The Black Between the Stars

Chapters

2 - Guests of Honor
3 - Breaking the Tension
4 - A Dark Disquiet
5 - Dear Future Self
6 - Equine Elements
7 - Know Thy Self
8 - Hazard Pay
9 - Weapons Free
10 - Administrators
11 - Short Fuse
12 - Reboot
13 - Into Thin Air
14 - Dead Calm
15 - This End Up
17 - Survivor Group
18 - Data Scraping
19 - Know Thine Enemy
20 - Detour
21 - Dawn of the Hunter
22 - Isolation
23 - Escape From the Habitation Decks
24 - Treachery
25 - The Dark Forest
26 - Last Ditch
27 - Intrusion
28 - The Signs of the Cosmic
1 - Alone in The Void
16 - Missing Persons
29 - Everything is Going to be Okay

2 - Guests of Honor

Applejack pressed forward. She heard nothing except the infrequent groaning of machinery, alarms, and her own footsteps. Warning lights and her own flashlight provided the only illumination and the slow, constant flashing gave her a headache. And she never saw any sign of anypony else. The entire maintenance section was practically dead. Maybe literally dead.

No, don’t think like that. They AIN’T dead. “Helloooooo!” she called out again. “Anypony out there? What’s goin’ on?”

No response except her own echo, thin and scared.

Applejack swallowed and kept walking, her footfalls clanging. “Alright, girl,” she whispered to herself, “it ain’t that bad. Maybe- Who’m I kiddin’, there’s no way this ain’t bad. ’Cept if it’s worse. Bettin’ it’s worse.” She did not know when to shut up, did she?

The hallway forked ahead, one part still going straight, the other going hard to the left. A set of signs hung from the wall, pointing straight, left, and back. All of them were maintenance terms meaningless to her except for one, along the straight path: Neurothaumatics. Wasn’t that where they made neuromods? What was she doing here? Whatever. It was a way out. She looked straight. Featureless corridor. She looked left. Featureless cor-

Something twitched in the corner of her eye. Applejack whirled straight again. Nothing but a tipped-over garbage can. She strained her ears. Nothing but some metallic echoes.

Left it was. She’d find another way out.

Applejack crept along, trying to keep quiet. If something was in here with her, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them. The added slowness? Worth it. She glanced over her shoulder and saw nothing.

The metal floor vibrated strangely beneath her hooves as she walked. It wasn’t really solid the same way ground was — or, heck, metal floors in the main part of Golden Oaks. She couldn’t say what, exactly, was different — was it “bouncy”? Did it just vibrate more? — but it was different enough that her attention kept getting drawn back to her hooves.

After she didn’t know how long, she came to another intersection. She stopped to read the signs. Just like she’d predicted, there was another sign pointing to the exit. Rather than the way she’d just come, it pointed to the ri-

Applejack wasn’t moving, yet the floor was vibrating.

She froze, refusing to even breathe. Yes, the floor was definitely shaking, just a little. Someone — or something — besides her was walking on it. If she had to guess, they were close. Her ears twitched this way and that, but she couldn’t hear anythi-

Clink clink.

Yes, she could.

Applejack locked her ears into facing the same direction. The sound was quiet and hearing which direction it was coming from, down here, was nearly impossible. But Applejack held her breath and wished her heart would stop beating so loud and listened and…

…didn’t hear anything. The sounds had stopped.

After almost a minute of waiting, the sounds refused to come back. Even the floor had stopped moving. Applejack looked down each hallway. Blackness. She swallowed, checked the signs one last time, and set off towards the exit. She tried to get her hopes up; she’d be out of here soon.

But that didn’t change the facts: there was something down here.

CelesTech was in the interesting position of being both a free-rein think tank and government-sponsored. It’d created many grand, wonderful things for Equestria and its allies in the past half-century, but all of that was at the behest of the Cosmic Thrones. Sun Queen Celestia IV wasn’t as much of a micromanager of the company as her predecessors had been (according to some of the company’s older members), she still sent up representatives to Golden Oaks for regular checkups. Having somepony be up there in person let them get a feel for research progress and morale far better than word processed reports ever could. Although Celestia wanted the chosen ponies to be as close to the diarchy as possible, most of the time, they were a carefully-selected scientist, someone who could understand at least most of the science being done, and a member of the royal family, solely for the first to report to. After all, it wasn’t like there were a lot of royals who were in possession of one of Equestria’s brightest minds in centuries, a thirst for knowledge that couldn’t be quenched by a lifetime spent in Zebrabwe in the Library of Rakotiru, and a better understanding of classical, quantum, and arcane mechanics than most doctorates.

Enter Princess Twilight Sparkle, a mare so sharp having her rule the country seemed a terrible waste.

There had been some aristocratic furor when Celestia had not only passed over her own son for ascension to alicornhood and the throne, but the replacement was from outside the nobility. Yet Celestia had remained resolute and unwavering in her decision. (One of Applejack’s more politically-minded friends said Celestia’s hour-long speech on the matter boiled down to, “She knows friendship like whoa and I’m the Sun Queen. Deal with it.”) Princess Twilight had gone on to be a perfectly capable leader-to-be, and the dearth of tabloid articles about her that were juicier than Princess Dislikes Ketchup shut up more than a few duchesses about not anointing Blueblood.

Outside of her usual duties, Twilight had proven to be a near-fanatical enthusiast of damn near every field of science and able to keep up with the top ponies. In spite of CelesTech’s already large budget, Twilight kept pushing to increase it further and take her own position in the organization. While specific that issue had yet to be resolved between queen and princess, Twilight’s intelligence meant there was only one option for Golden Oaks’ biannual royalty visit.

CelesTech’s uniforms might’ve looked a little bit silly, but their mandatory nature certainly meant one thing. Applejack didn’t need to worry about what she was going to wear. As she headed to the shuttlebay to greet the princess’s spaceship with everypony else, Applejack reflected that, on Equus, she probably would’ve spent a day trying to figure out what bows went with which dress and what colors went with her coat and still would’ve looked terrible once she dressed up. At least on Golden Oaks, everyone looked equally dorky.

Applejack fidgeted in place as she waited for the shuttle to arrive. The bay was big and cavernous and even surrounded by other ponies, she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable in it. She couldn’t even say why; the lobby of the station was even bigger, and Applejack felt just fine in that. She never went to the bay if she could help it. And she got the feeling she wasn’t the only one.

VP Glimmer paced back and forth at the head of the rows, back and forth, back and forth. She was muttering loudly. “Food? Good. Quarters? Welcoming committee?” She looked at one side of the aisle, then the other, and nodded. “Good. Tour? Good. I hope. So why can’t I calm down?”

“Because the princess is wearing off on you?” suggested a bearded researcher Applejack knew by sight but not name.

“Probably,” Glimmer muttered.

The intercom crackled. “Attention all personnel. Semi-Sacred Geometry is on her final approach, landing in one minute.”

“Okay! Okay. Be ready, everypony!”

Next to Applejack, Rose leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Why do we keep doing it like this? Twilight herself doesn’t even like it!”

“Dunno,” Applejack whispered back. “Protocol?”

Rose snorted. “Protocol is stupid.”

The seconds ticked by. Outside the windows, a big, sleek shuttle, the height of modern luxury, slid into view. It briefly cast the bay into shadow as it passed in front of the sun. It came to a smooth stop outside the port and the entire room trembled a tiny bit as it locked into place. Silence fell, so complete you could hear a pin drop on the other side of the room. Then the airlock hissed open and Princess Twilight Sparkle strode onto Golden Oaks.

Applejack had known Twilight for some time before she was chosen for ascension, and a large part of her personality had survived the species and class switch intact. So it might’ve just been because she knew what to look for, but there was no denying: beneath all those sparkly clothes, Twilight was the most regal dweeb in history. When she entered the bay, her eyes twitched up to marvel at the scienciness of the space, even though she’d seen it plenty of times before. When she glanced at Glimmer, her pace hitched for a quarter of an iota as she ran over (and freaked out about) the dozens of ways the conversation could go. And when she smiled at Glimmer’s greeting, something in her eyes made it the happiness of meeting a close friend rather than mere politeness.

The crew of Golden Oaks bowed to Twilight as Glimmer went over her usual spiel and rose as Twilight went through hers. Glimmer was saying something about how thrilled Twilight would be to see this or that when it happened. A certain somepony among the cafeteria workers squealed, “Hi, Twiliiiight!” She hopped up and down, waving a hoof at the princess from a back row. An embarrassment, a disgrace, a truly terrible breach in propriety and protocol.

At least, it would’ve been if Twilight hadn’t responded in kind. “Hi, Pinkie!” she yelled joyfully, waving like a foal would. She hovered a few feet above the deck so they could get a better look at each other. “I’ll get to you as soon as I’m settled in!”

“I’ll have cupcaaaaakes!”

“Remember to leave off the cherries this time!” Twilight landed again and turned back to Glimmer. “Sorry. You were saying?”

They’d well and truly broken the mold when they’d made Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Behind Twilight, her dragon bodyguard/assistant Spike rolled his eyes. He was a big fellow, taller than Twilight (horn included) and built like a brick outhouse, albeit a winged and extraordinarily dapper one. His toughness definitely clashed with his purple-and-green color scheme. But you forgot the latter because, well, dragon. And with a dragon bodyguard came a certain mystique for Twilight; dragons only protected people (of any species) they held great respect for. After the last treaty, dragons had supposedly been lining up to guard her.

Unfortunately, after Spike came the other guest.

Prince Blueblood stalked out of the shuttle like somepony inside had spat on him. His blonde mane was immaculate, his white coat was pristine, he himself was beautiful (almost sexy, Applejack didn’t want to admit), but the expression his face was twisted into made him look thoroughly punchable. As protocol dictated, and for no other reason, the crew of Golden Oaks bowed. Unlike with Twilight, they didn’t hold their bow.

“I mean, sheesh,” Rose whispered, “who spat in his ear?” She wasn’t the only one with such a sentiment; the ponies around Applejack were stiff and looking straight forward.

Blueblood looked at the crew, like he was expecting something more, then fell into line behind Twilight’s dragon. Trailing him were two pegasi bodyguards: a cyan one who looked like she’d rather be literally anywhere else and a grayish one who had apparently decided that even being a bodyguard to Blueblood was being a bodyguard to royalty, so she should act like it, dang it.

Once Glimmer led the royals and their guards out, the entire order of neat rows broke apart into chaos. Some ponies trotted out of the bay to snatch another look at Twilight, but most found their friends to talk with. Applejack and Rose just found a bench in the waiting area to relax on.

“So,” said Rose, “did you hear why Blueblood was sent up here?”

“Nope,” said Applejack. “And I don’t really care t’hear, either.”

“Oh, come on.” Rose elbowed Applejack lightly in the ribs. “You really don’t want to hear why Her Solariness is picking now to try to whip him into shape?”

“Not at all. I’m less interested in that than a mole is in the sky.”

“Huh. That one actually made sense.”

Applejack swatted at Rose with her hat. “When y’get home, y’need t’get out more.”

Rose laughed, then turned serious. “But, really, this is the first time Celestia has made him behave like a royal in… ever. Most of the time, they yell at each other in private or whatever.”

“So she just got sick o’her son actin’ like a foal when he’s thirty. Ain’t that complicated.” Applejack shrugged. “Wonderin’ why it took her so long, but that ain’t my business.”

“I guess.” But Rose didn’t sound all that convinced. She looked up. “Speaking of changing the subject, how long do you think Pinkie’s welcome cake will last?”

“You know we can take our time, right? She made an entire cake separate for leftovers.”

“Yeah. I mean just the first one.”

“Hmm. If it’s anythin’ like Twi’s last visit…”

3 - Breaking the Tension

Forward or back? Applejack didn’t like either option. Forward was unknown. She suspected whatever was following her was behind her. (She whipped around again. She didn’t see anything again. But she could hear it. She could feel it.) But forward was the way she was going, so forward she went.

She found herself missing the signs, for some reason. Of course, since she wasn’t at an intersection, she shouldn’t see any, but she still wanted to see them. Maybe for orientation. She could walk through the arboretum blindfolded and not hit a tree. These tunnels were featureless hallway after featureless hallway, completely devoid of any-

A door came into the range of her flashlight on one wall. She fast-walked up to it eagerly, only to be disappointed when she saw the keycard reader on the frame. Probably an office. What sort of position did you have in order to score a card-protected office down here? Head janitor? (Maybe regular janitor. Applejack didn’t know a thing about custodial jobs.)

Sighing, Applejack pushed away from the door. She turned her flashlight to the hallway she’d come down. Nothing. She turned around and moved on.

Clunk clunk clunk. Her footsteps were loud, or at least sounded that way. The station was as quiet as ever. Which… was probably a problem, down here. Applejack was surrounded by machinery. Shouldn’t some of it be working? Had the reactor failed?

Something irregular came into view, a shapeless orange mass on the floor. Applejack stumbled to a stop in surprise, almost clicking off her flashlight. But the blob wasn’t moving at all. Applejack held her breath and waited for a response to her light. Nothing. She took a step forward; the thing wasn’t so shapeless anymore. That looked like a leg… That could’ve been-

Applejack gasped in shock and ran forward for a better look. A dark purple earth pony was sprawled limply on the floor, her eyes gazing blankly at the wall. Although a cold pit was forming in her gut, Applejack jostled the earth pony. “You, uh… You awake?”

No response. Applejack hadn’t expected one. She knelt, put a hoof on the pony’s neck. No pulse, either. Applejack swallowed her bile. The pony didn’t look like she’d been hurt. She didn’t look sick in any way. She didn’t even look starved. It was like she’d just… dropped dead for no reason.

Cringing, Applejack poked at the corpse, moved its legs. It was still flexible, but Applejack didn’t know if that meant anything. She shined her light in the body’s eyes. They looked fine, but the pupils didn’t contract. She sniffed. Nothing unusual. She wasn’t going to get any information from here.

Although, just because she couldn’t get any information…

“Sorry.” Applejack forgot to wince as she patted the pony down and examined her uniform carefully. She was wearing the same orange-and-black of a low-level worker as Applejack. Some low-level workers were janitors. And one thing Applejack had learned in her time on Golden Oaks: the janitor always has the keys.

Or, in this case, the keycard. It was sitting in a small pouch, flat and unassuming and maybe capable of opening every single door on Golden Oaks. (Probably not. But Applejack could dream.) “Hope you don’t mind if I borrow this,” Applejack whispered. After pocketing the card, Applejack reached out, hesitated, and closed the pony’s eyes, her hooves shaking all the while. She wiped her eyes down, then stood up.

Now. Back to that door.

Applejack wasn’t much of an Ogres & Oubliettes player, but she knew just enough to be entertained as she watched Rainbow DM a game for a group of ponies. The party was doing the usual fortress infiltration and had, with great difficulty, managed to not get split. Unfortunately, not splitting up meant they could all get cornered simultaneously. As had just happened.

“The guard steps forward…” said Rainbow, an evil grin on her face. “Closer… closer… closer! She pokes her spear into the bush, aaaaand…” She rolled a twenty-sided die behind her DM screen.

It was amazing how thoroughly silence could fall around a group of roleplayers, especially with the noise around them. Pinkie Pie was chewing on her hooves like they were delectable chips, Lyra and Bon Bon were clinging to each other tighter than life preservers, and Time Turner just had big eyes and folded ears. You could cut the tension with a knife, even as air hockey dinged in the background.

