Contingency Plan
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Contingency Plan

The repair drone scuttles off into the tiny accessway, dragging a small bundle of processor crystals, relays, and cables with it. As the airlock closes behind it, you sink to your haunches, leaning against the wall. You wipe a mix of sweat and grime off your face, sighing. "Three days, and I've never been more sure that I'm not cut out for this nerdy tech stuff."

"Aw, come on, Rainbow. You've been doin' just fine."

You roll your eyes. "Yeah, sure AJ, I can rip out parts and disconnect what you tell me to, but I don't even like that. Actually building some chunk of archanotech like this? No thanks." With a sigh, you change the subject. "How about you? I'm no fan of enclosed spaces, but it must be a little creepy knowing there's nothing but your stasis pod between you and the void…"

"Eh, I'm not worryin' about it." Applejack actually chuckles. "Heck, I've got enough shares in Stable-Tec that I know for a fact how tough these pods are. I'm safer in here than you and Pinkie right now."

"Heh. Guess it's a good thing all of the pods had command links, instead of just Twilight's."

"Well, it's a good thing all 'round that we ended up taking the Fennel Frond on this trip. If an ex-ast’roid surveyor like her is in such bad shape, one of those fancy, shiny new skippers would have been nuthin' but dust."

You gulp. "Yeah, and the switch to the Frond was a last-minute thing. We got really lucky…"

A tone suddenly sounds, indicating someone joining the voice chat. "Hey guys."

"Pinkie?"

"Yupperoonie," she replies, but she sounds incredibly unenthused (for her), and you wonder if her hair is flat.

"What's up, girl?"

"Let me get the others in."

More tones sound off. "Pinkie?" Twilight sounds absolutely exhausted, even through the synthetic reproduction. "What's the issue?"

"We're…going to need that contingency."

Rarity speaks up, "You mean...?"

"Yeah," Pinkie replies. "That drone you sent me was finally able to clear its way into the main junction. The primary power line is…well, practically gone. We're lucky it didn't take out the comm lines entirely when it vaporized."

"Oh dear."

Fluttershy chimes in, sounding almost as bad as Twilight, "A-and the secondary?"

"Gone," says Twilight, "or close enough. A large lateral segment of the ship got torn away. Part of that damage is why Applejack can't leave her pod."

"So…what," you ask, "we've got to get some spare power line out of storage?"

"Yeeees…" Pinkie drawls out "…except I already tried, and there is no spare. Looks like we're lucky they even left toolkits here when they refit the Frond for diplomatic missions."

"Umm…" you say, at a loss.

Rarity sighs. "And so we come to the contingency."

"What's this?" says Fluttershy.

"I–" Twilight hesitates. "Let me bring up an external camera."

You squint up at the picture that appears on your screen. "Uhhh…what am I looking at?"

The view is of a dimly lit bulk in space. The larger part of it appears to have a vague, incomplete ring shape, or maybe something like an old-school shoe, but with a rounded cross section, and various bulbous projections. A number of blue-green beams of light run from the underside of the ring down towards the barren surface of the planet below. To one side of the ring, a lighter-colored shape is connected, looking out of place.

"A ship?" you venture.

"Two, actually. Maybe." Twilight huffs. "I'm not sure what you'd call the ring. Distance makes it deceiving, but it's actually huge, over five kilometers across. Maybe ship, maybe space station."

You focus on the beams. "What's with the light show?"

Rarity chimes in, "As far as we can tell, it's some sort of gravitational tethering system. It seems to be holding its place in orbit much like our inertial anchors—quite a feat given its size and low altitude. Hard to tell how long it's been there."

Twilight continues, "The little off-color thing on the side is definitely a ship, bigger than the Frond actually, and it has a very different design from the ring—it even has chemical engines. It doesn't fit the configuration of modern or historical ships from any known fleet. Also…" The view changes, to a close-up of the lighter-grey shape. It's clearly damaged, showing several gaping holes and sheared-off cuts. "…it appears to have taken quite a bit of damage, not dissimilar to what we've experienced."

Your head tilts, and you ask, "Okay, soooo what? Is the big ringy thingy what brought us here? Some kind of weapon?"

"Unknown," Twilight responds, "but something like that would explain why we ended up in an orbit, and so close to them. Neither is showing significant power emissions, except for the ring's tethers, and most of that power seems to come from the ground. However, I don't know what the heck that ring is made out of, but it's basically opaque to the sensors we've got left, so I can't be sure of much. I am still showing tiny bits of outgassing from the ship, so there are probably still large pressurized sections."

"Are there…could there be survivors?" Fluttershy doesn't sound particularly hopeful.

"I doubt it," Twilight says gently. "The radiological readings suggest a fairly primitive nuclear fusion reactor, but one that hasn't been running for…at least a couple of decades, maybe as long as a century."

Applejack asks, "Can a fusion reactor even run a void drive?"

"Oh, sure!" Pinkie replies. "The hard bit is getting the exotic matter, and pretty much everyone uses solar forges like we do, even though it's a lot more dangerous around an uncontrolled star. Once you've got the matter lenses, you just—"

"The point," Twilight interjects, "is that a ship with a fusion reactor is primitive enough that I wouldn't expect anything like our stasis pods. Maybe some sort of cryosleep, but that would take power to maintain that I'm just not seeing. I don't think there's anyone left from the small ship…and if there were crew on the ring, I don't see why they'd leave the small ship just…stuck to their side like that."

You blink, your tired mind putting things together, and then chuckle weakly. "Alright, I get it. Contingency plan. We need parts. There's a half-wrecked alien ship with no survivors…aaand I'm the one with long-range EVA experience."

A gasp from Fluttershy. "What? Twilight!"

"We don't have a choice, Fluttershy. I don't like it either, but…"

"We’re really in a bind here,” Rarity comments. “The stasis pods could keep five of us alive indefinitely, and maybe on our own we can repair the ship enough to support the sixth for a long time as well, but…"

"…But," Pinkie adds quietly, "in their void bubbles, no ship will hear a standard radio distress transmission. It has to be a tachyon beam, and we just don't have the components to get those systems up."

You feel a little stirring of excitement in your gut. "I understand, girls. Heck, sounds fun!" You smile. "Better than sitting here tearing apart more components."

There's just a synthesized sigh from Fluttershy, and you can imagine her shaking her head.

A chuckle from AJ. "You never change, Rainbow."

Twilight says, "I've been fiddling with our orbit since we noticed the structures. We're almost within return-trip EVA range now, and catching up. From the outgassing it even looks like a spacesuit might be able to use their atmosphere to make more breathable air for you, though we won't count on that."

You nod. "Okay, what am I looking for?"

"I'll load the manifest to your suit PDA, but the most important thing is cabling. We need something to run power from the reactor to the comm system and transmitters. Everything else will just add to our survivability and comfort until rescue arrives."

Applejack adds, "If'n you can find some metal to patch the hull near me, I could get out of here and help Pinkie directly. Might speed things up."

"Good idea," Rarity responds. "I'll send a drone to get more precise scans of the breach."

"For now, Rainbow, you should get some rest," Twilight says quietly. "We've been working you pretty hard, and you're not in stasis. Some sleep is a good idea before you go outside."

You smirk. "Alright, mom."

A grumpy huff is her only response.

"Actually, we should all get some sleep," murmurs Fluttershy. "Stasis or not, our minds are at work. And even you have your limits, Pinkie."

"Y-yeah…" Pinkie suddenly sounds exhausted. "…I don't have my usual pile of sugar here to keep me going…these emergency rations are no fun at all." You can agree with that…it's like eating dry, chalky mud.

"Good good," Rarity says briskly. "Dashie and Pinkie can get some sleep, and you too, Twilight—you've been running your mind ragged. The rest of us in stasis will get some rest later."

"I. Er." Twilight makes some strangled sounds, then sighs. "Yeah, I guess you're right...and we’ve at least got things stable, for now."

"I'll wake you all if there's any problem," Rarity assures her.

You all say your 'goodnights', and the chat breaks up. You wander back to your stasis pod, and flop down onto the cushion. You can't stop thinking, though! What will you find on the ships? Could there be aliens? Bodies? Ray guns and fantastical technologies? At this rate, you'll never get to sl—

Jump
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Jump

You press the spatial grip onto the wrist of your left wing, and wait for it to activate, wrapping around the leading edge and spreading a subtle, glowing field over the rest of the wing. A second grip goes onto the right wing. You flex the wing as the field turns on, feeling the old, creaking injury that led to your retirement from the Wonderbolts. For some reason it never heals, when much worse injuries don't even leave a scar.

You wiggle around to settle into your high-maneuverability EVA suit, and prod the PDA on the right foreleg of it, waking the suit up. A bit of static hits your vision as it syncs to your visual cortex, and then a bunch of nonsense appears, scrolling past your eyes, diagnostics, sensor readings, etc., before it settles on a simple status overlay. Then, even as you watch, a target is added to the display, presumably centered on the smaller alien ship. You focus your attention on the target, and a tag pops up showing the distance to it—currently just over 500 meters.

The helmet slips over your head, and latches click into place. Finally, you triple-check the seals on your suit: helmet to neck, around each leg, and at the wing ports. There is, of course, a whole mess of archanotech woven throughout the thing that should ensure proper seals, but it never hurts to be careful; decompression is definitely not a cool way to go. A prod of the PDA and the whole shebang self-fits and seals, tightening around your joints, shrinking to be hide-tight in some areas, and then you wince as it does other, less-polite things at your rear end.

When everything checks out, you nod. "Alright Twi, looks like everything's good to go. How long do you think radio contact will hold for?"

The alicorn's voice has an odd echo, audible both in and through the helmet. "There's really no way to be sure, Rainbow. The transceiver we're using is getting plenty of power from the batteries Rarity scrounged up, but we don't even know what exactly the ships are made of. I wouldn't count on any sort of contact once you head inside, though I'm hopeful."

"Aight, Twi. Ready as I'll ever be."

"Decompressing your room now…"

A hiss is audible through the helmet…and then it isn't. A small countdown appears in the corner of your vision, showing about four hours of breathing remaining. A few parts of the suit puff outwards slightly, and you wiggle and hop around a bit to check your flexibility—seems about right from what you remember from training. You look around, then poke the data terminal screen to turn it off, and head over to the door.

"…Alright, I think that's as good as the pumps are going to get it." The voice is now only audible from a point somewhere seemingly behind and to your left.

You prod the keypad to open the door, and walk a short way down the hall, coming to a larger and more elaborate door. 'Airlock 3', reads the sign overhead. As you enter, a slight tingle passes over you. You feel the artificial gravity leave your body even as your hooves began to stick to the floor.

From the storage lockers, you grab a couple of bags made of fine carbon fiber mesh, and fold them up into the suit's small saddlebag-style flank pockets. Then you take a 1000-meter spool of thin, high-strength fiber line, a bundle of mixed carabiners, and a light toolkit. Finally, you wrap a couple of dark black bands around your forelegs, close to the hoof—the one on the right stops just short of the suit's PDA. A quick cycling of the airlock, and you step out onto the Frond's hull.

The planet you're orbiting appears utterly dead. There's a bit of pockmarking from large craters, but the orangish haze at the visible limb of the planet implies there's some sort of clear, cloudless atmosphere. There are no significant geographical features in the area you can see. Why in the world did the ringy aliens set up their giant freaky station here? With that thought, you look up. The station—or whatever it is—takes up most of your overhead field of view.

From this distance, you can see details. There are a number of bulges along the length of it, as well as a few projecting outwards. Separate rooms? If so, some of them are alone larger than the Frond. It has an unsettling…almost organic look, with smooth curves overlaid with what you'd assumed were lines of hull plating, but now, closer, you're not so sure. You shift your focus to the target icon, which is indeed centered on the smaller ship that was docked to the ring.

"Everything looks good on our end, Rainbow." Twilight sounds pensive. "I've got us as close to a relative stop as I can."

You grin. "Alright, egghead."

She can't roll her eyes, but you know she wants to. You attach one of the carabiners to the end of the fiber line, and then click it onto a ring close to the edge of the airlock door. The spool of fiber attaches neatly to a loop on the barrel of your suit.

"Dive line secured. Catch you on the flip side!"

You aim yourself at the small ship, and crouch down on your hind legs, muscles tensed. You poke the PDA, turning off the hoof grips, and…jump.

The Sensation of Falling
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The Sensation of Falling

It's always strange, those first few moments. It was ignorable when your boots were stuck to the floor, but you know that now, technically, you are falling. It feels like falling. Your pegasus instincts scream at you to flap, push upwards, save yourself from splattering onto the ground…but what’s upwards, anyway? There is no ground, not in any close, meaningful sense. You hold yourself stiff, stifling those instincts, until training kicks in, and the moment passes.

You sigh harshly, and relax a little, looking around. The fiber line unspools neatly behind you with no resistance, using some tiny internal magic. Your aim was true, and you are coasting directly towards the small ship at a leisurely rate. You squint at it, and find yourself asking, "Hey, Twi?"

"What's up, Rainbow?"

"Well…I know you're pretty sure there isn't anyone alive over there, but what if you're wrong? Wouldn't we be stealing parts from them?"

Twilight sighs. "Well, I mean technically, I guess. But obviously they weren't able to save themselves, so if we can get a beacon working, the rescue can pick them up too! Seems win-win to me."

"S-sure." You chew your lip. "What if getting the parts we need kills them?"

There's a shocked silence, then, "I…I don't know. We'll have to talk it over, try to find alternatives. It's…triage at that point, I guess." She falls silent for a moment, then adds, "Sorry, just not really the sort of question I expect from you, Rainbow."

