to avoid injecting too much indignance into the question.

"Well, the screaming, for one thing." Devoid was still, as always, singularly immune to the moods of others.

"Why are you in my room?" Tracks said, feeling that it was as good a question as any to both shift the conversation away from himself as well as to address the proverbial pachyderm in the room.

"Twins kicked me out -" Devoid was quick to answer. That showed that he probably, and if Tracks' experience was anything to go by it was starting to look more like definitely, ignored how others felt as opposed to actually being ignorant. "- and I figured I could get some nice peace and quiet in here. Didn't figure on you still having those nightmares. Manducat again?" The lamplight reflected off of Devoid's eyes as he voiced the question, adding a new level of creepiness to his already unsettling gaze.

"They kick you out for the same reason I'm about to?" Tracks asked in the driest tone he could muster.

Devoid rolled his eyes and gracefully slid from the desk. "I see how it is, no love for -"

"Out." Tracks interjected, pointing a hoof at the door.

"Pfft." Devoid faced away and waved a hoof in the manner of dismissal. "You get one promotion and you start ordering everypony around..." He said as he began to slink towards the door.

"You -" Tracks could barely control his anger at the conceitedness. "- you -" He didn't care how ancient the old coot was. "- you!" He stuttered ineffectually.

"I know!" Devoid said triumphantly with a giant horse-apple eating grin on his face as the door slid open. "It's always about me, Me, Me!" He was fully out the door, which slid closed again before Tracks realized he'd just been played. Big time. By the master.

In the two minutes or so since he had woken up, he realized that both he and his sheets were drenched. He took a tentative sniff and gave thanks to Luna that it was just sweat. He didn't understand it, he hadn't had the nightmares for years now. He leveled his gaze back towards the door and realized he should probably lock the thing if he didn't want any more unexpected visitors. Now I could look forward to a new nightmare, Devoid. That particular thought actually made him chuckle. There were far more horrible things to dream about than Mr. Edgier-than-bismuth.

Tracks slowly extricated himself from the rapidly cooling dampness of the sheets. His hooves sank into the deep carpeting of his room and he took a moment to luxuriate in the softness to try and further calm his nerves. Despite the respite, he made the few steps to the door with a great deal of shakiness in his stride. He hoofed the locking mechanism. After double checking to make sure that it was indeed locked, he worked his way back towards the bed. His eyes glanced towards the bedside table and his mind dwelt upon what lay within. "No, I don't need it." He whispered to himself, willfully ignoring the flutter in his voice.

Tracks made himself busy stripping the bed, his shaky hooves making slow work of the job. When finally finished, he tossed the soiled linens into a pile on the floor, for dealing with at some nebulous point in the future. He opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and began to rifle through the spare sheets. He frowned. I haven't had to do this in years. He thought ruefully. Sheets in hoof, he made his way back towards the bed. Thankfully he didn't have to flip the mattress, he was in no shape to be doing any lifting. It was the work of a few more minutes to have the bed fit for sleeping in.

His task complete, he unexpectedly found himself opening the drawer of his bedside table with an unsteady hoof. He looked upon what lay within with a mixture of longing and revulsion. Tracks slowly, weakly reached into the drawer and stopped himself short. "I... don't have to." He said to himself. His hoof haltingly began to withdraw before stopping again. Tracks grunted with effort. His mind warred. He knew that he did not need it. But he wanted it, badly. The shaking in his limbs increased. "Just... a little..." His hoof reentered the recesses of the drawer and emerged with the item of his obsession.

"Gah!" Tracks exclaimed as he disgustedly threw the object across the room. It impacted the wall with a clatter and fell to the carpet. He sat on his haunches, looking at his trembling hooves. What am I doing? He thought as he looked across the room at the auto-injector, sporting a vial of blue tranquilizer, and cursed himself for worrying about whether he had damaged it or not. He was a mess. At least he hadn't blown a bunch of holes in the wall like Sophic did yesterday, right before she had -

He knew why he was on edge, why the nightmares had returned. Sophic had made him an Interrogator. He was - what was he? He'd said he was honored when she had made the announcement to everypony. When she had assigned him his own agents for his first mission. Of course he had graciously accepted, she had gathered all of the ponies in her vast staff together for the news. How could he possibly tell her that he didn't think he was even close to ready for something like this? How?

After a few minutes ruminating on that particular thought, Tracks realized that he had somehow ended up laying on the floor shaking. It took him a moment to realize he had blacked out. The auto-injector was floating next to him enveloped in the crimson aura of his magic. He looked at it quizzically. He hadn't even realized his own horn was aglow.

The injector hovered slowly towards his neck and he made no effort to stop it. The hiss-click of the device performing its function barely registering in his mind. The shaking ceased as the familiar warmth spread to his head and then to his limbs. His body relaxed and he felt both his heart rate and his breathing begin to slow. He attempted to roll himself up into the bed but, between the exhaustion from the nightmare and the sedative, all he managed to do was plant his face into the side of the mattress. Great, made the bed for nothing. He thought as he drifted back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Early the next morning the rays of one of Celestia's many suns shone into the main foyer of the Inquisitor's suites. Things were illuminated in that specific level of brightness that causes the eyes of the newly awoken to flare with pain. Faded tapestries of great heroes and saints from across Equestria hung upon the walls. The marble floors conducted sound rather well and the echoing sounds of several of Sophic Fortune's staff could be heard as they trotting to and fro on various, seemingly inexplicable, errands that kept the whole complex from falling into uncleanliness and disarray.

Free Fall tapped a hoof impatiently while standing at the base of the large staircase that dominated the center of the large room. Her emerald-green eyes were sweeping around the foyer in what she was starting to think was a pointless attempt to find that lazy oaf Tracks. There was no chronometer in the vast room but she knew that he was supposed to be there over an hour ago. She shook her forest-green mane in disbelief, causing a few stands of the sky-blue stripe to fall down into her cyan face. She used one of her wings to brush the errant strands back into place. She knew he had a lazy streak but this was ridiculous. He was the one who had wanted to meet her after all. With a sigh of disgust, she started trotting towards the hallway that would lead her to the suite's private landing-pad.

"Missing your coltfriend?" Devoid whispered, behind her and far too close for her liking.

She responded by wildly bucking her hind legs and yelping in surprise. Devoid swiftly dodged in such a manner that he somehow ended up side by side with her, one foreleg draped over her withers. She didn't even wonder anymore how he managed to do things like that, apparently he was just a natural at making ponies uncomfortable. Free Fall's look of shock was quickly replaced with one of annoyance. It was met with one of wry amusement. Free Fall groaned, she wasn't in the mood for Devoid's antics, not right now.

"Get lost, you old coot." She said, while shrugging him off with her wing. She knew if she even bothered to mention or, Celestia help her, deny his comment that she could expect him to tease her for the rest of the day. She turned away and began to trot away but he said something that stopped her in her tracks.

"Oh, too bad, I thought you might want to know where he was."

Free Fall very slowly turned to face him. Her face betrayed a hint of the anger she felt as she thought of the myriad activities Tracks could be engaged in rather than bothering meet her. She would have tried to grab Devoid by the lapels if he had ever actually bothered to wear clothes. She settled for getting muzzle to muzzle with the jet-black stallion and growling. "Where is that lazy sack of manure?"

Unaffected by her threatening stance and positioning, Devoid graced her with his trademark feline grin before speaking. "I'll only tell you if you promise me something."

"I won't rat you out Devoid -" She stated emphatically. "- now out with it."

"No, for once I don't care about that." He began. "I want you to promise me you will give Tracks your support, however and wherever you find him."

She looked at him with a quizzical expression. "Why?"

"He's been under a lot of stress, new promotion and everything. He needs your support, not your ridicule." Devoid said.

Now the look of confusion had become one of disbelief. "Oh, you care so much about him now? When did you become Mister Congeniality?"

His look became one of mild annoyance as he began to explain. "I'm not doing this to be nice." She frowned at his condescending tone, he was talking as one would to a foal. "I just don't want to go out on our maiden voyage of a mission and have our new boss be such a nervous wreck that my life gets threatened." He eyed her expectantly. "Well?"

"Where is he?" She asked.

He locked eyes with her, as if he somehow could detect intent with just a glace. She was pretty sure he couldn't. Pretty sure. Apparently satisfied, he answered. "Locked in his room, since about 0300 last night."

She didn't waste any more time talking to Devoid and, using her wings for an extra burst of speed, took off like a shot towards the housing units.

* * *

Able Body stood, decked out in full olive drab carapace barding, at the main entrance of the foyer. The earth pony mare watched the little drama unfold between Devoid and Free Fall with only mild interest. Knowing Devoid, he was probably teasing her about something, most likely that crash landing a few months back. Everypony knew it had been unavoidable, but if anypony knew how to salt a wound, it was him.

As long as he doesn't end up over here. She thought to herself as she watched the cyan pegasus take off towards the living quarters. She looked back to where Devoid had been, unsurprised that he had somehow vanished in the moment she hadn't been looking. She began to carefully scan the room in hopes of spotting the old sneak so he couldn't get the drop on her. She was interrupted when she heard two cheery voices calling her by her former Equestrian Guard rank.

"Hey! Sergeant!"

Able turned to face the speakers, though she didn't have to in order to recognize the origin of the greetings. Rank always walks on the left, my right, File will be on my left. She mentally reminded herself as the two peach colored mares that were the Twins approached. They both wore periwinkle blue uniforms, the colors of the Inquisitor's personal security force, which contrasted well with their straw colored manes in the morning light.

Able removed her helmet, allowing her burnt-umber mane to spill out across the cinnamon coat of her neck. Her brown eyes met with the pink of their eyes as she addressed them in turn, nodding her head to each as she said their name. "Rank. File." They both smiled at the greeting, which meant she had not gotten them mixed up. She found that they did not get angry when other ponies mixed them up, they were completely identical, but they loved when ponies took to time to figure out who was who.

"We have the equipment requisition forms -" Began Rank.

"- that you requested for the mission." Cheerily finished File, reaching back into her saddlebag and producing a data-slate.

Some ponies thought that the Twins' manner of speaking in unison or always finishing each others sentences was kind of annoying. Able had always just considered them a single pony, capable of doing double the workload. She also thought it was kind of endearing, in its own way. If they were unprofessional about it, she was sure she'd have issues, but the two siblings were so close, separating them would probably ruin them both.

Smiling, Able hung her helmet off of the side of her barrel armor plate and then took the proffered data-slate. She sat on her haunches and hoofed through the list of equipment she had ordered for the new Interrogator's first mission. She double checked everything just to make sure, she hadn't worked with Interrogator Tracks before and didn't feel like getting off on the wrong hoof by missing even the most insignificant piece of equipment. When she felt satisfied with what she saw on the slate, she pressed her hoof to it for verification.

The Twins, who had been watching her with interest as she perused the slate, smiled in unison when she hoofed the slate back over to them. File took the slate and placed it back in the saddlebag from whence it came. Strangely enough, since the Twins were some of the busiest ponies on all of the Inquisitor's staff, they hadn't immediately run off after getting her hoof verification. Instead they eyed her with something she could only imagine was curiosity.

"Is there something else I can help you two with?" Able asked expectantly. The Twins shared a look that somehow managed to combine elements of mild embarrassment with the still present curiosity.