“…4!” said Rainbow Dash. “The tip of the spear misses you by a foot! The bush rustles and the leaves pull back, but not enough to expose you! She frowns at the bush, then walks away without suspecting a thing!” A dramatic pause. “At least, not that you can tell, heh heh…” The entire group breathed sighs of relief, except for Pinkie, who breathed a squeal of relief.

Golden Oaks was a long-term facility, meant to hold inhabitants for years at a time. To keep morale up, the habitation decks were designed in a way that’d be luxurious on Equus, let alone a space station. The beds (for Applejack’s pay grade) were mere sleeping pods, but the recreation rooms were an expansive, multilevel affair, with every kind of amenity one could think of. A game room with tabletop games like billiards and air hockey or empty tables for regular board games. A small library with peace and quiet, plus some carefully selected books. A fully-stocked bar. An observation deck where you could just stare out at space if you wanted to (so, naturally, Applejack never, ever went there, ever). Heck, there was even a movie theater, with popcorn and everything. All of it with more space than was needed so the inhabitants felt more at home. And while the sleeping pods were small, they were still comfy. Applejack didn’t spend much time in them, anyway.

With work done for the “day”, the game room was comfortably busy: empty enough to not be claustrophobic or require yelling, full enough to not feel dead. After having too much of Twilight’s welcome cake, Applejack was feeling lazy, so she just sat and watched the O&O game, even though her lack of context meant she had no clue what was going on.

“So,” Rainbow said, “you’re up, Doc.” She leaned back in her chair. “And try to make a decision this year, hmm?”

“That only happened once,” Time Turner grumbled as he looked over his character sheet. “In December. December 31. At 11:57 PM.”

Lyra elbowed him in the ribs. “Nah, just face it,” she said. “You will never live that one down.”

The adventuring party fell into a deep discussion about how to get out of the stupid bush, the forces of the universe falling like chaff before the power of out-of-character talk. Rainbow glanced at Applejack, although she kept one ear turned towards the players. “Are you suuuuure you don’t wanna play, AJ?” she asked for the third time that session. “We’ve got character sheets! I’ll even let you roll up a character with a level to match theirs!”

“Nah. I’m fine,” said Applejack. “I don’t even know how to play.”

“Pfft. That’s easy. We’ll walk you through it.” Rainbow turned to the group. “Right, girls?”

“Right!” said Lyra. “What am I ‘right!’ing about?”

But Applejack shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t think playin’ OnO’s really the… thing for me.”

“I didn’t think so, either,” said Rainbow. “Then I tried it, and now I love it! AJ, you really need to get out of your comfort zone every now and then.” Her ears went back a little and her voice dropped slightly. “Seriously.”

“I’m outside o’my comfort zone already.” Space was plenty frightening enough for Applejack, thanks, and she didn’t want to add the obligation of a weekly gaming session on top of it. She’d be very happy once she was back on Equus.

“Further, then.”

“I just ain’t ready to-”

The door to the game room hissed open and someone with some unusually solid footsteps came inside. Applejack looked up and twitched; Spike was coming in, as the steel-coated of Blueblood’s bodyguards, both of them in more casual clothes than their entrance. Up close, the steel-coated bodyguard looked a lot friendlier than before. Spike and the pegasus exchanged some whispered words, then walked up to the O&O group. Light glinted off of Spike’s claws as he waved. “Um. Hey,” he said, his voice more boyish than Applejack was expecting. Maybe he was young for a dragon? “I’m Spike. I’m Princess Twilight’s bodyguard, and you might’ve already known that.” He grinned, the expression surprisingly friendly and warm for how many very sharp teeth were packed into it.

Bon Bon didn’t look away from the adventuring group, but her hoof went up. “I did!”

The pegasus stepped forward and put a hoof on his chest. “And I’m Thunderlane. Since we’re going to be together for two weeks, we might as well get friendly.”

“Rainbow Dash,” said Rainbow. “That’s Lyra, that’s Bon Bon, that’s Pinkie Pie, and that’s Time Turner.”

“Doctor Time Turner, thank you, that’s very important, it is.”

“And I’m Applejack,” Applejack said, putting her hoof up. “Pleased t’meet y’all.”

Spike smiled and waved, somehow nonthreatening even though literally every motion was exposing Applejack to many very sharp things. He leaned over the table to get a better look at the map. “Ogres & Oubliettes?” he asked. “Or Fatal Fortress?”

“O&O,” said Rainbow. “I’m still new to DMing and it’s easier to learn. This campaign we’re running? It’s so cool! Like, it began with-”

And Rainbow dissolved into an excited babble of RPG-ish gibberish that might as well have been another language to Applejack. She turned her full attention on Thunderlane. “So, what d’you think of…” She gestured vaguely around. “…here?”

“This is… just, wow.” Thunderlane stared up at the ceiling. “This place is incredible. I mean, the whole station, not just here. It’s practically a palace!”

“Well, it does have the best beds for over three hundred miles.”

Thunderlane snorted. “Ha ha. But, seriously, I wouldn’t mind working here. Maybe I’ll see if I can get transferred once I’m done with Blueblood.”

“Drink it!” said Spike, making both Applejack and Thunderlane jump. “Drink it and use Bluff to tell the guard that you’re nothing important!” Applejack managed to recognize his grin as one of pure rules-exploiting.

“But I’ve only got the one potion…” said Pinkie slowly.

“We’ll buy you another!” said Time Turner. “We’re already walking away from here filthy rich if all goes well. Which it won’t if you don’t convince that guard to leave.”

“Alright. I drink my Elixir of Glibness and… and tell the guard it’s just the wind!”

“The… The wind.” Rainbow looked like she was being force-fed manure. “You personally tell the guard you’re just the wind.”

“Well, with my +30 bonus, duh! Should I make a Bluff roll?” Pinkie was already reaching for her dice.

“No, no,” sighed Rainbow. “The guard believes you-”

Spike ran over to Rainbow and whispered something in her ear. Her wings twitched, her back went ramrod straight, and she started grinning evilly. “Not only does the guard believe you,” she said, “she leaves the courtyard immediately and- No. That’s all you notice.”

The adventuring group fell silent and their ears went limp. Their pupils were so small you’d be lucky to find them with an electron microscope. “What have you done, Pinkie?” whispered Bon Bon.

“IIIIII dooooooon’t knooooooooooooow!” Pinkie wailed.

Applejack rolled her eyes. “C’mon,” she said to Thunderlane. She pulled him over to an empty table nearby. “Um. If’n you don’t mind me askin’… why do Twi an’ Blueblood even need guardin’ up ’ere? It ain’t like we’re a warzone or anythin’.”

“Protocol, really,” said Thunderlane. “Better to have bodyguards and not need them than need them and not have them, right? Spike’s also Twilight’s assistant — seriously, that drake can find things in a book faster than a computer can in a database — and… heh…” He glanced around and whispered to Applejack, “Bodyguarding Blueblood’s basically a punishment. You pissed off the wrong ponies in the wrong ways, and now you have to run around with a playcolt like him.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Ooooh, yeah.” Thunderlane’s smile was oddly vindictive. “Every pony who ‘protects’ him is really getting disciplined in some way.”

Applejack nodded again before realizing she was taking an interest in this punishment right in front of one of Blueblood’s bodyguards. The blood drained from her face faster than water from a sieve. “Oh. Uh…”

Thunderlane snickered at Applejack’s expression. “Yeah, including me. I had a telephone pole up my butt, believe me, and I deserved it. Around him, you either lighten up a bit or give up and quit the Guard entirely.”

“Ah.”

A second of silence, then Thunderlane said, “So, what do you do around here?”

“All-natural oxygen reclamation assistant.”

“…Gardener in the arboretum?”

Applejack laughed. “Pretty much. It ain’t-”

The door slid open again, this time revealing the cyan pegasus of Blueblood’s guards. Unlike Thunderlane, she didn’t look much happier up close; her movements were quick and her ears were back. When she saw Thunderlane, she zipped up to him, nearly shoving Applejack aside in the process. “You said you’d wait for me.”

“And you said you’d be out in five minutes, but that didn’t happen, either,” said Thunderlane.

“I had to find this place myself!”

“So did Spike and I.”

“Like you-”

Applejack cleared her throat. “Uh. Hey.” She raised her hoof tentatively. “I’m-”

“Applejack, Lightning Dust. Lightning Dust, Applejack,” Thunderlane said quickly. A lot of restrained anger had crept into his voice.

Lightning Dust barely glanced in Applejack’s direction. “Hey,” she said gruffly. “Thunder, I just-”

“She’s attached to Blueblood because of insubordination,” Thunderlane continued, a bit loudly. He ignored Lightning Dust’s stinkeye. “Tried to be flashy rather than efficient during an assassination attempt on the Crystal Empress, got several members of her team wounded. She’s lucky the Empress is still alive.”

“I told them to duck,” grumbled Lightning Dust. “If they’d just ducked-”

“And if you’d just held back like you’d been trained,” snapped Thunderlane, “you wouldn’t’ve needed to tell them to duck in the first place!”

“Pfft. Training, schmaining.” Lightning Dust rolled her eyes. “Training’s boring. If I can do something cool and effective, why not? They should’ve ducked!”

Thunderlane’s wings sprang open. “THAT’S NOT-” He snapped his mouth shut and lowered his voice. “That’s not how it works. When you joined the Guard, you agreed to be a part of a team. As a team, we live together, we ride together, and we die together. If something goes down, I need to know you are where you’re supposed to be, and every time you do a flip when you shouldn’t, you’re keeping me from relying on you. So for Celestia’s sake, learn your sunblasted place.”

“‘Have your back’?” Lightning Dust snorted. “Please. We’re miles from literally anything. What’s gonna go wrong up here?”

“With that attitude, an awful lot.”

“You know what, I’m done here.” Lightning Dust stepped, saluted in a way even Applejack knew was sarcastic, and stalked over to the air hockey tables.

“Did you have t’do that?” Applejack asked. “I get that she ain’t exactly a ball o’ sunshine, but-”

“She’s going to wash out before the year is over if she doesn’t shape up,” Thunderlane said darkly. “She doesn’t care two whits about protecting others. She wants to swing her arcanosword, hear that swooshing vmmmm, and be told how awesome she is.” He sighed and shook his head. “If smashing her over the head with her mistakes doesn’t get to her, nothing will.”

“Huh.” How was Applejack supposed to respond to that? She’d never asked to hear any of it, she didn’t really care, and now there was this awkward personal secret hanging in the air over them, like a-

“Whaddya mean they’ve got defenses against wind elementals?” yelled Lyra. “They weren’t there in our scouting! And that was this morning!”

Applejack didn’t need to look to know how punchably Rainbow was grinning. “They were set up recently. Remember when you told that guard you were the wind after you drank a Potion of Glibness and she believed you? She thought you were a snarky elemental and hastily put up that trap. How else could the wind talk?” Rainbow’s hoof bumped Spike’s fist.

“…Weeeeell, poop. Hmm.”

“Plants!” yelped Thunderlane. “You work with plants. To exchange oxygen and CO2. Is that it?”

It had been a long, long time since Applejack had been able to talk with somepony who was interested in her work without already knowing it every which way. Being able to teach somepony was weirdly cathartic. “You bet your biscuit it ain’t. Most o’ the fruits an’ veggies we eat are grown up here. Apples are my specialty — family runs an apple orchard groundside — but we got all sortsa stuff. Tomatoes, sweet peas, green beans…”

“Are there any plants you can’t grow because they take too much work?”

“Oh, definitely. I’m actually real lucky we got apple trees up here at all. Um… Grapes! Sometimes, I just want grapes, but the soil ain’t right in here to grow ’em, and importin’ dirt ain’t exactly a prior’ty. Not when there’s…”

4 - A Dark Disquiet

It only took Applejack a few seconds to return to the locked door. Just to be sure, she looked over the walls for a plaque and found nothing. Figured. Down here, everypony probably already knew everypony and they didn’t need plaques. After a bit of fumbling, Applejack pulled out the dead pony’s card and, holding her breath, swiped it through the reader.

Bee-beep. A small green light winked on and the door slid open. The space beyond was as dark as could be, but it felt like a room. “Thanks,” Applejack whispered to the dead pony as she pocketed the card again.

She found the lightswitch after a moment’s blind flailing. It must’ve been a janitor’s office; it was drab, utilitarian, and stuffed with all sorts of neatly-arranged cleaning supplies and toolboxes, even a reployer. Most of it wasn’t of any use to her, but a computer sat on a desk in the far corner. She ran over, knocking down the trash can next to the door in her rush.

There was a lone cup of coffee on the desk, still half-full. Applejack grabbed it and took a big swallow. It was lukewarm and far too bitter, but it was better than nothing. She tapped at the computer’s touchscreen and, to her glee, found that it still had power. She logged on, gazed upon her desktop, and-

-didn’t know what to do next.

Applejack stared blankly at the screen. What was she expecting to do? Sit down, crack her fetlocks, and COMPUTER her way to victory? She didn’t know a dang thing about computers beyond the surface level. She only had her own very limited functionality, little more than form-submission programs, the station’s personnel tracker, and a few games she never touched. Nothing that could help her with- whatever was down here with her.

Something maybe skittered behind her. Applejack spun around; her flashlight illuminated the empty doorframe and two knocked-over trash cans. She waited. Silence and stillness. It didn’t take much thinking for her to close and lock the door.

At least she had a place to hole up. There was only one way in or out. She still didn’t know where her memory had gone; might as well stay here until she did, or at least found where it stopped. Applejack closed her eyes and thought.

Hey, sis!

Sorry I couldn’t schedule a video call, but things are pretty crazy down here. Twittermite Energy just suddenly took off and I spend all day running around, even with Dynamo’s help. It’s wild! We’ll probably have to expand. Anyway, I’m doing fine. Sorry I don’t have more to say, but it’d all be boring business stuff. Don’t have enough free time to be interesting at the moment.

I don’t know if you heard, but Sugar Belle’s finally pregnant! When Big Mac heard the news, we couldn’t get him to shut up, he was so happy. They don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet and they haven’t settled on a name. Feel free to suggest any. It’s gonna be weird, being an aunt. How did you feel when I was born? Can you even remember? You might’ve been too young for that.

You’re probably waiting to hear some bad news about Granny Smith after being gone for so long, but nope! She’s as spry as ever. (I know that’s not very, but still.) I think she’s immortal. She loved the last strain of apple seeds you sent, says they feel nice, and the trees have been growing nice and strong for their age. She’s been out in the orchards a lot whenever I visit; I bet she wants some arcanobionic legs so she can get back to just a little bit of proper apple-bucking (or as close to proper as you can get with arcanobionics).

Sweet Apple Acres is (are?) still talking about the harvesters with Filthy Rich. They’ve been working alright, but he went back on the contract and wants more money than we have at the moment, and the trees in the new fields won’t be apple-ready for two or three more years. Sugar Belle’s been haggling with him and I think she’s wearing him down to delay our payments for a while. I wish we could just get rid of them, but even Granny knows that then we wouldn’t be able to compete with other, larger orchards. Dad’d probably say something like “quality over quantity”, but quantity has a quality of its own, right? We’ll just have to see how it all turns out.

We all miss you. Hope you get home safe.

Apple Bloom

Applejack scrolled back up through the TranScribe on her uniform’s fetlock and squinted at the penultimate paragraph in the computer’s tiny screen. Harvesters, harvesters, harvesters. Couldn’t they just get back to good old-fashioned bucking? Of course not. They couldn’t collect enough apples to keep up with the competition, which would mean they couldn’t sell enough apples to manage the upkeep of the farm. And once apple-bucking, of all things, was gone, what else would inevitably follow? In a decade, her own home would be unrecognizable.