"Yeah, I dunno." You look up at the planet, and ponder. She's right, but… "I guess EVAs have always make me sort of maudlin and thinky. Nothing to do but coast and be gloomy. Our situation, the dead planet, and that creepy ring don't help."

Twilight gives you a weak laugh. "Just try to stay optimistic, then. No point lingering on bad what-ifs."

You shrug. "Eh, you know me. I'll be fine once I get to work."

You lazily wave your wings, and the spatial grips give you traction in the void. It's strange, another thing that needs lots of training to overcome instinct: a feeling like waving your wings underwater, but water that disappears once you stop flapping. Your actions turn your body, and you get a good look at what's left of the Fennel Frond.

At least a third of the ship is just…gone. There are fewer holes than in the alien ship, a testament to the strength and stability of Equestrian engineering, but the same sort of oddly smooth, flat, shearing damage, like the sharpest knife in the universe had just lopped off whole regions. The ship normally looked a bit like a mushroom, with a thick, hundred-meter wide domed cap of over a hundred tons of ice to the fore, originally for absorbing incoming debris strikes when the ship was cruising around between asteroids. The rest of the ship spread out under that protection, sensors and comm arrays peeking out around the cap, crew quarters, the harmonic reactor, and other essentials squarely in the middle. Now, it's missing entire sections—most of them storage, but also the emergency beacon, all of the projecting thrust assemblies, and most of the ice cap and void drive. Your mind…wants to pull some sort of sense out of it, see a shape that had been cut away, but Pinkie had already tried to explain that it was some rotated hyper…thingy. Whatever. You understand now why Twilight doubted the poor Frond could ever be made spaceworthy again.

You ask, "How are Flutters and Pinkie doing?"

"Pinkie is fine. Fluttershy is still just acclimating to the suit. You know you pegasi and your claustrophobia."

"Yeaaah. I'm a little surprised she agreed to play catcher with Pinkie."

"Well, she's the best choice for it. As long as Pinkie's in a suit, Fluttershy isn't needed to coordinate life support."

"Sure, but you didn't see her the first time I tried to get her to go for a little walk on the outside of Serenity Station. I swear the only reason she didn't lose her lunch was that she was too busy doing that frozen-in-terror thing she does. Didn't stop mumbling about the 'vasty deeps' for a few days afterwards."

Twilight chuckled weakly. "I, uh, wasn't much better the few times I've tried. But you know Fluttershy—she comes through when things really matter."

"Yeah."

You look back up at the alien ship, only 100 meters away now. Up close, it looks almost dangerous. It's long—far longer than in either other dimension. Half of its engines have been sheared off, along with an unknowable amount of ship on what you arbitrarily decide is the underside, the side you are approaching. The front appears to be mostly intact, and is covered in a bunch of projecting spars, some of which you're sure have to have been weapons. The body of the ship appears to have been torqued by its violent ejection into normal space, as the entire thing seems a little warped. This probably contributed to the multiple fractures and ruptures that are visible on the side facing away from the ring. It's really kind of amazing that there are still pressurized sections. You're within a hundred meters now, and you can see a stencil of some sort on the forward side…probably the ship's name.

A slight static hiss is your forewarning, before Twilight speaks again. "Rainbow, can you see any good entry points?"

"Hmm…" You eye the side of the ship. "I dunno, Twi. Those breaches on the side look kinda sketchy, like I'd just end up in crawl spaces or tangled in structural braces. I think I'll aim for the underside. Looks like a whole bunch of it got cut away, so there should be an internal door, elevator shaft, something like that." You gently flap your wings to redirect your course.

"Sounds good. Remember, let me know before you go through any doors, so we can see how the radio holds up."

"Yup." You're getting a clearer view of the underside now. There are the remains of what might have been some kind of large equipment or cargo bay, with big crane things, and storage compartments along the side. Unfortunately, they're all empty—probably blown away when the bay decompressed.

Towards the aft of the ship, you can see a large tunnel heading up. An elevator shaft? You angle yourself towards it, and see the underside of the elevator itself—a large one, probably for cargo, it could fit a couple dozen ponies if they really crammed in. Thankfully, the elevator is one floor up, leaving a single pressure door available to you. As you approach, your suit chimes, and a faint outline appears around the edges of the door, with a text callout: 'Warning: outgassing detected. Pressurized area beyond.'

"Alright, found an elevator door with air beyond." You look around the area, and it just takes a minute to find a small, well-secured bar of metal in the crawl space below the door—it looks like it was once part of a larger structure, but now it's thin enough for you to clip another carabiner on. You detach the spool from your suit, and hook it onto the carabiner, then tap one end three times—the magic pulses red, and the line is pulled tight by an auto-tensioner. "Dive line secure on this end. Checking out the door."

You land on the door, and activate your hoof grips, as well as the suit's vibration sensors. You then pound a hoof on the door, and wait. The spectrogram shows echoes of the noise you made, and then…nothing. "Nobody home." You examine the door, and find a lever surrounded by various symbols.

It's a challenge getting a grip on it: beyond it obviously not being designed for hooves, there are a couple of quirky safety mechanisms protecting it. After a couple minutes of fiddling, you manage to get a grip with a pry bar out of your toolkit, and with a shrug, give it a yank.

The door shudders as hidden vents blow a gale of air out laterally, protecting you from the worst of it. You still feel the pressure trying to suck you away from the door as you crouch low to the surface, still clinging to the lever. You idly notice that your suit talismans are managing to extract oxygen and a small amount of argon from the air. Lots of useless nitrogen, though. After a minute or so, the torrent ceases, and you stand up.

A quick pry gets the door to slide open enough for you to get your hooves on it, and before too long, you've got a half-meter gap to shine your light through. It's a hallway, of course. Not even emergency lighting on. You can see doors along it still hissing air out—not pressure doors, but they're trying. Otherwise, it appears to be empty.

You clear your throat. "Twilight?"

"How's it going, Rainbow?"

"I've got the door open. Going to go in, check out the rooms off the hall."

"Alright, go for it."

You brace your back against the door frame, and push the door open a little more, then head inside.

Acquisition
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Acquisition

"We're ready down here, Dashie!" Pinkie's waving, space-suited form is barely visible on the dimly lit hull of the Frond. Fluttershy is crouched next to her, only recognizable by the yellow wings clamped to her body.

"Y-yeah. Send it down."

"Alrighty." You check the carabiner one more time, both where it attaches to the dive line and where it's epoxied to a metal table that was floating around in one of the rooms. Then you brace yourself against the hull, and carefully give the table a shove, sending it drifting down the line. "There it goes. Hope that's good enough to patch AJ's room up." After a minute, you clip a mesh bag onto the line, and give its contents—batteries, some wires and tools, and several data chips and electronic devices—a similar shove. "And there goes the rest of it."

You take an awkward seat, legs hanging out the elevator door, as you watch the salvage head towards the Frond. Maybe you're mimicking a posture like these aliens would have had. From the chairs, tables, and a few pictures scattered around the rooms, they were bipedal, and rather tall compared to you. You wonder if you'll find bodies. Then you shake your head, and glance at your suit's visual overlay. "Hey, Twi?"

"Yes, Rainbow?"

"I've only got about an hour of air left, but I'm not tired yet. The suit seemed to agree with you about the air being usable, so I think I'm going to close this door, and open that next pressure door past the galley." You brace for the reaction.

"Are y–" She pauses…long enough for you to wonder if the radio has dropped out. "Okay. If you think it's safe."

"Eh, safe. What's safe, in our situation? I think it's worth a peek." You shrug. "I don't lose much if it's a bust, and I still haven't seen anything that'll work for power."

"Good luck, then." A sigh. "From the response, it looks like the radio will only work in some of the out-facing rooms near the hull. Try to check in when you can, okay?"

"Yup."

You rise, and squint at the door. It takes a little finagling, but it moves a little easier than it did earlier, and you manage to get it closed. There's a similar lever on this side, and you give it a pull, hoping it works logically, as a toggle.

"You still there, Twilight?"

Silence. You are alone.

Pacing back up the hall, you pass by the rooms you've already checked out. Mostly large rooms with bunks, and a distinctly military feel. A storage room, with a lot of things that just have to be weapons. A few extremely cramped offices. A gym. Through the door at the end of the hall is a galley, one that could have sat many dozens. You’d checked the stored food out earlier, and it’s technically edible, though terribly stale. You’d sent a couple of dessicated snack cakes back to Pinkie, for...scientific purposes.

You try to imagine this place lit by more than your suit and a few magical flares. Brightly lit, clean grey metal corridors. People walking around, eating, working. Were they much different from ponies? Of course, you're certain this was a military vessel now, and it's daunting to think about the kind of people that would have fielded such a large, well-equipped force—and this was just one ship.

At the other end of the galley is a pressure door, with the same emergency releases as on the elevator door. You cycle it, the released air rattling around some of the kitchen equipment, and when it stops, the suit reads some external pressure. It still wouldn't be fun to pop your helmet, but you'd survive for a little while, and your air gauge reverses its direction as the suit starts to magically acquire what you need.

There's another hallway beyond. As in the aft hallway, each door is a challenge—both because there’s no emergency release, and because each one releases a blast of higher-pressure air once you pry it open. This section is different, though. You're no Twilight, but it looks like laboratories of some sort. They didn't seem to see much use, some of them still having equipment covered in sealed plastic. One of the rooms looks more like a medbay, with an exam table, scanner, bandages and a stockpile of various fluids. They even had…were those tongue depressors? These aliens had tongues? The thought leaves you oddly disconcerted. The medbay seems much more well-used, and recently, but still no bodies.

The pressure door at the end leads to another, smaller elevator shaft, and this elevator is stuck much higher. You push yourself upward, and pass four more decks, stopping at the fifth. After a squint down at the lower decks, you decide higher is better, and open the door just below the elevator. The air blows by, as usual, if with a little less force, but then your suit starts flashing warnings. Methane? CO2? What happened in there?

You pry the door open enough to get a look.

Scorch Marks
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Extra-Vehicular Activity

Scorch Marks

In the thin beam of light you see scorch marks on the floor, and it looks like some of the overhead lights are broken. They would probably be sparking ominously if there was any power left. You toss a flare into the room, and nothing happens, so you shove the door open more, and cautiously enter.

It's a disaster area. It looks like it was some sort of large meeting hall, or perhaps muster area, large enough to hold at least a hundred ponies. The few bits of furniture were stacked against the three doors to the fore and sides, apparently welded or glued into place. It didn't seem to do much good, as to your fore and your right, the doors have been smashed open, right through the barricades. You throw a few more flares, more thoroughly lighting the room, and you can see burn marks on the floor and walls, what might be long-dried blood, and even places where the deck plating looks melted. Your pulse quickens a bit, even though it's clear that whatever happened here happened a very long time ago.

There's still no bodies. A small part of you wants to turn tail and run back to the ship right now, but the rest of you stomps on that part. This isn't a sightseeing trip—you need that cabling. You swallow the lump in your throat, and move on through the door opposite the elevator. It's a double door, and this hallway is wider than the last. Some of the doors to the sides are ripped open, just like the doors in the muster hall, and you can see further evidence of fighting and killing in here. You orient yourself, and enter the first open door on your left. It's a much more spacious office, with a fancy desk, a small window to the outside, and what looks like the remains of a potted plant.

You ignore the blood stains on the floor, plop down in the squeaky desk chair, and spin it around. There's a tablet computer lying on the desk, and you pocket it. Then, you tap on your PDA. "Twilight?"

"Oh! Hello, Rainbow dear!" It was Rarity. "Twilight is helping Pinkie with some reactor issues, so we get to talk! How are things going over there?"

You smile, despite the circumstance. "Hey Rares. It's…okay, I guess. I'm up on the seventh deck from the bottom, and it looks like there was some serious fighting up here. Can't tell between who and what…there's no bodies, just damage."

"Oh dear. Do…you think you're in any danger?"

"Nah." You smirk, even though she can't see it. "This all happened ages ago, it's no biggie."

"Hmm, okay, if you say so." She makes some soft humming noises which you're surprised the voice synthesizer bothered with. "I suppose it's understandable."

"Huh?" You wonder if you missed something.

"Well, I mean, from what you said this ship could carry hundreds of soldiers, right?"

You nod, then remember she can't see you. "Uh, yeah. Potentially, I mean. So far I haven't seen any, uh, remains."

"Okay. What I mean is, with that many people, stranded here with nowhere to go, I suppose they could easily break up into factions, start fighting over resources, and so on." She sighed. "Nasty business, but I'm not sure I'd even expect ponies to do any better in that sort of desperate situation."

"Hmm." You look around the office, and find yourself staring at the shriveled husk of a potted plant. "I dunno. I don't think that's what happened here. I can't say why, exactly, but…it just feels off." You add, with a grumble, "I wish I could find out more, but right now I'm struggling just to find somewhere that might have this cabling we need."

"Oh!" she exclaims. "That's right! I have a gift for youuu~"

You blink. "Wat."

"Well, technically it's a gift from Twilight, but since she's not here, I get to give it to you!" She falls silent for a moment. "Okay, so, her note says, and I quote, 'Dear Rainbow Dash, I'm providing you with a semiotic analyzer overlay. Even if we had full power, we don't have nearly the computational capabilities here to fully translate the alien language; however, on one of the PDAs you retrieved, there was a very detailed breakdown of a set of general symbols that are used on the ship, and I was able to work up a HUD overlay to make use of these! I hope this helps, Twilight Sparkle.'" Rarity paused. "I can't believe she actually signed it."

You stare into space for a moment—then, "Wat."