"We were just wondering -" Started Rank in a quiet voice.

"- oh! How exited you must be!" Exclaimed File.

"About what?" Able asked, genuinely confused.

"Oh, you can't fool us!" Rank said with a wry smile.

"Yeah, you have to be feeling it!" File added.

"What are you two talking about?" Able blurted, completely nonplussed.

The twins shifted their gaze from her to each other. A complex series of facial expressions and eye movements ensued for a brief few seconds before they both returned to looking at her.

"You can't seriously expect us to believe that you aren't even the slightest bit anxious-" The twins had started talking rapidly in tandem and Able knew better than to look back and forth as they spoke. That was one way to get an ursa sized headache. She just focused halfway between the two, which wasn't so hard, seeing as how they were always side by side. "- about getting to be in on the ground floor -"

"- of a brand new Inquisitorial retinue!" They both practically squealed in unison.

The Twins continued to look at her with unbridled enthusiasm for several increasingly uncomfortable moments.

"I..." Able paused as she thought about it. "I hadn't really thought too much about it until now. What do you mean, ground floor?"

The Twins looked at each other again, then back at Able. Then they began speaking in tandem again. "You have to know! The first ponies an Inquisitor goes on a mission with are the ones that have the closest bond with them throughout their career! Just think!"

"You're gonna be best buddies with an Inquisitor! We're so jealous!" They squealed together again.

Able put hoof to chin, she did not exactly know what to think about that. There were always rumors that the only thing that kept the Inquisitor ponies from going insane over their, sometimes centuries, long careers was the ponies they kept around them. But she had never thought of this assignment as anything other than just another assignment for Sophic. She never thought she would be working under another Inquisitor, or that she was expected to be friends with them. She didn't even know the Interrogator very well now that she tooke time to think on it.

"Hey!" The Twins had shouted, tearing her from her reverie.

Able looked up, mildly startled. "Wha?"

Two pairs of pink eyes narrowed as they stared at her. Able was worried that she had somehow offended them. This belief was quickly squashed, however, as Rank and File gave her two friendly smiles.

"Oh Able." Rank said.

"You had no idea, did you?" File asked.

Able shook her head from side to side in the negative.

"Don't worry about it." Said Rank, placing her left hoof on Able's withers. "Being in an Inquisitor's inner circle -"

"- will be the best thing that ever happened to you!" File smiled warmly and placed her right hoof on Able's withers.

They made an odd sight for a moment, had the Twins actually been one pony, the gesture would have been a hug. They stood there for a few more moments, exalting in each others presences. When the Twins had finally let go of her, Able was feeling in much higher spirits about the whole thing. They both gave her a wave and headed off towards whatever random set of errands awaited them.

Able watched the Twins leave and then decided to go to the target range. She was already a crack shot with her tartarus-gun, but practice made perfect and she wanted to make sure the machine spirits of her weapon were cooperating before leaving for the mission. She grinned as she went down her rapidly shrinking mental checklist of things to do before leaving. Preparedness was always a guardpony's friend, especially in Inquisitional work.

* * *

The private landing pad and hangar for the Inquisitor's section of apartments was located on the opposite side of the spire as the housing units. Thankfully the pony that designed this particular hive spire realized that launching and landing aircraft next to where ponies would be sleeping would result in all kinds of problems. The rockrete pad could accommodate just about any light atmospheric craft, and could even handle some of the smaller space landers as well. The odor of promethium and engine oils permeated what little air there was at this altitude in Bashkir Secundus' atmosphere. Miles below spanned the rest of the hive complex, hidden in the vitreous clouds of millennia worth of planetary pollution.

The attached hangar held all of the Inquisitor's various skimmers, chariots, and orbital shuttles. One particular craft, an Equila lander, stood out from the rest. All of the other craft, including a few other Equilas, in the hangar were colored the same periwinkle blue as the Inquisitor's security forces. This Equila was painted in shades of light grayish mulberry. The raised portions were a moderate sapphire blue and had stripes of both moderate violet and brilliant rose. Anypony who wasn't a purebred hateratick would recognize the holy colors of Saint Twilight Sparkle. This vessel also had many more armor and component patches, as well as other signs of the craft

A lone red robed tech-pony worked reverently on the Equilla. Of what little was visible from beneath the robes, one might discern that the pony beneath had once had a full coat of steel-gray fur before upgrading to actual steel plating. Two glowing red artificial lenses replaced what had once been the pony's eyes. The lower half of the pony's muzzle was nothing but a mass of tubes and wires. Instead of a mane and tail, the tech-pony had bundles of cable and wiring. As with most tech ponies, once augmentation had passed a certain point, the pony's gender became unknowable and, quite frankly, irrelevant. Despite that, most ponies seemed to refer to Pinion as a "he" and "he" didn't care enough to correct them in their ignorance.

What set this particular adept of the Equestris Marecanicus apart from many of his fellows was the set of wings he possessed. Not wings of flesh and blood, for those would have been replaced long ago. These wings were of a curious design, quite similar to the Equila that the tech-pony was working on. There were intakes and thrust vents and ailerons. The wings were definitely masterworks of the Marecanicus arts and while very rare, they were by no means unique.

Pinion had just completed the rituals of maintenance and repair on one of the Equilla's landing struts, the panel closed and the wax seal stamped and hardening, when his audio receptors picked up the sound of feathered wings cutting through the air. He accessed his internal cogitator and accessed the storage files that he kept for comparison to similar sounds. Their cogitator was 15% complete analyzing the sound when Free Fall landed heavily in front of them.

"Pinion, I need you, right now." The cyan pegasus blurted.

If he had been susceptible to normal pony emotions, Pinion would have sworn aloud in binary. He had work to do, and his internal cogitators calculated an 80% chance that whatever Free Fall needed him for "right now" had nothing to do with preparing for the upcoming mission. Pinion cancelled the audio analysis and set 90% of his cogitator compute cycles towards formulating proper responses to try and convince Free Fall to go waste some other pony's worthless, well, less precious than Pinion's at any rate, time.

He started the verbal chess match with his standard opening. "I apologize to you Free Fall. I am in the middle of -"

"It can wait!" Free Fall fervently exclaimed, quickly launching herself airborne with a quick thrust of her wings. She then swooped around to Pinion's rear end and planted her two forehooves on it in an attempt to push the tech-pony in the direction of the landing pad and, if Pinion was correct in his interpretation of standard Free Fall logic, over the edge into a terminal velocity plummet, ending with impact on one of the hive structures miles below.

Pinion didn't even have to plant his hooves when he turned to look at the struggling pegasus. "I weigh in excess of a quarter tonne, you are not going to be able to move me like this. Your organic memory must be faulty. You have tried this before and were unsuccessful."

Free Fall's eyes narrowed. Pinion's heads-up-display started flashing a warning. Based on fur ripples, pupil dilation, and the sound of grinding teeth, Pinion's cogitators had calculated that there was a 90% chance that Free Fall was about to commence in some sort of physical violence to coerce his assistance. Pinion blessed that his body was above such lowly functions as sighing, as the act of giving in to Free Fall now surely should have elicited a large one.

Instead of risking the safety of Free Fall and the Equila lander with a confrontation, Pinion calculated how he could most quickly expedite this little side task. "I will assist you Miss Fall." Free Fall stopped pushing and Pinion was able to start walking back toward the suites. "Let us go quickly so that I may more quickly return to my duties here." He spared the shocked looking pegasus a look. "Unless you do not wish for every last system on the Equila to be in working order when we leave for the mission." They galloped away together.

It took exactly 3 minutes and 23.48 seconds to reach Free Fall's destination. The needlessly vibrant colors of the housing units always proved distracting to Pinion's higher functions. He never could understand why ponies seemed to want bright colors everywhere, all it did was detract from what one was doing. The housing area of the Inquisitor's apartments was done in pastel shades of blue and green. If his visual acuity wasn't over 300% more precise than normal pony vision, he was sure that Free Fall would have actually blended in to some of the hallways with her cyan coat and striped green mane.

When they finally came to a stop, he scanned the door number. Pinion's databanks showed that this room belonged to his new immediate superior, Interrogator Tracks. The display suddenly jumped the chance of this task being mission related to 87%. Until Free Fall spoke. "Ok Pinion, I need you to override the lock and get us into that room."

5% chance of mission relevance. Blinked his display. It was a good thing Pinion didn't have facial features or autonomic body responses anymore. The sudden shift would have had his mouth hanging agape if he still had one. He turned his artificial eyes upon Free Fall before beginning to speak. "I will not assist you in breaking into the Interrogator's quarters for whatever mischief you undoubtedly have planned."

Free Fall narrowed her eyes again, and Pinion's readout flashed an alert for another high probability for a possible violent outburst. "It's not for a prank, you Cog Head!" Free Fall screamed, swinging a foreleg and impacting one of Pinion's head plates with a hoof. "He's locked in there! I need you to help get him out!" Now she was rubbing her most likely, 62% chance, bruised hoof.

With the probability of this action being mission related now teetering at 54%, Pinion did what Pinion always did and acted towards the most probable scenario, however small the lead was. A mechadendrite removed itself from his red robes and connected to the data-port next to the door. It was a simple matter for him to re-task the security machine spirits into maintenance mode and an even simpler job of finding the proper access code out of the billions of possible permutations.

The lock disengaged 7.8375 seconds after Pinion first engaged the device. The door slid open with a standard pneumatic hiss. Free Fall pushed her way past him and into the room. He heard her suddenly give a sharp intake of breath followed by another series of insistent demands. "Get in here right now! And close the door behind you!"

Pinion entered the room with an increased degree of care, just in case Free Fall was trying to do something untoward in the room. Pinion's eyes scanned the room for only a moment before focusing on the semi-prone form of Interrogator Tracks. Free Fall was standing nearby with a shocked look on her face. One of his mechadendrites whipped out and, due to a minor miscalculation which had nothing to do with emotional shock, struck the door panel at about 278% of the required pressure required to do so, causing the door to hiss closed. Pinion's advanced optics and auditory arrays went to work measuring vital signs and other physical indicators. The data was run into his central cogitator, which began to run calculations as to what could have possibly happened.

Pulse low, respiration shallow. Body position... rear legs splayed out behind subject, barrel is at a 79% incline to a bed, one foreleg stretched forward and up onto aforementioned bed, the other laying along the base of the bed. Left eye closed, right eye partially open with fully dilated pupil and signs of crusting around the edges. Mouth is open, tongue is lolled out on left side, significant drooling has occurred and subsequently dried on muzzle and neck. Auto-injector near subject, contains empty vial. Chemo auspex array detects trace amounts of aerosolized medical tranquilizer type mt-638462. A full vial of mt-638462 contains 10 times the Admanestratum's recommended dose.

"I know exactly what happened." Stated Pinion. Free Fall gave a look that did not register properly in his cogitation database. It must have been a neural error in Free Fall's brain, because Pinion's calculations placed the look on her face as equating to complete incredulity. He continued, undaunted, with his analysis. "It is clear that somepony has tried to assassinate the newly promoted Interrogator."

