Chapters Vanguard Station. A gigantic structure floating above Equus, working place of almost 800 ponies and home to a fourth of them, but most importanly, it was the port for all Equestrian extraplanetary travel. The living places and storage were shaped like an oktahedron, a double-sided pyramid with four edges. Each edge in the middle connected to an outer ring, containing the actual port, where spaceships could dock, be maintained, repaired and take off again.
Inside the plastic walls were ponies hard at work, pegasi were pushing big crates through the narrow, but high corridors. The crates were build with small magnets at the bottom, anchoring them lightly to metal tracks build into the ground, even in the weightlessness of space.
This was necessary to stop the crates from blocking the traffic above their heads, where ponies navigated their way using metal rods for earth ponies and unicorns, used their wings if they were pegasi, and the changelings just walked along the flat ceiling. To the untrained eye, it looked like utter chaos, but in reality, there was a strict order to it: big objects stayed at the bottom, keeping the space above them free for the busy workers to rush to their next assignment. Visitors, ponies on break and passengers were of the lowest priority, and so had to wait for the corridors to empty before making their own way to their destinations.
This did not count for royalty however. As princess Twilight Sparkle made her way through the station, she was met with ponies hurrying to clear the room for her. Twilight did not mind as she rushed past.
It was the 6th century of Twilights rule and her body has filled out over the years. She now stood at the same height as her co-rulers and towered over normal ponies. Although her mane did not yet have the flowing, magical properties, only an occasional ribble going along it, she looked impressive and regal, a symbol of what every young unicorn wanted to be. Next to her, a robot, shaped almost like a pony, but unmistakenly made of metal, with flexible white tubes making for mane and tail. Its rhinestone eyes were covered by a glass visor. The loud thumping of its brass hooves announced the coming of the princess and her personal robot assistant far ahead, which, by giving them a fair warning, possibly contributed to all the ponies managing to get out of the way in time.
"Twilight Sparkle, you appear troubled" the machine said in an artificial, but definetly female sounding voice.
The alicorn rolled her eyes.
"Am I to read your lack of an answer as confirmation, Twilight Sparkle?"
Twilight groaned, but gave a nod.
"You gave her a choice. I know you hoped your daughter would choose another way, but-" Twilight intercepted her.
"I sat down with her, Turing. I know what she wants" Twilight said.
"But you dont agree" Her robotic friend said.
Twilight bit her lip.
"Im just worried about her" she said after a long pause. "I mean, policing a colony is not as dangerous as a battlefield, and she´s a fully trained soldier and literally born for this ..."
The alicorn fell silent.
A few moments later, she shot a look at the Robot, which walked silently by her side.
Turing turned her head, seeing her friends expression. "My apologies, Twilight Sparkle, I assumed you were still reassuring yourself"
Twilights eyes shrunk to tiny slits. It had always been hard to detect whether the robot was joking or not, and her unique sense of humor had only gotten more obscure over the years.
As they stepped out of the tight hallways into the much more spacious dock, Twilight let out a breath she didn´t know she´d been holding.
Through a large glass window, they could see a large spaceship, almost two thirds the size of a normal cargo freighter boat, connected with the station through a steel tube, leading into the cargo space. A whole team of pegasi was pushing the freight into the ship, while most of the crew, except for the captain and his most trusted lieutenants, were still off in the station for a bit of entertainment and real food, one of the biggest luxuries in modern space travel.
Away from the main traffic, sitting ontop of black plastic trunks, was a group of three ponies, a young brown earth Pony mare and two unicorn stallions of the same age, a taller one with teal fur and a smaller one in red. Just by themselves they would have looked like normal ponies, but with the numerous pegasi serving as comparison, Twilight could not overlook the differences. These ponies were taller than any of the pegasi, even the mare reaching an inch above the tallest of them. They had a broader frame and there didn´t seem to be an ounce of fat on their bodies, the payoff of many hours oftzraining in addition to their genetics. Yes, those ponies had been "improved", their DNA modified to allow their bodies to surpass the limits of most normal ponies, all to make them excel in the one practise Twilight despised more than any other.
War.
Swallowing down her feelings and putting on a smile, Twilight Sparkle raised her hoof and waved to her daughter.
"Shetty!" Press hissed at the earth pony, interrupting the other unicorn. He jumped up from his trunk. "Princess!"
The other two quickly got up, standing at rapt attention and turned to the waving lavender alicorn. The other unicorn, Saw Blade, was taken aback by the sudden appearance of royalty. His lips silently formed the word "Wow"
The mare however bit her lip and raised her hoof to unenthusiastically wave back. "Hey, Mom" she said, earning a stunned look from Saw, but Press quickly silenced him by poking his side.
"Hello Shetland" Twilight said hestitantly.
They both exchanged fake smiles in silence, before Twilight tried to break the ice.
"I just wanted to wish you farewell, Shetty"
The pretense of a smile dropped from Shetlands face. "You could have done it on Equus, mom. why did you come all the way into space for it?"
"I... I was angry. I didn´t want you to follow in your father´s hoofsteps-" Twilight began, but Shetland interrupted her with an angry whinny.
"Im not following in his hoofsteps, he had nothing to do with this! nothing !"
"I gave you a choice!" Twilight said, speaking louder to drown out her daughter. Behind them the carriers stopped to watch the debate unfold.
"You shouldn´t have! and it´s too late now!" Shetland shouted, her face becoming tinted with red.
Twilight opened her mouth to respond, but, with enough volume to completely drown out the two, the robot to Twilights side shouted
"ENOUGH!"
Everyone in the room pressed their hooves or wings on their ears to drown out the voice echoing through the corridors.
In the sudden deafing silence, Turing spoke to Shetland in a normal volume. "Is it so weird that your mother wants to see you a last time before you depart to guard a faraway colony for months? She just wants to see you a last time before you go. And so do I"
Shetland looked at the robot, all traces of red vanishing from her cheeks. "Im... sorry" she said and moved towards the machine, embracing it in a hug.
"Do not be," Turing said, gently patting her back with her cold brass hooves. "but you should tell it to somepony else." And with that, she withdrew from the hug, leaving mother and daughter to themselves.
They both looked unsurely to each other, spreading their legs as if to embrace on another, but seemingly decided otherwise and lowered their limbs again.
They settled on bumping hooves.
"Despite everything, Shetty," Twilight said "I´m... proud of you"
Her daughter bit her lips. "Thanks" she simply responded, without meeting Twilights eyes.
"Your highness," Press´s calm voice started, causing both mares to turn their heads towards him. "I think our guide just arrived"
He pointed to a short changeling mare who has been watching the princess awe-struck, but now cleared her throat and said shakily. "Y-yes, w-we need to move on, or we risk delaying the start"
"Well, then i can´t stand in your way" Twilight said, taking a step back. She turned to Shetland. "Make some friends there, will you?"
"Will do, mom, will do" Shetland said, shaking her head with a smile that finally reached to her eyes.
"Wow" Saw Blade whispered, his eyes staring at the back of Shetlands head "I get to do my graduation with the princesses daughter!"
"We really need to get moving!" The changeling said, her tone less shaky and more professional than before. "Come on!"
They picked up their luggage (which had been fixated on the ground with small magnets), and followed the smaller mare into the tube connecting the station to the ships side door. On the last step, Shetland turned around and saw her mother and Turing wave their hooves, and she waved back. She wouldn´t meet them again for a while, after all.
As a passenger, the start of a spaceship was remarkably unexciting. Shetland, Press and Saw were simply led to their cabins, a tiny room with three bunks only Shetland could use without her hooves sticking over the edge. In the small free space, they decided to push their trunks together to make for a makeshift table. The changeling told them to make themselves comfortable, to which Saw snorted and received a glare from Press. She then ordered them to stay in their room so they would not be in the way.
"We wouldn´t be in the way!" Saw protested, but the changeling had already left the room. He groaned. "We´re on a spaceship, and all we get to see is this little closet"
"Relax", Press said "We get to see more when the complicated part is over. Like a plane, you can´t walk around in those either before they´re in the air"
Saw pondered on that for a moment. "Yeah, but Spaceships are way more exciting than planes" At that, he turned to Shetland, who had made herself comfortable on her bed. "Hey, your mom practically invented these things, did she ever tell you how they work?"
Shetland snorted "Are you kidding? She would never shut up about it! When your mom told you good-night stories, mine would ramble on about insanely complicated magic stuff"
"Well, thats great" Saw grinned. "Let´s hear it then"
Shetland chuckled. "It´s not like i understood much" she rubbed her bare forehead. "And mom´s not the best at keeping it simple"
"But you gotta know something , Shetty. Can i call you Shetty?"
She rolled her eyes "Alright. And yes, you can. Now give me a moment, this stuff would be complicated even if i knew more than half the words she used..." She rubbed her forehead with her hoof for almost a solid minute. Just as Saw started wibbling impatiently, she spoke up.