She flicked off her TranScribe and sighed. “Can I get a beer?” she asked the bartender. Golden Oaks managed to have a real bartender for the Yellow Tulip, apparently because it helped morale more than just having a robot. And Applejack needed some morale at the moment.

“Any kind in particular?” asked Joe. “Or just cheap and strong?”

“Cheap an’ strong, more o’ the strong.”

A few seconds and one exchange of cryptobits later, Applejack had a glass of some kind of beer sitting in front of her. She took a long swig and nearly gagged. Beer was the worst part of trying to get drunk, tasting like burning chemical runoff. But she had to struggle through it, and so she did.

She heard the door open behind her; several ponies gasped and the volume level in the lounge dropped a few decibels. Applejack just kept staring at her cup. Princess Twilight sat down next to her and chirped, “There you are, Applejack! I’ve been looking for you everywhere! How’re things up here? They’d be great for me, since this is a space station, but I’m not you, so I don’t know!”

“Does anypony really like beer?” Applejack mumbled. “Or does everyone just give into peer pressure?”

“I have no idea, but if the latter, it’s a prime example of the Abilene paradox!” Twilight smiled and flared her wings, a sure sign she was going to launch into some psychological explanation, then said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” grunted Applejack. “I don’t wanna bother you.”

“You clamming up like that bothers me.”

“…Homesick. And the home I’m sick for ain’t the home I’m goin’ back to.” Applejack sipped at her beer, waiting for drunkenness to overtake her. “You know how things’ve been goin’ down on the farm, right?”

“More automation than you’re comfortable with, yeah.”

“Well, I… When y’offered me the job, the only reason I said ‘yes’ was ’cause I wanted to work with my own four hooves. Real farmin’. I jus’… I wanted t’get away from the fancy-schmancy machines we were usin’. Now I want t’feel some real earth ’neath my hooves for the first time in years, but the farm’s worse’n before and I don’t know if’n I wanna see it again.”

“Even though it’s your home,” Twilight said for her.

“Yeah.” Another sip. “It’s… It’s too easy. Farmin’ ain’t supposed to be oilin’ motors an’ chargin’ batteries, for land sakes! It’s backbreakin’ an’ hard and work!”

“I know what you mean,” said Twilight. “Search engines take all the fun out of research.”

Applejack snorted. “Really? Findin’ exactly what y’need in an instant’s borin’?”

“Yes! It’s just point A to B, with no points C, D, or E. It’s so… unchallenging. And you don’t even get to learn anything interesting on the way! My brother lost an eye in the Royal Guard, did I ever tell you that? And he got it healed, but I was wondering if losing one eye would really affect depth perception all that much, so I started looking through every scientific journal or book I could find about depth perception. And along the way, I learned that there are some species of spider that use depth of field to judge distance.”

“Depth of…?”

“Field. It’s how much something blurs when it’s not in focus.” Twilight grinned. “Isn’t that neat? We all share the same general sense of vision, but they use it in a completely different way! And if I’d used Yahoof to look it up, I never would’ve found it! I could’ve just typed in something like ‘monocular depth perception’ and found the answers I was looking for and nothing more. Can you imagine?”

Maybe. Kinda. Not really. Yes. It was close enough. Even at her most inept, Twilight still tried. But- “That’s all fine an’ dandy, but I ran from my problems. Comin’ up here when y’asked, jus’ to work with my hooves?” Applejack laughed bitterly. “An’ then I got me a fine case o’ astrophobia or whatever. On a good day, I do alright, but I ain’t supposed t’be here.”

“Maybe not. But you are here. And personally?” Twilight whispered in Applejack’s ear. “I think you’re doing a pretty good job. I know change isn’t easy — I didn’t even have these four years ago!-” She flexed her wings. “-but sometimes, accepting it’s all you can do.”

Applejack stared at her beer. She knew that. She’d known that for a while. But she’d kept on being presented with options to avoid mechanical harvesters if she got just a little more extreme. This fertilizer for bigger apples. Those irrigation techniques for faster watering. And now, hey, your own personal garden above the sky. The change she had to accept now was bigger than ever, and who knew what kind of shock she’d feel? She’d kept all this secret. Even her own family didn’t know. But if she was going to talk about this with Twilight, she needed to tell her everything.

In private, of course. “Can we, uh, go to one o’ the personal rooms in Habitation?” Applejack asked. “I… got somethin’ I need t’get off my chest.”

“Of course.” Twilight glanced at Applejack’s glass. “You gonna finish that first?”

“Might as well.” Applejack downed the last of her beer and pushed away from the bar.

And that was the last thing Applejack remembered. The rest of her memory, up to the trash compactor, had been cleanly scooped away.

Huh. Why there? It was too much of a coincidence, too clean, for her memory to cut out right before she and Twilight were about to have some sort of heart-to-heart. It meant something. It had to. But what?

As she stared into the stark white of the computer screen, Applejack reflected that, meaning something or not, she was no closer to learning what the hay was going on. Trying to remember had just made things more confusing and she still didn’t know where, exactly, she was in Golden Oaks. She didn’t even know where anypony else wa-

Ding.

Given the size of Golden Oaks, CelesTech workers wore tracking anklets to make it easier to find employees on board. Why bother spending half a day wandering through the station, looking for So-and-So, when you could immediately be pointed towards the Hardware module? It’d saved Applejack countless hours during work. It even helped the medical workers, monitoring employees’ overall health. She idly went to the crew system, finding the locations of her coworkers. It was hardly perfect, but it was a start.

Then she saw the results.

Every single one of the other arboretum workers was dead.

Applejack — Gardener and engineer — Healthy — Neurothaumatics Maintenance
Berry Punch — Gardener — Dead — Arboretum
Blossomforth — Gardener — Dead — Arboretum
Caramel — Gardener — Dead — Central Executive
Catskill — Security — Dead — Server Storage
Cherry Berry — Botanist — Dead — Shuttlebay

No. No. This… This couldn’t be happening. It just- couldn’t. Applejack scrolled down a line.

Daisy — Gardener — Dead — Life Support

Oh, Celestia, no.

Golden Harvest — Botanist — Dead — Arboretum

This was a dream. A bad dream. She’d wake up at any moment.

Lily Valley — Gardener — Dead — Medical Bay

Yet the same statuses kept flashing past her.

Roseluck — Gardener — Dead — Lobby

Tears filled her eyes and Applejack brought a hoof to her mouth in horror.

Swan Dive — Security — Dead — Reactor

She was at the bottom of the list, yet she kept mechanically punching the down arrow, as if that would conjure ponies from the aether who were still alive. Applejack felt numb. She’d spent years working with all of those ponies, and now…

“Easy, girl, easy,” she whispered to herself. She took a long, shuddering breath. “You can… You can… This ain’t…”

She couldn’t even convince herself. Applejack hung her head in her hooves and sobbed, tears trickling down her legs. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t some action heroine. She was a farmer, stranded on a dead space station in the empty void, thousands of miles from literally anything. She didn’t know what was going on and she had a massive hole in her memory. She had no plan and clue of what to even think of doing.

Granny Smith had long gone on about the Apple family determination. They could get through anything, she said. In fact, the current Apple family only existed because Bright Mac had pushed through the pigheadedness of all the previous Apples. They had weathered all the paradigm shifts of the past hundred years and would weather all the ones of the hundred years to come. No matter what the world threw at them, an Apple would stand as tall and strong as one of their trees.

Maybe back on Equus, Applejack thought. On the farm, where she belonged. But not now. She didn’t even know what had gone wrong.

She was alone and she was going to die up here.

Desperate for some small shred of comfort, her chest heaving, Applejack grabbed the coffee cup and tilted it back for another drink, but it was empty. She sighed and squinted at the inside, the last forlorn little hope that there might be something. But, no, there was nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

She frowned and wiped away her tears. The cup was so clean, it was like there’d never been any coffee inside at all. She sniffed. No smell.

She looked at the desk again. There was another mug sitting there. Even though there’d only been one mug when she sat down. Applejack looked at the mug in her hoof. So what was-?

With an ear-splitting screech, the mug exploded in a buckball-sized blob of black goo and whipped itself tightly around Applejack’s body.

5 - Dear Future Self

Applejack would’ve screamed if she’d had any air left in her lungs. The black blob was strong, constricting her body so tightly she could barely think, let alone breathe. Applejack grabbed at the thing, but it was so slick and smooth she couldn’t get a grip. Acting on instinct, she slammed herself into the sharp edge of the desk as hard as she could.

As she rebounded and breathlessly toppled to the floor, the blob chittered in distress and let go of her. When it landed on the ground, it looked like a giant, four-legged spider bigger than her head. It began scurrying away. Applejack grabbed the stool she’d been sitting on, rolled over, and slammed it into the floor hard enough to shatter, but she missed the spider. It skittered away with a sort of slurred clicking and headed out of sight around a shelving unit. It left black ichor in its wake.

Applejack froze for an instant, then lunged for a discarded wrench. She didn’t know what that thing had done, but she’d be damned if she let it jump her again. She twirled it around, feeling the heft, the weight. Yes, as a weapon, this would do nicely. Holding the wrench above her head, keeping her back against the wall, Applejack inched to one side so she could see around the corner.

But the thing had vanished. Its ichor trail stopped in the middle of the floor next to a toolbox.

That… No, that couldn’t be right. Could it? Applejack crept forward, still keeping the wrench high. She looked this way and that, into the corners around the shelves. Nowhere the thing could hide. It was just… gone.

The leg holding the wrench went slack. “You ain’t losin’ it, are ya, girl?” Applejack whispered. She wasn’t sure of the answer. She walked closer to the shelves. Still nothing jumped out at her. She looked over them just in case. Coils of rubber tubing, copper wire, containers for nuts and bolts, a toolbox, some fire extinguishers-

Applejack twitched in recognition and looked at the toolbox again. The exact same toolbox, right down to all the little nicks and scratches, as the one sitting on the floor.

The one the blood trail led to.

…Who would leave a toolbox sitting out in the open like that?

Maybe it was paranoia. Maybe it was a little subconscious nudge. Maybe Applejack was losing her mind. Maybe she was pissed off and wanted an excuse to take it out on something.

But she swung that wrench at that toolbox like it had tried to kill her.

Turned out, it had.

The second the wrench made contact, the toolbox screamed. Before Applejack could react, its shape had unraveled into the four-legged spider thing — thankfully still. Its central orb had been caved in by the impact of the wrench and its legs twitched feebly. That didn’t stop Applejack from hitting it again, then again, just in case. Then again, because she felt like it. Black blood flew, splattered her face. She didn’t care.

She brought the wrench back in case the thing moved again. It didn’t. Swallowing her bile, Applejack leaned in as closely as she dared to examine it and quickly got lost. The thing was oily, slimy, looking more like it was a liquid held in a vaguely spider-y shape than a body. When she looked at one of its legs, it looked like several tentacles wrapped around each other. She didn’t see anything like eyes or mouth; the surface of its… central node was as smooth and featureless as could be. It didn’t look like an animal at all, more like a foal’s sketchy drawing of a spider.

“You couldn’ta done it,” Applejack said to the… tetrapod. “Could you?” It didn’t look that dangerous on its own… But it had turned into flawless copies of a coffee cup and a toolbox, so if it could turn into other things, too, then… And if there were more of them…

A lot more… Enough to kill everypony in the arboretum…

There’d be an alert. Right? A stationwide alert, sent to everypony over every messaging system available. Golden Oaks had such an alert system; it was tested every moon. There was no way the things could take over that quickly. Right?

Applejack tried looking at her TranScribe, but her hooves were shaking so much she couldn’t press the right buttons. She stumbled back to the computer in a confused haze, flinched again at the list of dead ponies, and tapped her way to her mail. Sure enough, the second line was highlighted in the red of an important message. She opened it.

ALERT! UNKNOWN HOSTILE ENTITIES ARE ABOARD THE STATION! SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. WE WILL UPDATE YOU AS THE SITUATION PROGRESSES.

Applejack blinked and reread those few words. Unknown hostile entities — seek shelter. Those things? (She quickly looked at the shelves again. The tetrapod was still there, still dead.) Seek shelter? Where? Golden Oaks didn’t have any sort of protective shelter in case something went wrong. It shouldn’t have needed them. Besides ponies, there wasn’t anything else on board the station except for the researchers’ very-much-inanimate experiments.

Right?

Sighing, she leaned back in the chair and stared into the harsh glow of a lightstrip. The scientists up here were researching neuromods and… She didn’t know what else, if anything. She’d heard rumors about reactors, weapons, computer interfaces, whatever. She didn’t care. She didn’t need to know. She just grew her plants and kept the oxygen levels high. But if they’d been researching aliens, of all things, then-

No. What they had been doing didn’t matter. What mattered was that now, there was something aboard the station.

Applejack groaned and wiped her mane down. Still no hat. Where could it be?

Her mind not much more than a stew, Applejack absently tapped back to her mail. Her gaze flicked up to the top message, then she sat up straight like she’d been hit by lightning. It wasn’t an emergency alert, but that wasn’t what caught her eye. No, what caught her eye was the sender: herself. Then the arrival time: Mar. 15, 2:06 AM. Less than twenty minutes before she’d woken up in the compactor.

Had she known she was going to lose her memory?

Between a lack of better options and simple curiosity, she opened the message. Nothing but a video file with a strange name: Watch me. When you were young you nearly got Big Mac’s leg amputated. Nopony else on the station knew that. This had to have come from her. She tapped the Play button. A second of buffering, then the player filled the screen.

There she was, sitting in a room she didn’t recognize. The Applejack on screen was dirty and disheveled, but held herself bright and alert. She even had her hat. “Hey, AJ,” she said. “Sorry, but… y’ain’t gonna like what’s comin’ next.”

Amnesia. Getting dumped in a trash compactor. Getting attacked by some strange creature that could shapeshift. And now, a message from herself that she couldn’t remember making.

This was a very weird day for Applejack.

“I don’t know how much y’remember,” continued Screen Applejack. “Maybe everythin’. Maybe y’don’t need me at all. But the time right now is 2:01 AM, March 15. An’ four hours ago, somethin’ took over Golden Oaks. It- It-”

“Want me to handle this part, Applejack?” a familiar voice asked, making Applejack twitch. Princess Twilight’s voice. What in Tartarus was going on?

“Sure.” Screen Applejack scooched aside and Twilight herself walked into view. She was definitely the worse for wear, if only relatively speaking; her crown was gone, her mane was messy, and she was covered in grime. But, like Screen Applejack, she didn’t look tired or overly nervous.

Before Applejack could register the sight, Twilight was already talking. “There have been ALIENS aboard the station for the past four months and I WASN’T TOLD!” she yelled. “Aliens! ALIENS!”

“Twi-!”

“Sorry! Sorry.” Twilight cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her voice was much more controlled. “About four months ago, researchers aboard Golden Oaks discovered aliens during a routine spacewalk. They were small, roundish, with four legs and no sensory organs. When they took these aliens in for study — WITHOUT properly notifying the Crown! — the creatures proved to be capable of mimicking the appearance of a similarly-sized item in the vicinity. The researchers ‘creatively’ called them changelings.”

Applejack glanced at the shelves. She knew that already.