Free Fall's eyes widened, but not in the manner of understanding shock that he was expecting. When she opened her mouth, the words that came forth were not the words of praise and gratitude that Pinion had been expecting either. "He's using tranqs again, tin head! That's his auto-injector!" She shook her head violently from side to side, sending her forest green mane whipping back and forth. "Idiot!" She kicked Tracks in the side, eliciting a small groan from the unconscious unicorn. "You're an idiot too!" She yelled at Pinion, jabbing a hoof in the air in his direction. "Get out! I'll deal with this! And if you tell anypony else what you saw in here today, I will make sure you never see nor speak again!"

He calculated that there was a 93% chance that she meant what she said, as well as a 76% chance that she could carry out the threat at some time in the future. Pinion turned around and exited the room in a manner that was as swift as possible while still technically considered emotionally detached and casual.

It took Pinion 7 minutes and 4.63 seconds to return to the hangar and the Equila. He was thankful to be getting back to work. The entire ordeal with Free Fall had eaten almost 15 minutes out of his busy schedule. He was about to open a fresh panel when his audio receptors detected a barely audible noise. He spoke without looking towards the noise. "Devoid, I am busy."

The jet-black stallion materialized from behind one of the landing struts of the Equila, specifically the one Pinion had just finished working on. "Just got one little thing for you, tech-pony. Then I'll be out of your cables."

"I only foresee a 20% chance of that being true." Pinion said. It was actually 6%, but Pinion had documented over the years that Devoid tended to monopolize on his own bad image and would purposefully harass him if he was given any number below 15%.

"I need to know if you can safely remove the memory from this." Devoid said while holding out a data-slate in one hoof.

Pinion looked at the wreck. It seemed to have suffered several close range las hits. One of his eyes remained focused on the slate, the other looked at Devoid. He knew better than to question where he'd gotten it or how it had gotten shot, there was a 65% chance that Devoid would completely fabricate a response and a 45% chance that he would instead state that he had somehow found it while either fornicating with Pinion's long dead mother or that he had found it in the equally improbable location of the inside of Pinion's own posterior.

Several snaking mechadendrites carefully took hold of the slate as Pinion got a better look at it. As he analyzed the device he spoke his findings. "Damage to the casing is severe. The machine spirits are dormant but I believe the memory circuits to be intact. The power source is still active and could theoretically short the entire device out." He looked up at the seemingly uninterested Devoid. "There is a very high probability that trying to recover the memory module will ruin both it and the device."

Devoid suddenly looked directly at him. Somehow, Pinion felt things he shouldn't have been able to. Knots in a stomach he had long ago replaced, chills ran down a spine made of steel and wiring. "Do it."

Pinion performed the rituals of preparation several times before moving onto the more complicated rituals of maintenance and data retrieval. The spirits of the data-slate were angry and mischievous due to the damage that had been wrought upon the device. Several of his attempts at the prayers were left completely unheard, others were met with an angry spark, or a flicker of random activity on the ruined slate's screen. After a harrowing 11 minutes and 31.89 seconds of invocations and entreaties he was able to deliver the final benediction to the device. And in one mechadendrite, he held the intact memory module.

He hoofed the small device over to Devoid. All Pinion wanted now was to get back to his maintenance. He turned away from Devoid and spoke. "Now please, leave me be. I have work to do." When he turned back around to see if Devoid was going to acknowledge the statement, he saw that the jet-black stallion had vanished. Pinion got back to work, glad to be rid of the troublesome pony.

Chapter 2: Embarkation

The Inquisitor's primary conference room was enormous. Sophic Fortune had originally set the room aside as a meeting place for all of her Inquisitorial staff. It was able to hold dozens of ponies and had been used the previous evening when she had announced that Tracks would be her new Interrogator.

The wooden table that dominated the center of the room was a single solid piece over a hundred hooves long and had been carved from the trunk of a massive tree. High backed cloth covered chairs lined the table on both sides, also supposedly framed with wood from the same tree as the table itself. The walls that lined the room were covered in a single elaborate mural which depicted the triumph of The Royal Pony Sisters over the forces of Hate and Disharmony. The carpeting was extremely plush and was colored a deep red color, like something somepony would expect to see on a planetary governess.

Tracks had contacted all of the members of his retinue and had told them to meet in the primary conference room an hour after lunch to discuss the upcoming mission. He had given specific instructions that everypony come wearing their field gear, and that all of their packing needed to be completed before the meeting started.

Able entered the conference room and was not surprised to find that she was apparently the first pony to arrive for the meeting. A habit she had picked up with the Equestrian Guard was that she always had a kit bag ready to go, so she had not needed to pack.

She was dressed, as always, in her olive drab carapace barding, though she had the helmet off and attached to the left side of her armor. She wore a combat saddle that consisted of a large battery pack on the left side and a rig for holding her tartarus-gun on the right side. The tartarus-gun, which she had carried since she had been a storm trooper for the Equestrian Guard, was currently in safe mode and pointed upwards in the rig. Her data-slate with the team's equipment roster was wedged into a pouch somewhere. She had also stuffed some of the saddle's other pouches with grenades of various types.

She noted, with mild distaste, that somepony had used the conference room before them and left many of the seats all over the place. "They have a party in here or something?" She grumbled to herself as she dragged some of the errant chairs back towards the table. She briefly considered straightening the rest of the room but a quick glance to the chronometer on her left cannon's plate informed her that she wouldn't have nearly enough time, despite having arrived fifteen minutes early. She settled for giving the sides and backs of the other chairs a mild glare of disapproval.

Pinion was the second pony to arrive, he entered the conference room exactly as Able's chronometer showed that there were ten minutes until the meeting. As per usual, nothing could really be seen of the tech-pony under his robes. The only distinguishing features were those metal wings he sported. Able knew some of the newer members of Sophic's staff had taken to gossiping about Pinion's actual gender. Some of the more unscrupulous ones were actually taking bets on what lay under the robes. Able had gone to great lengths to dissuade the behavior, which she considered to be rude and even cruel, whether Pinion said he cared or not. Able accepted the tech-pony for what he was and felt no urges whatsoever to need to see more than the red cybernetic eyes and the mess of tubes and wires that was his lower face.

Pinion's eyes locked with hers. "Greetings, Sergeant Body." The tinny voice issued forth from somewhere in the tangle of metal under his muzzle.

"Hi, Pinion." She said. "How is the Equila?" She wasn't sure why she had asked, she didn't particularly care for any tech-pony's tendency to ramble on about the most boring topics. Still, she couldn't deny that Pinion seemed to have an energy about him, like enthusiasm, though he would never admit to having actual pony emotions, whenever he was able to talk about something he had worked on. As Pinion started regaling her with the unknowable mysteries of aircraft maintenance she couldn't help but smile at how animated he had become.

Interrogator Tracks entered the conference room with about thirty seconds to spare and Free Fall walked in literally right behind him. The purple unicorn was wearing a dark gray cloak that covered everything below his neckline, and would have covered everything above as well had the hood been up. Able almost did a double take when she saw the Interrogator's face. The color of his coat seemed a little off and was lacking healthy sheen, almost as if he were sickly. The dark rings under his eyes completed the look and convinced Able that he probably hadn't slept well at all.

Then there was Free Fall. The cyan pegasus had on her periwinkle blue flight suit with matching saddle. Sheathed across the saddle was a wicked looking chainblade. Able had never seen Free Fall use the thing, though she had definitely seen them used during her time in the Guard. She never understood how anypony could prefer such a weapon considering how they tended to leave the wielder covered in gore. Able had never gotten to ask Free Fall about the preference before and decided against it now because, if the scowl on her face was to be believed, Free Fall appeared to be in an especially foul mood.

Tracks sat in one of the chairs that Able had gathered up and set his hooves on the table. "Ok, everypony, let's get this briefing started, we're out of here within the hour." He said in a weary sounding voice.

"Umm, Sir?" Able asked.

Tracks shifted an uncomfortable look in her direction. Instead of asking why she had interjected or remaining silent with a motion for her to continue, he completely floored her with his single statement. "Able, you know you can just call me Tracks, this isn't the military."

She felt a mild flush come to her face as she tried to recover. "Of course, Si... I mean Tracks"

"So, did I miss something already?" Tracks asked, with genuine concern in his voice. After a short pause he clarified. "I'm a little out of it today." Able noticed the remark had earned him a glare from Free Fall. Tracks didn't seem to notice and continued to look at Able expectantly.

"Shouldn't we wait for Devoid?" She asked.

Tracks' muzzle twisted into a sort of grimace and he looked around the room. His horn started to glow a light crimson color. One of the chairs that was fairly close to her own, one that had been turned away from where they all sat, was surrounded in a halo of light that mimicked the light of Tracks' horn. The seat turned in place until it faced them, revealing the inanely grinning jet-black unicorn.

Able immediately felt her hackles rise and reflexively bolted upright, sending her chair flying away from the table. She stopped her right hind leg a mere hair's breadth from releasing the safety catch on her rifle. She made up her mind in that moment, as she stood completely embarrassed and a mere nudge and bit pull from hosing down part of the conference hall with high powered las-blasts, she hated Devoid.

Oddly enough, nopony was staring at Able or giving her odd looks for the, almost extremely, violent reaction. Tracks eyes were closed and he was shaking his head from side to side. Free Fall was giving Devoid a withering look. Pinion just looked confused by all the pony emotion that was flying around. The only one who even spared her a glance was Devoid himself as he shifted to a more comfortable position in the chair.

He wasn't really wearing anything, which didn't really surprise her, the unicorn seemed to eschew just about all clothing. She seemed to remember him spouting some nonsense about it getting in his way. The only things he ever consistently wore were a sheathed knife on the cannon of his right foreleg and a magical nullification gauntlet on the cannon of his left foreleg.

"Don't be too upset, honey cakes -" Devoid began in one of his casually condescending tones.

Her eyes narrowed and she let her right hind leg bump her saddle's safety catch, causing the tartarus-gun to fall into its armed position. Able had reflexively moved so that the weapon was pointed directly at Devoid's face, which quickly replaced its grin with a frown. The high pitched whine of the gun's capacitors quickly decreased in intensity until it reached a low hum which indicated the weapon had reached maximum charge.

"Apologize." Able demanded of the frowning unicorn.

"Really? For hiding in the room?" Devoid voice was as flat as a cake subjected to a filly on a pogo-stick during baking. He eyed the weapon warily.

"Honey cakes?" Able hissed through her teeth.

"Ah." Devoid's placed his forehooves into the air in surrender. "I didn't mean anything by it, I apologize." Able bumped the weapon with her back hoof again and it snapped back into the upwards facing position. Devoid's grin returned to his face with the same alacrity as the weapon's powering down sound. "I was just about to say that Tracks here is the only one who seems to be able to just find me. Don't feel bad if ya missed me." He winked at her, sending her hackles rising again.

Tracks clopped his hoof on the table a few times. "Ok, fun time's over everypony." While he certainly looked bad, he sounded even more like he was about to drop from exhaustion. Able noticed though that Free Fall, who was sitting next to him, was looking in Devoid's direction and covering a smirk with one hoof.

Tracks reached into his cloak, placed a portable holo-projector from it onto the desk and hoofed it into operation. A giant indistinct blob was projected above the device. "Horse apples." He muttered, then whacked the device with his hoof. Able saw Pinion visibly cringe at the blatant disregard for the spirits within the device. Tracks' impromptu benediction seemed to mollify the soul of the machine however, as the image of a rotating sphere snapped into focus. Visible upon the globe were continents and oceans and three gargantuan structures, hive cities.