"So, you know teleportation? pop out of point A and show up in point B without crossing the space inbetween?"
Both unicorns nodded. Despite having heard it several times already, Press leaned in, his ears cocked.
"So, apparently , this ship is doing something similar"
"But we´re not teleporting" Saw said. "We´re not traveling instantly and it would take way too much power anyway"
"The only thing im sure of," Shetland said, her brow deeply furrowed "is that the magic part doesn´t make the ship faster. Technically"
"But how-" Saw started.
"Instead, mothers spell transforms us into a state of near -teleportation, reducing the significance of the space we´re crossing" she finished with a sly grin.
Saw stared at Shetland, wondering if she was making fun of him. "That explanation was crap" he said after a few moments.
She just shrugged in response "It´s the best one you´re ever going to get from an earth pony"
"Fair enough" he grumbled.
"One thing, though" she added "Traveling somewhere with this method leaves some kind of invisible line, connecting the two place, and every time you travel across the same line, the spell gets more efficient"
"Basically," Press said. "Every ship is faster than the one before"
"Yeah," Shetland said, unfaced by the interruption. "The first colony ship took almost a month to get there, while we only need a little less than two days, despite using the exact same method"
Saw whistled, then he turned to Shetland. "Your mom´s a nerd"
She rolled her eyes. "The biggest"
"Hello, Crew" The captain´s strict voice came from a speaker from the ceiling. "Our flight to Eggnor 4 will start in ten minutes. I want to hear an all-clear from all ponies in position by then. Passengers, strap yourselves to your beds. The transition can cause nausea, especially for unicorns"
All in all, it was quite uneventful. They spent the next few minutes strapped down, listening to ponies rush around, then the engines activated.
Shetland lamented their lack of windows.
Only a bit later, they got the all clear from the speaker and were allowed to unstrap themselves again. Press, whose face had turned a shade of green, quickly rushed to a bucket standing in the corner, a feat of wise preparation.
The next few hours they spent playing one of Shetlands board games ontop of their trunks. She had just managed to connect her two villages with a street, and simultaneously wall Press into a small corner of the playfield, as someone knocked on their door. It opened a tiny crack, and the solid blue eyes of the changeling mare from before appeared.
"May I come in?"
Press jumped up, ignoring the start of his turn. He beamed a wide smile at her. "Sure you can, Sweetie" He shuffled further into the corner to make place for her beside him.
"Wait, Sweetie ?" Saw asked. "You know her?"
Shetland chuckled. "She´s the reason he´s even on the ship, the big romantic doofus that he is"
Press just rolled his eyes and ignored her comment. Instead, he turned to the changeling. "Hon, this is Saw Blade. Saw, this is Ciloa Pie, my marefriend"
"Pleased to meet you" Ciloa said in the echoing voice of changeling mares. She extended her hoof towards Saw.
"Just as I am" he responded and shook her hoof. "But now im curious, Im here because I need to do some real guarding duty before I can graduate to a real soldier, but why are you here?"
"It´s the same for me" Shetland said. "Press has already done that last year however"
"I just want to be stationed at the same place as her" Press said as he lowered his head to kiss Ciloas´s cheek.
She pushed him off, but then nuzzled his jawline playfully before turning to Saw. "I graduated from the Manehattan university of Mineralogy a while ago. Im here to help analyse the yields of the mines, find more valuable mining spots and hopefully discover some alien elements.
"oh, rock science..." Saw said with a complete lack of real enthusiasm. "Thats cool..."
"You don´t have to fake it" Ciloa said earnestly "Most ponies don´t find rocks as exciting as I do"
"Hey, I would definetly prefer studying rocks over soldiering" Saw joked. "If I had the chance, I would be an architect. What about you two? what would you do if you had a choice?"
Press sighed. "Probably cooking. I would like that. But there´s no use discussing that"
"Says you. Shetty, what would you do?"
Shetland leaned back and took a deep breath. "This"
"Seriously?" Saw asked incredulously. "Even if you had a choice, you would still want to go risk your life?"
"My mom gave me a choice" Shetland replied evenly. "Said she could bend the rules for me. Allow me to do whatever I wanted. I refused. THIS is what I want"
Saw opened his mouth with a rebuttal ready, but Press cut him off. "Saw, she has had this conversation with her mother over and over, don´t make her do this again"
He grumbled, but chose to lay off. an hour later, they decided they would go to bed, as there was nothing for them to do.
"Tomorrow I could show you around the rest of the ship and explain how some of the things work" Ciloa offered.
"You understand the technical mumbo-jumbo?" Saw asked. "Impressive"
She chuckled. "Not really, but I can give you the simplified explanation I received"
She turned for the door, but Press pulled her closer to himself. "You could stay with me over the night, hon~" he said, nuzzling her horn, which earned him an echoing giggle from her.
"No funny business though, big guy" She said.
"Wouldn´t dream of it"
They had some trouble fitting themselves on a bunk which was honestly not even big enough to accomodate Press by himself. As such Ciloa ended up pretty much lying ontop of him.
As they switched off the lights, Saw mumbled. "Im jealous of you guys"
"Why so?" Shetland asked sleepily.
"You all got ordinary names. You know how tiring it is to have a name that basically already indicates a weapon?"
"it could mean you´re a lumberjack" Shetland said with a chuckle.
"yeah, sure" Saw said, grumbling.
"Dont worry" Press said with a yawn. "you´re not alone. Mine´s short for Precision Shot. And now shut up and let us sleep"
"Oh... alright" Saw said, his tone just a bit lighter as they fell asleep.
"Warning!" the speaker from the ceiling roared in an artificial voice, sending Shetland and Saw into shock, while Press tried to calm down Ciloa, who awoke screaming. "An unidentified ship is blocking our course"
They looked at each other in confusion as the speaker fell silent.
"Could it be Aliens?" Saw asked, just to be swatted lightly by Press.
"Maybe the colony just send a ship back to the station-" Ciloa started, but Press shook his head.
"If that was the case, we could identify it. And its definetly not aliens" he said with a look to the red unicorn.
The Speaker switched on again, this time with the voice of the captain.
"We have recieved a message from the ship, and it is indeed hostile. Everypony ready yourself. They are going to board us"
Perseverance
"We have received a message from the ship, and it is indeed hostile. They are going to board us through the ship head, everypony arm yourselves!"
Stunned, Shetland, Saw, Press and Ciloa stared up at the speaker in silence. Then, all over the ship, panic erupted and from everywhere came the staccato of hooves, ponies impacting on the walls and ceiling, shouts from fearful ponies trying to figure out where to go or what to do.
Shetland jumped up from her bunk, but her sudden movement in zero-gravity sent her into the ceiling. “AGH” she shouted, grabbing the side of her bed to pull herself down to the ground.
“What's the plan?” Saw shouted, his eyes darting from Press and Shetland to the speaker frantically.
“There's no plan!” Shetland shouted back at him. “This has never happened before!”
Press, took a look at Ciloa, who had grabbed the edges of their bed tight, her whole body shaking, and screamed:
“QUIET! if there´s no plan, we need to make one!”
“Where are our weapons stored?” Saw shouted
“I-in the cargo space, but that´s on the other side of the ship!” Ciloa answered.
“That doesn't matter!” Shetland said, her hooves now safely on the ground. “You two go there, get the weapons, I´ll try and hold them off until you reinforce us!”
“That´s stupid, you´re unarmed and unarmored-” Saw reached for Shetland with his hoof, but she was already at the door.
As she opened it, the screams of the panicking crew swept into the room and Shetland had to scream to overpower them. “It's risky, but we need a plan now , and this is it!” From the corner of her eye, she could see Press nod and take Ciloa by her hoof. Then she descended into the hallway.
It was chaos. From the front of the ship came ponies running towards the cargo to find weapons, places to hide, or their friends, while from the other side,ponies rushed in the opposite direction, carrying all the weapons and ammunition they could find.
And in the middle, they clashed into each other, blocking the way, screaming, they pushed, some fell, floating away weightlessly and trying to grab something to hold onto. Others tried fanatically to gather up their dropped weapons and to load them, often with the wrong type of ammunition. A loud thump from the cockpit told Shetland to hurry. She ran forward and shouted:
“Let me through, i´m a soldier! I'M A SOLDIER, DAMNIT!” However, only one earth pony in front of her seemed to understand her words and tried to make place for her, but then a unicorn, holding something big in his magic, tried to dive through the new free spot.
Shetland lunged forward, bit his tail and yanked him backwards. She was about to ignore him and make her own way through the chaos, but then her eyes fell on the weapon he was still holding.It looked like a bulky gun, almost as long as one of her legs and at least twice as thick. It had a barrel seemingly large enough to fit tennis balls. On top of it laid a big drum magazine, enough to hold at least six little balls.