"Hmm, indeed. She goes into a bit more detail in a postscript, but let me see…"

You just wait, swinging your legs in the chair, wishing you had a soda. And a bag of chips. And a warm, fuzzy pony to share them with.

"Weeell," she continues, "I guess there was a sort of translation dictionary for these symbols. It gave their meaning in multiple languages that the aliens apparently use…over two dozen languages, my my." Another pause, then she coughs. "Anyway, it went basic enough that she was able to determine the meanings of several of these symbols, as well as their basic number system. So, she cooked up a little widget for your suit's PDA to overlay the meaning onto the symbols."

"Oh. Uhh…neat?" you say, tapping your hooves together.

"Mhmm, well, there are apparently symbols for 'maintenance' and 'engineering', sooo…"

That makes you sit upright. "Oh! Well that's definitely helpful."

"Indeed. I'll just send this over, won't take a minute." She starts humming again.

Text starts scrolling by in the corner of your hud. You focus on it, but it's a bunch of gobbledegook about APIs and injections. When it stops, you don't notice anything different. "Uhhh, I don't see anything. How do I know if it's working?"

"Oh, well, I suppose you'll just have to find some symbols, see if it knows them."

You try to facehoof, and your still-grippy hoof pad sticks to your helmet. With a grunt, you peel it off.

"Um, Dashie? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, uh, it's fine." You feel your cheeks heating. "Break time's over, I guess. Thanks, Rares, and thank Twilight for me."

"No problem at all, love. Good luck!" She closes the channel.

"Yeah…" you mutter "…luck would be nice."

Reaction
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Reaction

'Engineering', the tiny callout on your HUD says. It’s pointing at a small, grey-on-white symbol with a red outline forming a rounded square. Another symbol shows 'maintenance', there's an 'airlock' one, and two green-on-white ones show 'food?' and 'stimulant beverage?'. "Well, it's working," you mutter, "kinda."

You'd returned to the elevator shaft, and moved downward until the engineering callout popped up, on what the overlay is also telling you is Deck 5. You glance up towards Deck 3, which held the ‘cryovaults’, but then recall what Twilight said about the lack of power.

A glance to the usual lever pops up symbols for 'warning', 'bulkhead door', and 'pressurized, artificial gravity'. You sigh. "Artificial gravity would be nice."

You go through the usual motions to unseal the door, and—

Are sucked downwards as air begins to howl through the pressure vents. You forgot about the breaches! The force of the fall spreads a spiderweb of hairline cracks across your faceplate, and you drag yourself off of your face. Angling yourself, you slam a hoof down on the lever to reset it. A few frantic yanks re-seat your prybar, and with a heave of your entire body, you manage to jerk the lever back outward, resealing the door.

You can’t flop, but you go limp, dangling from the door by one hoof as you catch your breath. The cracks on your faceplate slowly seal up, until you can’t see any sign of them; however, you do notice the ‘UEC’ meter in your display creep below 50%, as the suit uses up power to fix itself. Finally, after a couple of minutes, you look grumpily at the door, and launch yourself upward. It’s the work of a good quarter-hour to close both the Deck 2 door up top, and the Deck 7 door below, isolating the elevator shaft. Finally, you return to Deck 5, note your remaining three hours of breathing time, and break the seals, this time prepared for the decompression.

As the wind fades, you crack the door, and your spirits rise as you find yourself in a long, compartmentalized storage area. There has to be cable in here, right?

Right?

...

Right.

Over two hours later, you’ve learned that this is indeed where a large amount of extra wiring and cabling was stored. You’ve also learned that everything these aliens used for high-voltage is all-around terrible, at least after a long time in a vacuum. Anything with the right material and a large enough gauge to work as a main power line on the Frond is coated in what is now a brittle foam that turns to dust with the slightest nudge. You try to unspool a length of it, pondering ways it could be used without insulation, but the wire itself cracks apart under a bit of a stress, and you toss a chunk of it aside in frustration.

With a big sigh, you stretch yourself out, your spine popping in a few places. You did at least find a battery pack with a bit of charge remaining, and your Universal Energetic Charge meter is now back at 73%. Since you’re back down to worrisome levels of air, you’re going to need that charge so the filtering talismans can do their job once you get back into a pressurized area. First, though…

You squint at the door opposite the elevator. You’d wondered at first why the storage room is depressurized, as there’s no visible damage in here, but then you saw the pressure door was left half-open. You shuffle through, and find yourself in a short chamber, with another half-open pressure door right in front of you. To your left—the ship’s starboard—are the remains of a large, multipart door, obviously the airlock. The inner door is bent and warped, and what you can see of the outer door is in even worse shape. You can see the lower edge of a long, vertical tear in the outer hull, probably ripped open as a result of the structural torquing you noticed on your approach, and the tear wanders off upward and aftward.

You pass through the second pressure door, entering a wide hallway. In the first starboard room, you see the edge of the hull tear, and the contents of some sort of metal workshop all displaced towards the tear by the violent decompression. The other rooms are in better shape, but have still been in vacuum for years. In one of them, you do spot what looks like a desiccated donut sitting oddly undisturbed on a plate. Your mouth waters a little, but all you can do is suck down some weakly orange-flavored fluid from your suit and move along.

At the end of the hall lies the large pressure door to the cargo elevator shaft. It’s cracked just enough to admit you (or presumably one of the aliens). Just below is the roof of the cargo elevator, and above you can see a clear path until about Deck 3, where there appears to be some damage. You nervously bite your lip—at the door across the shaft, there are two new symbols, with associated callouts: ‘high radioactivity’, and ‘radiation-shielded area’. The door is sealed, but your HUD isn't popping up any outgassing warnings. Nothing happens when you gingerly pop the emergency lever, so you crack the door and check it out.

Now this is an engineering bay! Pipes! Wires! Catwalks! There's even airlocked ladders up and down to the next decks! Pinkie would be right at home here. You? You're just hoping you don't blow anything up. Also, is that a corpse?

You pick your way past some cables snaking along the floor, to a pretty important looking control console. There's a spacesuit slumped against the side, and as you come around, you can see the remains inside. They must have had a leak, or perhaps popped the seals themselves at the end, because the body looks freeze-dried by vacuum. You suppress a shiver. "So, what was so important that you, and you alone, came down here, dude?"

Checking around the body, you find a tablet, which you slip into your saddlebags. "Maybe you left a note, eh?"

You look around more, but find nothing terribly interesting, at least nothing you understand. There is, however, a rather large battery pack next to the corpse's console. It looks like it was jury-rigged into it at some point, but one terminal is disconnected now. A quick test shows it still carries a significant charge.

You're about to charge your suit, when something stops you. You look around again, then back at the body, the console, and the battery. You squint, and shake your head. "This is stupid."

With a bit of sparking and fizzling, you hook the console up.

Swiftly, a bunch of stuff flows across the screen, none of it understandable. You're peering at it, trying to figure out if you could somehow record it onto your PDA, when it goes black, except for a long white rectangle. Then a little bit more of it turns white, on the left of the bar.

And then, the whole room shakes.

Wake-Up Call
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Wake-Up Call

The shudder rips two of your hooves' grips right off the floor, and you give your wings a flick to return to all fours. A deep vibration is rolling through the deck plating, and as you look up, the white bar on the screen grows a little bit more, and a red dot appears below it.

"I take it back!" you shout to nobody in particular.

You reach out and kick the connector off the battery terminal, but nothing seems to change. The bar is more actively growing now. Some of the wires haphazardly slung overhead are sparking in places where the desiccated insulation has fallen away. It doesn't seem to matter, as the bar keeps growing and the vibration too, shifting to a higher pitch, but adding in harmonics.

Then, a new noise. Click click click. In the corner of your display, a radiation warning pops up. You feel bits of yourself trying to panic, but clamp down on it, and look at the actual level. It's not bad. You're fine, for now.

You look to the door, but then snort, and move back to the battery. A couple of kicks remove the other connector, and a bit of fiddling gets your suit hooked up, the charge climbing swiftly. 75…76…77. The radiation level is steady, and the vibrations seem to be smoothing out. Then, you blink and your eyes water, as the overhead lights come on. A glance shows the suit charging has slowed, and you pull away. 93%, not bad at all.

To avoid the wires on the floor, you gently hop upwards, and your wings stabilize you a couple of hoofs off the floor. A flick sends you back to the door, and out. The radiation level drops a bit, and after a moment's consideration, you shove the door closed, and re-lock it.

You can still, weakly, feel the vibration of the awakened fusion reactor through every surface you touch. You look around the elevator shaft, then recall the symbols two floors above, and move up to Deck 3. 'Cryogenic vault' and 'airlock' say the two symbols. You gently rest your head against the door.

The Frond still needs power cables, and everything on this ship is useless, or in-use and immovable. The other airlock, the one facing to the portside of the ship, that would be the one docked to the ring. It's your only hope, now. You look at the door again, and see that it's pressurized beyond. A glance at the 45 minutes of air you have left, and you dive down, shutting and sealing the door to the breached Deck 5. Then, you unseal Deck 3, toss in a few flares, and enter.

Your estimate of the war-making potential of this ship rises even higher. There are hundreds of cryo-stasis pods on this deck, rows and rows of them…though oddly, it looks like there's space and hookups for hundreds more, but they're just empty hatches in the floor. The pods are divided into rows by lines of small lockers, though there are some larger lockers too—probably the privilege of rank. Near the middle of the room, a bunch of them have fallen over, blocking your view of the midship pressure door. Every pod you can see is empty. You're just pondering checking some of the lockers, when a familiar static sounds in your ear.

"Rainbow? Rainbow Dash, are you there?!" Twilight's voice has that tone to it.

"Yeah, I'm here Twi." You move starboard to try to strengthen the signal. "I'm guessing you're seeing some activity from over there."

"That's putting it mildly! Are you okay? What happened?"

"Eh, I took a little radiation when the reactor turned on, but it wasn't that intense." You shrug. "As to what happened, I have no idea. There was a console, and a battery. I hooked them up. Everything started waking up."

"That's crazy!" She pauses, then adds, "And why did you just hook a random battery up to a mysterious console?!"

"Uhhh…" you tap your forehooves together "…they were there?"

She makes no noise, but you can feel her mentally facehoof. Finally, she sighs. "Someone must have set the ship up to automatically restart, given that little bit of power. It's actually pretty impressive that it works, after so long."

"Yeah, uh, I probably ran into that 'someone'." You gulp. "There was a body in the reactor control room. Looked like he put quite a bit of work in before he kicked it. I think he popped the seals on his suit when he was done, let the vacuum take him."

"How strange…"

"Hey, uh, Twi?"

"Yes?"

You look around nervously. "I'm not in danger of ship-go-kablooey here, am I?"

"Oh! Uhh." She pauses long enough that you start to get nervous, but then she finally replies. "Nnnoooo. I think you're okay. From the radiological emissions, it's a form of muon-catalyzed fusion. So there's certainly the potential for a catastrophic overload, but it would take both jamming it into a high-output mode, and disabling the cooling system and all the safety systems. Right now, it looks like the reaction is stabilizing to a good level."

You think about what she said. "That's…slightly reassuring?"

"It's really confusing that someone would set it up to do this, then just…turn everything off and die."

"Yet another mystery."

You blink as some of the overhead lights come on. It lights some areas of the vault better, but in other ones there's still darkness, or just flickering. There's…something strange in the shadows being cast behind a nearby locker.

Oblivious to this, Twilight asks, "So, what now? I expect having some power should make your search of the ship easier."

"Ennh." You shake your head. "It would have, but I've already found where they would have stored most of what we could use." You sigh. "The cables here are useless, Twi."

"What?"

You explain the state of the cabling in the engineering storage section.

"Ugh." She humms softly as she thinks. "That means anything in use on the ship is probably bad, not to mention now it has live current running through it."

"Pretty much. Sooo, I'm heading to the port airlock now. Should be able to cross over to the ring…hopefully there's something usable there."

She sighs. "I wish you didn't have to. I…that thing…ugh, it creeps me out."

"You too?"

"Yeah. I can't even give a specific reason for it, it just looks unsettling."

"I get it." You ponder what you saw on your approach. "This ship is military, and looks a little dangerous, sure, but I think I could have a chat with these guys. The ring just looks actually alien."

"Mmm," Twilight responds. "You know, I've always thought we've been pretty lucky out here."

"Lucky? What do you mean?"

"Well, so far every other people or cooperative we've met has been…maybe not friendly, but understandable to some degree. We can negotiate, find common ground, usually figure out diplomacy, safe passage, and trade. At the very least, agree to leave each other alone. There's no rule or law of nature that says a sapient species has to be that way…that they have to be relatable at all."

A shiver crawls up your spine as you ask, "And if somebody weren't relatable?"

She sighs. "At the worst, it comes back to pure pre-sapient nature. Survival of the fittest."

"Heh." You look down at the black bands near your forehooves. "Suddenly I feel underqualified and underequipped."

"Oh, uhhh…" She chuckles weakly. "I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about!"

"Riiight." You try to put as much deadpan into your voice as possible.

She coughs. "Sorry. Guess I got a little gloomy there. But, as we agreed, it's very unlikely that anybody's over there."

"Eh, it's fine." You blink, as a couple of the overhead lights start to shake back and forth. Then you notice the air pressure has started to rise. "Huh…looks like life support just kicked in. Got air coming in through the ducts."

"Really?" She hummed. "Too bad we'd need a full translation to mess with their computers; otherwise, we could probably modify their air mix and survive over there better than on the Frond."

"Ugh." You crinkle your nose. "Even with it messed up, I'd rather be on the Frond. Only one body so far, but this place still feels like a tomb."

"Yeah, I suppose."