"Abyssinian Prime." Tracks said, with a lazy flourish of one purple hoof towards the rotating image. "As I'm sure some of you are aware, Inquisitor Scisco, a former student of our own Sophic Fortune, was killed thirty years ago while defending the galaxy from the forces of Disharmony." Tracks hoofed another button on the projector and the image changed to reams of figures. "Scisco was only about forty years old at the time of his death. Even an Inquisitor of his... relative youth -" Tracks had pulled out a data-slate and was looking at whatever was displayed on it as he spoke. "- tends to acquire a great sum of both bits and other assets during the course of their career." He looked up from the slate. "Our mission is to go to Abyssinian Prime and recover the Inquisitor's assets there."

"Really? We're going there for money?" Free Fall asked, seemingly taken aback.

"Of course we are." Devoid said with a flash of his grin. "Go ahead and tell them why, Boss."

Tracks made his own feeble attempt at a grin of his own, but only managed something resembling a wince. "Our own, and I might add, quite incomplete, records show we have something in the realm of thirty billion reasons." He said, putting the slate down on the table.

"Why did Sophic wait thirty years to take care of this?" Able asked, genuinely confused. It wasn't like Sophic to put off things that needed to be done.

Tracks looked over at her. "Sophic says it wasn't a priority. Reclaiming a few billion bits pales in comparison to some of the stuff we've been doing. Honestly? I think she was probably putting it off on purpose. Scisco was her student. Reclaiming all of his assets means there's nothing of him left out there. I never knew him myself, but I think I can relate to how she feels.

Everypony was silent for a few moments.

"Still, just thirty billion bits? I know that seems like a lot to one pony, but the Admanestratum could easily take care of that, right?" Able asked.

"Thirty billion, three hundred and seventy-five million -" Pinion started to rattle off the figure.

"It's not just the bits." Tracks interrupted. "If it were just the bits, we could trust the Admanestratum to collect everything. Problem there is that Abyssinian Prime was the center of all of his operations. There will be estates, equipment." He leaned forward onto the table and shifted his eyes from pony to pony as he spoke. "Records. Secrets." He paused again, most likely for dramatic effect. "Inquisition secrets." He sat back again. "We will need to make sure that any and all sensitive information, equipment, etcetera are reclaimed."

"Oh, One more thing." Able saw a gleam of fire in Tracks' eyes now. He seemed miraculously energized. "Note I believe this to be our true mission. Sophic may have crushed the cell of haters that personally took Scisco's life, but she was never able to track them past the tunnels where it all went down. I'm willing to bet that, somewhere in his records, we might find some clues that will point us to the rest of them."

"And then?" Devoid somehow asked without sounding rhetorical.

"Then we end them." Tracks said through gritted teeth. "We send them straight to Tartarus."

"How long till we head out?" Free Fall asked. "My wings are getting itchy."

Tracks looked over at her. "Glad you asked. The reason I called this meeting on such short notice and told you to be ready to go is that I've scheduled a ride with the Equestrian Naval Frigate 'Accord.' They leave orbit in -" He checked the chronometer on his data-slate. "- eight hours. I expect us to be en route to the Accord within the hour." He pointed a hoof towards Able. "I want everypony to do a quick check of their equipment with Able here before we go. If it's not on her list, don't you dare complain about not having it later." He then pointed at Pinion. "Is the Equila ready for takeoff?"

"Every system has been blessed and sealed." The tech-pony replied.

Tracks hoofed the holo-projector off and stuffed it back into the recesses of his cloak. He then pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. He grabbed his data-slate and looked at the chronometer on it. "I expect wings up in forty-two minutes, ponies. See you all on the Equila." He pocketed the slate and started walking towards the door.

Devoid swiftly made his own exit, managing to pass Tracks on his way out of the conference room. Pinion stopped to double check Able's own data-slate and then made himself scarce.

Since nopony else seemed to want to check their equipment with her, Able stood to leave. Free Fall suddenly leapt over the table with a quick flap of her wings and landed in front of her. Able wasn't sure what to expect from the cyan pegasus. The look on Free Fall's face was one of... amusement?

"Bravo!" A smile spread itself ear to ear on Free Fall's face as she spoke. "Way to put Devoid in his place!" She said, placing a forehoof on Able's withers. "If I knew all it took to get some respect out of the old coot was to pull a gun on him, I'd have done it ages ago!" She started chuckling. Despite not being very happy with the fact that she had pulled a gun on a team member, Able actually found herself laughing along with Free Fall. She felt that it did wonders to relieve the tension she had been feeling.

"C'mon, lets go get our stuff and go to the Equila." Free Fall said. They walked out of the conference room and towards their living quarters.

"So, -" Free Fall asked after they had been walking for a few minutes. Able looked over towards her. "- would you have really shot Devoid if he hadn't apologized?"

Able thought for a moment. Honey cakes her brain reminded her. "Yes."

Free Fall started laughing again as they continued walking.

* * *

Free Fall couldn't believe that she had been purposefully missing out on Able's company for the last few years. She supposed that she had never really had high opinions of military types. They had always seemed so stuffy, unimaginative, and well, boring. She had never thought about the qualities in a military pony that she might actually find enjoyable. The assertiveness, the candor, the guts.

And what guts! She had been absolutely amazed when Able had pulled the gun on Devoid. Able probably hadn't seen her jaw hit the table, but she probably had caught the grin that Free Fall had been attempting to hide. Able was probably still wondering why nopony had reprimanded her for the action. Free Fall, and probably anypony who had ever spent any significant time with Devoid, knew the truth of it was that he deserved it. Probably would have deserved getting shot too, if he had allowed it to escalate that far.

Free Fall had been making all kinds of small talk with Able all the way into the living quarters. Able seemed particularly interested in her chainsword. She had asked all kinds of bizarre questions about how one avoided getting their opponent all over themselves. Free Fall never really thought about it, she'd never had the issue before.

When they had gotten to their quarters, she had been surprised at how little luggage Able was actually bringing with her. Efficiency, another Equestrian Guard attribute she wished she possessed. She felt downright embarrased when she hauled her own bags from her room. The feeling amplified slightly when Able actually offered to carry one of the bags for her. She had declined as gracefully as she could, though she regretted having to drag both of her bags through the halls.

Now, on their way to the landing pad, the conversation between the two of them had taken a turn towards the team. "You work with Tracks often?" Able asked her.

Free Fall couldn't help but laugh. "We've been on so many missions together, I couldn't even begin to count." She said with a smile. "I've pulled his sorry rump out of the fire more times than he would probably care to admit. He's even saved me a few times." She knew it sounded sappy, but decided to say it anyway. "He's a good friend." When he isn't being an idiot. Her brain griped.

Able nodded with a smile and they continued onwards. A few minutes more and they had reached the landing pad. The hangar was open and the Equila just inside. Free Fall noticed with satisfaction all of the fresh wax seals on the various panels on the vehicle.

The two ponies walked around to the rear of the majestic vehicle and trotted up the rear boarding ramp. It looked like everypony was already aboard, Tracks and Pinion were sitting in seats in the common room and she was pretty certain she saw Devoid's form in his sleeping compartment. Free Fall moved through the common room and stuffed her bags into her own sleeping compartment before turning to wave to Able. She was happy to see Able return the wave.

Free Fall moved past the sleeping compartments to the front of the Equila and opened the door to the cockpit. Hundreds of blinking lights and a dozen readouts and screens greeted her. As she sat down in the aged cloth covering of the pilot's chair she noticed a folded piece of parchment on the instrument panel. Even though she was pretty sure she knew both who it was from as well as what it said, she resolved herself to read it anyway.

Sorry,

She sighed. She had forgiven him earlier, when she had woken him up instead of throttling him. She sighed again, she didn't have time for this. She pocketed the parchment and started going through the rituals of pre-flight.

She hoofed the onboard speaker system. "Alright, everypony, ramp is coming up, all aboard who's coming aboard!" She hoofed the rune to close the boarding ramp. She watched the indicator runes as well as felt the vibrations of the ramp hydraulics. When she heard the satisfying thunk of the ramp slamming into place, and the indicator light glowed green, she smiled. Time to get this bird rolling.

She stretched her wings out and used them in addition to her hooves to manipulate the Equila's controls. She used the secondary thrusters to taxi the Equila onto the landing pad. With only a few more rituals to perform, Free Fall was moments away from takeoff. When she was satisfied that the machine spirits of the Equila were cooperating, and less likely to incinerate them mid flight or void them into space, she engaged the main engines.

She always enjoyed takeoffs. The Equilla rocketed upwards at ever increasing speeds. The late afternoon sun of Baskhir Secundus illuminated the landscape in all manner of beautiful colors. She wished she could see the sun reflecting off of the hive, she always enjoyed seeing that. Still, she couldn't complain as the vessel rose ever upwards.

The blue sky slowly gave way to a field of stars. Free Fall dug a hoof into the neckline of her flight suit and pulled out a necklace, from which a silver crescent moon pendant hanged. She held it tightly and uttered a prayer to Princess Luna. She had entered space countless times before, but it just never seemed right without a supplication to the Princess of the Night.

Though Free Fall was flying by instruments, she kept an eye out the front viewport for the Accord. One of the most enjoyable parts of being a shuttle pilot was being able to see the massive forms of the Everfree faring vessels from the outside. They never failed to impress her, and the Accord was no different.

The frigate was just over a kilomare and a half in length. The light from the Bashkir system's sun illuminated the vessel from fore to aft, reflecting from the metal surfaces and making it shine like some celestial jewel. As the Equila drew closer, more details could be discerned. The spindly communications towers, the armored prow, the bulk of the main engines, and the rows upon rows of macro weapon batteries.

A series of blinking runes indicated that the machine spirit of the Equila had begun to interface with that of the Accord. Free Fall sat back in her seat and let the machine spirits do their work. "Ok everypony, we're on final approach." She announced over the onboard speakers. It would only be a matter of minutes now before they were docked.

* * *

The hallway that lead to one of the Accord's landing bays was lit by a series of regularly spaced illuminators. The deck plating had been polished to an immaculate shine and fresh wax seals and parchment marked all of the maintenance access panels. The airlock door to the bay was a massive slab of metal that was designed to retract into the ceiling, as well as to slam down in into a trench in the floor in the case of a decompression incident.

A charcoal coated pegasus stood at attention before the airlock door with an air of dignity. With his short clipped red mane and piercing violet eyes, not to mention the heavily starched officer's uniform, anypony could feel the authority practically radiating off of the Accord's executive officer. Commander Sen Eschal's ears rotated as they picked up the faint clop-clank of hooves on the steel deck-plating as somepony approached him from behind.

Without turning he addressed the quite expected arrival with a brusque tone. "Mister Tar Mack. I trust you have a sufficiently good reason for being late?"

Sen had received the order earlier in the vessel's day cycle that a group of Inquisition agents would be boarding the vessel. Included with the orders were strict secrecy policies including one to minimize the number of ponies on-board who saw or interacted with the group. He had ordered Tar Mack to minimize the number of load crew that would be present for the arrival of the Inquisition.