Twilight was still talking. “I guess it’s a bit better than ‘mimic’. Anyway, these changelings didn’t seem all that aggressive or dangerous, so the researchers contained them. However, four hours ago — that’s about 10 PM, March 14, remember — the changelings on board the station suddenly broke free of their holding cells and… and…”

The picture was clear enough for Applejack to see the pain in Twilight’s eyes, see the tears slowly gather there. For being a princess, Twilight had always been able to make time for just about anypony. She was Friendship, after all. Applejack had felt numb after seeing all her colleagues dead. How much worse would it have been to have actually been there while it happened? When you knew the name of just about every dead pony on the station? It was a miracle Twilight was keeping it together as well as she was.

“M-most of the crew is dead,” Twilight said. Her voice trembled, despite her best efforts. “Over seventy-five percent, I think. The changelings killed them. And there are… other things out there. The researchers don’t recognize anything besides the regular changelings, but they’re hostile and VERY aggressive. They’re hunting down Golden Oaks personnel like animals.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, then burst out, “They even ruined Pi Day! I’m sorry if it seems my priorities are all out of whack, but it’s PI DAY! One of the only true nerd holidays ever!” She put a hoof to her face, breathed in, then slowly let the air out. “Sorry. Catharsis.”

That was Twilight, alright, hiding her worries with a bad nerd joke. At least whatever was going down hadn’t completely gotten to her yet.

Screen Applejack pushed her way back into view. “But we got a plan. Sorta. Not really.” She grinned nervously and shrugged.“It’s so crazy you pr’y wouldn’t believe Twilight if she said it. But you’d listen to yourself, right? You better. Anyway, we’re in the neuromod labs. Twi here thinks that, with the same stuff we use t’make those things, ma-”

Abruptly, the screen started pixelating, like the quality was dropping. The video stuttered and screen Applejack’s voice started skipping: “-ybe we c-ybe we c-ybe we c-” Then the player closed itself, replaced by a plain blank message:

YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO VIEW THIS ITEM. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMIN.

“Don’t have-?” Applejack spluttered. “It’s my flippin’ email, you goldang-!” She nearly ripped the computer from its stand and hurled it across the room. Even with that under control, she almost broke the touchscreen as she closed the message, went back to her inbox, and stabbed at the email again.

YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO VIEW THIS ITEM. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMIN.

“Don’t you gimme that!” Applejack yelled. “It’s in my account!”

YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO VIEW THIS ITEM. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SYSTEM ADMIN.

“Son of a motherlovin’…” Applejack closed her eyes, grit her teeth so tightly she could practically hear them cracking, and forced herself to be aware of her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. She was not going to break the computer. She was not going to break the computer. She was not going to break the computer.

And when she opened her eyes again, she did not break the computer. It was close, though.

She stared at the computer; it was something to look at, keep her mind straight. Shapeshifting monsters on board. She had a plan with Twilight. Somehow. A plan she didn’t remember. Twilight herself was nowhere to be found. So what now? Find Twilight? Break into the locked file (somehow)? Deduce whatever plan she and Twilight had come up with? Even if she settled on one plan, where would she even go to begin with?

…The neurothaumatics research labs. That was where the video had been recorded, according to her past self. She’d had her hat in the video. She didn’t have it now. She wanted — needed — her hat. As good an excuse as any. She was heading there just to get out of these maintenance sections, anyway.

So. Heading there alone. Unarmed.

Or was she?

She looked at the wrench she’d used to kill the first changeling. It’d felt good in her hooves, she needed a weapon, and she didn’t know enough about guns to use one well if she found one. She picked it up again and swung it experimentally. Even without adrenaline, it felt like a good, solid whack was enough to ruin something’s week. “I think you an’ me are gonna get along jus’ fine,” Applejack whispered to it. She stuffed it into one of her pockets. Thank goodness hers were so huge.

Still alone, but no longer unarmed. It was a minor relief.

And did she need to be alone? Maybe she could find Twilight through Location Services. Applejack reflexively went back to the Crew tab before she remembered that she only had access to the locations of the Arboretum workers. Security could look through all personnel, though. …Rainbow Dash was security. Applejack knew Rainbow well enough to guess her password, right? Applejack drummed her hoof against the desk and quickly came up with three options. She logged off and tried them one at a time.

User ID: rdash
Password: Aw350m3
INVALID CREDENTIALS

User ID: rdash
Password: aw350m3!
INVALID CREDENTIALS

User ID: rdash
Password: Aw350m3!
WELCOME, RAINBOW DASH

For someone who was part of the security team, it was amazing how much of a security risk that pony could be. Maybe that was why her clearance was pretty limited. There were a few commands she didn’t recognize (so not touching those) and she had access to every crew member in Location Services, plus an extra tab for guests. Open it up, and:

Blueblood — Prince — Healthy — Central Research
Lightning Dust — Bodyguard to Prince Blueblood — N/A — N/A
Spike Chrysophylax — Aide and bodyguard to Princess Twilight Sparkle — Wounded (mild) — Lobby
Thunderlane — Bodyguard to Prince Blueblood — Dead — Neurothaumatics Division
Twilight Sparkle — Princess — Wounded (mild) — Habitation Decks

Huh. Habitation? What was she doing all the way over there? Well, at least she could move. Too far from Neurothaumatics, though; Applejack would get back to her later.

Still alone. But she knew where to find Twilight. It was a start.

Applejack walked to the door on tiphooves, ready to rip out her wrench at a moment’s notice. She poked at the button to unlock the door and winced at the sound it made as it opened up. She looked in one direction, then the other. Nothing amiss. Nothing she spotted, anyway. She set off down the hall as quickly as she dared. The alarms still blared and everywhere was still cloaked in darkness, but it wasn’t as scary now that she had something like a goal.

This is crazy, she told herself in her head. Y’ain’t got anythin’ like a plan. You gonna just keep movin’ forward an’ hope it all magically comes together? The same plan that stuck you up here in the firs’ place?

Well, sure, she responded. What else am I gonna do? Sit an’ cry?

Wait for help. You ain’t a soldier, you ain’t cut out for this, you ain’t-

Applejack ignored that voice as best she could. She’d never been able to sit still for long. She loathed her farm’s harvesters, didn’t she?

One intersection later, the flat corridor turned into a staircase with a sign pointing up it: Neurothaumatics. The hair on Applejack’s back stood up even as she climbed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was at the top, but she had to. It was her only way out.

A door loomed into view at the top of the stairs. Plain. Metal. Ominous. Behind it could be just about anything. A truckload of dead bodies. A wreckage of a laboratory. A pile of books, every one of them a changeling. Nothing at all, the entire wing wiped clean. Applejack’s mind raced as she reached for the button and her hoof shook. Then she took a few steps back, pulled her wrench out of her pocket, and reached forward with that. No sense in being any closer to the door than she had to be.

Clink. She hit the frame. Clink. Frame. She wiped a few beads of sweat off her face. Click. Button. The door hissed open.

6 - Equine Elements

There was light in Neurothaumatics. That was good.

What it revealed? Less so.

It seemed the maintenance halls had only escaped damage because they were out of the way. Neurothaumatics had been ravaged. Gashes cut into the walls, exposing the infrastructure beneath. Black blood was smeared across the floor — with very little red, Applejack noticed. Flickering lighting fixtures dangled from the ceiling. If it wasn’t nailed down, it was usually overturned; in one corner, test tubes were scattered out from a smashed cart like some bizarre flower. The same alarms that had been blaring downstairs sang the song of their people up here as well. There were more than a few shell casings lying about.

And, of course, the body, only a few yards from the door.

The stallion was wearing a security uniform and was sprawled out like he’d been tackled while running away from something. But after that… what? Applejack swallowed and took a few steps forward. No wounds. Nothing out of the ordinary from what she could tell. Like the janitor, he’d just died. His mouth hung open in a silent scream.

“Sorry,” Applejack muttered. She closed the corpse’s eyes. It seemed right.

Her eyes fell on the pony’s shotgun. It looked like a regular model and was strapped to the inside of his front leg. Applejack didn’t know much about guns, but protection was protection. Although it made her skin crawl, she unhooked it from the dead pony and attached it to her own leg. The second she clinched the last strap into place, a small, shapeless pressure began pushing on her thoughts, giving the feeling of a switch.

Applejack was mostly used to telepathic controls like that, so it didn’t bother her too much. The ammo counter said there was only a single shell left. Good for testing, although she’d need to raid a security checkpoint. Now, if she pointed the gun that way and just poked the thing like this-

BANG. The gun went off and slammed into Applejack’s shoulder like a sledgehammer, driving her back a step. The sound of the report was forced back in on itself over and over in the tight space until it nearly deafened her; even when the echoes died off, her ears still rang. The counter flickered and spun over to 0.

Well. At least the trigger worked.

Was the gun supposed to be as light as it was? Maybe. Maybe not. Applejack took a few steps, then a few trotting steps. It wouldn’t hamper her, at least. She could even swing her wrench with that leg if she needed to.

Her heart didn’t feel any lighter, but it did feel better-protected. Applejack wiped some black slime off a sign opposite the maintenance door. To the right: Neuromod Removal Chamber. Applejack had heard something about neuromods and memories once upon a time. If that wasn’t a starting place, nothing was. She set off.

Even with the alarms and wreckage, Applejack was more comfortable in the main hallways rather than maintenance. She didn’t know the layout, but the familiar design of the floors and walls let her pretend she did. She walked with her head high and her wrench close.

But the sights she saw slowly chipped away at her demeanor. Applejack knew the labs ought to be clean and pristine, but these resembled a warzone. Walls were ripped apart, vents hung open, and the lights kept flickering. She passed by several labs, all of them large glass-walled chambers. Yet in one case, the glass, a full inch thick, had been broken and left gigantic shards scattered across the floor like the world’s most hazardous confetti. Broken from the inside out. A pony rested against the opposite wall, her back crushed and scored by more shards. Yet other than that, she was just as strangely woundless as the other bodies.

Applejack kept an eye out for suspicious duplicates of objects, but she never saw any. She kept her ears peeled for suspicious noises, but she never heard any. Which made her even more on edge. There could be a changeling right behind her and she wouldn’t know. She patted her wrench. Still there.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for Applejack to spot a sign pointing to a door labelled Neuromod Removal Chamber — Authorized Personnel Only. It was, like the other labs, glass-walled, so Applejack galloped up to the window and peered in. The first thing she saw: her hat! It was resting on the floor, clean and intact, so close and yet so far. She stared longingly at it for a few seconds, then surveyed the rest of the room. A chair rested in the center of the room, its headrest fitted with something that had the uniquely nasty aesthetic of medical tools. A computer was hooked up next to it and next to that was a small table — almost a bedside table, really — for whatever the doctors needed. It wasn’t much larger than a doctor’s office, with enough room for only three or four ponies willing to get a little cozy. Most of the other stuff in there was various bits and bobs of debris. If it hadn’t been for her hat, Applejack would’ve walked away and forgotten about it.

But there was her hat. She’d been here. Why? She needed to get in.

She turned to the door, only to withdraw, gagging. In her excitement, she’d managed to miss the pegasus lying slumped facefirst against the door. Blood was smeared down the door, as if he’d been dragged, and one of his wings had been broken. His head rested at a grotesque angle. Swallowing, Applejack reached forward and delicately poked the body to push it away from the door. The pony fell over and toppled onto his back.

It was Thunderlane, the bodyguard she’d met barely a week ago. His face was battered and bloody, like he’d been smashed against the door repeatedly, with a broken jaw rendering him horrifically uncanny. Applejack clapped a hoof to her mouth and turned away as her stomach heaved. She clamped her jaws shut and breathed through her nose. In. Out. In. Out.

“You can do this, girl,” she muttered. “You can do this.”

Swallow. Eyes open. Nothing she could do for Thunderlane now. Keep on track. Keep moving. Applejack wiped the (still warm) blood from the doorframe, looking for either a card reader or a keypad.

Unfortunately, what she found was a keypad, four places for ten digits each. It was probably too much to ask for it to be something simple, but Applejack tried anyway: all the same digits, variants on 1-2-3-4, even a few random entries. Each attempt was met with an angry failure beep from the pad. Unless she found a convenient sticky note with the code written on it, she wasn’t getting in.

Through the door, anyway.

Applejack squinted through one of the windows again and looked up. A large vent cover was set into the ceiling — big enough for a pony to crawl through, if she was lucky. Maybe… She trotted to the room on one side, marked as Storage. It was protected by a card reader, but her janitor card opened it straight up. “If I get outta here,” Applejack muttered, “I’m gonna give every janitor I ever see a kiss. No matter what.”

The inside of the storage was relatively bare, mostly neatly-organized shelves and lockers and a few crates. The scientists must’ve been real sticklers for organization. Applejack examined the ceiling and quickly spotted it: another vent cover that matched the one in the neuromod chamber. If the vent was as large as the cover — about three feet by three feet — she’d be able to crawl through and come out inside the other room. Thank Celestia for the necessity of HVAC. Applejack planted her shoulder against a crate to push it beneath the vent.

“Excuse me.”

Applejack spun around at the sudden voice, bringing her gun up. “Who’s there?” she yelled. “Show yourself!” She didn’t aim the gun as much as point it vaguely in what she hoped was the right direction. It was hard to tell which direction the voice was coming from; it sounded like the speaker was inside something.

“Not just yet. Trixie thinks you might hit her with panic fire. If you please lower your gun, Trixie will come out slowly.”

Lower her gun? Even with her limited knowledge of firearms, Applejack didn’t want to do that. It was the only thing resembling ranged protection she had. And if this Trixie referred to herself like that, could she be trusted? Or was she crazy?

But Applejack’s options were so limited that, inch by inch, she put her leg back on the ground. “Alright,” she said. “It’s down. C’mon out.”

“Excellent.” A few metallic clinks, and one of the lockers opened a foot. Applejack twitched but kept her feet on the ground. A blue hoof poked from the locker and waved. “See? Here. Trixie is coming out now, so please refrain from becoming trigger-happy.”

The locker opened completely and a light blue unicorn with a long, pale mane toppled out. She got up with a serene… not exactly indifference, more an “I meant to do that” look. She brushed herself off — she was wearing the uniform of a volunteer — and looked at Applejack with a sort of cool but nonhostile confidence. “Greetings.”

Applejack’s leg twitched. “Uh… Hey. Name’s Applejack.” She gestured at the locker with her unarmed leg. “What were you doin’ in…?”

“Trixie was hiding, obviously,” huffed the unicorn. “She has been hiding for the past several hours. Or did you miss the alien invasion in progress?” Her horn glowed as she levitated a tube of hairspray and a lighter out of the locker. She gave the lighter a few experimental clicks to see if it still worked and nodded to herself. “What are you doing here? I thought I locked the door.”

“Janitor’s skeleton key.”

“Ah. Yes, that would do it nicely.” Trixie glanced at Applejack’s gun. “At least you- Wait.” She marched up to Applejack and wrenched her leg from the floor to look at the gun. Applejack pulled away, but Trixie had apparently seen all she needed to see. “You were pointing your gun at me while it was empty?”

“Ehm…” Applejack looked at the ammo counter. 0. “I… guess?” She’d completely forgotten about using up her last shell.

“I don’t know who you are or what you want,” Trixie said, boggling, “but you need to mod yourself up with guns. All the guns. Right now.” She grabbed Applejack’s tail in her magic and stomped out of the lab.

“Whoa, hey!” Applejack dug her hooves into the metal floor as best she could. Earth pony strength beat unicorn magic and she stopped moving. “Bless your heart, but I ain’t doin’ any eye-stabbin’ today!”

Trixie whirled around and glared at Applejack like she had just said something earth-shatteringly stupid. “Listen, Applesnack or whoever you are-”

“Applejack.”