You take a bracing breath, then nod. "Alright. I'm going to head on over."

"I doubt we'll be able to get any sort of contact while you're over there—that thing's hull is pretty impermeable. Be careful, Rainbow."

"Careful is my middle name!"

"Wha? I thought it was–" you cut the connection, smirking.

You stretch, and hop from hoof to hoof for a moment, getting your blood flowing. A big, creepy alien space station. What's the big deal? As you start moving, you remember the weird shadow. You look again, and decide that it seems oddly curved for this room full of sharp angles, so you creep around the corner, trying to see what's casting a curved shadow.

It's…an egg?

Openings
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Openings

At least, it's shaped like an egg. Pretty big, though—several times larger than even the largest dragon egg you've ever seen. It's a dark greenish-grey color, and has a strange, shiny look to it, somewhat dulled by age. It appears to be stuck to the ground by some sort of…goo? Twilight would probably have a better description for it, but it looks like dried snot. The snot is all over the floor in this tight intersection of paths between lockers, and you notice it's all over one set of lockers, really built up. Almost looks like some sort of nest.

The top of the egg looks like it was cut open in a cross, and peeled back. You gingerly peer over the edge, but it's empty. The light poke of a hoof sends cracks through the egg's surface—obviously it's been here, empty, for a long time. You huff in confusion, then start making your way through the maze of lockers, to the pressure door.

As you get closer, you find more evidence of fighting. Scorch marks again, and the same weird melting of metal. What kind of crazy weapons do these guys use, and on an already damaged spaceship? In some places the floor is melted straight through into the crawl spaces below, revealing a surprisingly large gap between this deck and the one below. There's all sorts of machinery, as well as tubes and wires to support the cryotubes, though most of what you can see is pitted and scarred by the melt damage. Unlike on Deck 2, there's broken and empty weapons lying around, and as you approach the open pressure door, you even see what looks like a partially-melted knife.

As you pass through the pressure door, you look back, and evaluate. This…looks like a fight to the end. Like they were trying to get to this airlock. What for?

The doors are in the same configuration as for the starboard airlock. The lights in the airlock chamber were all shot up in the fighting, and the pressure door forward is sealed and locked. You glance through the tiny window, but it looks like most of the lights up there are dead as well, though one big one is visible near the other side of the room…it looks like another cryovault. Finally, you turn to the airlock, shining your light on it.

Right on the door are the 'airlock' and 'hazard' symbols. To the right is what appears to be the control panel, with a bunch of rectangular buttons, some of them lit, and three bigger, round buttons. Most of it is labeled with text, though there are a few symbols above, on a small screen: the 'pressurized with artificial gravity' symbol is showing on the left, then tiny version of the 'airlock' symbol, and then just the 'pressurized' symbol. You stare it at, then the door, then back at the panel.

You shrug. The three big buttons are red, green, and black. "Okay. Uhh…green means go, right?" You push the button.

Nothing.

"Red then?" Poke.

Nada.

You snort at the panel, then stare at the buttons, and listlessly poke a few more. You blink, then look at the in-ship pressure doors. Next to each is a small control panel, now active. The only difference between the two is that one button is lit on the closed door, and not on the open, and a different button is the opposite.

Okay… You tap your helmet against the wall a couple of times, then stare at the lit button on the closed door, find the similarly marked button on the airlock panel, and push it.

Zip.

With a growl, you smack the big red button again.

Zilch…wait. That wasn't always there. On the small screen above the panel, a couple of characters have appeared over the tiny airlock symbol. The characters change, and suddenly your overlay pops up, showing '60'. Then it changes to '59'. Then '58'. Oh. At '50', two yellow lights over the airlock start flashing, and you back away.

It's only because of that distance that you see a flicker of movement through the window of the forward pressure door.

It was just the flashing lights, right?

You see another flicker…something moving in front of the light in there.

In a flash, you slink back through the open door, then peek back around the corner, looking for more movement through the window. You can still see the countdown. '29'…'28'…

The pressure door unseals, the emergency release lever on this side popping out just as its counterpart on the other side was pulled.

You back away, past a row of lockers, and duck around the corner. Why are you so afraid? You're not sure. I'm sure nothing is alive over there, Rainbow Dash. Right, Twilight. You keep backing up, putting more of the room between you and the door, until your rump bumps into something, and you jerk around.

Another egg. Okay, no big deal, except—

It's open, like the other, but something's different. You poke it, and it doesn't crumble. It feels soft, disturbingly so. You peek above the edge, and it's empty, but still…moist.

You hear what must be the airlock doors opening, and as you glance that way, a shadow flashes by at the corner of your sight. You look around wildly for it. You can't see anything, but hear a skittering noise.

You start to move away, to go, uh, somewhere—anywhere—when you see the movement again. You turn, but it's too late, and something wraps itself around your helmet.

Fear of Failure
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Fear of Failure

TOO MANY LEGS! GET AWAY!!

It's on your helmet, it has a lot of legs, and it's all squishy and gross against your faceplate, and there's something wrapping around the neck of your suit, too. You frantically try to push it off, but it won't budge.

You try to calm down—it's fine, you're safe in your suit, protected by—

You see the squishy bits start secreting some sort of fluid, and suddenly your overlay is DANGER flashing CORROSIVE SUBSTANCE red warnings REPAIR SYSTEM OVERLOAD all over.

You struggle with whatever it is, trying to push it off again, trying to get at whatever is around your neck, but it's not moving, it's just getting tighter!

FACEPLATE INTEGRITY CRITICAL. REPLACEMENT MATERIALS REQUIRED.

RIGHT THEN. You shake your head, and blindly key in a sequence on your PDA. 'Charged' flashes in one of the few empty spots in your overlay, and you slam the black bands on your fetlocks against your faceplate.

There's a bluish flash, and the grip around your head and neck loosens. You shove the limp creature away from the faceplate.

REMOVE HELMET IMMEDIATELY.

Okay, okay! You pull the thing's tail from around your neck, and quickly crack the latches on the helmet. Air rushes out, the pressure outside still low, and the melted faceplate starts to sag, so you push the helmet off, chucking it away.

You gasp for air. It's thin, and terribly cold, but you've survived on thinner air at high altitude. Of course, that was Equus air.

It's fine. You grab at one of the pockets on your suit, but then you see it. The…spider creature. It's still moving, despite having taken a full-power zap that would have killed some ponies. Its legs flick weakly, and the tail starts to move.

You glance around frantically, then gingerly grab the thing by its tail. Floating over to one of the small lockers, you fiddle with the latch until it opens, and chuck the little monster inside. You curl the tail up after it, then slam the locker door closed, latching it. Ha ha! Nice try! Rainbow Dash won't be beaten by some creepy little space spi—

Your ears quiver as you hear a noise you recognize now, even without your helmet on, even at a distance: the forward pressure door being pried open. You lightly kick off the floor, until you're hovering near the ceiling, over the lockers. You're getting a little lightheaded from the foreign atmosphere, but you shake it off, and crawl over top of the rows of lockers and cryotubes until you reach a spot, surrounded by broken lights, where you can peek over, towards the door. You can just see the forward door, through the aft. The yellow lights are still flashing, providing the only real light in the other room, apart from the flickering shadows being cast from the distant light behind the opening door.

The door is moving hesitantly, in jerks. You get the feeling whoever is opening it has plenty of strength, but isn't really sure what they're doing. It opens a crack, then a hoofwidth, then a bit more, but then it stops. You squint into the dim flashing, looking for…for what?

Its movement is slow—so slow you almost miss it at first. Predatory, like a hunting griffon. Two long digits—maybe better described as claws—reach around the door frame. The skin—if that is skin—is all greys and blacks, and shiny, looking either polished or wet, and you can't tell which. The claws are knobbly, looking like they contain bones and sinew, just without any sort of fat or other padding. The claws grip onto the frame, and then something pushes against the door, smoothly sliding it open. It crawls into the room, clinging to the wall.

Between the shadows, the flickering lights, and the darkness of the alien creature, you only perceive it in parts. Much of it is like the claws, seeming emaciated. There are ribbed regions, looking even more skeletal. In contrast, there seems to be a smooth, bulbously rounded head, though you can't see any eyes. It swivels this, and you're not sure if it's testing the air, or looking around, or hearing, or all of the above—

Then it opens its mouth, and there are so many teeth.

Your heart is beating so fast, from fear and the lack of proper air, and you instinctively push yourself away from the monster in a near panic. Your hoof slips off your perch, and slaps into a locker, making a hollow, metallic bang. The corner of your eye sees the creature's head point your way, even as you're jerking around, kicking from locker to locker, trying to put more distance between you and it.

You can hear it making its own way closer, and fast. You force yourself to slow down, your vision now edged with black streamers, and you move another few rows more silently. Finally, you spot one of the sets of larger lockers.

Glancing over your shoulder, you quickly but carefully unlatch it, and find it not empty, but with enough room for a terrified, spacesuited pony, sans helmet. You slip inside, and gently close the door.

Your breaths are coming in desperate pants now, and it feels like your heart is going to explode. Before you can try to take action, you hear the sound of crumpling metal. You bite your hoof, and slow your breaths down around it, the blackness now crawling inwards. As the sounds draw closer, you peer with narrowing tunnel vision through the slits in the door of the locker.

Finally, it's right on top of you. You feel the walls of your hiding spot shudder, and those teeth appear, as the creature's head sweeps into view. You're sure it will hear your heartbeat any moment, and you wonder if it would be better to be eaten by this thing, or just silently die from the bad air. It raises a claw, and—

A loud, frantic metallic banging sounds from the other end of the room. What the...?

The creature pivots away, and then you hear and feel it pounce off of the lockers, heading towards the new noise.

You wait a single moment, then drop your hoof, gasping desperately. You fumble at the suit pocket, and try to let training take over. A small bundle of rubber and plastic tubing falls out, and you pull it apart. Loop around the muzzle, behind the mouth. Tubes deep in the nostrils—it should hurt, but you can't feel anything at this point. The other end of the tubes run down, into the neck of the suit, and press against the forward wall. Finally, you jab almost blindly at the PDA. Emergency. Open-air breather. Commit.

The tubes pull tight down your neck as the suit absorbs the ends. Moments later, you feel a light pressure in your sinuses, and you breathe through your nose, forcing yourself to take slow, deep breaths. In.........out. In.........out. In.........out. Slowly at first, then faster, the darkness recedes. You start to feel how much your nose hurts from you jamming the tubes in, and it's a good pain.

You give yourself a moment—only one—to stabilize. You can still hear the banging at a distance. Gingerly, you open the locker, and peek out, left, right, up. Nothing. You step out. As you move to close the locker, you look inside again, and pause.

Reaching out a hoof, you grasp at a photograph, printed on thick paper. Two of the biped aliens are there, holding each other, looking at the camera. They look like they're grimacing, but maybe that's a normal smile for them. You stare at them for a long moment, then shake your head. Obviously you're not quite over almost asphyxiating. You squint at the photo, then on impulse slide it into the pocket the breather tubes came out of. You notice a small cloth bag that was under the photo, and you grab that and stuff it in your saddlebags. Another glance at the locker's contents, and you close it.

You're looking around, trying to decide what to do next, when—bang—a louder, slower banging sounds from where the original noise drew the monster away. With a wince, you—bang—look around, then up. There, on the ceiling, you notice a metal grating—an air duct? How cliched. It looks—bang—just barely big enough for one of the natives of this ship, and so fairly roomy for you. With a hop and a flick of your wings, you drift up towards the ceiling. You keep an eye on the—bang—direction of the noise, but you can't be seen from there.

You—bang—reach the grate, and wedge your pry bar into it. You close your eyes, and with a—bang—jerk, you pull the grating off, any sound from it covered up nicely. You slip into the air duct, then pull the rectangular grate in after you, setting it aside so it won't fall anywhere.

The metal of the duct is flimsy and light, so you avoid putting much force on it, using your wings to drift your way around. After a couple of turns, you find yourself closer to the noises, which have switched to the sound of claws on metal. You look down through a grate, and see the creature clawing at the same locker you had shoved the spider thingy into. Finally, it claws the latch right off, and the locker pops open, the freaky space spider jumping out at the freaky space monster. The spider grabs onto its face, and scuttles around, lightly wrapping its tail around the monster's shoulders. The monster turns, and crawls off, back towards the locker you hid in.

A shudder runs down your back as you continue down the ducts, finally making your way into a junction that you're pretty sure lies right over the airlock room. There's no additional vertical space, but it widens up a little, the duct walls seem thicker, and there's a large fan blowing air through the chamber, out both forward and aft. To one side of the fan is a vertical duct with a ladder, presumably connecting to the adjacent decks.

You sigh, and sink down on the other side of the fan. The breeze from it is warm, so the ship's life-support systems are really kicking in now. Another, full-body shudder runs through you, and you rub your face in your hooves and try to shake the terror of the last few minutes. Why was that spider thing going for your face? How could it secrete acid like that, strong enough to eat through a laminated single-crystal faceplate with a magical repair system backing it? And it's in league with that monster?

You let yourself unravel for a moment, quietly, then pull back, pushing your panic down. A few deep breaths…a few more. Okay. You'll scream and bawl like a foal for a few days when you get somewhere safe, but not now.

How are you doing physically? Self-assessment time… You think you're reasonably recovered from breathing too much alien air. Your wings are fine. You're…hungry?

You blink, and realize you don't even know how long it's been since you ate something. You ate on the Frond, right? Once or twice? The rations were awful though, so you put it off…and you didn't bring anything along, because you'd only be out here for about four hours…right? You facehoof…and feel a grimy mix of dust and grease rub off your hoof, onto your face. Ugh. You rub at the spot, and look at the shiny metal wall next to you, seeing a dark smear on your forehead.