Judging from the sounds reaching his ears, Tar Mack had decided to leave the entire loading crew out of it. The clop-clanks continued until an unruly slate mane and silvery muzzle entered Sen's peripheral vision. Sen remained at attention, eyes locked forwards even as Mack's head turned to face him.

"Sorrah, Sir. Had ta find duties for the rest of ma crew. You said that ya wanted dee-scretion, and I reckon'd ya wouldn't want nopony showin up un-spectedly." Replied the load-master.

"Understood." Sen replied. "You'll be fine with just yourself and the servitors?" His tone was not one of compassionate concern, it was more one of stern expectation.

The pegasus load-master gave Sen a confident look with his golden eyes. "Don't worrah none 'bout me, Sir. It don't take two ta get them servi-tars in line."

"Word of advice, Mister Tar Mack." Sen started. "These ponies are Inquisition. Be careful. Watch what you say and do, I don't want my best load-master to wind up floating in the void."

The golden eyes widened for a moment. "Thay couldn'... Ah mean thay wouldn'..." Tar Mack's accented voice died in his throat.

Sen spared the load-master a sidelong glance with his eyes. "They're Inquisition. If they don't take a liking to you, then who knows what they'll do?" Tar Mack seemed to consider this for a moment before turning his head towards the airlock door. Sen returned his gaze forward and heard Tar Mack swallowing quite loudly.

A harsh buzzer sounded and the amber light above the airlock door changed to an emerald green. With the whine of hydraulics and a sharp hiss of equalizing air pressure the heavy airlock door began to lift open. As the door slowly rose Sen felt the void chilled air wash over his pasterns, then his fetlocks and cannons. The door's snail like pace might have been excruciating had Sen actually been looking forward to this meeting.

He despised VIPs, especially ones that somehow outranked him. They always wanted the impossible from him; to get a grand tour of all parts of the ship, demands to see the captain, suites that were better than the other passengers. Always, and they always wanted it "now." And these are Inquisition agents, nopony knows what in Tartarus they will want. He thought glumly.

Everypony had heard stories about the Inquisition. Sen had listened to the outlandish stories that spread like fire throughout the ship regarding the Inquisition. Even so, most ponies thought that most of what was said was just bridle gossip. Sen knew, quite unfortunately, as far as he was concerned, that most of the rumors did not even come close to the true horrors of the Alicorn Inquisition. He briefly recalled the times he had witnessed mass summary executions and the unforgettable images of entire planets on fire. None of that mattered to him now, he had his duty to perform.

As the door raised past the level of his withers, Sen ducked his head and moved forward into the expansive landing bay. The vast space was normally able to accommodate a great number of spacecraft at the same time and seemed very underutilized with only a single Equila. The servitor ponies, which didn't require voidsuits to operate in hard vacuum, had already been active for a few minutes and had already attached the craft to a docking sled. As Sen approached they were in the process of attaching refueling lines

Sen approached the boarding ramp of the shuttle and noticed that Tar Mack had flown over to the servitors and had started barking out orders, interspersed with unintelligible yelling and profanity. Sen reached the base of the craft and the boarding ramp, which had already lowered. He saw that the shuttle's inner airlock was opening, which meant he would soon be making the small welcoming speech for the occupants. The speech never really changed in all the years he had been making it, the only difference being the title of whichever VIP he was greeting.

An uncomfortable amount of time passed before Sen spotted movement at the top of the ramp. Slowly walking down the boarding ramp towards him was a pony in a dark gray hooded cloak. The garment covered the figure completely enough that the only feature he could make out was the purple color of their hooves.

The mystery pony was flanked on the left by an earth pony completely encased in Equestrian Guard storm trooper armor. The body proportions suggested that they were a mare and their posture and bearing spoke of an intense training regimen. He noted, with a fair degree of consternation, that they were armed with a tartarus-gun. Guests with guns had always caused issues in the past, but he didn't think asking Inquisition agents to disarm was either wise or even possible, without dying at any rate.

Flanking the cloaked figure on the right was a tech-pony, wearing the signature red robes of the order. Sen took special note of the wings, those were rare. Most pegasi that heard the call of the marechine cult usually had to sacrifice their wings to reach the higher mysteries. Sen couldn't really make more of a mental assessment, the robes concealed everything except the tech-pony's face and metal hooves.

As the mystery pony reached the bottom of the ramp the entire group paused.

"Commander Sen Eschal?" Came a stallion's voice from the recesses of the cloak.

"Yes, Sir. I am Commander Eschal, Sir." Sen replied in a short, clipped tone.

A purple hoof reached up and drew the hood back, revealing - Sen was extremely mistrustful of unicorns. Of course the Inquisitor is a unicorn, figures. He thought. He did not lose his composure, he had decades of practice putting up with just about everything. He put up with the Accord's navigator, he could deal with a regular unicorn. Unless the cagey witch is reading your thoughts. Sen hushed his panicking mind. He could see, quite clearly, that the unicorn's horn was not alight.

"I am Interrogator Tracks." The unicorn said, revealing the Inquisitorial rosette that he had hanging around his neck. Sen expected the Interrogator to introduce his companions but, as the silence dragged on, he realized that no such introductions would be forthcoming. Speech time.

Sen cleared his throat and began. "Oh, grand agents of our Princesses' Most Holy -" He stopped when the Interrogator held up a hoof, a pained, perhaps exhausted look on his face.

"You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander." The unicorn said, though a peculiar look crossed his face as he said it, as though those particular words were sacred or something. "We do not wish to take up more of your time than necessary. As soon as my companions and I have our luggage loaded onto your servitor dolly, you can show us to whatever rooms you have provided."

Sen was surprised. Pleasantly so. VIPs that didn't want the galaxy of him was a nice change of pace. Tar Mack came around with one of the servitors harnessed to a luggage dolly. The Interrogator and his ponies threw their luggage onto the small cart.

Two more ponies came down the ramp, a cyan pegasus in a flight suit, obviously the pilot. She had a chainsword strapped to her back... Wait. Why, for the love of Celestia, does their pilot have a chainblade? His mind demanded. He had tried, ages ago, to wield one of the accursed things. Almost took one of his own wings off.

Seeing the second pony, the black unicorn, dragged him violently from his reverie. It was the eyes, predatory and cat yellow. His motions were like those of the creatures Sen had seen on that space hulk he had helped clear in his youth. He actually had to stop himself from drawing his sidearm. The worst part was, he had seen it. Had seen Sen placing his hoof on his weapon. No, the worst part was the grin he had given Sen when he had seen. That grin silently spoke. "Try it."

I am an officer of the Equestrian Navy for Celestia's sake! I will not allow some group of freaks to make me lose my composure! He mentally reprimanded himself. He returned a look that said that the unicorn was not worth his time. The unicorn snorted in derision, but turned away to toss his pack on the dolly. Sen didn't think they would cause any trouble, but he sure as hay wasn't going to turn his back on that one.

Sen led the quintet of ponies and their luggage to their quarters. The purple one had put his hood back up and hadn't said anything since he had put the kibosh on Sen's speech. It was only a matter of a quarter hour to get everypony situated.

Instead of giving the Interrogator the comm frequency of the lieutenant who normally handled guests, he gave his own. It wasn't because he wanted to foal-sit the Inquisition party, he just didn't want to read a report about the liaison officer being found gutted, or jettisoned out of an airlock, or whatever. Good officers were hard to find, especially ones the likes of Lieutenant Fixer.

Sen trotted away from the guest quarters with something bordering on relief. With the Inquisition squared away, all that was left was for Sen to decide on what he would put in his report to the Captain.

Chapter 3: Perils of the Everfree

The cargo bay was not large by the standards of the Equestrian Navy, but it was more than adequate for Able's needs. At fifty stand mare lengths to a side, she only had to gallop around the bay twenty times to make a full kilomare. It was also surprisingly empty of cargo, with only a few dozen crates of supplies in attendance.

She had just finished her seventh kilomare and was just starting to work a nice burn into her muscles. Her cinnamon coat had gained a nice sheen from her sweat. Whenever she had the chance to run she felt like smiling or laughing. Able never felt more alive than when she was able to physically exert herself.

She glanced over at the wheezing form of Free Fall. The cyan mare had managed five herself before she had started to falter. Six had been the magic number that had caused her to pull aside for a breather. Considering how she had told Able that she didn't have her own training regimen, Able was quite impressed with Free Fall's endurance. She figured that it had something to do with all the hovering and flying the pegasus enjoyed so much.

Eight kilomares, Able noted mentally as she made another pass. Two more and she could start her combat exercises. She was hoping Free Fall would be fully recovered by then so the two of them could go at it. She had tried snagging Tracks for the practice but she had barely gotten him to reserve the cargo bay for their personal use and he seemed less than enthusiastic about training. She had briefly considered asking Devoid but, after quickly coming to her senses, realized he would probably try to make the session as unbearable as possible.

Nine. She saw that Free Fall was looking a lot better now. Able grinned as she picked up speed. She always put extra effort into the last kilomare. She did this when she didn't have the time to just gallop until her legs gave out. Last time she had tried that she made it over sixty kilomares, though she had completely collapsed afterwards. Since ruining her legs right before a mission was not a particularly smart idea, she had worked out the ten kilomare regimen.

Aaaaaaaand ten. Able slowed herself down to a canter and angled herself towards Free Fall. By the time she arrived at the now recovered pegasus Able had managed to get her breathing under control. May need to do a full gallop for the last two kilomares next time. She thought. She was always striving to push herself to the limit, a pony could never be too in shape, after all.

"You have your wind back yet Free?" Able asked eagerly. She had been waiting for a training partner for almost a week now and the excitement was starting to get the better of her. She was also excited to train with a pegasus, she had never had the opportunity before. The Equestrian Guard was composed primarily of earth ponies, just as the Equestrian Navy was mostly pegasi.

"Sure, sure," Free Fall said. As the two of them squared off to prepare to spar, Free Fall spoke again. "Y'know, we haven't known each other that long." She paused for a moment before continuing. "I haven't really seen you without your armor on before."

Able cocked her head to the side. "Is this how you plan to start all of our sparring matches?"

Free Fall waved her hoof back and forth. "No, no, no. I'm just curious," she began. "How in Equestria did you get that cutie mark?"

Able looked back to her exposed flank, which bore the universal symbol of las technology, a thick red line impacting a circle with thinner lines going out in all directions

"You want my cutie mark story?" Able asked. Her mind reached back. She hadn't shared that story in a long time. "I..."

* * *

Able had grown up on one of the many agricultural worlds in Equestria. Her family was one of many that worked tirelessly to provide food for the planets in Equestria that were unable to grow their own. She had a multitude of siblings, both younger and older than herself who helped her spend most of her time cleaning farming equipment and learning how things worked around the massive farm.

It was her older brothers who had first introduced her to the family lasgun. Rusty and Combine... She could never remember which one had first hoofed their parents' old weapon to her. While she hadn't seen which one had forced the gun on her, the rest of her memory of that event was cemented in her mind for all time.

It was early in the year, one of the days waiting for the spring harvest. No planting to be done, no real serious pests attacking the crops yet. Just waiting and more waiting. The barn was one on the edge of the family property. Time and the regular exposure to pegasus weather had stripped the paint from the once red structure and had bleached the underlying wood to a dull gray. The older brothers liked to go out there and shoot random garbage for fun. Rusty, Combine, and some of her other brothers had snuck the lasgun and a few spare battery packs out for a round of killing cans. Able had wanted to go, she felt she was missing out. Most of the brothers complained that she would "filly up" their "colt time." Rusty, who was the eldest and colored the same as his name, had told them all to stuff it.