An E-45 grenade launcher!
Shetland grabbed the weapon and tried to pry it from the unicorns grasp, but he grabbed it with one foreleg, the other he set on Shetland’s chest and tried to break her grip.
“Let go!” he screamed, his voice seemingly too high-pitched for his body.
”You can´t use this in here” Shetland screamed back. The E-45 launcher was specifically build so it could be used in interiors without destroying them, trading sheer explosive strength against the ability to accurately lob the little grenades behind cover, but Shetland certainly didn't want to test that theory on board of a spaceship, where it could spell everypony's doom.
Suddenly, the unicorn’s face became as pale as a skull.
Shetland followed her eyes and froze.
Around the corner came something that looked like the skeleton of a pony, if there weren´t the glass, red glowing eyes, wires hanging between the metal bones and pistons and cogs in place of the joints.
The robot raised a hoof, and hefted atop that hoof was a gun.
The unicorn recovered first from the shock, and threw himself at Shetland, trying to wrestle the weapon out of her hoof, but with a loud cracking noise, he fell beside her, holding his stomach. Out of his back poured his blood.
Without thinking for even a second, she raised the weapon and shot a tennis ball sized grenade at the machine. It impacted on its chest and exploded, ripping the robot apart, scorching the walls, but only dealing minor damage to them.
But already, a group of three robots turned the corner, guns raised, and the crowd of ponies recovered from their shock and ran, all in different directions. Shetland aimed her weapon again, taking a step back. The robots’ guns roared, and they tore into the crowd, injuring half a dozen ponies before another shot from Shetlands weapon blew one apart and threw the other two to the sides, one badly damaged.
But then, as even more came around the corner into the hallway, Shetland shot one more time and turned to run. Even through the explosion, she could hear more of them arrive! How could they already be here? She didn't hear a single shot fired from the ship head!
She suppressed a scream as a bullet grazed over her flank and she turned for a moment, shooting behind herself before she jumped and floated over a screaming pegasus, who had been felled with several bullets to the side.
All around her ponies were running, ponies screaming, falling, dying. Shetland ran faster. She knew she could not defend them against that many without backup, where were her friends? She heard the thumping of metal hooves growing closer at an alarming rate
Another two ponies next to her dropped, they pleaded for her to save them! Shetland couldn´t look back, she breathed heavily, she ran. In front of her was a gate, which she knew was to the cargo space. Behind it, she saw Press, in his full set of armor, barring the helmet. He stared at her, his rifle levitating beside him. His face turned pale.
“RIGHT BEHIND YOU!” He screamed.
Shetland looked back. Only a few metres behind her ran several robots, faster than any pony she´d seen before. They were not in the shape of ponies, their shoulders stronger than any pony she’d met, their heads smaller, but fitted with a frightening jaw, filled with teeth worthy of blades, and their hooves had steel claws coming out of them.
Turning back to Press, Shetland raised the grenade launcher and without looking, lobbed a grenade behind her back.
A tremendous force launched her forward and it felt like her leg had been ripped apart and set on fire. Shetland lunged forward, crashing into a tall crate with her shoulder first, but the force knocked her hard against its metal casing, giving her a feeling as if her head had been hit with a sledgehammer.
Stunned, she heard Press and Saw shouting, Ciloa bend down over her, her expression one of shock, and behind her, the big gate closed.
Shetland tried to sit up, but Ciloa´s holed hoof pushed her down again. The others and an earth pony Shetland didn't know gathered around her, their faces expressing shock, fear and worry.“D-does anyone here know anything about first aid?” Press asked, his voice deprived of any sense of calm.
Saw shook off his hesitation and looked up. “I need any kind of fabric you can find! Look through the crates, healing potions, blood packs, stim packs, bandages- DON'T MOVE!”
Shetland had tried to sit up and look at her lower body, but as she moved her right hind leg, a pain like she had never known pulsed through her body, as if a dragon had set her leg on fire and then stuck knives into her scorched flesh. She let out a scream, loud enough to startle Ciloa and make the others rummage through the cargo even more hurriedly. “How bad is it?” Shetland pressed through her teeth and sore throat. She could not even suppress tears flowing out of her eyes.
Saw took a close look at her flank, his nostrils flaring. Shetland now noticed the smell of burnt flesh as well. “I-I need to see!” she demanded through her teeth. Saw seemed conflicted, but he softly pushed her up a few inches. She let out another shout, both from the pain, but also from the view.
Her right flank and leg were burnt and bloody, her flank and outside part of her hindleg was scorched black. Around her inner thigh, it was bloody, the skin flaking off. Her cutie mark was unrecognisable, now just black, ripped skin. Lesser burn marks reached up to her stomach and her left inner thigh, and her tail was almost completely burned, and in fact, Saw set to stomp out embers glimmering in its smoldering remnants, an act that would normally have Shetland clench her teeth, but now barely even registered.
Press came back with a first-aid-kit, and he and Saw quickly pulled out healing salves, sterilizers and bandages. “Alright, this is going to hurt a lot…” Saw stated and started by smearing healing salve over her blackened skin. Weirdly enough, she barely felt him there, only when his hoof wandered over her reddened burns did she yelp, and Press had to keep her still. Through the agony, Shetland felt ashamed; she wanted to hold still, let Saw do his work without complications, but as soon as his hoof reached down again, pouring more salve onto her wound which only seemed to make the burning worse, her resolve melted away, and she screamed and struggled against Press´s grip.
“C-c-can't we give her any painkillers?” Ciloa meekly suggested, pressing herself against a crate, not daring to get any closer to the scene before her.
“That could cause problems” Saw said through his clenched teeth as he smeared the last bit of salve on Shetland’s wound and started pouring sterilizer on bandages. “If she uses that leg, it could cause serious long-term effects”
Now that the treatment was temporarily over, Shetland had managed to regain her senses and croaked through her hoarse throat. “You know what causes long-term-problems? Bullets! I need the painkillers so I can fight!”
Unable to give a proper response, Saw just nodded to Ciloa, who took a syringe from the first aid kit, and stabbed it through Shetlands foreleg. Saw started to wrap the bandages around Shetland´s wound and fed her a healing potion.
After about a minute, she could feel her side cooling off. She could still feel it, it even hurt badly, but her mind wasn't clouded by pain anymore and she could think. She looked over to the door, and noticed that the foreign earth pony stallion did the same.
“How do we know this door will hold?” He asked, or rather, squeaked. On his overall was a plaquette which read “Rock Plunge.”
“It will,” Ciloa assured him, “at least for a while”
“How do YOU know?” He retorted.
“Because” she said and looked around the stacked crates. “We are supplying a mining colony. And for mining, you sometimes use dynamite. This door will hold, even if at least a fourth of the explosives here go off at the same time”
“Heh,” Shetland chuckled. “If we can't make a plan to beat ´em, i could wire all of it together and blow up the ship. I know my way with explosives.”
“Anyone even know who they are supposed to be?” Saw blurted out.
“Pirates,” Press said with perplexing certainty.
“Why pirates?” Shetland asked, unable to look at him from her position on the ground . She ignored the urge to stand up and talk to him eye to eye.
“Because those robots are clearly stolen.” He said. As everypony but Shetland stared at him in bewilderment, he explained. “Those are standard warbots, unmodified. They follow the rules of the Neighpon contract. If our enemies did not modify them, it´s probably because they stole them and wouldn't know how to change their design. And because any nation can build ´em, they wouldn't need to steal at all. So the most logical explanation is pirates.”
“Ooh,” Saw and Shetland said in unison, but Ciloa and Plunge just seemed even more baffled.
“After the victory in Hiroshimare,” Press continued. “All the nations of Equus made a contract detailing exactly how to limit artificial intelligence. And these bots follow those guidelines to a T. They´re inflexible and unable to stand up to fully geared and prepared soldiers,” he clenched his teeth. “If we had responded better instead of delving into chaos, we probably could have held them off without great losses!”
“THAT DOESN'T HELP US AT ALL!” Plunge screamed.
“M-maybe it will” Ciloa said. “I-if the bots outside really follow those rules, we should know them.”
A loud bang outside made the group turn towards the door. It sounded like one of the robots hurled itself against it. Fortunately to no effect.
“Well,” Press said. “Sentient A.I. is unbound by these rules, but those have to be built with a data core, so it can't save itself anywhere else. If you destroy the core, the A.I. is dead. No safety backups. All robots have to have one.”
“Except Turing, my mom's friend. But she helped design the cores and mom trusts her so she gets a pass.” Shetland said hoarsely.
“S-so…” Ciloa said, her voice echoing even more than usual. “Those things outside have these cores we need to destroy?”
“Actually” Saw chimed in. “only one. They're actually not drones, they don't have data cores, they're guided by a central core. Probably on their command bridge”
“But then we only have to destroy that one… right?” Ciloa asked, hope glimmering in her eyes.