“Whatever. We are in the middle of what can be politely described as an absolute shitstorm and you don’t even know how to use your own weapon. If you don’t take a few seconds out for some educational eye-stabbing, whatever’s going to happen to you is going to be a lot worse than one puny neuromod.”

“Why don’t you do it, then?”

“I despise guns with a fiery, burning passion capable of levelling cities.”

“Ah.”

Trixie turned back down the hallway. “Trixie knows where the mods are stored and will deign to find the correct one for you. They’re just-”

“You go find ’em, but I need t’get in there.” Applejack pointed toward the neuromod removal chamber. “I think-”

Trixie whirled on Applejack like a magnet snapping to its pole and, her eyes wild, yelled, “No! NO no nooooo. We are not splitting up, not now.” Applejack opened her mouth to protest and Trixie wagged a hoof at her. “Ah bah bah! Saying something like ‘it’s only for a minute’ guarantees that something will go wrong. Unless we need to, we are sticking together. We have safety in numbers, you have Trixie’s magic, and Trixie has your… ah…” She eyed Applejack up and down. “…guns and legs.”

Applejack snorted. “Are y’always this paranoid?” she muttered.

“You aren’t? But if you agree to stick with her, Trixie will let you visit the neuromod removal chamber first. Even though I don’t why.” Trixie strode to the door like she was a model on a runway.

“Won’t work,” Applejack said, trotting after her. “Door’s locked.”

“And Trixie will so graciously unlock it for you.” Trixie inched the last few feet as she approached Thunderlane’s body, then levitated a small computer thing, not that different from a TranScribe, from her bags. She held it next to the keypad and stared at it as symbols Applejack didn’t know flashed across the screen. “Now then… Reveal to me your secrets…”

“Uh…”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is interfacing with the lock,” Trixie said, not looking away. She tapped something on the screen. “It connects wirelessly to the mechanisms to open and shut the door, so if the signal is spoofed sufficiently, we can- Oh, there we go. 5150.” Another tap and the doors opened. Trixie turned to Applejack with a smug look on her face — one that, bizarrely enough, looked strangely fitting for her. Applejack rolled her eyes and stepped inside. Trixie stayed outside, looking this way and that, her hairspray and lighter at the ready.

First things first: Applejack scooped up her wonderful, wonderful hat and plopped it on. The weight of it, however slight, was familiar and reassuring. Just like that, her morale went up several points, then did so again. She had her hat back. The world was slowly coming together again.

“Normally, I’d say I hoped you wanted more than that hat,” Trixie said, glancing over her shoulder, “but it looks good on you.”

“Naw, it looks great.”

“…I’ll be honest. It does. …Did you want something in here besides that hat?”

Applejack shrugged. “I dunno. Lemme look.”

There wasn’t much else to see inside the room that Applejack hadn’t already seen. Bits of drywall knocked from the ceiling, glass shards that had found their way inside… Just trash. Well, and a neuromod. It was resting on the floor behind the chair. Since she wasn’t going to inject herself with an unknown neuromod, Applejack put the bricklike device on the table so she wouldn’t step on it. Maybe there was something on the computer? She tapped the screen to wake it up, and luckily, it hadn’t been long enough for the computer to lock.

Apparently Twilight herself was still logged in, and had been looking at a map screen for some reason. Applejack closed it and stared at Twilight’s desktop. Nothing obvious leaped out at her. No videos, no suspiciously-named files, not much of anything she couldn’t access herself. Nothing. A dead end with no extra branches to follow. Unless she struck out into Golden Oaks at random.

Although… Applejack glanced around the computer at Trixie. She was a volunteer for neuromod clinical trials. Volunteers had files on them. And if Twilight was overseeing the project in general, she’d want access to everything, including volunteer files, right? Maybe. It couldn’t hurt to look up who Trixie was. Just in case.

Not knowing where to start, Applejack went to Location Services, just like before. Lo and behold, it had another tab she hadn’t seen before, for volunteers. She tapped on it, cringed at the long list of dead ponies, and found a Trixie Lulamoon who was still apparently healthy and in Neurothaumatics. Her entry had a link to her file; open it up… aaaand…

NAME: Trixie Lulamoon
ID: 0622
ARRIVAL DATE: 1007-05-05
CLINICAL TRIALS: Computer science skills (confirmed), programming (confirmed)

ASSESSMENT: Although Lulamoon is a convicted felon, her crimes solely involved theft of high-value objects; she has never been known to raise a hoof or fire a spell in anything other than self-defense and the worst injuries dealt were short-lived, if severe, headaches. It is believed that she suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder before her incarceration, but since being released, this seems to have dwindled to low-key narcissism. Although a braggart, she is surprisingly frank about her abilities or lack thereof, and what relationships she establishes are very much two-way. Since her parole, she has never been involved with the law again for so much as a speeding ticket. A close eye should be kept on Lulamoon, but it is highly unlikely that she will cause any problems aboard this facility.

ADDENDUM 1007-10-01: After she experienced success in clinical trials of some more advanced neuromods, Lulamoon took a brief white-hat role, exploiting security flaws in our network to send teasing emails to Time Turner about said flaws. Her computer privileges have been revoked pending further investigation. Removing her neuromods was debated, but Dr. Turner himself insisted that they be left in, largely because her analysis of the flaws was correct.

ADDENDUM 1007-11-11: Following persuasion by Dr. Turner, Lulamoon’s computer privileges have been reinstated and her payment as a clinical trial participant has been supplemented with a small additional fee as a computer consultant.

A bit stuck-up, but good with computers. Honestly, there were worse reasons for Applejack to join up with her. Maybe she could unlock the-

“Um. Applewhack?” Trixie asked quietly.

“Applejack.”

“Did… Did you move the body when you found it?” Trixie backed up into the room, keeping her not-flamethrower pointed out. “Because I’ve been… staring at it for a while and… and the bloodstains don’t make sense.”

“What?” Applejack’s head whipped up. “Show me.”

Applejack hadn’t paid much attention to the area around Thunderlane’s body, but when Trixie pointed it all out, it was obvious. There was an extra puddle of blood several yards away from the door. “And doesn’t it look like he was dragged to here?” Trixie asked. “Look at those smears.”

Unlike Trixie, Applejack was willing to take a closer look at Thunderlane. Sure enough, one side of his body had more blood smeared across it. Had he managed to drag himself to the door before getting attacked? Or had a changeling done it?

It didn’t make any sense. Applejack followed the trail to Thunderlane, didn’t find anything new, followed the trail back to the puddle. She examined it more closely, and- “Whoa, hang on. You seein’ this?” She pointed at a single set of bloody hoofprints, facing backwards and going off down the hallway. Even more traces of blood were smeared across the floor.

“Huh. Weird.” Trixie bent down to take in the hoofprints. “These aren’t even a full set, there’s not enough of them. Just front hooves or back hooves.” She tilted her head. She turned around so she was facing the same direction as the hooves and reared. She backed up, unsteady step by unsteady step, and each footfall matched closely with the hoofprints. “Maybe they were also dragging somepony,” Trixie said as she dropped back onto all fours.

“I dunno,” Applejack replied. “I guess… maybe, but-”

Hold up.

She’d made a plan with Twilight that might’ve messed with her memory. It’d involved the neuromod removal chamber somehow; why else would her hat be there? There was a puddle of blood outside the room where somepony had been dragged away. That somepony almost definitely wasn’t Twilight, who was in Habitation. So- Applejack managed to turn around and get a look at the edges of her rear hooves.

A few flecks of dried blood were still clinging to her uniform. Exactly where it’d collect if she’d been dragged through a puddle of blood.

“We’re followin’ these,” Applejack said resolutely. “Right now.” She didn’t have many other options, anyway. She set off down the hallway, her face practically glued to the ground. Beyond the bloody hoof prints, details leapt out at her one by one. There were a few blood smears… There was a trail through the bullet shells…

“I’m sorry, what?” Trixie galloped after Applejack. “You didn’t find anything in there, but suddenly you want to follow this one trail? Applejack, that pony is probably dead.”

“She ain’t dead. She’s me.”

“…I’m sorry, WHAT?! How do you miss that?”

“It’s complicated. You wanna know why I was tryin’ to get into that room at all?”

7 - Know Thy Self

“So let me get this straight,” Trixie said. “You woke up in a trash compactor with no memory of the past week. You found a message from yourself and Princess Twilight herself about… some sort of plan you two made. But you’re locked out of that message right now because of admin privileges.”

Applejack didn’t look up. “Pretty much, yeah. I read your file on the computer and it said you’re testin’ computer mods?”

“Test?” Trixie snorted. “Trixie does not test them. Trixie uses them to their full potential!” If she was angry at Applejack looking at her file, she didn’t remotely show it.

“So y’think you can, I dunno, unlock the file or whatever?”

“Perhaps. Trixie will do her best.”

Applejack grunted in affirmation and kept her nose right above the floor. The trail was still visible, although since there was less and less of it with each step as blood dried or dripped off, it wouldn’t be around for much longer. She peeled her eyes more than she thought was possible, always on the lookout for the tiniest of specks, which could mean the difference between-

“Look out! Yo-” Bonk.

Rubbing her head, Applejack staggered back and looked up. She’d been so focused on the floor that she hadn’t been looking at where she was going, which turned out to be a door labelled Non-Chemical Waste Disposal. In other words, access to the trash compactor.

Applejack wasn’t sure what she’d find — probably either nothing or whoever had dragged her away in the first place — but she didn’t care. She ripped open the (already unlocked) door and found- nothing. Just a small, bare metal room with carts and bags for trash, rubbish littering the room, a computer terminal in one corner, and a large chute on one wall. She clicked on her flashlight and peered down the chute. It was as silent, cold, and dark as the grave, but not unusual for a garbage chute.

“Hmm.” Trixie looked around the empty room like it had personally offended her. “I was expecting more than this.”

“So was I,” Applejack responded. She examined the floor in front of the chute for the last dregs of the trail. Just a confused muddle of hoofprints overlapping each other as whoever it was shoved her in.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

Applejack groaned and stood up. “Trixie, I… I’m just a gardener. Less’n fifteen minutes ago, I woke up without a huge chunk o’ my memories an’ nearly got crushed t’death. But apparently I got a secret plan goin’ with Princess Twilight herself, somehow, even though I know as much about it as a fish does ’bout flyin’. I ain’t just graspin’ at straws, they’re all I ever had. I’m like a wet cat doin’ everythin’ t’keep her head above water ’cause that’s all I can do. No. I don’t know what I’m doin’.”

Weirdly enough, it was cathartic to admit it all, somehow. Like she’d been lying about having a solid hold on the situation and now she didn’t have to pretend anymore. Should saying it aloud have brought it all closer to home, made her break down? Maybe, but it wasn’t like it’d been sunshine and roses getting here. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies, almost died herself. It’d hit close to home already.

So she had only the barest sliver of a plan. It wasn’t like things could get much worse than that, right?

And Trixie seemed to agree. “Fair enough. I was getting bored in that locker anyway. Besides…” She grinned a grin that was either incredibly winning or incredibly punchable. “Tracking down a mystery will be a great test of Trixie’s skills.”

“I thought you said you don’t test mods.”

Trixie’s stinkeye was uniquely spectacular.

Applejack snickered and said, “Well, I ain’t findin’ anythin’ else here, so why don’t we get those gun mods.”

“Very well,” Trixie said, still glaring at Applejack. “Follow me.”

As Trixie led Applejack through more and more of Neurothumatics, Applejack got more and more anxious. The overall sorry state of the module didn’t improve one bit — and if Twilight was right, the changelings had first attacked when nopony was supposed to be here. Just what did the rest of Golden Oaks look like? For all Applejack knew, the rest of the station was a few sneezes from disintegrating completely.

Soon, Trixie stopped Applejack in front of a lab that had a lot more shelves inside than the others. “Right here. If you’ll give Trixie a moment…” She popped out her mini computer and, with a bit of fiddling, popped open the door. “The Neuromod Storage Bay,” Trixie said with far more grandeur than Applejack thought the place deserved. “Every single neuromod CelesTech has created is stored here. This is the repository of the future, a place where-”

“I’m sure the corporate bigwigs appreciate that marketin’ spiel,” Applejack said, “but we’re here for a reason.”

Trixie’s ears went straight up. “Marketing spiel?” she yelled. “Applejack, do you know how important the items stored in here could be? They could change the face of Equestria as we know it!”

“Yep. Frankly, right now, I’m more concerned about my own face than Equestria’s.”

“Hmph. Very well. We’ll need to look up which mod is which.” Trixie stalked to a computer terminal. Applejack followed close behind, keeping her ears up. She hadn’t seen a changeling in a while and she was feeling paranoid. Just one thing out of place, and-

“Alrighty,” Trixie whispered as she sat down, “I don’t suppose you’re nice enough to be unlocked, are you?” She tapped the screen, revealing a login prompt. “No, you are not.”

“That ain’t a problem, right?” Applejack asked. She tried to sound concerned, but couldn’t quite manage it. Anything to delay a potential eye-stabbing with a needle, even if only for a few seconds.

“Fear not!” yelled Trixie. She held up her hooves like she was about to conduct some sacred ritual and had put on a dramatic voice. “The Great and Powerful Trrrrrrrixie shall use her unparalleled hacking skills to get us in!” She rotated the monitor a little and, from the back, plucked a sticky note with a password written on it. Seven seconds later, they were in the account of one Dr. Moondancer.

“Some hackin’,” grumbled Applejack. “I coulda done that.”

Trixie’s grin was eminently punchable. “Ah, but you didn’t.” She began sifting through menus so fast Applejack could barely follow. “About seventy percent of hacking relies on ponies being occasional idiots, and let me tell you-” She wagged a declarative hoof at Applejack. “-ponies are not good at security in a place like this. Trixie saw ponies who worked here replace sticky notes just like this two or three times.” She reached some sort of inventory screen and went to the search bar. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one email has a code for a safe or something, a long rant about proper security procedures, and a big, bold statement telling her to delete the email. Ah, here we go.”

Applejack leaned over Trixie’s shoulder to check. They were in the middle of a long list of neuromods with long descriptors Applejack didn’t recognize and keywords like “dance” or “archery”. It apparently looked fine to Trixie, though. She ran her hoof across one line. “Mod PPN-8, firearms… What’s the description?” She opened up a link and skimmed the resulting page. “Knowledge of all sorts regarding guns of all sorts, blah blah blah, applications in security training, good enough!” She stood up. “Look for mod PPN-8. They should be alphabetized.”

And alphabetized they were. The storage aisles had nice, clean placards on them, like they held food at the grocery store rather than experimental magic devices in a space station. The mods themselves were on shelves behind unlocked glass doors; apparently the designers had thought the room’s security was sufficient. In keeping with the rest of the station, multiple doors had been shattered and neuromods were spilled across the aisles. Applejack and Trixie followed the P’s all the way down to PPN-8. But there were multiple PPN-8s: v3, v4, v5… “Just take the latest one?” Applejack asked.

“Probably, but maybe not,” said Trixie, rubbing her chin. “I’ve heard newer versions can have problems the older ones didn’t. Hang on, I’ll check.” She raced back to the computer.

As Applejack waited, she delicately took a v5 mod from its cradle. It was an unassuming thing, basically a small steel brick with a container of purple liquid sticking out from one side, an eyepiece on another, and some bits of plastic tubing running around it. One of the masterstrokes of neuromods was how easy they were to use. Applejack lightly squeezed the brick between both hooves and cringed at the deployment needle that jumped out of the eyepiece.