Rusty always had some form of plant stalk hanging out of his mouth, usually wheat. He moved the stalk from one side of his mouth to the other in satisfaction. He had just finished off an energy pack and had done quite well, hitting all ten of the cans he had lined up within the thirty shots the clip had provided. He kept a smug grin on his muzzle as he passed the weapon to the next oldest colt.

It was Combine's turn to murder some tin. He set up his ten cans, slammed the battery home and took careful aim. After thirty shots the only thing he had managed to hit was, well, the broad side of the inside of the barn. At first skeptical, then surprised, and then finally hysterical, Rusty had fallen into an uncontrolled fit of laughter as Combine's pathetic attempts at marksmanship continued.

Combine's normally tan cheeks had developed quite the embarrassed shade of red by the time he had finished. In a poor effort to save face, he had said that his mane had gotten too long and had been getting in his eyes. Rusty retorted, in classic brotherly fashion, by saying that even their little long-haired sister could out-shoot him.

The next thing Able knew, the carbine had been dropped in her hooves and her two eldest brothers were looking on expectantly. Rusty's golden eyes beamed encouragingly at her as he chewed on his wheat stalk. Combine had looked on with what she assumed was confidence. He probably thought it was an excuse to get the attention off of himself and to give her a chance to find out how much she disliked guns.

She remembered her first impressions of the weapon. She felt the weight, the balance, the unfamiliarity of the cold steel in her hooves as she held the lasgun for the first time. She also remembered, it had felt so... right.

Rusty had showed her the proper rituals for operating the lasgun. Within a few short minutes she had it shouldered and sighted properly. Rusty was about to tell her to hoof the trigger when she surprised him by blasting the first can to smithereens. All the gathered siblings had a good laugh at Combine's expense over Able's bout of "beginner's luck." This quickly changed, however, as she had continued to hit all of the remaining cans without missing once. Ten shots. Ten cans. When she had looked around, everypony's mouths were hanging open. Even her oldest brother, the ever-present wheat stalk had fallen clean out of Rusty's gaping muzzle.

Rusty had taken quite a liking to her after that, and had invited her on all of the future rifle practices. After a few years, she had become quite adept with the family lasgun. While her parents hadn't originally approved of it, she started following Rusty when he went on pest control runs.

Wild animals would often try to eat their crops or attack their livestock. They were a constant nuisance to both their family's as well as other farms. Smaller animals needed to be shot, rabbits and groundhogs could devastate a crop by eating roots and leaves and burrowing everywhere. Larger herbivores could also cause quite a bit of damage, but they were easy enough to scare away. A single shot from the lasgun would send most running far away, even if their inherent stupidity brought them back time and time again.

Predators... Predators were a different story entirely. They would rarely just walk in to attack the livestock. Often they would sneak in and make off with one or more small animals. Predators were difficult to deal with, but were still manageable... Until one day.

Able was trotting past the livestock area with Rusty, the same route they took they noticed a large ferocious creature attacking the chicken enclosure. Neither one knew what kind of horror this was. It was enormous canine monstrosity, black of fur and red of tooth and eye. The two froze as they watched the beast tear apart the fence as if it were made of tissue paper.

Rusty had shakily lifted the lasgun, and fired...

* * *

"I..." Able paused, the words catching in her throat. She looked up at Free Fall. "I don't really want to talk about it," she managed. "How about we just start sparring?"

"Fine," the cyan pegasus said. She seemed to do a little warmup run in place. Able found herself quite confused at the display. Confusion was replaced by adrenaline fueled clarity as the winged mare spontaneously launched herself though the air towards Able.

Able jumped backwards to avoid the cyan blur that was now attacking her. She found herself successfully parrying everything thrown her way despite Free Fall's blinding speed. The pegasus had obviously earned the rainbow lightning pins that she wore on her flight suit. Able realized that despite the extreme speed advantage that Free Fall had, she had almost no technique to her attacks. If it weren't for the speed at which Free Fall was moving, Able would have been able to easily block and counterattack everything. A little bit of training would make Free Fall one dangerous pegasus, but for now...

Free Fall hit the deck with a resounding thud.

As the pegasus groaned in pain, Able offered her a hoof.

"How," the cinnamon mare shook her head while she asked, "have you managed to work for Sophic for so long," she paused with exertion as she helped Free Fall to her hooves, "and yet you don't know any basic combat maneuvers?"

"Well," Free Fall said, "I think it might have something to do with the fact that I'm the pilot."

"You can't tell me that you've never had a chance to get any practice in," Able scoffed. "What about Tracks?"

"Oh, yeah, Tracks," she said in a sarcastic tone, "because getting him to do anything physical isn't a feat in and of itself." Free Fall looked at Able again. "I mean, don't get me wrong, he is really good at what he does... He just... doesn't do physical."

"Yeah," Able said thoughtfully, "I noticed that when I was trying to get this cargo hold reserved... And when I tried to get him to train with me..."

"Well," Free Fall said while dropping back into a semi-passable combat stance, "let's get back to it."

Able grinned and moved into an offensive stance. She was going to see Just how fast the pegasus could move.

They continued with the back and forth for many minutes. The sparring session was blurs of movement punctuated by Free Fall slamming into the deck plating or a pile of cargo containers. Able used the pauses to try and convey some of her knowledge of forms and technique to the speedy pegasus, but Free Fall just didn't seem to have the attention span or the proper instincts to actually pick anything up.

Able had just about given up on teaching the pegasus anything worthwhile when suddenly...

Free Fall kicked her right in the muzzle. Able staggered to the side, more than mildly surprised.

Free Fall let out a whoop of excitement for the hit as she bounced in place. "I think I'm getting better at this!" She said eagerly.

Able couldn't deny it, Free Fall had somehow started picking up on her motions. There was something else nagging at Able as well. While she was starting to slow down due to mild fatigue, Free Fall was not slowing down at all. If anything, she seemed to be getting faster. It was almost like she was on some kind of combat drug or something.

Able hadn't quite believed everything she had heard about Free Fall and her supposedly endless energy supply, especially after she had seen the pegasus winded after a mere six kilomare run. But that doesn't make any sense! Her mind screamed. How did she get winded by a short run yet have the stamina to keep doing this?

Able frowned. She felt her cheek twitch as the other mare continued to bounce. "How do you have so much energy?"

Free Fall shrugged and, with a small thrust from her wings, went into a hover a few hoof lengths from the ground.

It's suddenly hit Able, a little harder than Free Fall's hoof had. "You've been using your wings to move this whole time, haven't you?" Able felt stupid as she asked the question, and Free Fall's response confirmed it. Able had to control the urge to face-hoof at such an obvious oversight.

"Of course I have, I'm a pegasus," Free Fall replied.

* * *

Maybe she'd hit Able in the head harder than she'd thought. The earth pony mare seemed to have forgotten Free Fall had wings. And now she was holding her hoof to her head and shaking it back and forth...

"I didn't brain you too hard, did I?" Free Fall asked with genuine concern.

"No," Able began, "I just didn't figure your wings in. I should have. You use those practically all the time you aren't flying the Equila, right?"

"Well, yeah." Free Fall wasn't sure what Able was getting at.

"Think about it," Able said in the lecture voice she'd been using this whole session, "your wings are just starting to get warmed up. But I'm starting to get tired."

Free Fall was puzzled. "You're tired already? But we just started!"

Able's head trauma was apparently acting up again, her hoof had gone right back to between her eyes. "No, I'm not, I'm just..." She paused for a moment. "I want to tie you up."

Free Fall felt her eyebrows rise. "Say what?"

"Specifically your wings." Able gave her a look that said she was about to go into lecture mode again. "You're not picking the moves up because you're moving too fast. If you slow down a bit for the training here, I bet you'll start to pick it up... faster."

Free Fall cocked her head to the side in confusion. That didn't make any sense to her. How could going slow possibly help her learn faster? "I'll try it," she said skeptically, "but I really don't see how this is going to help me learn this stuff faster."

Able gave her a confident smile. "Trust me, once your muscles have memorized the motions, you'll be able to do them slow or fast. But we have to slow you down first. I can't teach a blur."

Free Fall let Able secure her utility belt around her wings. Free Fall gave a few experimental stretches to make sure it would keep her wings to her sides without making it so they would become cramped. She hadn't felt so clumsy since her foalhood. Without her wings for balance and little boosts to her speed she felt... "I'm like a voidcraft in an atmosphere," she said.

Able gave her a vacant look.

"No wings?" Free Fall said. Able continued to give her the blank expression. "Y'know what?," Free Fall said, "never mind. Let's get to this."

Free Fall went through the motions Able was showing her. She almost couldn't tolerate how slowly she was moving. It was like she was underwater, all of her movements felt sluggish, slow. She didn't know how other ponies could stand moving so slowly. Even pushing the rest of herself to her limits, she couldn't even come close to the speed she was accustomed to.

Free Fall realized that Able wasn't taking advantage of her slow speed as they sparred. If anything, she had slowed herself down to better let Free Fall pick up the moves easier. And, despite her original skepticism, Free Fall had to admit that she was starting to pick some of them up.

A shrill buzzer sounded through the cargo hold, causing both mares to stop mid grapple and stare at one of the vox speakers that was blaring out the noise. They disentangled from each other and waited for whatever announcement was going to be made.

"Attention all hooves, Everfree translation will occur in T minus ten minutes," a tinny voice announced over the vox speakers, "repeat, Everfree Translation will occur in T minus ten minutes."

"Finally," Free Fall found herself saying, "I thought we'd never translate."

Able frowned. "Yeah, now we get to look forward to two to six weeks of horrific nightmares," she added with a strong hint of sarcasm. She looked like she was in thought for a moment before she spoke again. "I'm surprised," she said, "I thought you would be more upset being cut off from Princess Luna. I know I get scared every time I get cut off from the Princess."

It was a well known fact that the Princess of the Night patrolled the dreams of all Equestrian citizens. Her presence there was all that prevented the Everfree from exerting its corrupting influence within the imaginations of ponies all over the galaxy.

It was also a well known fact that Luna's influence over pony dreams did not extend into the Everfree itself. Anypony in a vessel that had translated into the Everfree, even one protected by the strongest of Gallop fields, would be subjected to surreal and horrifying nightmares every time they closed their eyes.

Free Fall waved a hoof dismissively at Able's comment. "Nothing scares me."

Free Fall could feel the skepticism radiating off of Able. "Uh huh," Able said with a smirk and a roll of the eyes that said exactly what she thought about the statement.

Free Fall scowled at Able with what she hoped was a suitably intense stare. Her hopes were dashed as Able's smirk grew into a full mirthful grin.

"You," Free Fall stated, "are worse than Devoid."

Able continued to smile at her. It wasn't like Devoid's vicious mocking grin, there was camaraderie and a true joviality in it. Despite her best attempts, Free Fall found herself returning the expression. "Fine!" She exclaimed, throwing a hoof up in an overly dramatic fashion, "you got me! I'm scared of ducksays!"