“If only it was that easy” Shetland sighed. “It will throw all the drones it has at us. And we're just two soldiers, a wounded one, and two civilians”
Several loud clangs came from the door. They were now shooting it, still to limited success.
“W-we can't just give up!” Ciloa shouted. “”There´s a lot of weapons here, right? And armor! We can fight!”
“What we need,” Press said while he looked through more crates. “Is some way to surprise them. Take out a big chunk of them and storm onto their ship”
“I have a grenade launcher,” Shetland suggested.
“Good start, but that´ll probably not kill enough. And we can't risk bigger explosions or it will blow apart the ship”
“It's the best plan we have.” She insisted.
Plunge, who had spent the last minute observing the gate, peeked up at that. “Wait… w-what if we open the doors?”
Shetland made a grimace. “Then the robots storm in and kill us, great plan, normie”
Plunge shook his head, and with a bit of anger in his voice he retorted. “No! I meant both doors!”
The following moment would have been complete silence, if not for the metallic banging on the gate.
“L-look, i´m a technician, so I know how to remotely operate the machinery without the ship A.I. T-these levers on the wall-” he pointed at a set of encased levers next to the gate. “Open the door to inside the ship and… well…”
“Space!” Saw exclaimed, a grin appearing on his muzzle. “You want to open both doors and suck the bad guys into the void!”
“But how do we avoid being sucked out ourselves?” Press pointed out. “And can we close the door again? I would rather still have air to breathe even after we’ve won.”
“I-I'm not completely sure about the doors” Plunge admitted. “But some of the armor suits have an option to turn on magnets on the hooves, we can stick to the walls like changelings! Im sure we can find some here.”
“Hmmm,” Press said, as he weighed their options. “What if all the cargo gets stuck in the doorframe?”
“It won't,” assured Plunge. “It is all strongly fixed on the ground”
Shetland grinned. “Alright, everypony, seems like we got a plan!”
Ciloa threw a compassionate look at Shetland. “But where will you be, you can´t fight-”
“Yes, I can!” She stated, her voice raised.
“Surely, you can´t think-”
“Ciloa, I can´t stay back, we're safer in a group, and no one can stay back to try and protect me, there´s not enough of us. Also, I'm an earth pony. Not only that, an enhanced earth pony with alicorn heritage. Give me some drugs and i'll be fine!” She said with a reaffirming grin, which promptly distorted into a grimace as she got up on her hooves. “I'll be fine,” she said through clenched teeth.
Ciloa still looked worried, but with no valid counter-argument she just nodded and mumbled. “Just don't overdo it…”
Press was now branded in a complete set of what looked like a set of black knight armor, but instead of steel, they were covered in carbon plates. His face was covered by a black helmet with no opening, just a blue visor, slightly glowing. His were encased in solid carbon and unable to move and his tail was contained in an unsightly sack of black rubber and plastic. Tiny mechanisms at his joints, build to reduce the impact the armor would have on his mobility and reaction time, were covered by flexible black materials. Thin glowing lines across the armor informed the wearer and his allies whether the armor was flawlessly powered or not.
He tapped Ciloa´s shoulder. “We still need to find a suit for you.” and he led her off, just as Saw arrived to help Shetland into her armor set, which was practically the same as Press´s, but in a dark shade of violet.
Shetland took a sharp breath. Gently, but swiftly, Saw fitted the armor on her, piece after piece. “It must hurt like a bitch if you can still feel it…” he said.
“Give me a stronger one next time… and a doctor.” She said.
The banging on the gate had stopped, which made all of them nervous. If the enemy was not waiting right outside, their plan would most likely fail.
When they were all ready, they divided into two groups, one on each side of the gate. Shetland, Press and Plunge on the right side with the lever for the gate inside, Ciloa and Saw on the other, with the lever for the outside.
Shetland placed a fore hoof on the metal wall. It just slipped off again. In her visor, a little marker appeared over her hoof.
“Eh… activate magnet?” She whispered. Suddenly, she felt a force pull her other three limbs down, much stronger than she had anticipated. Her eyes started watering again as weight was put onto her bad leg.
After a minute, they had all placed themselves securely with all four hooves on the wall. Saw seemed a bit nervous, while Ciloa appeared weirdly calm. Shetland figured that sticking on walls and ceilings was quite normal for her.
“E-everypony ready?” Plunge asked, unable to suppress the shivers in his voice. He and Ciloa placed their hooves at the levers.
“Ready” they said in unison. And they pushed down.
As the gate opened, Shetland estimated at least a dozen robots with gun behind it, and another half dozen of the fast, toothy sort. The robots sat behind cover, made of bunks, chairs and even a water tank. It seems they anticipated us making a sortie , Shetland thought smugly. Too bad robots weren't known for their creativity.
Shetland felt a pull on her back, and she knew without looking that the gate to space had opened. It made a noise almost like a vacuum cleaner. The force got stronger. The drones seemed to realize something was up, but without a tactile sense, they could not pinpoint the reason. Two of them got up from their cover, and took a step into the cargo. But then, the water tank behind them moved forward, knocking them over and they were lifted from their hooves, flying out of Shetlands view. By now, the drones seemed to have realized what happened, but it was too late, and even as one or two tried to hold onto objects close to them, they were simply sucked out of the hallway with whatever they were holding onto.
By now the wind was roaring, and Shetland felt as if a minotaur was trying to pull her off the wall. Ciloa should have pushed the lever back by now! Shetland looked to her left, and what she saw froze her blood.
Ciloa was staring at the lever, panic in her eyes. It was encased by both her green and Saws red magic, but it was stuck.
The effort of her magic visibly strained her. She seemed to gulp. Then, she pulled one of her hooves from the wall, grabbed the lever, and pushed it up again.
“HA!” She cheered, but then her expression became one of horror as her other forehoof came loose. She hung there for a second, and her lips formed the word “no” in her helmet, then she was sucked off the wall and accelerated towards the opening.
“NOOOO!” Shetland and Press screamed, but both of their screams were overpowered by Saw´s, who lifted his hoof from the wall in a desperate attempt to grab Ciloa’s hoof, but the ferocious pull lifted him too from the wall, and before the gate closed, they were both towed into the great hollow between the stars while the door closed, cutting them off from the view.
“NOO!” Press screamed as he slid down the wall. He stared at the closed door, then whirled around and ran towards the lever.
“PRESS!” Shetland screamed as she slid down. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“WE HAVE TO BRING THEM BACK!” He shouted back, reaching for the lever, but Plunge tackled him and the force sent them both floating in the air.
“We can't bring them back, Press, t-they´re gone!”
“NO!” He screamed, as tears formed in his eyes. “S-she can´t be, w-we can still save them!”
“They were pulled into outer space, Press…there's nothing we can do…but we have to move now, or the rest of the robots can recover!”
Press let out a scream, then he pulled himself onto the ground with his magic. Shetland could hear his unstable breathing between his words as he said in a shaky, vulnerable voice
“Alright, Shetland…give me a weapon. I will make those buckets pay! ” At that last sentence his voice had a tone of finality, but also growing fury. Shetland tossed him a pair of guns, a rifle and a shotgun, and without waiting for her and Plunge to arm or ready themselves, he stormed off into the hallway. Alarmed, Shetland quickly took a heavy pistol and a second shotgun, and tossed Plunge a gun, she didn't register what it was. Then she ran after Press.
Ahead of her, the sounds of combat had already begun. She floated past a jawbot which had been devastated by a close range shotgun blast. Ahead, she heard Press screaming, and the sounds of rapid fire. She doubled her efforts to catch up to him, cursing the fact that her wound prevented her from going faster.
Behind her, Plunge suddenly screamed. A robot had burst out of a side room and taken several shots at him. His shouts were caused by surprise rather than pain, as his armor’s magical shields was quite enough to withstand a few bullets. Yet it would not hold much longer, and the shaky shots from his rifle were unable to finish the attacker off.
Shetland put a bullet between its glowing red dots, causing its head to explode in a shower of broken glass, ceramic and steel.
She gestured the startled Plunge to follow as she once again took off, trying to catch up to her friend. She sailed past several more broken machines, some from Press, some from her own efforts. She tried to ignore the broken, maimed and bulletridden corpses lying on the ground, and sometimes floating. Shetland pushed away the broken body of a pegasus with only one wing left, as she heard a different scream from the cockpit. One not only of rage, but of pain.
“Oh no,” she whispered, and barged through the door.
The great round room was devastated. The normally sealed door on the side, which would lead into a station if the ship floated over Equus, had been forced open, and a long tube lead from it to the pirates’ smaller spaceship. Broken chairs, glass and body part were everywhere, the wall in the back of the room was scorched, and around that area laid the captain and eight ponies of his crew, ripped to pieces from what could have only been a grenade. That was how the robots got past so quickly.