Before you start cursing at stuff, you pull out the bag you got from the locker, and check out the contents. It's a bunch of random stuff. There's a metal tool that would probably be really neat if you had hands or claws instead of hooves. A tablet computer. A little rectangular metal thingy with some detailed etching on the outside. Another rectangle, this one with a tiny (dead) screen—a wire is plugged into it, which ends in what looks like almost like headphones, but the position…oh duh, alien ears. Some sort of radio or music player, then. Your nose wrinkles as you pull the cap off an oblong tube—it's filled with something waxy and pungent. Gross. There's a little tin, and when you pop the top of that off, it has some dark grease that doesn't seem to smell at all. A comb with two broken teeth. A book, with a soft, worn binding, and dried out, fragile pages. The faded cover shows one alien holding another as they stare into each other's eyes, and the background looks like a…sailing ship? Weird. The last item is a hat. You blink. It's…nearly identical to a typical baseball cap from back home. It even has a logo: a partial circle, open to the right, with a stylized creature that looks kinda like a bear inside.

You glare at the small pile of stuff, then look up at your 'mirror' again. Hmm… You put most of the stuff back into your saddlebags, then open the tin, and dip a hoof into the stuff inside. It's not terribly thick, and seems just a little gritty, but barely reflects any light at all. You take a closer sniff, and just get a vague smell of some sort of oil you don't recognize.

With a shrug, you smear some of it onto your face. It spreads pretty well, and doesn't leave you feeling too awful, although you doubt you'll feel the same way if you end up having to wear it until a rescue ship arrives. You spread it over your entire face, and down your neck, using your improvised mirror to try to be as thorough as possible. Finally, you tuck as much of your mane as you can together, and trap it under the baseball cap, brim tilted backwards, as is the way of your people (The Cool). You smear a little more of the grease onto the bit of your mane that's still visible between hat and suit neck.

A final perusal in the mirror confirms it: you look like a complete mess. You'll also be a heck of a lot more stealthy in dark places. You can't put the grease on your wings without seriously killing your flight control, but at least now you can look around corners without standing out so badly. You wipe the residue off on some of the shinier areas of your suit, then ponder the suit itself. A few taps of the PDA and the suit surface ripples, and fades from off-white to a brownish grey pretty similar to the goop you just smeared yourself with. Good thing a function designed to make you more visible in an emergency can do just the opposite. You're just starting to feel accomplished when your stomach growls at you.

"Well, I just have to dodge an unknown number of alien monsters, find materials to repair or replace my helmet's faceplate, find some cabling that doesn't suck, and get it back to the ship. Then I can have some…nutritious, chalky mud for dinner."

You pout, and take a long pull of orangey water from your suit. With a sigh, you pocket the last of your stuff, and then stretch a little. Onward!

Humidity
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Humidity

Moving to the other side of the junction, you find the air vent into the central room adjacent to the airlock. The vent cover is missing, probably blown off in the fight years ago, and you edge over, peering out into the darkness. The yellow lights are still flashing in an annoying manner, but they at least give you a little bit of a view into the distance. The room—and what you can see beyond—appears to be empty.

You slip through the vent, and quickly duck around the upper frame of the inner airlock door, into the airlock itself. It's fairly clean, and there are several lockers where it looks like space suits would have been stored, but they're all empty now. Beyond, you get your first look into the ring.

The room beyond appears to function very similarly as an airlock, but that's about it for similarities. The ring's lighting seems to be working, but it casts only a very dim glow that doesn't even fully light the airlock, much less the space beyond. The ring's insides look entirely in keeping with its outsides—that is, creepy. If anything, it's worse inside, with structural supports having a ribbed look, as if you were inside a corpse, or maybe some giant beast's intestines.

You shake off that thought, and enter the ring's airlock.

As you pass through, you feel something settle over you, and you realize you're entering a gravity field. You look around with a huff, then softly flap back upward. A few taps on your PDA increases the grip of your hooves, and you firmly plant yourself upside down on the ceiling. You give silent thanks that your hoof grips are magical instead of the old magnetic ones, since you're not even sure the slightly squishy surface you're on would work with magnets.

Continuing into the ring, you peer beyond the airlock, into the main structure. A long, wide—almost wastefully wide, you think—corridor runs down axis of the ring. It's quite dark as far down as you can see, but there's enough light for you to pick out some other doorways. As you creep across the threshold into the ring proper, you're hit by a wave of warm humidity, which carries with it a smell that sends a shiver down your spine.

What is that? It's got the iron tang of rust, or blood, but there's something else. You take a deep breath, and the memory that springs to mind is the time you were flying through the Everfree—just the outskirts—on a hot day, just to stay in the shade on your way home from visiting Hoofington. You curved around a tree, and suddenly, your reactions far too slow, found yourself covered in spider webs…and spiders. With a shudder, you force that memory back down. You hadn't even noticed a smell that day as you were too busy freaking out, but apparently, here, now, you're smelling spiders.

Gritting your teeth, you move on towards the center of the corridor's ceiling. Your overlay flashes a few messages about the air, and it seems like ship's aliens might have been able to breathe in here without their suits. It's far closer to their ship's atmosphere than yours.

You mark the airlock in your overlay, then wander up and down the hall a bit, but you don't see any sign of aliens, monsters, or anything. With a shrug, you drop to the floor, enter the door nearest the airlock, and find…nothing much. It kinda gives you a vibe like a lab, pony or alien, but seems barren. There are little urns sitting on a table in one corner, but you know better than to go poking anything in a lab when you're just looking for some power cable.

Leaving that room, you look up and down the hall. So many doors. Your wings droop a bit, as you move on to the next one.

...

You rest your head against the side of a bench—one of the few flat, metallic surfaces on this horror show of a station. You've been through dozens of rooms. Nothing even vaguely cable-like has shown up. It's like these guys have some sort of wireless power thing going on, because even the obvious standalone bits of equipment don't have power cords. Though several of the rooms have been locked, with no obvious entry method, the open ones seem to be randomly arranged. Here's a place with food (scan: inedible). Oh hey, next to it one conveniently finds the lab where we keep horrible be-tentacled monstrosities! At least, some of them, since there's more down the hall, next to the room full of creepy overgrown plants covered in what look like eyeballs!

You're still heebeein' your jeebees after that one, even a half-hour later. Thankfully none of what you've found has been alive. You guess even the jungle-like humidity isn't enough to keep plants going for decades without food 'n stuff. Whatever eyeball-plants eat.

With a sigh, you push yourself back upright and leave this particular empty storage room. You're coming up on the center of the incomplete ring shape now, where the two long arms connect to a slightly thicker, straight section. If the ship were built logically, you'd expect this to be where engineering, support, and other basic systems were located, but at this point you don't know what to think. It could just end up being a big ice cream parlor.

Unnnh. Ice cream.

Your stomach growls, and you swallow some drool as you walk up to the next bulkhead. They've been spaced regularly along the corridor—all with pressure doors wide open, just like this one, but there is some difference here. The wall looks at least two, maybe even three times thicker, and there's a second bulkhead with a similarly thick wall only five meters away. The door in the second bulkhead appears to have been closed at some point, but it shows melting damage very similar to what you saw on the ship, except that the materials here seem to be a bit more resistant to the acid. You prod tentatively at the melted edges, but they're hard, the acid long gone.

You're passing through the half-meter thick door, noting a difference in the walls and the lighting, when a logo appears covering much of your overlay. One that is drilled into the head of any and all who enter the Equestrian space program, and that one then hopes to never see again. As you duck back into the door, the symbol shrinks to fill a smaller—but still obnoxiously large—portion of your field of view, and below it is red text.

PSA Class-A Material Detected: Antimatter

PSA Instructional Film #429-Q
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PSA Instructional Film #429-Q

Antimatter—and You!

As the title faded in, the usual oddly perky Perseus Safety Accord instructional film background music kicked in. The picture flickered like an old film projector movie—bafflingly incongruous with the top-of-the-line holoprojector showing it, and with the setting of a room on a ridiculously advanced multi-billion-bit space station.

As the title faded, a clear, authoritative, and slightly nerdy voice that everyone in the room was exhaustingly familiar with started speaking over various diagrams, pictures, and slides full of equations.

"Antimatter! What is it? How dangerous is it? What should I do if I detect some?"

"Of the three hundred and twenty seven Class-A hazardous materials, machines, artifacts, and spatiotemporal configurations, antimatter is one of the most blatantly dangerous and difficult to manage!"

A slide showing a pony in a lab coat, peering into a test tube. Several in the audience snorted.

"Antimatter is just like normal matter, having the same properties and quantum numbers except for the charge. All known Category-3 and above sapient civilizations have at least a basic knowledge of antimatter and its properties, as it is a natural product of the high-energy experiments which eventually lead to the development of advanced power and space travel technologies."

Now a cartoon of two particles, one with a blue plus, the other with a red minus, as they collided.

"The danger of antimatter lies in the fact that, when normal particles and antiparticles make contact, they annihilate, releasing particles and radiation. Because mass contains enormous amounts of energy, the results of even a small antimatter annihilation event can be catastrophic!"

Back to the 'scientist', but now he was holding a broken, empty test tube, and looked dazed and comically singed.

"Just one gram of antimatter is a city-scale threat! A kilogram can obliterate a megacity and render large areas of a continent uninhabitable! And just a thousand kilograms presents a planetary-scale threat!"

A terribly animated view of a planet exploding.

"But what of peaceful uses, you might ask? Well, the developments required to produce and contain large amounts of antimatter also immediately make available far safer methods of energy storage and propulsion! It is for this reason the Accord specifies that the production and storage of greater than nanogram quantities of antimatter is confined to only a very few tightly regulated and extremely secure research facilities.”

A brief shot of some fancy lab with lasers and other nonsense—probably a fake set.

“What to do if an Accord-compliant sensor system notifies you that antimatter has been detected?”

The next slide was a bulleted list, made redundant by the narrator reading it out loud.

“Step 1: Don’t Panic! Step 2: Contact an Accord officer or outpost through the best available channel. Step 3: Track if possible, but do not engage or agitate!”

Now a grainy film that was believable as real, of a ship being fired upon by a number of smaller vessels.

“Remember: avoid confrontation at all costs! Even with stable exotic-matter containment systems, a single excessive shock or vacuum breach can lead to complete annihilation!”

A shot connected with the ship, and there was just enough time resolution to see a blast of light expand outward from the it. Then, nothing.

“For the safety of you and any innocent bystanders, confrontation of suspected antimatter producers, smugglers, buyers, or users must be handled by trained Accord officers, accompanied by full wings of SCP ships of class Kappa or above!”

Now a cheesy shot of somepony in an Accord uniform standing next to the ‘scientist’, both of them grinning and waving like idiots. This faded to the usual ending: an animated PSA logo weaving around on the screen, as the music came to a bright, cheerful conclusion.

“Unregulated antimatter is one of the most dangerous materials for all citizens of the Perseus Arm! But together, we can keep each other safe!”

Fin.

Tread Lightly
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Tread Lightly

You blink, and shake your head, wondering what kind of questionably legal magi-memetic hooks the PSA must put in those videos to make the memory so clear.

"Yeah, right," you mutter. "I’ll just call up my local Accord officer, no biggie."

Pulling up the alert details, you feel your heart skip a beat. 'Hybrid exotic matter vacuum chamber detected. Emissions consistent with 0.92 kg antimatter ±13%.' Despite the video memory being so vivid, you know more about antimatter from random chats with Twilight and Pinkie. Enough to understand that the aliens that built this ring could now be considered certifiably insane by any known civilization.

You don't know nearly enough to speculate what kind of experiments they might have been doing that required so much of the stuff, but there's no question now as to how the ring still has power, no matter how long it's been here, abandoned.

It takes some 'totally kinda mostly almost sorta legal' override fiddling that Pinkie taught you, but you manage to get the alert to go away. You also get a target icon added to your overlay. You take a deep breath. Cable. You're here for cable. Just don't poke the antimatter, and it'll all be okay.

You pass back through the melted door, into a downright cavernous space. The ceiling is high, at least twelve meters. No labs here, no rooms, not even separate equipment storage that you can see—just in-place tech, most of it still active. The antimatter containment is right near the center: a featureless black cylinder that your overlay is warning you not to let pregnant mares within three meters of. There are other cylinders around the room, some of them with tiny wires running around the surface, some of them complex messes of pipe, others looking more like crystal formations you'd see in the Empire.

Wandering around the periphery of the chamber, you decide it's a very good thing Twilight isn't here, and she should not be told about this, nor allowed to come here. She'd never leave.

That crystal formation looks like it's melting, the drops flowing downwards from some pillars, but upwards from others, slowly building new formations on the opposing sides. It's beautiful, but for some reason you have the feeling that it's watching you, so you stay clear.

You pass by an innocuous-looking device, but as you close to within two meters, you feel something ripple over your body. It feels like every atom in you is about to go its own way, like you're falling, then rising, then going sideways, and then all at the same time. You blindly stagger away, shaking. Your overlay belatedly pops up, 'Unstable gravitational lensing array. Avoidance recommended.' "Yeah, thanks," you gasp out.

Recovering, you move on. Before you know it, you're almost at the far side of the room. You're looking warily at a clear tank filled with bubbling fluid. Floating in the fluid is a chunk of meat with wires and tubes piercing it from all sides. The meat is slowly pulsating. The tank is slightly elevated, and so it's while you're looking up at the poor blob of flesh that you notice something out of place.