"What's a ducksay?" The clueless cinnamon mare asked.

Free Fall smiled wide. "They say Quack!" She exclaimed, throwing both front hooves into the air for the big reveal.

She saw Able facehoof. Hard.

After Free Fall landed back on her front hooves, she pumped one in victory.

"T minus one minute to Everfree translation," said the tinny vox speaker.

Able shuddered. "I hate this part."

Free Fall gave her an encouraging pat on the withers. "It'll be fine," she said with as much reassurance as she could muster into her voice, "I've done this countless times, and you will too, working with Tracks."

"I've done this plenty of times," she said bitterly as the ten second countdown began, "it never gets better."

"Five," the voice said as Free Fall began to feel the queer sensation that accompanied the process of leaving the physical universe.

"Four." everything she saw became distorted, like through a constantly changing lens.

"Thhhhhhrrrrrreeeeeee." Sounds became distorted.

"Two." An intense pressure began to build in her head, like the worst sinus head cold she'd ever had.

"One." As the number was counted off, Free Fall felt the customary lurching sensation as the Accord completed the translation...

But something was wrong. She didn't hear the sound of the speakers announcing the successful translation to the Everfree.

She couldn't see, she couldn't hear, she couldn't feel...

No... That was wrong.

She saw, she heard, she felt, she smelled, she tasted...

Everything... Ever.

Somewhere in the infinity of sensation she was experiencing, some small part of her brain was not suffering from complete sensory overload. That part of her vaguely realized that Able had run over to where they had piled their gear and was screaming for a medic into her helmet's comm set. It also noticed the cyan mare's body that was thrashing around in a puddle of its own vomit and blood.

Huh, her mind thought, as it floated above her convulsing form, that looks painful.

Chapter 4: Timberwolves in Sheep's Clothing

They had been traveling for over a month now. The Accord's itinerary had been given to them by Commander Eschal before the charcoal stallion had valiantly run away. It had looked like it was going to be a two week trip to the edge of the Bashkir system, then two to six weeks in the Everfree, then another one to two weeks to get to Abyssinian Prime.

Tracks wasn't sure when the last time was that he'd felt this miserable. It didn't help that he had started the trip in the harrowing depths of tranquilizer withdrawal, or that he wasn't exactly a fan of space travel. The withdrawal insomnia was bad enough all on its own and, with the three extra weeks of practically no sleep, and what sleep there was being plagued by visions spawned by the nightmare fueling realm of the Everfree, he was both physically and mentally drained.

On top of everything else Free Fall had come down with the worst case of Everfree sickness he had ever seen. She needed to remain completely sedated in the Accord's medical bay for the entire time they were Evereal. Even now, two days since the Accord had gone sidereal, she was in a recovery bed.

But these things were only part of why Tracks wanted to prematurely terminate his own life force.

He was drenched in sweat and had managed to get a thick lather going on his coat. He could see the steam rising off of his own muzzle in the relatively cool space of the cargo bay. He was breathing hard enough that his sides hurt from the effort. He even had a froth starting up at the corners of his mouth. Every muscle in his body was on fire, every joint ached. He felt like he had tried to outgallop a maglev train only to be run over by it. He didn't like to consider himself out of shape, but that didn't change the fact that he probably was.

Tracks glared at his nemesis, the pony that had put him in this uncomfortable state. He attempted to move into a defensive stance. He was too slow.

Able's hoof smashed into Tracks' muzzle, sending him sprawling across the floor for what seemed like, and possibly could have been, the dozenth time in the last half hour. After a few moments, and the upside-down view of Able, he realized that he was lying on his back. Again. With a loud, exaggerated, although perhaps not that exaggerated, groan he rolled to right himself. He shakily rose to his hooves and uttered some colorful profanity as his legs gave out again and he fell to the floor.

Able facehoofed. "You have got to be kidding me." Griped the cinnamon earth pony. "You've been working with Sophic for over ten years and you can't even -"

"Give him a break, Sergeant." Devoid cheerfully interjected. Tracks groaned internally as Devoid came to his defense. Having Devoid verbally defend him never worked out in his favor. "Tracks has always been pretty pathetic in hoof-to-hoof combat." Tracks felt the red creeping to his face as Devoid continued to defend him. "Took me ten years to get him this good." Continued the jet-black unicorn, willfully oblivious to Tracks' rising embarrassment.

Tracks laid his head on his hooves in an effort to slow his breathing and to try to tune out the others. He found himself ruminating on how his only consolation was that nopony from the ship's crew was present, since they had reserved and sealed the relatively open cargo space for this small exercise session.

Able had, earlier in the trip, somehow convinced him that they needed access to an exercise space on a daily basis. He had, at first, said that it was unnecessary. Shortly after was when he had started to feel the vibrations through the deck plating. Able, who was directly across the hall from him, said it was probably from her having to canter in place, although he did have a sneaking suspicion that she had actually been galloping back and forth right outside his door. It was starting to happen constantly and was interrupting his reading, researching and, most importantly, sleeping. It had started to drive him batty.

He had eventually contacted Commander Eschal and made the request for a private space. The Commander had been very accommodating, he even had asked if that was all Tracks had wanted, The Commander had seemed to be under the impression that he had wanted a tour or something equally crazy. As far as Tracks was concerned, if you'd seen the insides on one spaceship, you'd seen them all. They all smelled the same too, like stale recycled air, with a faint hint of latrines and cooking fires.

Tracks had declined Able's frequent requests for a sparring partner, his primary excuse had been that Free Fall had been available and was much more eager to fill that role. But, with Free Fall laid up in the Accord's med bay, Able's requests had become more and more insistent. He had held Able off with the promise that Free Fall would be ready again once they went sidereal. Except she hadn't been, the med techs had said Free Fall would be in recovery another week. So finally Tracks had finally given in. Now, drenched and feeling like his entire body was about to fall apart, he found that he was greatly regretting his choice to acquiesce to her training request.

"- tell ya right now, you're not gonna get him to fight like that." Tracks lifted his head from the floor as he heard what Devoid was saying. He'd heard this little speech before, and it always ended up with him being hurt.

Tracks spoke up, mustering the most authoritative tone he could between wheezes. "Devoid, whatever you are planning, I am, most certainly, not in the mood."

"Not in the mood?" Devoid mocked. Tracks suddenly felt a lot more uncomfortable, although he wasn't sure how that could possibly be. "Do you honestly think the enemies of Equestria will wait for you to be." Devoid paused and leveled a murderous glare in his direction. "In. The. Mood?" The look was withering, causing Tracks' spine to feel like ice water and his stomach to involuntarily cramp.

Suddenly, Devoid was rocketing towards him. Tracks' eyes widened and he felt adrenaline begin to pump aggressively into his system. He quickly stumbled to his hooves and backpedaled as quickly as he could. It wasn't the speed with which Devoid had come at him that had provoked his, now in overdrive, fear response, nor had it been the look that was in his eyes. It was the glinting knife he was wielding in his mouth.

As Able watched on in what could only be described as utter shock, Tracks found himself diving out of the way of a wild swing. He rolled, barely avoiding the blade and landing on his back. Again. He saw movement behind him and he rolled to all fours in an attempt to escape the lunge. Tracks used the momentum from his roll to dodge the knife thrust and found himself floundering sideways in an attempt to get out of Devoid's swing radius. There was no respite however, he found himself desperately dodging swing after swing.

This was not the first time Devoid had decided to literally combat Tracks' lackadaisical approach to training. He would have thought more on how to convince Devoid to knock it off, but all of his mental effort was firmly focused towards avoiding that blade. He knew he couldn't keep dodging for too much longer, he was already exhausted. If Devoid was really trying to drive the "point" home by actually skewering him, then he needed to get the knife away from him.

Tracks waited for the next swing and feigned a dodge to the right. Devoid swung in the intended direction and Tracks started to move to hoof the blade out of his mouth. Devoid had definitely anticipated the feint, the swing itself was a misdirect. Tracks found himself pivoting on his back hooves in a desperate attempt to wrench his entire body out of the way of the counter-attack. The blade passed so close to his face he could see his own frantic reflection in its highly polished surface. He landed facing away from Devoid, placed all his weight on his fore-hooves and bucked for all he was worth. He was rewarded with a dull thud of hoof connecting with flesh and bone

Tracks heard the skittering sound of metal on metal and turned to see that Devoid had sprung backwards a few body lengths, and that the knife was sliding along the metal deck plating of the hangar. Tracks was tensed up, ready to go at it again if Devoid got it into his psychopathic mind to come at him again.

He didn't. "See?" Devoid turned and deadpanned to Able, who was still frozen in shock. "Just got to give him incenti -"

"What -" Tracks had violently interrupted, then had to pause for a breath. "- What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing wrong with me." Came the sardonic reply. "You're the one that seriously neglects their physical and combat training."

Tracks' mind was still riding adrenaline and not letting him think clearly. "Why did you use a real knife? You could have cut me!"

That stupid grin never left Devoid's face as he spoke. "Could have nothing, check your cheek there."

Lifting his right hoof to his face, Tracks was surprised to see it come away red. He could now feel the blood dribbling down his muzzle and off of his chin. His right eye started to twitch and he felt anger welling up inside him. "You. You. You!" Tracks was stuttering the word.

The grin widened. "I know, you think it's all about me, me, me. But the real lesson here is about -"

"You know I only had to put up with this before." Tracks said icily. "If you keep this up, I'm going to have to let you go."

"Pfeh." Came the snorted response, accompanied by a dismissive hoof. "Don't tempt me, I was fine working with -"

"Out an airlock." Tracks finished, eyes narrowed.

Devoid cocked his head to the side, grin lessening slightly. "Fine." He turned and sauntered away. "You're no fun since the promotion, Tracks." He said as he exited the cargo bay.

Tracks put his hoof back to his wet right cheek, attempting to probe the edges of the cut. He winced from the resulting pain. It was going to need micro-sutures. He turned to Able in hopes that he might be able to convince her to see his face shut. Instead, he noticed that she was eying the knife on the floor with a contemplative expression on her face.

"Don't even think about it." He said to her.

* * *

The bridge of the Accord was a testament to naval efficiency. While it appeared to be a chaotic mass of ponies going every-which-way, there was an underlying order at work. Everypony knew their assigned tasks and nopony wasted time with idle chitchat, not while Commander Sen was on the bridge at any rate.

The room was set out in a semicircle formed of four consoles that overlooked the massive holo-globe that claimed center stage. Each console was ponied by a single Pegasus officer who Sen had personally assigned to the post. On the left side was Shellback and Vector at the engineering and navigation consoles, respectively. To the right of those, at the gunnery and augury consoles, sat Double Arc and Air Wave.

Behind the consoles and towering over everything else in the room, including the holo-sphere, was the Captains dais. A set of elaborate steps lead from the base of the platform all the way up to the captains chair which Captain Tress spent most of her time in. Sen, like a good executive officer, spent most of his time making sure that she never had a reason to leave the Captain's seat.

As Sen was making his quarter hourly circuit of the bridge, he noticed Air Wave was waving a white hoof at him. Sen sighed internally when he saw the sight. Air Wave looked like a schola filly who was desperately trying to get the attention of their teacher. The image wasn't helped by the fact that she was propping up her waving forehoof with the other. The "ooh, ooh"s definitely weren't helping.