And, leaning on the side of the room, behind a group of two robots and one jawbot, sat Press, his hooves on the sides of his helmet, trying to force it off.
Shetland rushed to his side and froze. The side of the armor covering his throat had a clean, round hole inside, through which blood poured out. Press coughed.
“Aimed at the two, then the doggie jumped me- threw off my aim,” he managed to say, his voice weak and shaky. “Managed to shoot ´em, but only after this…”
“Hold on, Press, w-we'll help you, I-I´ll patch you up- AGH!” Shetlands hoof rose to her helmet. Press had just slapped her cheek.
“I’m done” he said. “Save yourselves…I'll be with…” But he lacked the air to finish his sentence, and he closed his eyes, his lips twisting into a pained, but nonetheless content smile.
Shetland took a shaky step back. She swallowed, but it did little to remedy the dryness in her throat. “G-go on,” she said to Plunge, but mostly to herself. “W-we need to move on!”
She turned towards the tube and, without looking back at her former friend, she moved on.
The tube did not lead into the pirate ship's cockpit, but against Shetlands fears, there were no robots awaiting them. It seemed the pirates had not expected their prey to win, or at least counter-push into their ship.
Shetland rushed forward, the pirates’ ship was only a fourth the length of their victims’, not longer than 40 metres at most. She rushed through the tight hall. Only a single robot stood in her way, and she finished it off with two shots from her pistol.
She was now certain all the bots had been sent onto their ship, with only the bare minimum remaining…but where was the crew?
She burst into the command room and there it was, attached to several wire cords. The data core. it looked like a green square the size of a pineapple, with little intricate details on its surface. She looked around suspiciously, but there was still only emptiness. Was it a trap? She took another look, but Plunge shouted with panic in his voice: “THEY'RE COMING AFTER US!”
Shetland looked back. Indeed, the robots were climbing back onto their own ship. The A.I. must have been panicking. She kicked the door closed and rushed towards the data core and yanked the wires out of it. Thank Celestia her armor was insulated.
“I-is it over?” Plunge asked, his breath strained.
“I hope so” Shetland answered. But she had to be certain. She took her gun, readied herself, and quickly opened the door to the hallway. The drones had all fallen over, lying there like toys without their batteries. She shot each through the head,just to be sure, then she turned back with a victorious grin.
“We won.” Then she dropped against the wall, spreading her aching leg. The joy of victory was short-lived, overtaken by pain, exhaustion and most of all, her inability to banish the images of her friends’ last seconds from her inner eye. When she closed her eyes, she even thought she could even hear their last moments. Ciloa’s and Saw’s terrified screams . Press´s last breathless words. All those ponies she didn't know by name…
Something touched her shoulder. She looked up and saw Plunge, who looked anxiously at her. “Thank Celestia…I thought you were…”
“I was just thinking…and exhausted,” She said, her breath already stabilizing, but her voice still shaky.
“We need to search the ship for survivors, soldier mare! And make sure there really aren't any pirates here.”
“Alright…just give me a moment” Shetland gasped and thankfully accepted Plunge´s hoof.
Even after a quick search, they found nothing but two deactivated robots, which Shetland made sure to destroy before moving on. There were signs of a crew, a filled fridge, waste in a bucket, some inappropriate writings on the toilet walls, but no living soul to be found.
However, before she could ponder too much about that, she had a duty to look for anyone still alive. She promised herself and her leg some peace later. Hopefully, they could find a doctor.
Climbing back onto their ship was harder, especially since she felt the drugs starting to wear off. She now had to keep her leg in the air, as touching anything with it would cause her to scream in agony. At least walking on three legs was not too difficult without gravity.
As she carefully slid out the tube, her eyes instantly darted to Press. His body, leaned against the wall before as if he was just sleeping, had slid down to the ground, lying in an unnatural position that could not be mistaken for anything but death. She forced herself to look away, even as tears clouded her vision. His last order was to continue the mission, and she was not done yet.
However, as she trotted through the hallways and rooms, she had the gnawing feeling of her last hopes draining away. Wherever she looked were just empty rooms, or worse, rooms full of corpses. In the canteen she saw the remains of seven ponies and a changeling, who tried to take cover behind a table but were caught out by a group of jawbots, their weapons, or maybe their aim not good enough to drive them off. She couldn't tell. An hour of unsuccessful searching and calling for ponies to get out of hiding later, Shetland returned to the Cockpit, where Plunge was already waiting, his head in his hooves.
She turned towards the body of her friend. She gulped. “We-... you should be buried next to her. You were…” but her words failed her.
“Soldier mare…” Plunge whispered.
“If those damn pirates hand´t stopped us…” Shetland blinked, a realization dawned on her.
“Fuck! T-the line is only between the Equestrian station and the colony! They certainly did not come from our station and they were in front of us- they came from the colony! That has to be why there were just robots on the ship, the pirates are all still in the colony. We have to get there fast and save-”
“YOU DON'T GET IT!” Plunge interrupted her with an angry shout. “We're not going anywhere. We're finished! ”
“What-” Shetland begun, staring dumbfounded at the smaller stallion.
“We're dead!” He screamed, his teeth grinding, his nostrils flared, as if it was solely Shetland´s fault. “Lost! Doomed! Our captain is dead, and the data core of our A.I broken!
Do you know how to fly this ship?”
Shetland took a step back. “No…” she whispered. She hadn't even thought about that. Of course they couldn't fly without a crew, or at least someone who knew how to pilot. Her mind raced. There had to be something! “Maybe- maybe there's a book lying-”
“COME ON, there is no way either of us can learn to pilot a half-broken spaceship from a MANUAL!” He shouted. “Damnit, damnit, DAMNIT!”
“Maybe someone is still alive-”
“There can´t be! We looked through every single room. Probably more than once. There´s just us! Fuck. If you just could have done your job right, all of this wouldn't have happened!”
“What did you just say?” Shetland growled.
“Your friend said it himself. If you weren't clueless about your own tasks, you would have stopped them easily!”
Shetland’s hoof shot forward, grabbing him by the neck. How dare he rail about her and her friends’ sacrifices? Shetland pushed down on his throat. How dare he, he did not achieve anything, he did not destroy a singly enemy! He struggled, but he could not push her off.
Shetland looked down at the stallion. His face was beet red, and he was beating on her hoof, unable to remove it, but his eyes, his eyes were empty, as if someone had snuffed out a light behind them. He had the eyes of a corpse. Shetland removed her hoof, and he fell down, coughing and breathing greedily. “G-go” he demanded between his heavy breathing. “I-I want to be alone”
Shetland turned. There was nothing for her. She limped through the hallway, pulling her burnt leg after herself. Her stomach growled. She went to look for food. In the canteen, after climbing over the unlucky defenders, she found a pack of noodles, some water and pieces of nutrient chalk. That would have to be enough.
From somewhere a shot rang out. Shetland’s head raised, her ears peeking, but there was no follow-up shooting, no screams and no steps.
He had escaped the trap.
She looked at the table, but decided it was not the right place. Instead, she trotted into the cargo. She had one last thing to do. She rummaged through the crates until she found what she was looking for. A helmet. But more importantly, a helmet which had a build in voice recorder. She set it on her head.
“I-is this on?” She asked, not expecting an answer.
“S-start recording.” She swallowed, her throat still dry, she should have taken a sip of water before this.
“H-hey mom…here, Shetland Sparkle, y-your daughter, if you still remember me that is… Maybe this ship won't be found in millennia, if ever…” She shook her head, new tears flowing out of tear ducts she had thought dry. “W-when you find this, you should know how I… d-died.” And she started talking, about the attack, the chaos, Ciloa, her friends, her fear, in no order, she rambled and sobbed into the helmet until she had no tears left.
“G-goodbye, mom. I love you,” she said. “Recording over”
She took off the helmet and set it beside her, then she opened the water bottle and greedily chugged down its contents. She would not die with an empty stomach, so she slurped up the last noodle and even chewed the disgusting, tasteless chalk.
She closed her eyes. It would be better if she didn´t see. Her hoof grasped the cold metal and she raised it, until she felt the barrel against her temple.
She sat there for several seconds, pointing the gun at her head.
“Now!” She thought, but her hoof didn't react. She trembled.
“Now!” She demanded to herself, but her shaking hoof just could not press the trigger. She threw the gun aside in a fit of rage, which quickly turned on herself. Why did she have to be so scared? There was no point, she was certain to die anyway!
She didn´t know how long she sat there, beating on herself, but her painkiller wore off more and more, and the throbbing pain forced her up again. She rummaged through the crates, weapons, explosives, tools, a painkiller syringe which she happily took, grain, steel plates and, taking an entire crate for itself…
A robot. Not a skeletal warbot, no. A robot like Turing, but more advanced-looking and shaped almost like a pony, barring the lack of a mouth. It actually looked almost like a smoother version of her armor, even with a visor covering its eyes. Or maybe that was its eyes.