Up till now, the ceiling, floor, and walls in this station had appeared seamless. Even wires and pipes seem to blend right in, almost as if this station had been carved from a single piece of…whatever it's made out of, or poured into a mold. But from here, looking upwards, you can see a slight break in the material of the ceiling, the straight line standing out on a ship full of organic curves. It's a bit closer to the center than you'd like, but you flit your way up to the ceiling.

It looks like, here, the plating was cut, in a square. There are camouflaged bolts—invisible from afar, but one of them wasn't tightened quite enough, leaving the tiny little dip you saw from the floor. You set your hoof grips onto the ceiling, pull out your toolkit, and have the panel off in a moment, hanging precariously from a single bolt you didn't quite unscrew all the way. A peek inside isn't very enlightening, and you briefly ponder the open door that leads to the other half of the ring, but decide this is at least worth checking out first. You climb on in.

You immediately regret this decision. No matter how spotless the working areas of this station might be, this service area is much like any other: dusty, dark, and smelling a little of mildew from the humidity. You pop a couple of flares off, revealing a twisty little maze of passages, all alike.

The panel opened into a small junction, giving you four directions in which to travel. You pick a direction that keeps you at roughly the same distance from the center of the chamber below, turn your flashlight on, and start moving.

You haven't gone five meters before you find a way upward, and you take it, feeling like a stereotypical pegasus. There's a very light breeze blowing through this run, and it's refreshingly free of that spidery smell. You take a nice breath, then move on. In a couple of places there appears to be damage—nothing significant, just like someone larger and heavier than you was moving through here, and carelessly banged into stuff.

You've gone up another two levels and maybe 15 lateral meters before you see it—a cable! It's thin, but long, running off into the distance in both directions. It looks…newer than the other equipment you've seen in this ship—whereas nearly everything else has looked like an integral part, this was added on, attached with some frankly flimsy looking brackets. You keep a damper on your excitement, and give it a scan…'Live wire, unknown quicksilver alloy, 0.72 GA, 0.1 VDC, exceeds specification'.

You don't dance, but you can't hold in a little squee. You just have to disconnect it, and you can get the heck out of here! Easy peasy.

Mission Accomplished
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Mission Accomplished

You follow the power line towards the antimatter reactor until you find its connection point at…well, it looks like a breaker box. There's a bigger line going in, a bunch of smaller lines going out, and buttons. You nod definitively, as if that will make it more of a breaker box. Then you start pushing buttons.

Eventually, you find one that turns off power to the cable in question. You're pretty sure the flashing red lights when you hit some of the buttons weren't a big deal, because the lights stopped flashing when you hit those buttons again. You poke one more button, and everything's back to how it was when you started…you think.

The cable connection itself takes some finagling, thoroughly convincing you that the ring-builders had either magic or more precise manipulators than hooves, but you get it disconnected eventually.

Traveling the other way takes a lot more time. You're looping the cable over your neck, through a carabiner attached to your suit, down one side, between your forelegs, and over your chest. Every two meters, you have to stop and pry loose the bracket holding the cable to the ceiling.

And none of this is helped by your pausing every few minutes. Sometimes, when you pass an intersection in this endless maze, you keep thinking you hear something. Echoes of movement. There's nothing when you shine your light, but you make yourself stay still for a while afterward. You find yourself thinking about how this cable would act like a tether, if you needed to move fast.

Nothing happens, though. No monsters dragging you into the dark. You're just starting to really notice the weight of the cable when you see it snaking downward. You check your PDA, and see that you've already got more than enough cable for the Frond's needs, but you stop, and look at the cable's connector.

It's complex. You don't see any of the cable material itself, but what looks like some sort of crystalline interface, which superficially looks similar to the crystals used all over the Frond. You decide that cutting the cable might make it harder to work with, so you'll keep following it to see if you can find the other end.

You look around, and realize the passages have gotten narrower. Given the length of cable you've accumulated, you've probably passed well into the far wing of the station without realizing. You follow the cable, hopping down a level. Looking back and forth, you glance at your PDA and wish it were a tactical model, with an auto-mapping system. As it is, it would probably be more straightforward to try to head back through the station’s main corridor.

The cable follows a few more turns, then drops to what you recognize as the main corridor plating. A few more meters, and it drops right down through a hole they didn't even try to close up. You yank off the last bracket, loop up the cable, and peek down into the space below.

Bodies. Three of them, all in space suits that are fairly similar to yours, if a bit bulkier. Aliens from the ship, though these are quite a bit more naturally decayed than the one in the reactor room...mostly skeleton, now. You gulp, and look around, trying to see as much of the room as you can from here. It looks like one of the standard mid-sized rooms you saw dozens of in the other wing of the station. The door is closed. Your cable is running down to a large device in the center of the room, which seems to go on below the floor.

You drop down into the room. First order of business, you disconnect your cable from the now unpowered device, and loop it around yourself, tying it up a bit tighter with zip ties. Then you head over to the aliens.

It immediately becomes clear why at least one of them died. Its left leg is gone, and from the way the suit ends there, you can tell it was melted off. More of that danged acid. Looking closer, you can see signs of it on the other two. Scarring and pitting on the bodies of their suits, and one of them looks to be missing a part of its jaw. You shudder in sympathy.

The one that seems the least burned is holding a tablet in one hand, and what's probably a weapon in the other. You gently take the tablet, adding it to your collection. It had also laid its intact helmet next to itself. You take this as well, and with a little careful work, manage to cut a large piece of the faceplate out. One last glance up at the alien's skull, and you notice something. A small hole. You glance at the weapon in its hand, and the hole, and shake your head, turning away.

Looking at the door, you ask, "So…what made you guys lock yourselves in here to die, huh?"

With a swallow, you check around the door, and find a set of controls. You flatten yourself against that wall, and take a drink and a few deep breaths. Then you randomly push buttons until the door glides open—almost silently, as if it had just been serviced. As the air outside starts to mix into what you're breathing, the smell of spiders gets even more prominent. You make your breathing as quiet as possible, and edge out to get a view.

Eggs.

More of the same ones. Dozens, visible just at this bad angle. The ones you can see are just bare remnants, most of the top part of the shell broken away long ago, but you can recognize the base, where it's been attached to the floor by the same crusty stuff you saw back on the ship. Beyond, in the distance, you can see the silhouettes of a few that look whole. You glance over your shoulder, at the hole in the ceiling, but think of darkness, and the sounds of monsters in a maze, and you decide to look at least a little bit further through the door.

Out in the main corridor, it's like a nightmare. The already dark, disturbing architecture has been made downright awful by the addition of copious amounts of monster snot all over the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Eggs are everywhere—most of them spent husks, but a few still whole, unopened, and glisteningly moist in the humid air.

Keeping a tight control over your breathing, you activate your hoof grips and slowly crawl your way up the wall. You're halfway up, carefully stepping over an obstacle, when you freeze, and realize that you're actually standing over a bone. Following it, you see it's a leg bone, belonging to one of the aliens from the ship.

It met quite a different fate from the ones that were locked in the room below. It wasn't wearing a spacesuit, and it appears to have been liberally coated with the same goop that's all over the walls, tacking it in place. In the upper part of its body, what you'd analogously call its chest, is a large hole. The bones are warped outwards, like something tore its way out from inside.

You think about the empty eggs, the spider thing trying to get at your face, and look around a little. There, in a small pocket in the goop. You poke at it with a hoof, turning over the dessicated remains of one of the spiders. And with so many eggs…

Almost certain of what you'll see, but still dreading it, you crane your neck, looking more closely at the shadowed walls of the corridor. They're everywhere. You can see dozens of them, now that you're looking, pinned at nearly regular intervals all along this stretch of wall. The majority of them are quite a bit larger and heavier-looking than the aliens from the ship, and you have a sneaking suspicion those might be the ring’s builders. You glance back down at the floor, at the live eggs, then resume your silent climb. Soon enough you're on the ceiling again.

You turn towards center-station, then pause and look over your shoulder, wondering if it gets even worse the further you go. Your imagination conjures up even more horrible monsters, giant egg-laying monstrosities, and you shake your head to clear it. The shaking almost makes you miss the shadow moving across the farthest wall, and your breath catches. You turn tail and start swiftly but carefully crawling up the corridor.

As you move, the number of eggs decreases, as does the number of broken skeletons, until there are no more. The amount of alien snot stays pretty consistent, though, making you feel like you're moving through a giant, disgusting nostril. Before long, you approach a bulkhead, one of the single-layer ones. The door of this one is melted, like your entry into the central chamber, though the hole is far larger. You peer carefully into the darkness around you, but can't see anything threatening, so you drop down, and peek past the door.

It's clear. No more snot, no sign of monsters. You duck through, and move along. The way isn't entirely clear, with some pieces of dropped equipment and some sporadic battle scars. You recognize some of the equipment as coming from the ship. You break into a canter down the corridor. The heavy bulkheads leading to the central chamber are likewise clear, and you barely slow as you pass through.

That's the only reason it doesn't catch you.

The Action of Falling
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The Action of Falling

You run obliviously through the inner bulkhead door, but some instinct tickles your brain, and you duck to the right, your momentum almost sending you tumbling. The black, bony claw that was swiping at you whiffs through the air, missing by only a hoofwidth.

A monster, similar to the one on the ship, but different. More streamlined, with a lower gait. It looks fast. You skid to a halt, facing it, and it crouches like a cat ready to pounce. You smirk. "Come on, then!"

It jumps at you, and it's pretty fast—but you're faster. You hop up, your wings giving you a boost over it, and give it a good downward buck in the head as it goes by, hearing something in its head crack. A graceful landing is marred by your hind boots slipping when they hit the floor. You hear the off-balance creature slam into the equipment that was behind you, and turn back to face it.

It's already starting to stand up. A crack in its—skull? carapace?—is evident where you kicked it, with a splatter of foul yellow blood oozing from it. Then you notice that the machinery around it is smoking slightly, wherever the blood has sprayed. You finally focus on your overlay to see familiar warnings about corrosion on your hind boots and legs, though the repair systems seem to be handling it this time.

"That crap is your blood?! What the hay?!" You growl at it, as it simply turns towards you, and sets itself to attack again. "Oh, heck no!" You jump before it's ready, springing into full flight, rising quickly towards the ceiling.

It watches you rise, then jumps onto the chamber wall, easily clinging to the ribbed internal structures, climbing towards you as if the artificial gravity didn't mean a thing to it.

You grimace, before swooping into the forest of equipment, dodging around contraptions that were a curious distraction just a short while ago. A jink to the left to avoid the torturous 'unstable lens array' from earlier. A dive below a spider-web of cables that feed into a featureless white cylinder. You recognize the dripping crystals, and the same feeling of being watched makes you angle yourself to give it a bit more distance. Then the space you were just occupying is filled by another creature of the same type lunging out from behind the crystals.

It grabs your rear hoof in a grip that feels tenuous, but it's enough to pull you back to the floor. You slam your forehooves down, and lever your body around, yanking yourself free. As you keep spinning, your forehooves dropping down, you flick out a wing to smack the thing in its ugly face. Its reactions are absurdly fast—you feel its jaws snapping shut, almost catching a primary feather.

In the slowed-down time of this fight, you have the leisure to notice that you can see the hole you left in the ceiling from here. It draws your attention only because another of these horrors is dropping from it, already pointed in your direction.

You lean forward, and push off with your forehooves, another flick of your wings propelling you towards the door. You force down a panicked thought of what you could possibly do if one of these things is waiting for you there, and just focus on dodging around the last few columns of machinery in your way.

As you approach the door, you line yourself up with the melted hole in it, and crouch. You use every muscle in your body to propel yourself through, tucking your legs in as you pass through the small airlock-like space between the two thick bulkheads. But there's nothing inside waiting for you. You stretch out your forelegs and catch the edge of the far door, swinging yourself around to a stop right next to the controls.

You stare at them, trying to remember what worked back at the door you opened, but then you fall back on your usual method of just randomly pushing buttons. Your lucky streak continues, as the two-part door begins to slide in from the sides with a hiss. You start backing away, but then a pair of claws reaches through, pushing against whatever motors are in place. It's not enough, and you wince at multiple heavy crunches as the creature is crushed between the edges, its blood spraying out, instantly smoking and beginning to melt through the door.

Time to go.

You take wing, pounding at the air, quickly reaching maximum speed and not slowing at as you duck through bulkheads. None of the monsters are evident here, but whether it's through a newly melted door or the serviceways, you know they're coming. Your marker on the airlock is a welcome sight, and you slow a little, taking the landing easy. You’re not exactly quiet with your heavy breathing, but the airlock looks clear.

Re-enabling your grips, you run back onto the ship. Another quick comparison of control panels next to the pressure doors, and you punch two buttons on the airlock controls. The yellow lights start flashing again, and the same sort of countdown as before shows up on the screen. "Dangit," you mumble, "why does everything have to be on a countdown on this stupid ship?"

You look nervously at the airlock, then turn around and move into the aft cryovault. It's as you step through the pressure door that you realize the feel of walking hasn't changed like it should have. Apparently the artificial gravity has returned to the ship. You turn your grips back off, and quietly slink through the rows of lockers. It takes you a minute to find your way, and you hear the airlock door start to close as you find your discarded helmet.

Sitting back against a locker, it's quick work to knock away the brittle, half-melted parts of the faceplate. You put the helmet back on right over your new hat, squinting through the hole. A few taps of your PDA enable in-depth repairs.

As you're glancing at system messages, you suddenly feel like you're falling—the gravity has turned off. You squint your eyes shut for a moment, then shake off the feeling, retrieve the shard of alien glass, and press it in front of your face, hoping the 67% left on your UEC meter is enough for this. The faceplate is encompassed in a soft blue glow, and the glass begins to melt, the edges blending together and the curve beginning to match the original material.