It had already come to this. Breaking into labs, stealing their research, and injecting herself with it for a chance to stay alive a little longer. Applejack didn’t think it was wrong, not at all, but it definitely wasn’t what she’d expected to be doing even a week ago. If she pushed into the outbreak, what else would she be doing that she thought she’d never have to do?

Honestly, though, if taking a neuromod was her biggest concern, things were going alright.

“V5!” Trixie yelled, making Applejack nearly drop the mod. “V5 is the best!”

“Alright!” Applejack called back. “I’m taking it now!” She blanched at the needle one more time, then touched the eyepiece to her eye. The physical, wet surface of her eye. She reflexively tried to blink, but the eyepiece was in the way.

“Please wait and look forward,” a soft voice cooed. Purple lines flickered across Applejack’s vision. “Neuromod calibrating.” The waiting, however short, was terrible. Applejack’s eye was watering like mad and she kept wanting to pull the mod away. But if she did that, she’d have to start all over. Applejack ignored her heart and kept looking forward.

“Calibrated. You may learn when ready.” The voice was so soothing, so calm about this, that it made Applejack squirm. And was that the best slogan they could come up with? It sounded like she was loading a gun with knowledge and shooting herself in the head with it. Which, okay, wasn’t that far from the truth, but still.

Well. Nothing to it. She took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.

The needle in her eye actually didn’t hurt. It was sharp enough that it didn’t pierce her lens so much as frictionlessly slide right through. It also went through her pupil, so no nerves there. And it was in and out fast enough that it was over before Applejack knew it’d started.

But she felt it, if only for an instant. It tickled her retina. It tickled her retina.

Before the flash of synapse-rewriting magic had faded from her sight, Applejack hurled the neuromod deployer away and reflexively clapped her hooves to her eye. Between the thing touching the outside of her eye and touching her retina sweet Celestia, her eye was watering like crazy. It always did, or so she’d heard. Her engineering mod definitely had.

For five seconds, nothing. Applejack just groaned and massaged her aching eye. Ten seconds. Nothing. Fifteen.

And then Applejack knew guns.

The breadth of knowledge didn’t hit her like a train, knock her down, or overwhelm her. One second she would’ve looked at you cluelessly if you’d asked her about calibre. The next, she could’ve gone into extreme detail about dozens of different calibres and their pros and cons. She felt like she’d been firing guns since foalhood. She didn’t just know how to aim; she knew how to zero a sight, how to clear a jam, how to take apart any gun in the room and clean it and put it back together. She was never aware of it coming into her mind. It was just there.

Applejack looked at her shotgun; through her new eyes, it wasn’t just a shotgun anymore. It was a Throne S6 semiautomatic shotgun, 12 gauge, meant for close-quarters fighting. No slugs, not on a space station; pellets only, to keep the muzzle energy down. Five-round tube magazine, plus another one in the chamber, all tracked by an LED display. Very reliable and capable of being fired in space if need be. Even underwater, if you had the right ammunition (which Golden Oaks didn’t). The pressure in her mind was now comforting, familiar, an easy trigger to pull. The gun was still light, but now she knew that was because the gun was empty. Once she got some shells in, it’d be nice and heavy.

At the far end of the aisle, Trixie leaned in. “Did you get it? Do you feel okay?”

“I’ve been better.” Applejack blinked again and rubbed her eye. Still it insisted on water. “Been a lot worse, too, so I’ll take what I can get.”

“So you know guns now?”

“Like the back of my hoof.”

“Excellent. I suppose now the only thing left is to unlock your video and… do whatever it is the princess wants you to do?”

“I guess.”

Trixie was already hard at work at the computer by the time Applejack got there. Applejack risked a glance at the screen and saw nothing but a command prompt window with a long list of commands and responses she couldn’t hope to understand. “How’s it goin’?” Applejack asked.

“Effh.” Trixie blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “This is proving to be far more difficult than Trixie suspected. Whoever locked you out had privileges higher than the usual, so many of Trixie’s usual methods aren’t working.” She tilted her head to one side, cracking her neck.

“Many? Y’already tried ‘many’?”

“Trixie is very good at what she does, Applejack.”

As Applejack sat and waited for Trixie, she did the one thing she’d hoped she’d never have to do. She stopped. She slouched forward in her chair, propping herself up on her front legs, shaking all over. She felt partially terrified, one part of her brain screaming her lights out while the rest shut down all emotions and forced her to categorize everything she knew and take stock of the situation.

All of her co-workers were still dead. She was still stuck in space. And every step she took, she was deliberately plunging deeper into whatever madness was going on, completely headlong. She had nothing to go on but a single video that might not even be worth anything once she actually saw it. The only ally she’d met so far was a computer programmer. There was a very real possibility that she was going to die, just like the rest of the station, and the more she kept moving, the higher that possibility became.

But she couldn’t just wait. If waiting was her thing, she wouldn’t be up here in the first place; she’d be letting the harvesters do their jobs at Sweet Apple Acres and not caring that she didn’t have any dirt on her hooves. Moving let her feel alive. Moving gave her a chance to do something — maybe something good, no matter how small. If she survived.

Breathe, girl. Breathe. You can do this. Just keep movin’ for’ard.

“Bah!” Trixie said eventually. She pushed away from the desk in frustration, her ears back, not even noticing Applejack’s distress. “Perhaps Trixie could do this with more time in a less stressful environment, but not here and now. And don’t even think about asking if this is the best Trixie can do, because yes, right now, it is! Stupid…” She sucked in a breath through her nose. “May I have a moment?”

Applejack quickly sat up straight and pushed her hooves down hard onto the floor to hide the shaking. It wouldn’t do to break down in front of her only ally. “Have a whole minute if it’ll make y’feel better.” She knew the feeling.

“Thanks, but I’ll just need a moment.” Trixie picked up a few binders from the debris, walked into the hallway, hurled them with enough telekinetic force to lodge them in the metal wall on the other side, and walked back in. “I’m better.”

“Huh.” Applejack tilted her head. “Not even a scream?”

“Nope. I prefer to keep my lungs intact to introduce myself.” Trixie collapsed back into the chair. “It’s strange. It’s like every email has been locked by an admin. Which I suppose is possible, but…” She drummed her hoof on the legrest, then hastily went to another screen, bringing up a huge table of rows and columns. “Changelog, changelog, changelog…” After a moment of reading, her jaw dropped. “Ah, Applejack… When were you reading your email?”

“Ehm… 2:25? 2:26? Somethin’ like that.”

“Because at 2:26, somepony removed the view permissions for literally every single email on our servers.” Trixie spun around to stare at Applejack as if that meant something. “If you’re not an admin, nopony can read anything in their inbox.”

“Seriously?” Applejack didn’t know much about computers, but she definitely knew that. “Why d’you think they did that? Were they tryin’ t’get me?”

Trixie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they were trying to keep the aliens from reading the email- Hey, don’t laugh! We don’t know they can’t! They might be sapient! Keeping information from them is a smart thing!” She swiveled back to the computer. “Whatever the reason, this was a panic move, a quick-and-dirty solution for a more precise problem because they were short on time, like using a chair as a hammer. And the permissions were changed by…” She frowned and leaned closer. “No, that is not right. Time Turner? No.”

“You’re sayin’ Time Turner locked everypony out?” asked Applejack. She only knew him by loose reputation, but that was still well enough to disbelieve Trixie. He’d seemed… friendly enough. Besides, locking ponies out of their mail just didn’t make sense now.

“Or somepony using his account,” muttered Trixie. “He was the head of the Computer Science division, so he had access to just about everything… No, it never would’ve been him…” She drummed her hoof on the table and stared at the screen. “He was… so enthusiastic about his work you couldn’t help but get caught up in it,” she said. “That stallion could make searching the phone book the most exciting thing ever.”

“Didn’t he want you to keep your mods?” Applejack asked. “It was in your file. You’d been hackin’ into the network and the scientists thought you shouldn’t be able to do that. All ’cept him.”

“He did. And to be honest, he shouldn’t have.” Trixie spun the chair around to face Applejack and rubbed the back of her neck. “I couldn’t help myself, and that was a ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’… thing. You know what I mean? And getting my mods removed wouldn’t’ve even set the testing back that much, since I’d already proved they worked. Then Dr. Turner comes along and doesn’t just let me keep my mods, he hires me. I sometimes do some database and security maintenance for him. I know him.” She pointed at the screen. “And he wouldn’t have done this.”

Trixie spun back to the screen. “But who would’ve…? And where-” She twitched and quickly side-scrolled across the logs. “Workstation, workstation…” she muttered. She stopped at a certain column. “Workstation! CRMO1… But… that’s his office…”

The words were out before Applejack knew she was saying them. “Wanna check it out? It ain’t like we got anythin’ else we can do. ’Cept maybe hide.”

Headlong.

Trixie frowned at the screen, tapping the desk. Her ears flopped this way and that. Eventually, she said, “You know that, um, with the thing dragging you leaving hoofprints and using computers… You know that probably means there’s a pony on board doing that, right? That… tried to kill you.”

Applejack swallowed. “…Yeah.”

“So… are you sure this is a good idea? I mean… what if…”

“Then if we run into ’em, we’ll try to talk to ’em, figure out why they’re doin’ this. And if they’re plannin’ on doin’ worse things, we’ll stop ’em.”

It sounded so simple when she put it like that. But for all she knew, the only way to stop them might be a wrench to the head. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do that.

It only took Trixie another moment to nod. “You’re right. Trixie knows enough magic to incapacitate a pony for a little while if we meet them.” She stood up. “Central Research is just a module over. We can be there in a few minutes.”

Once Trixie pointed the way, Applejack went first down the debris-strewn hallway. She was the big, tough, armed earth pony. Still no shotgun shells, but the wrench was as hefty as ever.

She just hoped she wouldn’t have to use it against a pony.

8 - Hazard Pay

“What’s it like bein’ a volunteer?”

One of Trixie’s ears went down. “Pardon?”

“Bein’ a volunteer,” repeated Applejack. “Or tester or- whatever you’re called.” After only a few moments of walking, Applejack wanted to break up the silence. It sat too heavily.

Trixie shrugged. “It’s not much. The labcoats pick a neuromod, inject it into you, and you test the limits of it. A clinical trial usually takes one to four weeks. Trust me, it’s not as interesting as it sounds.”

“D’you like it?”

“It’s a job, so: not really. It’s all moral, if that’s what you’re asking. We all get free room and board, a salary, and any tested mods we want to keep. Applejack, Princess Twilight comes up here biannually. She would freak if we were treated like lab rats in a bad sci-fi movie.” She lowered her voice dramatically. “And you know what Twilight is like when she freaks.”

Applejack nodded. She knew.

She waited for Trixie to continue, but Trixie didn’t say anything. Not very talkative or out of things to say about neuromod testing already? Probably the latter. Whenever it came to her skills, Trixie seemed ready to wax poetic about them and dare you to not do the same. Talk about her, and she’d talk for hours. Talk about her job, and you wouldn’t get much, if only because it was boring.

A line jumped into Applejack’s mind from a certain file: convicted felon. CelesTech wouldn’t let anypony dangerous on board… would they? Maybe she could find out. “So, uh,” Applejack continued, “how d’you, uh, get t’testin’ neu-”

Trixie sighed and rolled her eyes. “If you’re interested in Trixie’s felony, just say so. She knows it’s in her file.”

Applejack opened her mouth, ostensibly to protest, but instead said, “Fine. It said you stole somethin’. What’d you steal?” She wouldn’t do anypony any good by trying to figure it out in some roundabout way, and Trixie would probably figure it out eventually. How many other ponies had tried asking her what she’d done without actually asking her?

Rather than looking away and lowering her ears, as Applejack expected, Trixie held her head a bit higher and the corners of her mouth actually went up. “Something very valuable. Very, very valuable.” The small smile grew into a full-blown smirk. “Equestria’s crown jewels.”

“Wait, what?” Applejack spun around to boggle at Trixie. “That- That was you?” It’d been all over the news for a year almost a decade ago. Crime of the century, or so the news sites said. In fact, once the regalia had been recovered and the pony responsible had been found, the Stellar Thrones had put down a nationwide gag order to prevent anyone from revealing the thief’s name and deny her infamy for her deed. It had worked; she’d been tried, convicted, and sentenced without anypony hearing her name.

“That was Trixie, and Trixie alone.” Trixie’s smirk grew even more pronounced. “Performed flawlessly in less than an hour and without anypony getting hurt or even noticing. A good theft, no?”

“Um… I guess.” Sure, stealing the crown jewels was impressive, but Applejack didn’t really want to praise crime, even if it was nonviolent crime. But the file had said Trixie was trustworthy and she hadn’t done anything to hurt Applejack, so at least she wasn’t dangerous.

“It brought Trixie much satisfaction.” Trixie’s smirk faltered, but only slightly. “And two years in jail before I was paroled.” She drew herself back up. “Still, worth it. Trixie was able to join a security firm to exercise her… ahem, talents in a way less likely to lead to prison. Several years later, she was approached by CelesTech to be the source of some security neuromods and-”

“Wait, the source? How’s that work?”

“Brain scans. The skills must come from somewhere, no? And what better source than a master thief? Anyway, Trixie accepted and decided to also volunteer for testing. One somewhat boring year later, here we are.”

“Huh. I guess there are worse ponies t’get stuck in here with. Like me. I’m a gardener.” Applejack grinned sheepishly.

“A gardener who knows guns.” Trixie pointed at Applejack’s shotgun.

“Guns that I ain’t got bullets for.”

“We’ll raid a security booth. There’ll be one right inside Central Research.”

Sure enough, once they passed through a door labelled Central Research and into a hallway just as ransacked as the ones before, they saw a booth for security officers like Rainbow Dash (Applejack twitched; was she still alive?) set into the wall ahead of them. The door was open, so Applejack wormed inside.

Just like Rainbow’s booth, it was smaller than a cubicle in there, narrow and everything within easy access of a single swivel chair. On the other side of the booth, a strongbox had been opened and several boxes of shotgun shells were strewn across the counter. Most of them were empty, but two of them were still full and closed, sitting side by side. Applejack reached for the closer one-

Two boxes of shotgun shells. Side by side.

“Hang on,” said Applejack.

Trixie pushed her way into the booth behind Applejack. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Those.” Applejack pointed at the boxes. “One of ’em ain’t right.”

“Applejack,” said Trixie in a voice that was only barely holding back a long-suffering sigh, “sometimes there are two of something in the same place. It happens.”

“I don’t trust it,” Applejack snarled. She nudged Trixie back and drew her wrench. “Stay back.”

“Fine, I’ll get it myself,” said Trixie. Her horn glowed a pinkish aura enveloped the box.

“NO!”

Too late. The box rattled and exploded into a ball of black goo before it’d risen an inch. It hooked its legs around the edge of the desk, pulled itself from Trixie’s magic, and leapt at them, chittering.

Trixie screamed and stumbled backwards, her magic vanishing. “Sweet Celestia, WHAT IS THAT?” she shrieked.

Applejack swung the wrench blindly and as best she could in the cramped space, clipping the changeling and smashing it against the wall. It flattened out and rebounded like a superball, again hurtling at Applejack. She pushed backwards, shoving Trixie with her. The changeling landed on the floor in front of Applejack, but as she brought her wrench down in an overhead swing, it rolled away, hopped up onto the desk, and squeezed through the item slot with no problem. It ran off down the hall, deeper into Central Research.

“What WAS that?” shrieked Trixie.