She probably shouldn't turn it on, she thought. If it was sentient, it would be cruel to awaken it, just so it could realize it was doomed to be trapped until its energy ran out.
However, she simply couldn't bear the thought of slowly starving to death alone, so she reached over and tapped its head. She found a plate in the back of its head that could be unscrewed, so, after finding a screwdriver, she did so. Behind it was a little switch, which she turned on. A shock went through the mechanical body, and two lights behind its visor started up.
The robot sat up, looking around.
“Have we arrived?” It asked, its voice sounding almost like a real stallion’s, with only a faint metallic vibe. “This does not look like Eggnor 4,” It looked towards Shetland. “Greetings, my designation is Mellow Drive. You can call me Mellow. Would you please fill me in on what… happened…?” He said, his voice changing from curious to shocked as his visor darted over the corpse of a pony lying just a few metres away from the cargo gate.
Shetland sighed. She took the bottle and turned it around, trying to get a few last drops to fall into her mouth. Then she explained.
At the end of it, Mellow stared at her, horrified at her words.“There has to be some way to escape!” He said.
“Not unless you know how to fly the ship.” She groaned, lying down on her good side. She didn't want to get her hopes up just for them to die again.
“But… maybe i can get the knowledge out of the A.I. It knows how to fly the ship, right?”
“If its data core wasn't broken, we could grant it full control and it could probably fly us back. But since it IS broken it is of no help…” Something about what he said caused a light in her head to switch on. “Oh, Celestia” she whispered, then, for the first time in hours, she smiled. She flashed a mad grin at her new best robot friend and said: “I know how we can escape!”
Reflection
Shetland glided through the hallway at a brisk pace. She kept her eyes focused on her target, trying her best to ignore broken drones, cover, and worst of all, corpses she could see out of the corners of her eyes. As she reached the cockpit, she braced herself. With her eyes closed, so she would not have to look at Press´s body, she fumbled through the room blindly.
“Shetland!” Mellow’s artificial voice screamed. He had fallen behind after she abruptly took off and had to update his motor senses to work in the weightless environment, but Shetland's sudden slowdown had given him a chance to catch up.
“Shetland,” he said again. “What are you doing? do you have a plan?”
She nodded, still unable to open her eyes. “Just tell me where the tube is and I'll explain”
“A little to your right…why are you doing this?”
“I don't want to see.”
“You… you knew one of them?” Mellow asked, his voice intermingled with clear concern.
“I don't want to say either!” Shetland snapped at him, then she felt the opening of the long tube connecting the ships. She let out a sigh. “I-I'm sorry. He was my friend”
“It´s okay, Shetland. I can only imagine how stressful that must be for you. So, this plan of yours?”
“Exactly,” she said as she climbed to the smaller pirate ship. “You see, there IS an A.I that can fly a ship, and it's right there”
If Mellow had a mouth, it would have dropped open. “T-The enemy? The intelligence that attacked us?”
“Think about it,” Shetland said, her voice abuzz. “Their A.I. managed to fly this ship from the colony right into our flight path, with no crew on it except for mindless drones which it also manually controls.”
“Wait… you said they came from the colony? why would they send a spaceship our way, manned with just drones? How would they escape if this didn't work?”
Shetland slowed down again, furrowing her brows. “They had to come from there. There is no other way their ship could have been in front of us” She puffed out her cheeks and blew air through her lips. “They must have a second ship. That way they could escape even if this attack failed…”
“Are you really sure they're pirates? It would be incredibly unusual for lowly criminals to have two spaceships at their disposal.”
“It doesn't matter who exactly they are, Mellow! We have to assume their real crew is still in the colony, probably holding hostages-”
“Maybe they aren’t. Maybe they killed everypony,” Mellow said,interrupting Shetland, who turned and looked at him with a shocked expression. “They were fine killing everypony on the ship and-”
“We have to assume, Mellow!” Shetland shouted. her throat felt like it had a little jawbot in it, tearing from the inside, but it didn't matter. “T-there are much more ponies living in the colony than on a ship… there have to be hostages.” She stated again, staring into his glowing visor, as if provoking him to disagree.
“Alright, Shetland… do you have a plan to deal with… lets say around forty to fifty pirates and also rescue the hostages?”
She gritted her teeth. “Only if we can use this ship to arrive. We'll have the surprise factor, if they see their own ship arrive, they won't expect hostiles on it”
“That´s not enough! we need something more!” Mellow exclaimed.
Shetland looked back at him, her eyes lingering on his visor and her expression changed to one of… he could not properly identify it, perhaps sadness. “It´s… all we have Mellow. We just have to hope for the best.” She said and entered the command bridge, briskly walking to the data core. Praying it would work, she took the wire she had plugged out of the cube and reinserted it into the core. Then, as the lights started to glow, she took a step back and leveled her shotgun at it.
“Startup sequence initiated… memory loss due to power outage detected. Attempt repairs,” a voice intoned from above them, much like the captain’s speaker system on their ship. Shetland nervously waited as the voice started to count percentages. “Lock and barricade the door,” she whispered to Mellow. “It could try to fool us”
“Repairs complete. Memory restored,” it paused. “Enemies on ship detected. attempt connection to drone units-” it intoned, but Shetland interrupted it.
“If you do anything funny, I will blow your core to pieces!”
“Connection attempt aborted,” the voice intoned. “Diplomacy route engaged. You have reactivated this unit. I am bound by programming to not reveal or hint towards my end user´s identity”
“I want to know what you were sent here to do.” Shetland asked.
“I have been tasked with finding the ship on course towards Eggnor 4, kill the crew and strip the ship and its cargo of its most valuable parts,” the A.I. answered.
“This seems a bit too helpful, don't you think?” Mellow asked, the small lights behind his visor narrowing.
“It would be standard procedure actually,” Shetland asked. “Except for the killing part. and until now it´s only been done while the ship´s still on a planet. However,” she said to the ceiling. “You've failed. we've destroyed your drones. you can't kill us anymore. you have failed your objective”
“processing… this statement is true.” it said, without even a hint of emotion at the fact.
“So… Shetland said, hoping desperately her assumptions were correct. “It's time to move on to the next thing on the list, right?”
“... This unit could wait for the enemy to perish of natural causes,” it said. Shetland could hear the cooling unit of the core pick up as it thought of the conundrum. It made her grin.
“Isn't it usually the case that unmanned ships controlled by artificial intelligence have a set date after which they have to return, whether or not they have achieved their goal?”
The A.I. did not answer, but Shetland was now sure of her theory. “So, imagine I threatened to shoot your core here to pieces if you don't return exactly when I say it… you could not risk failing another objective willingly, could you?”
The noise of the cooling unit picked up dramatically, just to drop off after a few seconds. “You would be right. Privilege granted. Awaiting your command”
“Excellent,” Shetland grinned. “Now prepare for another power outage.” Then she pulled the wire out again.
“why-” Mellow started, but Shetland interrupted him.
“We need to prepare first. and move a lot of stuff we'll need from ship to ship. Also, I need you to do three things: one, search the ship for anything that could be used for communication and disable it. We can't risk them getting a warning. Two, destroy any drone you see, I think we got them all, but we better double-check that. And three, take guns and get used to them, you'll need to do that very soon, you got all that?” She looked in his visor.
He nodded. “Alright… what will you do?”
“Check out what we can use in the cargo of our ship”
They each went to their assigned tasks. Two hours later, Mellow joined Shetland in the cargo room, she had separated ten big crates from the rest and was just closing an eleventh. He made a noise which would come close to a whistle. “Are we really gonna use all that?” he asked.
“Hopefully not,” she answered. “I've laid out some armor suits, not sure which one's your size. Try them”
As he set out to measure the suits, she added: “Also, i've put the best guns over there… familiarize with them… I think once we push over those boxes we can start.” Her voice shivered tensely.
Mellow moved closer to the large crates. “Do you need help, Shetland? With your leg… and what's in them, exactly?” He reached for one of them, but she swatted his hoof away.
“It´s weightless and I took painkillers, I can do it myself!” She said loudly.
Assuming it was a thing of pride for the soldier mare, Mellow dropped it. “Can I carry those guns over, at least?” He asked.
“Hu- y-yes, you can do that,” she said and pushed the crate out the room, careful to not use her injured leg.
Once again, she stopped in the cockpit at the sight of her friend’s body.
“Do… do you want me to put the bodies away?” Mellow asked softly.
“No…” Shetland said, and pressed her eyes shut. Then she took a deep breath. “Yes… put it away… I need to stay focused…”
Mellow nodded and gently pulled Press´s body on his back. Dead limbs hung from his back in unnatural angles and Shetland’s stomach jumped, but her artificial friend quickly carried the body out of sight. She took another controlled, if shaky, breath.