Your view is blurring a bit and skewed by the magical glow, but you can still see well enough to notice the shadows coming from around the doorway. You tense up and look around as well as you can, then upward: at the air vent you once looked down through. When you look back down, one of them is already turning the corner towards you.

You snap your wings, driving yourself upward, slamming into the ceiling. You fumble for your pry bar, but have to duck aside to dodge the alien flying towards you. It crashes into the vent, knocking the cover loose, and you dive at it as it's flailing around. A hoof towards its center of mass sends it flying away, but there's another one heading your way from deeper in the room.

Snagging your hooves around the opening, you pull yourself inside and flail away from the vent. The monster reaches it, trying to climb into the tight space, and you kick off of a flailing claw, tucking your wings tight and flying away down the vent. A couple of turns later and you're back at the junction, and—

There's one already in there—probably went straight up from the airlock. It pounces on you, hissing, claws swinging, and you flail, meeting each swing with a countering hoof, yet having to pull your punches so you don't make the darned thing bleed. You try to kick away, but it gets a grip high on your hind leg and it's like a steel vice. You feel something tear and bruise deep in your thigh, and are convinced it could rip your limbs right off if it really tried. It opens its mouth and you flex away on instinct; not a moment later, a disgusting secondary jaw snaps out, cutting through where your shoulder just was. You lash out, punching it right in that extended mass of bone and teeth, and it it lets out a shriek.

Quickly pounding on your PDA as the monster regains its focus, you give it a firm tap on either side of its head. A blue shock, and it writhes—not knocked out, but stunned enough that its grip on your leg loosens. You push it away and manage to direct yourself towards the downward duct in the junction. Passing through, you notice a control panel, and two quick pokes close a pressure seal in the air duct.

You allow yourself a shuddering sigh. Then the gravity turns back on, and you're falling. You frantically try to reorient yourself with your wings, but there's no time.

As you slam into the floor of the Deck 4 air duct junction, your right wing is still pointed down. You feel a snap, and everything goes red.

And then, dark.

Life is but a dream...
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Extra-Vehicular Activity

Life is but a dream...

You stare at the goofy little doodad on Slipstream's desk. It's all wires and little metal balls, and it never stops moving and spinning. You don't know how she can stand having it there—anything like that would keep you from concentrating on work. Especially paperwork.

You look back up at the grey-green mare behind the desk. Her uniform is neat and crisp, though her usually well-groomed white mane has had a few stray hairs poke out at odd angles in the past few minutes. She's still staring at the papers you'd given to her a couple minutes ago, various conflicting emotions flickering on her face. You think you read confusion, panic, worry, maybe even a little anger, all flavored with fear of actually questioning 'The Rainbow Dash'. Finally, you politely clear your throat.

She jumps, and glances up at you. Her jaw works, and then she manages, "May I ask why?"

A smirk. "You're the boss, Slip—of course you can."

The annoying comeback seems to melt the last of her freeze-up, and she snorts. "Okay, tell me why."

You sigh, and lean back. "Eh…it's been building up for a while, but I guess this latest injury just really gave me the time to think things through." You wiggle your right wing.

She shifts to looking concerned. "Really? I was told you should be back to a hundred percent within another month, with maybe some extra stretching required. Is it still hurting?"

"Oh, a little," you lie, "but it's nothing about the injury itself specifically." That one's the truth.

Her nose scrunches up. "Then why?"

You rub the back of your neck. "A lot of reasons. For one…" you shrug "…well I am well past retirement age from the 'Bolts, yanno."

A sardonic look. "Yeah, right. And you're still in better shape than most of us, injuries aside."

"Ehh…" You smile wistfully, staring off into the distance. "I think that's actually part of it, really. I…I had my dream. And it was awesome. Broke records, yadda yadda, but after so many years, I'm just…done?" You feel something in your gut—a knot that's been there for a long time—loosen, as you actually say the words. "Yeah. I'm done. It's time to get out, stop hogging the spotlight, and you know dang well I'm not taking a desk job or you wouldn't be sitting where you are. So, it's time to go."

She just stares at you for a moment, then her wings flick. "Okay. Mind if I ask where you're going? What's next for the one and only Rainbow Dash?"

You grin. "Goin' home, Slipstream."

A nod. "I hear Cloudsdale's gotten a bit gentrified, but—"

"Ha!" you interject. "Not Cloudsdale, eugh. Ponyville."

"Buh?" You can almost hear a spring in her brain snap. "Why?"

You shrug. "It was home for quite a while, but…mainly, it's where my friends are…or will be."

She raises an eyebrow. "That whole 'Elements of Harmony' business?"

"I mean…" you nod. "We got pulled apart a bit by that stupid war with the zebras, and then found new interests in the post-war boom. We've kept in touch and all, but lately…I just feel something pulling me back there."

"Destiny?" she ventures, a humorous twinkle in her eye.

You snort. "Nothing so exciting." With a sigh, you look around, then raise your hooves helplessly. "Look at me, Slip. I've outlasted my classmates in the 'Bolts, and their replacements. Nopony knows how long the five of us are going to live; all they can say is that we're not immortal like Twilight, but we don't age like we should! The way it's looking, those of us who've had foals could easily live to see their own grandchildren die of old age."

She shifts around, uncomfortably.

"Yeah," you nod, holding a humorless grin, "it's weird to think about right? Well imagine how it is to live it. I think all of us have started to feel it…heck, I think Twilight was first. She started asking if any of us wanted to go on diplomatic trips again, over a decade ago. We were all too busy then, but…it's been in the back of my mind. I brought it up to Rarity a few years ago, hypothetical retirement plans and all that…about a month later she started selling off some of her properties, delegating more. Now, we're going back, together, once I'm done here. Pinkie's the furthest away, up in Serenity Station doing her freaky space-warpy stuff…hasn't said anything, but I've got a feeling we'll see her before too long."

Slipstream just looked at her for a while, then crossed her forelegs. "So, what. You get your group of friends together with Princess Twilight, form a little cult?"

You chuckle. "I dunno. It's not like we'll all just stay there all the time, but…it feels like home, and I want it to be home. It's not like I'll need to work, so I probably will follow Twi along on diplomatic trips. I've seen some of the world with the 'Bolts, but not nearly all of it! Heck, maybe someday I'll head up to Serenity myself, or further. See what all the fuss is about."

She nods, and smirks. "The quiet life of a retiree with the body of a thirty-year-old."

You just wink.

With a sigh, she reaches over, pulls out a pen, and proceeds to sign your papers. She then places them in a small receptacle, and pushes a button. With a flash, three identical copies appear, stacked on top of the original. She pulls off the top copy and wings it over to you.

"Thanks, Slipstream."

"Don't thank me yet," she says with calm smile. "You realize there's going to be a party, and with someone as decorated as you, probably a ceremony as well."

Your ears flatten, but you nod. "Yeaahhh, I figured. Seems silly to me—'yay, Rainbow Dash is quitting'—but whatever. I'll still be in Hoofington for about a month, clearing some stuff up, so just let me know."

She nods and then stands, seeing you to the door.

As you're about to reach it, you pause, and look askance at her.

"Something else?" she asks curiously.

"You know…it's really all about Twilight."

Her head tilts.

"Nobody can say how long we'll live, and we can't know who will be the first to go, but…we all know Twilight will be the last of us. I've lost some loved ones already, so I can imagine at least a little of what it will be like for her, and Spike, when he's awake…and for that matter, even what the other Princesses have and will go through." You think back to the war. "I've lived my dream, had my fun. Now, since I can't be there for her, forever, I want to try to make the world Twi and all of them will live in…as good as it can be."

Reception
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Extra-Vehicular Activity

Reception

"Rai-ow! Ar- -u there?! Co- -ainbow Dash!"

A familiar pain is radiating up your right wing, the inflamed nerves screaming even into your back and side.

"Da- Pinkie, c- -ittle more?"

You swallow convulsively, then take a drink to clear your throat.

"That's better. Rainbow Dash, are you there? I'm barely getting anything, but I think you should be able to-"

"Twi…'m here," you croak out.

"Rainbow! Thank Celestia! Are you okay? You don't sound too well."

"Just…took a bad fall." You shift, and your wing throbs enough that you let out a groan. "Ugh…I think I dislocated my wing again…that same stupid spot."

"Oh no! Can you move?"

"Yeah…yeah. Just gotta work the ol' magic." You force a bit of humor into the statement, as you also force yourself to stand up.

"Ew. Rainbow, I don't know how you can joke about that, it's awful."

"Eh…" Your right rear leg is still throbbing where it got grabbed, but it can hold your weight. "…if it's either laugh or cry, I'll take laughter." You reach your left hoof over to hold the wing at just…that…angle…and before you can think too hard about it, you slam yourself into the ductwork wall beside you.

Pretty, pretty stars… You're not even sure if you screamed or what, but the next thing you perceive is Twilight, tentatively asking, "Did it work?"

"Yeah." You cough. "I think so." You gingerly spread the wing a little, then clamp it to your side. "Good enough."

"Alright, well, that's good, because you've got to move now." Her voice hardens. "You've got to get out of there!"

"Huh?" You shake your head, trying to clear the fuzz. "I mean, not that I disagree, but what's up?"

"I don't know what you did over there, but something in the gravity tether system has gone wrong. The ring is slowly slipping out of alignment—it's got maybe twenty minutes left before the beams from the surface lose contact, and then its orbit is probably going to decay pretty quickly."

"Oh. Uhhh…" You look down at the cable still wrapped around you. "…I guess maybe that's what the cable I took was powering…though I did fiddle with a bunch of breaker switches, too."

The radio just emits a long-suffering sigh.

You blink, then add in. "Um, we've got another problem, Twi. There's, like, about a kilo of antimatter stored on that thing!"

"What?!"

"Yeahhh it's just kinda sittin' there in that middle section."

"Uhhh…hold on, let me check the probable drop orbits." She pauses. "Wait, no, don't hold on! Regardless, you need to get moving!"

"Right." You walk out into the junction. The way left is blocked off by a pressure seal. The aft section of this deck must be breached. The right ducts are clear. You stretch your wing again, wincing at the complaints of the abused tissues within. Observing your overlay, you see two things: your UEC is at 23%, and there's a note that your faceplate integrity is 73% of normal. Lovely.

You're about to head forward when you hear a garbled transmission. "-ash. Send som- -elp you get- -uited up."

You rush back to where you'd fallen, shouting, "Twilight?! You there? Don't send anypony—there's things over here! It's dangerous! Twilight?"

Nothing.

With a growl, you head forward along a strangely linear duct until you find an air vent. You crouch down and try to get a view below, but can't see much. A couple of whacks with a hoof send the vent cover dropping down below, and you peek out, then drop down into a long, wide hall. It's odd compared to the other decks, with four regularly spaced pressure doors along each side. Aft is the closed central door with what looks like a well lit space beyond, but you move forward.

As you pass a door, out of the corner of your eye you spot a tablet lying on the floor, half in shadow. It's a bit banged up, but you pocket it anyway. While there, you spare a moment to take a curious peek through one of the doors. Through the small window, you can see a single dim overhead light silhouetting what appear to be more cryotubes.

You feel something trying to piece together in your head, but you don't have the time to sit and help it along. Instead, you trot to the forward elevator door, flexing your injured wing every few steps, and making sure to put full strain on the bruised leg. As you reach the door, you pause, staring at it, trying to remember what state you left the elevator shaft in, and wondering if it even matters since the power turned on.

With a shrug, you try the same button combination that worked on the airlock, but some other buttons flash, and the door stays shut. You grunt, and go through the motions to pull the release lever. Air howls through its emergency vents, until it eventually goes still. You're about to pry the door open when you stop, and try the buttons again. This time, the door slides open

Ducking your head through, you survey the elevator shaft very carefully, looking for any sign of creepy crawlies, but finding nothing. All the other doors are closed. You can feel there's no artificial gravity in the shaft, so you pass through the door, closing it behind you. Your wing is usable enough to guide you down the shaft. You pause long enough to close the door to Deck 5, and then notice one button on its control panel is blinking. A glance up and down reveals that the same button is blinking on all of the doors' panels. You shrug, and press it.

Jets of air shoot in all along the elevator shaft, becoming increasingly audible as the pressure returns to normal. Neato. You're coasting down to Deck 7 when your radio crackles to life.

"Rainbow dear, are you there?"

"Rarity!" Your heart races. "Where are you?"

"Just approaching your entry door now. Are you alright?"

"Yes! I'm fine, just stay there!" You reach the door, and quickly open it, looking down the hall beyond.

"Are you sure? Twilight said you were injured."

The hallway looks empty, so you shut the door behind you and run down it. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be there in just a minute. Uhh, find something to brace yourself on; I’m gonna have to decompress that section to open the door."

"Alright, dear."

You close the midway pressure door as you pass, and run through the galley. Your eyes jump from air vent to air vent as you pass, but you don't see anything amiss. Maybe they just aren't exploring this far yet? You reach the aft elevator door with your pry bar at the ready. "You holding onto something, Rares?"

"Yes, love—feel free."

A yank, and you settle to wait for a much longer decompression. A few papers and bits of debris waft down the hall, coming out of the opened doors. Finally, you can open the door.

She's there, waiting, looking stunning despite having recently come out of a stasis pod. It's awkward in the suits, but you manage a hug. After, she looks at you with concern. "Oh, Dashie, what did you do to yourself? Are you sure you're okay? I brought a dose of Inaprovaline just in case…"

"What, the wing?" You shrug. "It's fine."