“You ain’t seen it before? C’mon, we gotta follow it!” Restowing her wrench, Applejack yanked Trixie to her hooves and pulled her down the hallway after the changeling.

“What? No, I haven’t seen it!” Trixie yelled as she stumbled. She wrenched her mane from Applejack’s mouth and kept running. “I thought the aliens were these- equinoid things! They looked a little like alicorns, but-”

“Well, that thing — Twi called it a changelin’ — that thing’s also an alien and it can turn into anythin’ nearby.” As Applejack watched, the changeling jinked into a room.

“Well, that’s just great!”

Applejack slid to a stop outside the room and pulled her wrench out. “Short version, if’n y’ever got two or more of somethin’, one of ’em’s pr’y evil. Like twins in bad sci-fi shows.”

“Look for suspicious pairs of things.” Trixie’s voice was getting less frantic and panicked. “Okay. Okay, I can do that.” She nodded and pulled out her improvised flamethrower. Applejack nodded back and they barged into the room, weapons at the ready.

They were in a wrecked conference room, over a dozen identical chairs set up around a larger table. No other exit from the room. No sign of the changeling.

“I’ve only seen one and I already hate them,” Trixie said flatly. “So how do you figure out which one is which?”

“…Uh… Smack ’em with somethin’?” Applejack shrugged. “I dunno.”

“Oh, perfect. Perfect! We don’t even- Hang on for just a teensy moment.” Trixie stared at her lighter like it held the meaning of life. “Are we actually in a situation where ‘burn everything’ is the correct answer?” She tilted her head. “Huh. I always thought that was the domain of jokes and edgy teens.”

“That why you’re carryin’ those around?” Applejack pointed at Trixie’s hairspray and lighter.

“Most living things run from fire,” Trixie said defensively, “and these make a lot of fire.”

“Sounds about right. But, ehm, don’t go all arson-y on me yet, ’kay? I dunno if the fire suppression systems still-”

There was a faint sound, almost like a cat purring. In near-identical motions, Applejack and Trixie plastered themselves with their backs to the wall. To her surprise, Applejack’s hoof wasn’t shaking that much as she raised the wrench. She surveyed the room carefully, looking at each chair in turn, looking for one of them that was out of place or off in some way. It was easier than she thought it’d be.

“That one,” she said, pointing. “The only one that’s been knocked over. At the head o’ the table, see? That’s the changeling.”

“I’ll believe you,” Trixie said quietly. “Why don’t, um, you figure out if it is?”

“Was plannin’ on it.” (Trixie twitched in surprise.) “Get ready to magic it off me if I’m right.” Applejack slid along the wall towards the head of the table, inch by inch, until she was only a few yards from the chair. She swallowed and lunged; when her wrench hit the chair, it caved in like it was papier-mâché. The changeling shrilled in pain as its form unravelled, so Applejack gave it two more thwacks to shut it up.

“Got it,” she said needlessly. Wiping slime off her face, she looked up. There were still a lot of chairs in the room. “Think we oughta… test the rest?”

“Oh, sure,” Trixie said in a high-pitched voice. “Let’s stay in here, where there are probably other shapeshifting things waiting for us.” She aimed her not-flamethrower at a chair. “It’s not like we can-”

The chair next to it jittered.

Trixie shrieked and sprayed. A giant plume of fire jumped from the lighter and engulfed the chair; heat blasted out and made Applejack put up a hoof to block her face. Something screamed, screamed like Applejack had never heard before. It was hard to tell if it was Trixie or the changeling. She forced herself to look.

The changeling, back in its four-legged form, writhed on the floor, smashing aside other chairs in its throes and tossing burning droplets of liquid about. Trixie shuffled away on her rump, shooting another fireball every few seconds. She hit the wall and reared so it was flat against her back, her not-flamethrower shaking even though she was holding it in her magic. Still the changeling thrashed and wailed.

But soon it was over. The changeling went still and… decohered, becoming less of an animal and more of a blob. The burning hairspray flickered, popped, and went out. And there was silence. It had all taken less than ten seconds.

“Uh… nice one,” said Applejack.

“Thanks!” squeaked Trixie. She didn’t put her tools down.

Something in the station creaked. One of the other chairs caught fire.

“Guess the fire suppression ain’t workin’.”

“I saw a fire extinguisher outside. I’ll get it.”

Out, back, spray, and the fire was out.

“Thanks,” said Applejack.

“Sure.”

“…Let’s go back and get me some shotgun shells.”

“Yes. Let’s.”

“Check the other drawers, too,” Trixie said as Applejack re-entered the checkpoint. “Every good thief knows to look everywhere. There might be goodies in there.”

“Really?” Applejack grabbed the closest box of shells and loaded them into her gun with a practiced ease she’d never felt before. “Everythin’s goin’ to Tartarus on a tannin’ rack, and you’re thinkin’ of lootin’ the place?” she asked as she pocketed another two boxes.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “Trixie is obviously talking about survival goodies. Medkits, more bullets, maybe just some candy so we don’t get hungry. She stopped thinking about committing theft years ago.”

“Right.”

The drawers — the ones that were unlocked, anyway — yielded mostly junk: scratch paper, pens, a few bags of Big Bang candy. However, Applejack did what she thought was a tiny stun gun. It was only a few inches large, cylindrical, and had a set of nasty-looking prongs on one end. She pulled the mental trigger and tiny bolts of lightning arced between the prongs. Well, maybe the batteries would be worth something. She stuffed it and a pile of spare power cells into a pocket.

When Applejack walked back outside, the increased weight of her loaded shotgun was weirdly comforting. She wouldn’t have felt that way before; a side effect of the neuromods? But she had protection and that was what mattered. “So, d’you know where Time Turner’s office is?”

“Ah…” Trixie rubbed the back of her neck and looked away. “No.”

Applejack could’ve rolled her eyes, but she didn’t want to get Trixie’s morale down at all. “Alrighty then,” she said casually. “Let’s get lookin’.” She marched forward into Central Research as if she knew what she was doing.

Almost immediately, she came to an intersection, with one hallway each going straight, left, and right. The changeling had led them down the right hallway. None of the halls looked particularly different from one another, but the boardroom implied executives of some kind, so- “Which way d’you wanna go?” Applejack asked. “I vote right. Whenever we come to a branch, we keep goin’ right.”

“Sounds good,” said Trixie. She whirled around and held up her flamethrower. “Tell me if you hear anything, okay?”

“Yep.”

By now, Applejack wasn’t surprised at the state of the hallways. Gashes dug into the walls and floors and she was a-okay with it. Or at least not shaken by it. Most of the room placards were still up, so she didn’t need to look in every single room they passed. A small lab, a small lab, a conference room (the conference room they’d just been in, as a matter of fact), another small lab…

They turned a corner and were immediately confronted with a security door that had been forced open, violently, from the other side. The metal itself had been bent outward and a hole ripped clean through to give its users passage. And on the frame above: Changeling Containment — Authorized Personnel Only.

Applejack came to a stop when she saw that sign. This must’ve been where everything had started. Where the changelings had gotten free. Was going in there safe? What if the entrance to Time Turner’s office was in there? What if there was something else in there? Other ponies? More changelings? Whatever Trixie had seen? Something nopony had experienced before?

Trixie, glancing over her shoulder, bumped into Applejack. “Hey!” she squawked. “Why did you- Oh.” She stared up at the sign and swallowed. “Um. Hmm.”

“What d’you reckon?” Applejack asked.

“Well. Um.” Trixie tugged at a lock of her mane. “I… think that… Twilight had said that changelings were discovered four months ago, right? So they weren’t originally planned for. Or maybe Time Turner also took up changeling analysis. So there’s a chance that maybe his office is in there, so we kinda have to… y’know, go in, but once we do, we should be very careful about what we do.”

The problem of doing things without a plan was that you had no plan for when things weren’t going your way. Applejack wanted very much to turn around and nope it right on out of there. But if that was where their office was, she was only delaying the inevitable. But if the office wasn’t there, what was the point? But if-

“How ’bout this.” Applejack raised her gun. “I go in first, just a little, and see what it’s like. If it’s bad, we skedaddle.”

Trixie stress-laughed. “Heh. ‘Skedaddle.’ Who says-”

“I do. If it ain’t bad, we search it, stickin’ together, no matter what.”

“Okay, uh, that sounds good. I’ll… keep watch, okay?”

“Right.” Applejack kept her shotgun up and awkwardly shuffled three-legged towards the door. After five seconds that lasted for ten minutes, Applejack stuck her head in through the hole. On the other side, the lab was worse than she could’ve imagined.

It was clean, spotless, sterile. Normal. Untouched. No sign of any changelings or bodies. No debris. It was like everypony had just got up and left for the day. She squinted around. No suspiciously-paired objects. No dead bodies. Nothing.

She took a step back and looked at the label for the room again. Changeling Containment — Authorized Personnel Only. But if this was where they’d escaped from, then why did it look so… not-escaped-from?

Applejack hesitantly clambered through the hole. Nothing jumped out at her and the room didn’t look any different. In fact, it looked even more like a perfectly ordinary lab. Something wasn’t right, but she didn’t think the place was dangerous. Was it?

“You can come in,” Applejack called out to Trixie. She swept her gun across the room; nothing moved. “I think.”

“You think?” Trixie inched her head inside and frowned. “Oh.” She climbed on through, walked up right next to Applejack, and waved her flamethrower about. “So what gives? This is where it all started, right?”

“You’d think so.” Applejack examined the room more closely. This main section wasn’t too big — she could see a door back to the rest of the hallway on the other side of the room — but another door was on the side wall, leading Celestia-knew-how-much-deeper in. Most of what was here was workstations, computers, centrifuges, instruments she didn’t recognize. Nothing that could hold a changeling. No offices, either. “But if changelings weren’t known when Golden Oaks was made, how-”

“Some of the staff up here are… basically construction workers,” said Trixie. She didn’t lower her flamethrower. “Time Turner told me once upon a time. Since CelesTech doesn’t know what we’ll be studying next, the labs are built on the fly as needed. There’s a lot of empty modules and spare material down in storage and a new lab can be built in about a week. Usually less.”

“Huh.” Applejack hadn’t heard that before. She probably would’ve found it more interesting if she hadn’t been in the middle of an alien invasion. Her gaze fell on the side door. “We’re goin’ in there.” She pointed at it, though the only other way out was hard to miss. “But not real deep. I don’t think Time Turner’d be that far back and…” She looked around again and tried to ignore the way her coat stood on end. “…and I don’t like the look o’ this place.”

“You and me both,” Trixie muttered.

The door was unlocked. Beyond was a narrow hall, not quite as pristine as the lab, but still in far better shape than the rest of the station. It had some scuff marks on the floor and walls, not much more. Even the lights looked untouched. On either wall were more doors, all without keypads. Applejack tested the first one without looking at the plaque. Unlocked. She leaned in and-

“Sweet granny in a hickory bush.”

It was another, more personal lab, with a specific apparatus set up. It looked like it was for testing light, but Applejack wasn’t sure; she couldn’t tell one end from the other, much less describe it. Wires ran across it to all sorts of little machines and computers that controlled this or that function or whatever. That wasn’t what caught her eye, though.

No, what caught her eye were the sticky notes. The sticky notes stuck to just about every available surface or object, from hard drives to lenses to coils of wire to an abandoned water bottle. The sticky notes that all, every single one of them, read, “Not a Changeling.”

Well, if you’d been having changeling troubles in the past, that was one way to go about it. It made the user of this lab look stir-crazy, but it worked. A quick look-over; nothing was duplicated. In fact, even the same sorts of items had different designs from each other, with this crocodile clip being a different color than that one. Probably deliberate.

Once she got over the initial shock of seeing it, Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle. It was so surreal, that was pretty much the only response available to her. Trixie, however, wasn’t as sure. Frowning, she said, “Is this room safe?”

“Trixie, look at it.” Applejack gestured into the room. “Everything’s labelled. There ain’t no changelings. Somepony really kept track o’ all this.”

“Are you sure? How do you know one of those ‘Not a Changeling’ notes isn’t a changeling?”

“Well, I… Hmm.”

Applejack looked at Trixie.

Trixie looked at Applejack.

They both looked at the room filled with notes.

The room filled with identical notes.

“BURN, YOU BASTARDS!” Trixie shrieked, spraying the makeshift flamethrower everywhere. “BUUUUUUUUUURN!”

Once the fires were out, the pair found twelve changeling corpses all told. The lab was trashed, but oh well. Changelings were dead.

Trixie nudged the leg of one of the bodies. “Do you think they’re intelligent?” she asked. “Or just animals?”

“Dunno.” Applejack was already heading down the hallway. “Pr’y just animals.”

“But…” Trixie trotted up to Applejack. “Don’t you think that maybe-”

“Trixie, far as I’m concerned, it don’t matter. I just wanna find Time Turner so we can read that email and figure out what Twi and I wanted to do. They’re in the way.”

Trixie opened her mouth to protest, then shook her head and kept walking. After a moment, her ears suddenly went up. “Wait,” she said. Her voice was a bit quiet, like she was thinking aloud. “Changelings can only copy nearby things, right?”

“As far as I can tell.” Applejack thought that if they could copy other, less suspicious things, they would; it’d be harder to find them.

“So in order to copy a ‘Not a Changeling’ note, there had to be a note in the first place.”

“Okay…” Applejack came to a door, looked at the sign: Changeling Observation Room. Worth a quick look. She pushed the door open and peeked inside. Nothing immediately suspicious.

“Which means the scientists were having problems with changelings beforehoof.”

“You goin’ somewhere with this?” The observation room was long and thin, running parallel to the hall. Desks and computers lined the wall closest to the corridor, while a long containment chamber was set against the opposite side. Its walls were glass for easy observation — or at least, had been, since one of the inch-thick panes had been smashed to bits. Glass shards still lined the floor of the containment chamber. Some sort of venting or piping was in the back wall, plenty big for a changeling. If that was connected to some sort of habitat, then this must’ve been where the changelings got out to begin with. Huh. Kinda plain for that.

“But none of the other problems led to a mass changeling breakout,” Trixie continued. “So why now?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Applejack. Why was Trixie so focused on this? She stepped out of the room. “We got-”

Then she realized what she’d seen. She ripped the door open to confirm it and her throat went dry. “Son of a-” No. This couldn’t be right. Something was wrong. But she knew what she was seeing, and she knew she wasn’t wrong.

“Son of a what?” Trixie into the observation room and looked over Applejack’s shoulder. “What’s up? I want to see what’s up!”

Applejack pointed at the remains of the containment chamber. She tried to talk, but the words didn’t come.

Trixie got it almost immediately. “Oh.” She took a step back. “That’s what’s up.”

The glass shards were resting on the inside of the chamber. Glass that had been broken from the outside. Glass that had easily held the changelings.

A pony had let the changelings out.

9 - Weapons Free

“But why?” Trixie muttered again. “What would they get?”

Applejack couldn’t bring herself to ask. It’d been easy to just brush aside the “how” before. Some flub in containment, maybe, nobody’s fault specifically. Accidents happened, however tragic. (She could even ignore the clear hoofprints dragging her from the neuromod removal chamber to the garbage disposal.) But if it was deliberate, if a pony on board had done it… how would she know who was responsible? Could she even trust anyone? Or would the next pony they found just be waiting for a chance to slit their throats once their backs were turned?

“Did they communicate with the changelings? Did they think they could get something?”