“He was really close to you, wasn't he?” Mellow asked as he returned.
Shetland nodded and said with a husky voice “He… I knew Press since we entered marine training as foals. I was the only one who had homeschooling by my mom ontop of that, so I seldom had free time. But Press, he would accompany me, and since then I had someone I could pass notes to while mom rambled on,” her eyes had drifted off, looking at a faraway place. “We were the best of friends. Then one day Ciloa showed up, a distant relative to one of mom's oldest friends and Press immediately adored her. She-”
Shetlands voice broke. She gritted her teeth. “I should have saved her! I saw her struggling, reach out with her hoof and then… sucked out…” She stomped her hoof. “She was too far away and… Saw… none of us knew him, we just met him yesterday, but he risked his life, trying to catch her… he´s a hero. and I… I´m not.”
Mellow put his hoof on her shoulder to calm her down. “You couldn't do anything, Shetland. If she was too far away for you to reach then there´s nothing you could have done. It´s not your fault she died. And… you can be a hero. I believe that you can save us”
Shetland turned her head, meeting eyes with his glowing lights. A deep sadness laid in her eyes and she opened her mouth, just to bite her own lip. “W-we wasted too much time. Help me move the crates, but don't open them, you could scramble ammo types…” She said, forcing the words out. He nodded and went off, leaving Shetland to work alone, but now more focused.
Half an hour later, Shetland went over the crates, checking their contents while Mellow waited at the data core. When she arrived he was adorned in a full suit of armor and even a helmet, which managed to bring a tiny chuckle out of Shetland. She reinserted the wire one more time into the core.
“Shall I execute your command now, intruder?” The voice asked.
“Yes,” Shetland said simply. Immediately, she could hear the engine of the ship starting up. She turned to Mellow and showed him two tiny earbuds. “We can stay in contact with these, make sure you have them in your ear once we're on ground and do not take them out, no matter what”
He nodded in understanding and she patted his shoulder. “This is our best chance.” She said, before she moved back to the room in which she'd stored the crates. “Knock here about two hours before we land,” she said and locked the door behind herself.
Landing a spaceship was a hard, almost impossible task. Big freighter ships were not build to land at all: instead, their cargo space was detachable. They would be thrown into a planet's atmosphere, land safely with the use of parachutes and gas balloons and be retrieved by pick-up teams from the surface. Because of the difficulties associated with this procedure, efforts had been made to make it as efficient as possible. On Eggnor 4, the colonists had decided to simply use the huge cargo rooms by connecting them with their pre-existing structures, which made the colony look like a weird mish-mash of glass and metal structures if viewed from above. But then the pirate ship slowly pulled up, and the colony was no longer visible from the cockpit.
Mellow and Shetland laid on the floor of the ship´s gate with their armor´s magnetic modules in effect to secure them to the ground. Mellow said it tickled his hooves. The engines roared and they felt the pull of gravity shift, now not from their sides anymore, but more and more pulling them to what they perceived as downwards. They were landing. Soon after, they felt like the ground had smacked their undersides, the lower jet engines had engaged, slowing their descend. And then it stopped.
Shetland got up first. She opened a crate which was also secured to the ground and pulled out her weapons: a heavy pistol, two assault rifles and a shotgun. Mellow reached out his hoof, but she stopped him. “Mellow, you need to listen very well now,” She said, her eyes staring into his visor intensely. “I have a plan, but it´s very risky, for both of us.”
“I am ready.” He replied simply. “Just tell me what to do.”
“First we wait until a bunch of pirates try and enter the ship, they won't expect an attack. We'll catch them by surprise and then I'll slip out”
Mellow nodded, but her use of the singular did not evade him. “What about me?”
“You stay on the ship and distract them, survive and hold them off as long as possible, they will want their ship back.”
“You- you want to use me as bait?” He asked incredulously.
“Listen,” she said loudly. Her ears picked up the mechanical sound she already knew as the connection tube. “While you distract them here, I will look for surviving colonists; if they took hostages, they probably locked them all in the same room for simplicity. I find them, free them, arm them and then we'll come back and save you. The clutter in the hallway, that´s cover I've built for you. I've also sealed most of the side rooms, so they can come from only one direction. Just hold out as long as possible, you can do it” She swallowed and pressed one of her assault rifles into his hooves. Her eyes darted around and her mouth opened, but then the loud noise of metal hitting metal sounded through the ship, and quickly after someone knocked on the door and a throaty voice bellowed. “This thing gonna open or what, tin box?”
“Ready?” Shetland muttered under her breath.
“Ready!” Mellow confirmed, then he pulled the lever. The door flew open and before either party could identify the other, Shetland opened fire, the screams of surprise and pain bloated out by the rattling of her gun. She only stopped when she was sure they wouldn't move anymore and cast a short glance at the corpses. They were a bit smaller than ponies and looked humpbacked. Their teeth were sharp and their eyes pitch black. Overall they looked more canine than equine.
“Hyenas,” Shetland cursed, but she didn't have any time to ask herself why those of all species would be here. “Get in cover,” She screamed to Mellow, who saluted. “And stay in contact!” He motioned to his ear to indicate that he understood, then Shetland leaped through the tube, her gun raised. No one else was in the big hall, but that would change soon. Shetland dashed through the leftmost passage: the further away she was from the place of landing, the less resistance she would encounter.
It was a good thing she found an even more effective painkiller drug, otherwise she would have been much more hampered. Mellow had warned her she should be careful with those, but right now, they were necessary.
A broken door, with scorch marks on the walls caught her attention, and she moved closer. One look confirmed this was the armory, stripped completely clean. She opened a random drawer. Nothing. The pirates probably brought all of it on their ship. Shetland cursed. With the armory ruled out, the only weapons she could give to the hostages, if there even were ones, were those she could take off killed pirates.
Her ears peaked up. Someone was running through the corridor. She quickly checked her rifle and went into position. Only a second later, a group of three hyenas, two of them in armor much like Shetland's, popped into the room, in plain view of their target. But Shetland's enhanced hearing had given her a warning they were lacking and she filled the air with automatic fire as her enemies were scrambling to point their weapons at her. One´s shield failed after a split-second, and it fell, it´s chest punctured, together with the unarmored one who, without protection, simply fell in the hail of fire. But the last pirate managed to take cover behind the body of its companion, and Shetland´s magazine ran out of bullets. With a victorious grin, the hyena burst out of cover, and quickly pulled the trigger on Shetland. One shot cracked her shield, a second destroyed it, a third missed. And now Shetland had taken cover and pulled out her own pistol. Then she burst out, both foes quickly aiming to get the deciding shot and with a loud crack, the hyena's head exploded.
Shetland took a deep breath, then equipped her rifle with a new magazine and stormed off to where the small group had come from. In the distance she could hear more gunfire and she hoped Mellow would be able to handle himself. Her direction lead her into what appeared to be the colonists’ quarters: a twisted hallway with doors everywhere. Considering the close proximity, Shetland secured her rifle on her back and switched to a shotgun instead. Then she rounded the corner and-
Wham!
She hit something of her size and she was thrown back, landing unfortunately on her bad leg, which gave in and she hit the floor. She had run into a hyena which had rounded the corner at the same time she had, but this one was unarmored, probably the reason she did not hear it. She got up again, but the hyena did the same. With a startled look on its face, it threw itself on the shotgun Shetland had dropped. With a sudden surge of anger, Shetland threw herself on the pirate, knocking the beast against the wall, her armored hoof pressing against its throat. “Where are the colonists? Are there survivors?” She screamed
The hyena scowled, but Shetland pressed harder and it let out an almost pony-like giggle. Shetland remembered faintly from one of her mother´s lectures that this was a sign of submission under hyenas. She relieved the creature's throat, but before it could try anything, she grabbed her shotgun and held it straight towards its chest.
“Y-yes, t-there are survivors of your colony, pony,” It said between taking greedy breaths.
“How many? Where? How do you protect them?” She said, but before it could answer, she added: “If I even suspect a lie, I will pull the trigger first on your thighs, and then your head”
Sweating, the hyena licked its lips and said with a higher-pitched voice: “A-about a hundred and fifty, pony. In the ample hall” It looked at the shotgun, which Shetland still held straight at its chest. “Just from here, take the left a-and walk straight ahead, behind the door with the chairs in front it is! Some of us are guarding them.” It swallowed. “T-That's all I know, don't shoot me!” It cried out, it´s eyes watering.
Shetland squinted her eyes, then she knocked its head with the butt of her gun with as much force as she thought wouldn't kill it and moved on, quickly running in the direction the hyena had mentioned.
“Shetland!” Mellow´s voice suddenly shouted in her head, startling her enough that she had almost fired a shot.