She looks skeptical, so you wave your wing around a bit, with only a dull ache.

"Remember?" You smile toothily. "I'm a…whatever Twi called it. Physical addict. As long as I keep moving, my magic will heal me."

She rubs her hoof over your shoulder. "Adept, dear, physical adept. And that doesn't keep me from worrying." She looks at the power cable you're still wearing. "Here let me take that."

As she unclips the cable and pulls it off you, you mumble, "Yeah, well, I suppose you had good reason to worry this time. There's some freaky critters running around this thing."

Glancing up from attaching the cable to the dive line, she asks, "Critters? You mean something survived?"

"Ehh…" You shrug. "Not exactly? But sort of. I'm not sure if they're an escaped experiment or what, but it looked to me like they killed the ring's builders, and then the crew of this ship too, when they arrived."

She pushes the cable down the line, and you can see Fluttershy waiting on the Frond to catch it. Rarity stays turned away for a moment, and when she turns back she looks stricken, tears in her eyes.

"Hey!" You wave your hooves. "It's fine, I'm fine. Only one of those creeps got its claws on me, and I kicked its butt!" You decide not to mention the freaky spiders yet. Or the acid for blood. Or the…reproduction methods.

"Oh, Dashie." She sighs, and blinks some of the tears away. Finally she sidles up close, pressing against your side. "I know you can handle yourself. It just…it still distresses me to see you get hurt, or in danger."

You smirk. "Well, Danger is m—"

A quick prod in the ribs. "Don't you dare." She tries to glower, but there's a smile behind it.

You chuckle, and she rolls her eyes.

"I take it that's why you were so worried I might come on board?" she ventures.

"Yeah." You nod. "Those things could be all over the place by now, through the air ducts."

"Alright," she says. “Well, let’s get out of here, then." She sighs, and looks down the hall. "It's a shame it's lasted so long only to be vaporized now, but if they could overwhelm the entire complement of a large military vessel, then I suppose it's for the best. It'll be like a Minotaur funeral for the departed."

Something tickles in your mind, but you nod absently. When you look up at her, she's looking back expectantly. You wave at the dive line. "You first, mi'lady."

She snorts, but hooks back onto the line, then glances back at you before kicking off.

You watch her drift along, but then look around, and close your eyes. Empty spaces in the cryovault. The pressure doors in that hall. The lone engineer in the reactor. A fight to the last, to get to the port airlock. To the port airlock, but after it was closed to keep more monsters from boarding. After they're on the ship, in the cryovaults. There were cryotubes behind that door.

"Rainbow, what's wrong?"

Gritting your teeth, you look back down the hall. Could it…? Could you? A shake of your head. You look back…and your eyes drift across the symbols next to one of the doors. 'Hazard'. 'Explosives'. It was the storage room you'd checked out before. Weapons storage.

You look back down the dive line and, despite the distance, you can see Rarity's eyes.

"Dashie?" Her horn glows, and she glides to a stop.

You take a drink, and roll your neck, feeling a satisfying crack. And then, you close your eyes, and stretch.

Your wings arch wide, straining against aches and pains, quivering, vibrating. You crouch down, flexing your legs as well, the bruised muscles and flesh burning, your breaths heaving.

You stretch until you feel like you're going to fly apart. Until you start to sweat from fighting yourself. Until you feel a white-hot flame spread from your core, flowing out into your body, and you feel like you could breathe fire.

Until…everything stops hurting.

Exhaling violently, you open your eyes and give yourself a shake. A haze of magic cascades off of your body as you fold your wings. You’ll pay for that later, but right now it doesn’t matter. You feel...good. You tap your PDA to bring everyone in. "Twilight?"

"Rainbow Dash, what's going on? You've only got four minutes until the gravity tethers are out of alignment!"

"Okay." You bite your lip. "And what happens then?"

A pause, then, hesitantly, "Well…there will be a heavy torque, as some parts of the station are tethered while other aren't. The gross effect will be to pull the whole thing downwards and send it on a fast equatorial spiral."

You squint. "The antimatter won't go off until it hits the surface, right?"

Pinkie chimes in, "Yup! It'll be over the horizon, too, so it won't be too bad for us."

Now the real question. "Can you send me the orbit data?"

Applejack is the first to speak up. "Rainbow, dangit, tell us what this is about!"

Then Pinkie shouts, "Done!" and data starts scrolling past on your overlay.

"Pinkie!" That was Twi and AJ.

She just sounds a little exasperated. "Well, Dashie’s in a hurry, right?"

"Good luck, Rainbow." That was Fluttershy, barely audible, but you smile as you start poking buttons on your PDA.

Twi, AJ, and Pinkie are arguing, while Flutters is silent and Rares is just looking at you and you don't want to look back quite yet. Finally, a timer appears on your overlay, currently at 3.4 minutes. You quickly stuff everything extraneous into your second mesh bag and hook it onto the dive line. "Alright, girls. Gotta go. I'll be back in a jiffy, so heat up some chalky mud for me, eh?"

They all go silent, as you swing around the edge of the door, and unhook the dive line spool's carabiner. Finally, you look at Rarity.

She's not crying or anything. Actually, is that a blush? Hard to tell for sure from this distance. She simply says, "Sure you don't want some help?"

You wince. She can handle herself, but…you shrug helplessly. "Gotta go fast, Rares."

It gets you a small smile, and she nods.

Five taps on the end of the spool and it starts reeling itself in, back to the Frond.

You pull yourself back up into the hall and move to the door controls.

Twilight tries one more time. "Please, Rainbow. What's this about?"

You smirk, as the door slides closed. "If I'm right? Something awesome."

Breaking Stuff to Look Tough
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Extra-Vehicular Activity

Breaking Stuff to Look Tough

You hit the pressurization button, and air begins to stream into the section as you wing your way down the hall to the storage room. 53 seconds left on the timer. The room is well-built, and everything is solidly racked, so you just grab onto a support and wait for the timer to count down.

It's anticlimactic when it happens. The ship shivers as the gravity tether beams lose contact with the ring itself, and start sliding faster over various projections of the ring, and the ship. A series of small yet stomach-churning wrenches shake the ship, but the artificial gravity compensates for the worst of it. Finally, a message flickers by on your overlay, 'projections 99.7% accurate', and the timer resets, to 37.2 minutes.

You jump up, and look over the racks. There, the oddly small cylindrical items, next to that same 'explosives' symbol. You poke at them, and manage to flip a cap up, revealing a button. Okay then. You get out the now-empty cloth bag you'd swiped from that locker, and fill it with the explosives, as well as some others you find in the room. It takes some fiddling to get the closure to work, but it makes a satisfying 'zip' when it does. The bag gets one leg through a strap, then slung over your withers.

Moving to leave, you notice the long, dark-metal object whose clones you've seen lying scattered and broken around battle sites. You retrieve your pry bar, and yank one out of its rack space. It looks tough to handle with hooves, but maybe not impossible. There's a tiny digital display on the side, currently reading '0'. Looking the thing over, you note a piece is missing, and recognize a stack of such to one side. You pull one out, squint at the dozens of projectiles stacked in it, and slide it home. The display changes to '95'. Well alrighty then. You jury-rig some straps to carry it at your side.

You flit out into the hall, then down to the galley. A quick check of the weapon finds a small switch with understandable pictograms, and you flick it to the setting that looks the most dangerous. You hover, back braced against one wall, and after a moment's consideration, you put your off-hoof over the weapon to control the recoil. Your pry bar snakes over the firing trigger, and you give it a short pull.

It's noisy, and you feel like you got bucked in the ribs, but your aim at least stays pointed generally forward. At least one of the shots hits a meal-dispensing machine on the far wall, and it basically explodes. You stare at it for a moment, then gently hug your new best friend, hoping your grin isn't too manic. "I'mma call you Spitfire the Second."

With Spitfire tested, you head for the forward elevator, eyes dancing between air vents. Nothing happens. The elevator shaft is likewise still unoccupied. You're almost starting to feel impatient as you hit the buttons to open the door to Deck 3.

You're peeking around the corner, not even able to see yet, when some hint of movement tickles your senses and you pull back—

Just as a claw shoots out of the doorway, followed by an alien. You flip your wings slightly to add force to a kick, adding a bit more momentum to the creature as it flies across the elevator shaft. Before it hits, you're taking aim, and you send a burst from Spitfire its way.

To your mild surprise, it reacts much like the dispenser, several points on its body exploding. Unfortunately, this sends numerous globules of yellow death flying through the zero-g shaft. You dodge one, then take a chance and swoop through the door into the forward cryovault.

It's a mess. A lot of fighting went on here, shredding many of the lockers and empty cryotubes. You duck around what cover is left, your head constantly swiveling to look for any sign of more monsters. You almost fire a burst at nothing when your radio crackles.

"-ash? Rainbow are -u there?" It's…Fluttershy?

You roam slightly more towards the starboard side of the room. "Kinda busy, Flutters, what's up?"

"I, um, the others are working on the power, but I'm watching the ship, and, um, you're pretty far away now, but I think you might be in trouble."

“Ha!” You grin crookedly. “More trouble? How?!"

"Well, Rarity said something about monsters?"

"Yeah, they killed a whole buncha people over here, girl. Sorry, but they're going down with the ship."

"Oh, I...I understand, it's just that, uh, are they bony and black and carapacey and terrifying?"

You freeze. "Yes? Why?!"

"Well, a whole bunch of them are swarming the outside of the ring now, from the far side of it. They're heading towards the ship."

Even as the last piece of the puzzle clicks into place, you duck under a swinging claw. A smack from Spitfire puts the thing off-balance, a flick of your wings gets you some distance, and a pull of the trigger turns it into a floor hazard.

Backed into an aft corner of the vault, you hear a muffled squeak through the radio.

"Uhhh, sorry 'bout that, Flutterbutter. But thanks for the warning—you've solved one mystery over here. Gotta go!"

You get some height, and fly towards the center of the room. Nothing else accosts you as you enter the central section, and you shut the door behind you. A glance at the aft vault, and you shut that door too. You try to take a look through the small airlock windows, but can't tell if there's anything waiting or if the critters are all taking the scenic route. Regardless, you hit the open sequence, and sigh at the countdown.

You sit on your butt for sixty seconds, staring up at the air vent, waiting for something horrible to drop through it. You try not to think about what’s headed your way, but you can’t help it—no wonder closing the airlock didn’t save the ship if these monsters can space walk without a suit! Finally, the giant doors hiss, and fold away, thankfully revealing an empty shot into the ring.

The ship shudders, and a glance at the orbital projection shows that you're really starting into reentry now, though the ring is helpfully shielding the ship from the worst of it. You wonder if the monsters could be so kind as to burn up, but shake your head—it won't matter in a moment.

As soon as the airlock is open, you immediately start the closing sequence. This time, though, while trying to watch the vent and the airlock, you remove the sack full of kaboom, and open it up. When the countdown reaches 10, you open the aft pressure door. When it reaches 5, you flick the top off of a still curiously small cylinder. And as it reaches 0, you fly up to the center, where the door seals up last, and wait. At the last moment, you press the little button, throw the cylinder back in the bag, and fling the whole shebang into the airlock.

Then you fly like you're gettin' paid for it again. You don't even bother with the central door, just speeding quickly through the aft cryovault, trying to look in every direction at once. You're almost at the aft elevator door when you hear a muffled thump. A half-second later, another. After that, they all start to blend together, and you've hit the door controls.

Just before the door seals you into the elevator shaft, you hear a much louder thump, and a slight decompression occurs, closed off a moment later by the door. You wait for anything else, but then move down, and enter Deck 4.

It's in vacuum, and it's easy to see why. The first room aft is filled with rows and rows of what you're pretty sure are computer cores, but the starboard side is torn to pieces by damage from a breach. There's a body collapsed against one of the piles of tech—it's missing one of its forelimbs. As you pass forward, you start seeing pressure doors just like in the forward part of the deck. You look through the first port door's window to see a large empty space, and beyond it…the ring.

"Awww, CRACKERS!" you yell at the door. "How could it decompress the section, but not get rid of you?" You kick at the door. "JUST BREAK ALREADY!"

The ship shudders, and you think you actually see a ripple pass over the surface of the ring you can see. The view of the ring’s side starts to list, and reentry plasma becomes visible around it. Then, the whole ship starts to shiver, and you feel deep, wrenching vibrations through your hooves. You quickly stumble forward, and through the open the door into the mystery section. Above and below, the central section contained the airlocks. Here?

You look at the computerized deck maps on the walls. While the starboard side is all red and crossmarks, the port side shows many dozens of green lights, spread among seven green outlines. "Alright, welcome to Shuttle Control." You stare at the absurdly complex control panel, full of buttons, toggle switches, and computer displays. "Now what the hay do I do?"

Another ship-wide shudder reminds you that it doesn't matter just yet. A closer look at the map shows red crossmarks at the outer boundary of each green outline. The room shakes again, and then red lights start flashing. "Uh-oh." You dive towards one of the legs supporting a control station, and hold on for dear life.

It's like someone picked up the ship like a baseball bat and decided to play Dashieball. The deck bucks around, even through the artificial gravity, and you're slammed into the floor several times. You keep your head up despite the whiplash, just trying to protect your faceplate. Finally, there's one last wrench, and it…stops. You're not sure how long it is before you can focus your eyes again, and you stumble to your hooves. You look up, and the board is green. Great.

Now you look at the controls. No happy, friendly icons. Nothing flashing invitingly. Nothing…oh hay, a big red button, covered in a clear plastic guard.

You glance around, hesitating, then lift the cover. A red light starts flashing and something pops up on the nearest display, but it's all gibberish. You bite your tongue, and push buton.