"Yes, Miss Air Wave?" Sen asked.

"I'm detecting vox traffic in-system on emergency frequencies!" The pegasus said with far too much cheer for such dire news. After a few moments of staring expectantly into Air Wave's blue eyes, which matched her mane, Sen sighed again, this time out loud.

"And?" He asked, quite unnecessarily as far as he was concerned.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, turning to her console to refresh her short attention span plagued memory. "It's a distress call. The message origin is about five hundred million kilomares bearing three-twenty by one-four. The message decodes as coming from the civilian freighter 'Ovis Aries.' She says that she took a severe impact from a rogue asteroid. She's crippled and only has minimal power. They're worried that the life support systems will fail before the system defense boats can get to them and evacuate the ship."

Sen felt his brow furrow as he heard the report. It was every naval pony's worst fear to be stranded on a crippled ship, watching helplessly as the air and supplies diminished. "I'll inform the Captain." He said as he turned to trot towards the Captain's throne. He stopped for a moment and turned back towards the energetic mare. "Good job, Air Wave." He turned away just as her face scrunched into squeedom.

As he approached the elevated platform, the greying tan mare who sat upon it saluted him. Sen returned the salute crisply and waited for the Captain to drop her hoof before he dared to lower his own.

"Captain." He began, always a stickler for protocol.

"Yes, Commander?" She asked, her cobalt eyes sparkling inquisitively.

"Air Wave has detected a distress call, civilian freighter. She's five hundred million out, bearing is forty degrees off our course to Abyssinian Prime." Sen had made sure to do the math on his trot over.

Sen saw Captain Tress put a hoof to chin in thought. Her other hoof rattled on one of the foreleg panels on her chair, and one of the many attached display panels came to life, showing the readings from Air Wave's console.

"This will take us about a day out of our way." Tress stated, her eyes locking with Sen's. He knew she wouldn't leave the Ovis Aries to the void, she was just stating the facts for consideration.

"That is still well within our estimated arrival time." Sen responded.

"Yes. Yes it is." She stated before intensifying her gaze. "But somepony will have to inform the Inquisition of our course change."

Sen felt his heart jump into his throat. He swallowed it back down.

The Inquisition team had been relatively harmless since they had boarded. Aside from the request for access to an open space for their training and for a medical bed for the duration of their pilot's Everfree sickness they had asked for nothing the entire journey. They had yet to request something that he could not or would not provide, so he had no idea how they would react. Everypony expected delays due to Everfree travel, it was uncontrollable. But a purposeful delay? Even with the lives of thousands of space faring ponies in the balance, the Inquisitors could simply decide that their mission took precedence and make everypony's lives very difficult.

"I'll inform them" Sen said with as much conviction as he could muster. Tress gave him another salute. He returned it sharply and spun to leave. As he made his way from the bridge he could hear Tress giving orders to Vector to change the Accord's course.

Sen knew the ship very well. He had lead several counter-boarding actions in his day, which had lead to him knowing all kinds of hiding places and shortcuts throughout the Accord. He used his knowledge of the latter to reach the guest quarters in under a quarter of an hour. He hoofed the door chime rune for the Interrogator's room.

After a few minutes had passed, Sen decided to check out the cargo bay he had reserved for the Inquisition group. Another few short minutes of trotting through the Accord's corridors brought him to the bay door, which was locked. He entered his own access codes and was surprised to see that they were declined. The bay had been sealed with indigo level codes and only an Inquisition agent could unlock them again.

Sen had just decided to leave and try the Interrogator's chambers again when he suddenly felt all of the hairs on his neck rise. He quickly spun around, coming face to face with the grinning jet-black unicorn. His vision was filled with those cold, cat-yellow eyes.

"Can I assist you, Commander?" He said in what Sen could only interpret as a mocking voice.

Sen had prepared himself for this pony's antics and did not flinch. Instead he narrowed his eyes and spoke flatly. "I must speak with the Interrogator. It is a matter of great importance"

The unicorn's grin twisted into a kind of smirk. "Must be very important for a Commander to come down." He teased.

Sen came to the realization that he utterly despised this pony. He found himself thinking of ways to accidentally make sure somepony was on the wrong side of an opening airlock. He was pretty sure that he would have to try another tactic but, after a few moments of continuing the stare-down, the unicorn turned to the bay doors and quickly tapped his hoof against the runed keypad.

"Far be it from me to keep you from being able to execute your duties, Commander." The unicorn drawled.

Sen ignored the unicorn's taunts. He was getting what he wanted.

The metal door slid open on well oiled runners, exposing the relatively open space of the cargo hold. Sen noticed, as he entered the bay, the pony he had been seeking for the last half hour. The Interrogator was sitting on his haunches and an earth pony mare Sen did not recognize was standing next to him. He assumed, correctly, that it was the pony he had seen in the carapace barding before. She seemed to be doing something to his face with one of her hooves.

As he approached, he saw that the Interrogator was not wearing his cloak. Sen found himself curious as to what kind of cutie mark a prospective Inquisitor would have and caught a glimpse of something he couldn't really place. It appeared to be a circular lens with a grip attached to it. His thoughts on the matter were cut short when his attention was grabbed by the large amount of blood on the Interrogator's face. The mare had a medical device in hoof and was sealing a rather nasty gash on the Interrogator's cheek.

"Am I... Interrupting something?" Sen asked.

Interrogator Tracks jumped at the voice and there was a tearing sound as a series of stitches were forcibly removed from his face. Sen, an experienced naval officer, who had worked with naval ratings and even press ganged crews in the past, was impressed by both the creativity and the vulgarity of the swearing that issued forth from the Interrogator's mouth. He held his hoof to his muzzle as fresh stream of blood cascaded down his face.

"Where? Why?" The Interrogator sputtered. "How did you get in here?" He finally managed to demand.

"I let him in." Sen jumped as the unicorn behind him spoke. He had completely forgotten he was behind him. He cursed himself, he knew his situational awareness was far better than this.

"Really, Devoid?" The Interrogator said, finally attaching a name to the jet-black pony in Sen's mind. "Wait, why are you here?"

"Well, I forgot my knife." Devoid said as he sauntered over to where the blade had fallen. He picked it up in his teeth and re-sheathed it. "And the Commander here said it was really important that he speak with you right away." He drawled while working his way back towards the cargo bay door.

The Interrogator's eyes narrowed at Devoid's retreating form. He then turned his attention back towards Sen. His face took on as affable an expression as his blood streaked face could manage. "Well, Commander, as long as you don't mind watching my face get stitched back together, you can tell me the important news right now, otherwise it'll be a few minutes."

Sen explained the reception of the distress signal and the Accord's change in course. As he spoke, the only noise other than his own voice was the humming of the medical device as it sealed the Interrogator's face. Tracks remained still and silent throughout Sen's report, the only change in his expression being the occasional wince when the suturing device pierced a nerve bundle. Sen finished talking about the same time that the cinnamon mare finished stitching.

Tracks looked Sen square in the eye. "You should have come to us first."

Sen felt his heart involuntarily constrict. "Well it is standard -" he stopped talking as the Interrogator raised a hoof.

"Commander..." The Interrogator paused and sighed. He closed his eyes and brought his hoof to the bridge of his muzzle. "Sen, can I call you Sen?" He said as he opened his Crimson eyes and looked into Sen's.

"Ok?" Sen said questioningly.

"Good, and you can call me Tracks." Sen wasn't sure where the Interrogator was going with this. "Sen, we need to trust each other a little better. Now, I trust you to run this ship and get me to where I need to go. I need to know that you actually trust me back. Trust me to not abandon thousands of stranded ponies unless hundreds of thousands or millions, even billions are at stake."

Sen was too old to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Especially about acceptable losses. Despite that, Sen saw the truth in the Interrogator's words. He grimaced. "I'll tell the Captain to set us back on course."

"What? Why?" The purple unicorn asked quizzically.

"You just said..." Sen paused as he went back over the conversation in his mind.

"I just said that you should have come to us first, just in case. If our mission was time sensitive and you tried to pull this try this 'we already changed course' nonsense, you could have found yourself in serious trouble." The Interogator paused for a long shuddering breath. Now that Sen had gotten a good long look at him he realized how terrible he looked, even accounting for the facial wound, more so than when he had first arrived.

"That being said," The Interrogator began. "I fully endorse the action to rescue the Ovis Aries. We at the Inquisition are all about saving the lives of loyal Equestrian citizens, regardless of the rumors."

Sen couldn't prevent the grin from coming to his face. He had thought that all Inquisition agents were like the ones he had met in the past, cruel, vindictive, single minded in the perception that their duties were more important than all others. Against all of his previous expectations, he found he was beginning to like Tracks.

* * *

The bridge was dimly lit, the only illumination came from the instrument panels. A rhythmic clacking could be heard from the shadows that enveloped the captain's throne. Two eyes, one gold, one green, glared with burning hatred down at the rest of the bridge.

"Captain?" The pony at the augur panel called to the throne.

The Captain pierced the pony with her eyes. The pony cowered back into his seat. The Captain smiled. She enjoyed making these ponies squirm. They weren't good for much else aside from eating.

The pathetic pony began to stammer in an attempt to justify his continued existence. "W-w-we j-j-just received a vox message from the Accord, My L-l-lord. T-t-they are en-en-en route to rescue us. Estimated t-t-time of arrival is thirty-one hours."

"Very good, pony." Came the screeching voice of the captain, which caused the pony to cringe. The plan had worked then. The communications array they had raided was working flawlessly and now they would be coming to her, like lambs to the slaughter. The Timber-Wolf class raider Tooth and Claw was hungry for combat since it had dispatched the Ovis Aries all those months ago. The Accord might be a better armed and armored equestrian naval frigate, but the Tooth and Claw would have surprise.

The Captain stood up from the chair, exposing the front half of her figure to what little light existed on the bridge. Red feathers and a black beak framed the mismatched eyes. Her forelegs were scaled and ended in wicked razor sharp talons. The fronts of a folded pain of wings could be seen trailing into the darkness surrounding the throne. With her back half remaining in shadow, the griffon captain began to screech orders at the bridge crew.

As the pitiful ponies ran around fearfully in front of her to carry out her orders, one stallion moved a little slower than the rest. Captain Rouge Claw's smile grew. She pounced on the poor pony, who released a terrified whinny. Her hind legs were lion paws that dug into the terrified stallion and pinned him in place. The pony let out a high pitched shriek that was cut short as she slashed at his throat with one of her foreclaws. The others watched in horrified, yet relieved, silence as she began to feed on the still struggling form.

The pony tasted like he looked, weak and malnourished. Still, she relished the flavor as she ate. She knew an Equestrian naval ship would hold much finer cuisine than this. As she chewed, she envisioned how the pathetic ponies of the Accord would drown in their own blood. She promised herself that she would eat the heart of their captain herself.

The struggles of the mortally wounded pony ended far too quickly for her liking. She never could stomach dead flesh. Unable to eat what remained of the body, she motioned for two ratings to drag the carcass away. The others quickly, wisely, returned to their tasks with renewed fervor. She climbed the dais to the captain's throne and submerged her gore soaked features in darkness. She absentmindedly read the chronometer on one of the panels. She was willing to wait thirty hours for her next meal.