“Mellow! What's your status?” She said quieter, concern in her voice.
“Bad,” he shouted back. “I've had to give up the first position and they're using my first cover against me now, more of them are coming in-” She heard shuffling, followed by a burst of gunfire and she guessed he had risked a quick look. He shouted: “Around five of them, all armored, Shetland, please tell me you've made progress!”
“I might have found the place they're holding the hostages, please, just hold out a little longer!” She said, then she cut the call. She was standing in front of a big wooden door and, lacking any reasonable alternative, peeked through the keyhole. She could see a large group of ponies a few metres away, sitting on, next to, and under rows of benches which she guessed were aligned in a big half-circle around a stage, on which she could see the back of one hyena standing, loosely holding an automatic weapon, but Shetland was sure there were more she could not see. She quietly took her rifle, then fired a large burst through the door, splintering the wood and, from the screams of pain and alarm, caught one hyena in her volley. Then she jumped to the side, just in time to evade the return fire, from what seemed like two more automatic weapons. She held out her gun and blindly returned fire through another section of the door, but achieved no hits this time. She dared not fire from another angle, lest she might hit the crowd of ponies behind. The Hyenas had no such scruples and blasted their volleys through the wood. Shetland had to dive behind a vending machine in the hallway for cover. She could hear the fizzing of soda cans, as some bullets hit her shield.
She desperately thought of a plan. Surely, this was loud enough to alert every pirate in the vicinity, and unlike before she could not move on, she had to free the hostages! And to make it worse, Mellow called again.
“SHETLAND! I ONLY HAVE ONE MORE COVER LEFT, YOU NEED TO COME SAVE ME!” He screamed, even louder than before, just tuning out the gunfire from both sides.
“I´M WORKING ON IT!” Shetland screamed back, looking around for anything-
Aloud scream bellowed out, at first Shetland thought it came from Mellow, but then she saw through the badly damaged door, a group of hostages had thrown themselves at the hyenas as they were distracted, one had went down under the surprise attack, the other, behind a metal desk for cover, was wrestling with a small pegasus mare who tried to pull the weapon from its paws. Screaming, Shetland stormed forward.
The hyena managed to smash the pegasus's head with one of its paws, then broke the gun out of her grip and shot a burst into her stomach. He turned to face Shetland, but she already rammed into him, throwing him on the ground. Forgetting all weaponry, Shetland smashed her hoof in its head once, twice, thrice. After a fourth stomp, she heard something snap loudly and she slid off the corpse. A few hostages were cheering, but a big group was already forming around the shot mare. Shetland knew with one look it was too late for her, blood poured out of her body and her breathing was troubled. Unable to follow her last moments, Shetland looked over the crowd. most of them were still shaking in fear, some were smashing on the other hyena, their eyes filled with tears of rage.
“SHETLAND!” The desperate call came from Mellow. “YOU NEED TO COME NOW!
“How many are there?” Shetland asked. She had around four weapons she could give to colonists, maybe they could rush back, catch the pirates in between-
“I DON'T KNOW,” Mellow screamed. “AT LEAST A DOZEN, SWARMING THE SHIP, YOU NEED TO COME NOW!”
A dozen!? The blood froze in Shetland’s veins. She swallowed, cold sweat running down her face. She looked over the colonists, some of them seemed brave enough, but none of them appeared like soldiers. A DOZEN! Shetland’s breath quickened, her throat was dry. She may have taken on three at once before, but she always had the element of surprise and superior armor. She would not surprise this group, and she had no armor for the colonists. She took off her helmet and swiped the sweat off her forehead and licked her dry lips. Her hoof was shaking.
“I-I'm sorry, Mellow,” She said, holding her helmet and the microphone in it close to her mouth.
“WHAT?” Mellow screamed back. “Y-YOU CAN´T LEAVE ME, YOU HAVE TO SAVE ME, SHETLAND. SHETLAND, SHETLAAAND!”
Unable to bear his voice, she pulled the earbud out of her ear and threw it into the corner. She swallowed, her hooves shaking so bad that she dropped her helmet. She rummaged in her armor´s pocket and pulled out a tiny device, which quickly extended an antennae. It's only purpose was a singular, red button and a tiny switch. She turned the switch and a small green light on the top of it went on and shone onto the button. Shetland´s lips silently formed the words: “I'm sorry”.
She pressed the button and all she could hear through the sudden barrage of noise was the quiet crackle coming from the corner, which had replaced Mellow´s voice.
She dropped down, her stomach twisted, she felt nauseous. Something wet and salty dripped from her nose onto the ground. The hostages gathered around her, unsure what to make of her strange behaviour. She felt bile climbing up her throat. Her skin felt cold. She dragged herself into the corner, the atrocious crackle picking up as she moved closer to the dreaded device. Shetland closed her eyes and stomped on it. With all her willpower, she swallowed down her gall. She looked towards the gathered and confused ponies. Questions like “what happened?”, “Who is she?” and “are we safe?” flew through the room, as well as concerned ones, asking if Shetland was okay, if she needed medical help. Instead, she spoke up. “Listen up, ponies” She said loudly, surprised how steady she could make her voice sound. “I need volunteers right now, pick up the guns, we will chase the bastards off this place!”
Her demands were met with instead obedience and moments after, she had an entourage of three recruits.
“The rest of you, stay here, barricade the door!” She commanded, then she turned for the hallway and chased back the way she came from. Almost immediately, they saw a group of two hyenas, but instead of opening fire, their eyes widened in fear, and they ran for the next door. But Shetland wouldn't give them the opportunity, she fired her guns into their backs, dropping the hated foes, then she quickly led her group past. Whenever they saw the enemy, they seemed to be fleeing, only one group tried to return fire. They were cut down. It seemed the commanding officer of the intruders had called for a hasty retreat. Shetland chased after them with blind fury, rapidly cutting them down as they tried to run. Then, from the hangar just in the next room, they heard a roar. Storming in, they saw the second pirate ship, its engines starting as they fled the colony.
However, the sight that made Shetland drop her weapon and sink to her knees, that made her quickly assembled team scream and panic, was the sight of the burning wreckage that had both destroyed and saved Shetland´s life only half a day ago. The fires slowly caught into the room, smoke seeped into the room and made taking a breath difficult. The colonists screamed, some of them ran, trying to find a way to combat the fire. Shetland threw off her helmet. Despite the screams and the fire, her ears were filled with a quiet crackle. Her leg hurt. breathing hurt. She violently threw off parts of her armor until she got one foreleg out. She turned up her bag and pulled out a small syringe as her expression twisted into a joyless smile. She set it to her leg and pushed, and as the drugs flowed into her veins, her pain stopped, and slowly, the horrible crackle was replaced with the calming sounds of her heart.
ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-, ba-, dum, ba.... dum… ba….
Something cold touched her cheek. Screaming filled the air, close to her ear, but Shetland simply smiled as she closed her eyes. The pain was gone, and the melody of her heart soothed her to sleep.
ba-, ba…., dum, ba…, …, …
Epilogue- All that is left
beep. beep. beep. beep.
The noise repeated, again and again, it tirelessly rehearsed itself. Shetland felt something soft and warm beneath her and the air smelled: not filled with lousy fumes, but the odor of grass and flowers. She opened her eyes, but immediately closed them again as the brightness stabbed into her pupils. She moved one leg to cover them and found it weirdly heavy, almost difficult to move. From somewhere, wherever she was, she heard a gasp, and then the quick staccato of hooves rushing somewhere.
Shetland tried opening her eyes again, just tiny slits, and waited until the light became bearable. She looked around. Everything was white: the walls, the ground, the bed she laid in, even the blanket covering her. For a moment she thought she lost the ability to see colors and could only perceive black and white, but as she turned her head and looked at her hoof, she saw her normal brown fur. She looked around further, but there were no other beds. On her left side however, stood a stand, it held a small bag which was connected to her left forehoof. Other cables on her chest were connected to a small device which displayed a small green line which regularly jumped up in beat with the beeping.
She tried to move her legs, but then a sharp pain ran through her right hind leg, Shetland gasped and the pace of the beeping quickened. Shetland took a deep breath as the pain subsided. She felt the urge to lift the cover and look at the injury, but she fought it down. She knew what happened. She swallowed, her throat was dry again. Her leg was burnt. Ciloa, dead. Saw, dead, Press, that earth pony, she couldn't recall his name.
Mellow.
She raised a hoof to her eyes, but she could not banish the look of him. her ears perked up, and she heard a crackle.
The door flew open, startling Shetland out of her thoughts. In the doorway stood the only person who Shetland could bear to see now, who looked at her with eyes just as water-filled as her own.
Twilight Sparkle rushed to Shetland, she wrapped her hooves around her limp, but living body, and both mother and daughter cried into each other's fur.