Golden Oaks was a speck in an abyss. All around them, for hundreds of miles, was quite literally nothing. She couldn’t just pick a direction and flee. No, she needed an escape pod or a shuttle. And if she took one of those, she’d be limiting the chances of any other survivors to get away. Until this entire station was under control, she was basically trapped. Until a changeling found her, or her food ran out, or her water ran out, or, hay, the oxygen ran out. So many ways to die in space. Fun, fun, fun.

“Were they mind-controlled? Maybe the changelings forced them to let them out. Can aliens do mind control? But then why didn’t it happen before?”

Applejack had always been afraid of space, but all her fears before had been marked with a little asterisk labelled Paranoia. After all, if something went wrong, it had to be mechanical failure, right? And they had the best techs on the planet to fix things. Now, every bad dream she’d ever had about a single loose screw spelling death for everyone on board seemed a lot more likely. Right now, the safest thing to do would be to sit tight and wait for more qualified ponies to handle it all.

She’d never been very good at sitting.

Applejack and Trixie had sped up their searching once they found the broken holding cells, but Time Turner’s office hadn’t been in Containment. They exited out of the labs on the other side and kept walking, Trixie mumbling to herself all the while. Applejack let her; Trixie was still moving. The hallway continued on, with no sign of Turner’s office. In fact, this side of Containment had less doors than the other, with the rooms those doors led to much barer. Maybe it was meant for expansion and nothing had been built here yet.

They came to another intersection, one path going straight, another to the left. Applejack looked down the hallway in front: it soon ended at a door similar to Containment, this one labelled Weapons. Hooray. She turned left. Not far beyond, she saw another four-way intersection. Modularity was so much fun.

As Applejack walked down the hallway, Trixie trotted up next to her. “Um,” Trixie said, “not to, ah, alarm you or anything, but where are all the changelings now? If this is where they first came from, shouldn’t we have seen some before now?”

“Dunno,” Applejack grunted. She really didn’t want to be thinking about that right now. “Maybe they ain’t here anymore? Spread throughout the station.”

Right at that moment, an inky, equinoid-ish shape came out from one of the cross halls, sniffing the ground. Applejack came to a stop, blinked, and stared at-

“No!” Trixie whisper-screamed. Something grabbed Applejack’s tail and began pulling. “Back up back up back up!” Applejack shuffled backward, Trixie pulling her too fast for her to stop and turn around. All the while, she had to look at the thing, sniffing at the ground, ready to look up and spot her. Trixie yanked her around the corner, pressed her against the wall, and squeaked, “That was what I saw! Earlier! Before you met me! It-”

“Quiet,” whispered Applejack. She nudged Trixie’s hooves away. “I need t’get a better look at it.” She poked her head back into the hallway and looked.

The thing looked like vines or tentacles twisted in a shape that vaguely resembled a pony. Where the vines didn’t fully meet, holes punched through its legs, its body, its horn. Its whole body was shiny and black in a way that made Applejack think of worker ants, drones. Its eyes had neither pupil nor sclera, neither white nor black, instead just a cold, emotionless blue. Its whole shape jittered slightly and continuously, film just out of alignment. Two-inch-long fangs jutted from its upper jaw. Wings, broad and jagged and some sort of hardened slime, extended from its trunk in about the same locations pegasus wings would. The thing’s movements were fast, jerky, almost mechanically birdlike. The drone froze in its sniffing, chuffed at a certain portion of the floor, and raised its head, rasping deeply. As it looked around each hallway in turn, a too-long tongue whiplashed out and back in.

Trixie yanked Applejack back behind the corner. “What are you doing?” she squeaked. “It’ll see you! You can’t just-”

“Shut up,” snapped Applejack. She looked around the corner for the briefest of instants to get a slightly better look at the changeling. The thing looked… wrong, somehow, equine only in shape, closer to an insect than anything else. Its movements, the way light bounced off it, its just-barely-too-lean proportions, all of it made Applejack’s skin crawl off. An abomination. That was the best way to describe it.

Before, she’d had some issues about if she could shoot something alive. Now, she practically wanted to shoot it. She glanced at her gun’s display. Six rounds. Plenty. “I’m gonna shoot it.”

Trixie nearly got whiplash from the force of her double-take. “You’re- going- Well, um. I’ll… get ready to run, then, shall I?”

“You do that.” Applejack leaned around the corner and raised her gun. She’d never aimed it before in her life, but thanks to neuromods, it felt like she’d done it a thousand times a year. Luckily, the drone was looking down the opposite hallway. Sights over the head… “Also cover your ears.” She wrapped her thoughts around the telepathic trigger… And…

The gun’s report rang out and it bucked against Applejack’s shoulder like a mother. But she knew it was coming and she knew how to handle it. As she absorbed the worst of the recoil, the drone’s head snapped to one side and dissolved it a black, pulpy mess. Direct hit; the thing never saw it coming. Its body quivered for a second, then collapsed to the ground.

As her ears rang and Trixie complained, Applejack coughed out the gunsmoke and blinked her eyes clean. She kept the gun aimed at the body. From the way things were going, it’d pull some freaky alien night fertilizer and stand up again in a moment, probably with the remains of its head flowing back together. No way she was going to be the horror casualty who turned her back on the monster before it was dead.

The seconds ticked by. No freaky alien night fertilizer happened. Applejack still would’ve shot it again, just in case, but she wanted to preserve her shots.

The moments ticked by. Was she supposed to feel bad, having shot something? If it’d been a pony, Applejack supposed she would’ve been gibbering in shock. She didn’t feel anything now. These monsters had killed nearly everypony she’d worked with. Now, there was one less to hurt others. She wasn’t even that disturbed by the changeling’s head turning to paste. It wasn’t like it was red paste, after all.

“Is it dead?” Trixie asked, her voice slightly muffled. “Please tell me it’s dead.”

“I think it’s dead,” said Applejack. “And I ain’t just sayin’ that ’cause you want me to.” She took a few steps towards the drone’s body. Nothing, not even a twitch. She kept her gun up.

“Oh?” Trixie peeked around the corner and twitched. “Oh. Yes, that’s… That’s definitely dead.”

“I sure hope so.” A few more steps. The trigger was so, so tempting right about now. Just one or two shots, and she would absolutely destroy the drone’s body. No chance of getting up from that. But: shot preservation.

A bizarre sound, a wolf’s howl mixed with a dolphin’s click, suddenly pierced through the halls. It was answered by several more. And Applejack heard some strangely muted hoofsteps approaching in a gallop. She froze and pivoted her ears forward. Yes, they were definitely-

“Get over here!” Trixie yanked her back. “They heard us,” she muttered. Her breathing was quick and panicked and her eyes were wide. “They’re coming. We need to run.”

“You’re su-”

“Yes I’m sure! Why do you think I’d make this up?!” Trixie tugged. “Please!”

Screw it. Applejack galloped back over to Trixie. “C’mon. If we’re hidin’, we’re hidin’ in a frackin’ armory.” They ran down the hall, back to the Weapons door. “You can get this open, right?” Applejack aimed down the hall. Still empty.

“I better.” Trixie pulled her TranScribe out and began hacking.

Another howl-click rang out, closer. As she fiddled with her computer, Trixie’s hooves were shaking, but her magic wasn’t. “Come on, c’mon c’mon come on…”

The sound of hooves. Applejack risked glancing over. “Trixie…”

“Just a-!”

Be-beep, and the door opened. The two ponies toppled through; Trixie slammed on a button to shut behind them. Keeping the door in her sights, Applejack shuffled backward until she bumped into a desk. Something shrieked on the other side of the door. “It’ll keep ’em out, right?” Applejack asked.

“It should,” said Trixie, scooting next to Applejack.

WHAM.

Something smashed into the door, and smashed hard. The frame rattled and Applejack’s heart rate doubled. Suddenly, that door seemed very, very thin.

“It should,” Trixie said, much more quietly. “Come on. Let’s, let’s get to the other side.”

Applejack glanced over her shoulder. Across the room, another door. Between them, nothing but desks with computers, turned over and wrecked by changelings. “Right. Yeah.”

WHAM. Applejack didn’t need to imagine hard to hear the shriek on the other side of the door. Frenzied scrabbling noises rang through the lab.

They began shuffling to the wall, Applejack aiming at the door all the while. “You’re sure it’ll hold?” Applejack asked.

“It should.”

WHAM.

“That ain’t a ‘yes’…”

“Yes I’m sure!” squeaked Trixie. “Turner told me, the doors are magnetically sealed! As long as they have power-”

The lights flickered. Then the lab was plunged into darkness as they went out. Everything seemed to stop — everything. The floor beneath Applejack’s hooves suddenly seemed too steady for its own good (they were lucky artificial gravity ran on nigh-perpetual spells rather than electricity) and she missed the whirr of a dozen machines she hadn’t realized she’d been hearing. Even the changelings outside quieted down.

“…I’m sorry,” Trixie whispered. It was so quiet Applejack could hear her gulp. “The… main reactor must’ve failed.”

“Keep movin’,” Applejack hissed to keep herself from screaming her head off. “It ain’t long ’til-”

Metal screeched on metal as the door was wrenched open. Shapes darker than black, at least four or five of them, poured into the lab.

“Down.” Applejack wrenched Trixie to the floor and pulled her into the space beneath a desk.

What in Tartarus what in Tartarus what in TARTARUS. This wasn’t fair. Not at all. Applejack looked at her shotgun again, suddenly aware of how painfully bright the readout was in the dark. Five shots. Enough to kill them all if she didn’t miss and if she killed them with one shot each and if she hadn’t miscounted.

Low, distorted harmonics reverberated through the lab like a half-dead motor, setting Applejack’s teeth on edge. A changeling was making those noises? Were they communicating? Were they just the chatter of animals?

The sounds of the changelings’ hooves were odd, like metal hammers wrapped in velvet. Muffled clinks rang out as the drones prowled the lab. What was the best thing to do? Run? Stay here? Move to another hiding spot? Fight? Try to distract them? Whenever Applejack tried considering one option, another forced its way forward; her plans stayed mired in themselves. She unconsciously flexed the leg the gun was attached to.

Next to her, barely visible in the darkness, Trixie was curled up in the fetal position and staring out blankly. Her lips were moving in a constant stream of panicked curses, but she wasn’t making any noise. Her chest expanded and contracted like the world’s fastest bellows as she breathed.

Whunck. The desk shook as a changeling leapt on top of it. Applejack could feel the vibrations from its throat as it warble-hissed. Trixie’s breathing stopped and she put her hooves over her mouth. She looked at Applejack like a scared foal looking to mommy for help. Applejack glanced up at the desk above them. Maybe-

The drone on the desk craned its head around and down and looked Applejack in the eyes.

Time seemed to freeze and Applejack got a good look at the changeling, a far better one than she wanted. The strands that made up the thing were twisted more densely in its head, giving it a face just equine enough to be sickening. In what little light there was, it gleamed wetly, like oil or bile. Its blue eyes were cold, flat, soulless. Applejack would’ve felt less disgusted from looking at a rotted corpse.

Time unfroze when the changeling opened its mouth and shrieked. A tongue over a foot long and dripping with slime lashed out and swiped across Applejack’s face. She panicked and instinctively drove a hoof at its face, but the changeling moved its head back and she missed by inches, hitting nothing but air.

The hoof she was hitting with, however, was on her gun leg. And she was at point-blank range.

BANG.

Brute recoil slammed her against the back of the desk. The black fluids that splattered her in the face were cold, which was somehow worse than if they were warm. The changeling’s dead body slid limply off the desk to fall in a pile in front of her. Trixie was probably screaming next to her, but Applejack’s ears were ringing too much to hear. Something tugged at her; she went with it and found herself getting pulled down an aisle by Trixie’s magic. She didn’t know where, but “away” seemed like a solid deal.

A drone hurled itself over a desk next to her, barely visible in the dark, shrieking like a banshee. It smashed into Applejack’s side and drove her across the aisle, into another row of desks, banging against a monitor. Applejack lashed out blindly as she bounced off and threw the changeling off; it tumbled through a bank of monitors and skittered off into the dark. Applejack aimed, but it was already gone. “Trixie!” she yelled. “Light!” Her voice almost sounded normal.

“Light? Light!” And the room pulsed with pale-pinkish light as Trixie pushed magic into her horn. Long shadows dripped across the floors and walls, bobbing and weaving with Trixie’s head. Dark shapes scurried around the fringes of the light, making growly ululations at Applejack and Trixie. Applejack looked left and right; there was a changeling between each exit and two or three more prowling through the dark. She constantly switched targets with her shotgun, trying to see which one would pounce first. Or which one would be sacrificed to let the others move in. “Y’got any exits?” she whispered to Trixie.

“No,” Trixie whispered back. She gave a light tug on Applejack’s tail to get them moving. “But I’ve got hiding places.”

Super.

One changeling, walking on top of the row of desks in front of Applejack, stepped into the light of Trixie’s horn. Applejack snapped her gun to it. “Stay back,” she snarled in her meanest voice. With animals, tone of voice mattered more than words. “I’m warnin’ you.”

Whatever message her tone carried, the changeling didn’t react. It changeling glanced at the gun, then looked at Applejack again. Its tongue snaked out and it chittered. The two of them stared at each other as Applejack scooted back. The thing almost looked like it had emotions, somehow. Like it was waiting for something. Or-

She was tunnel-visioning. Applejack broke off from the staring contest and swept the gun around the room. Still changelings at the exits. But another was trying to creep forward while her attention was on the first one. It froze when Applejack aimed at it like a foal caught with her hoof in the cookie jar. They locked eyes for a moment, then Applejack swung back to the first one. It had crept forward a few feet.

They knew what she was doing. They knew what they were doing. They knew.

One of them warbled. It sounded like a distorted laugh.

Something clicked behind Applejack and Trixie yanked her down a hallway. Back rooms for testing hardware, probably. In the dark, it felt like a cave. Trixie pulled Applejack into an expansive lab as the changelings outside screeched in anger. The two ponies scrambled around a desk and ducked under it.

Trixie was panting heavily. “Oh Celestia, oh Celestia, oh Celestia…” Applejack’s own heart was pounding like nothing else; she wiped her forehead down with a shaking hoof. “Think this’ll do?” she asked, more to give herself something to do than any curiosity. She put a hoof over her gun’s display to block the light.

“It should,” said Trixie. “In the dark-”

The lights came back on, sparser than before. All around them, machines whirred to life. Computers made startup noises. Applejack groaned.

Trixie swallowed. “I… guess the auxiliary reactors came on.”

“Trixie, do the world a favor an’ just shut up.”

“Will do.”

“Y’still got the lighter?”

Trixie held up the lighter and the hairspray can.

“Good. Keep ’em close.”

Hooves pattered down the hall outside, sometimes stopping, sometimes not. They went right on by the lab. Applejack’s hind legs twitched, tensed. “Go or no?” she whispered to Trixie.

“What? No, not yet!” Trixie whispered back. “They might come back! Are you crazy?”

“No, just makin’ it up as I go.” Applejack flexed the hoof connected to the barrel of the shotgun even though it wasn’t attached to any mechanism. The gun itself itched.

“Look, we know where they’re coming from.” Trixie pointed at the door, the only door into or out of the room. “So as long as we stay here, they can only get at us from one direction. We are not getting rid of an advantage like that.”

Applejack looked askance at Trixie. “Y’got experience hidin’ from people wantin' t’kill you?”

“Well, yes. Thief, remember? I’m good at hiding.”

“Good for you. But I-”

Click.

Applejack put a hoof to Trixie’s mouth. “Hold up, quiet,” she whispered. The click wasn’t particularly loud, but it had come from too close for Applejack’s comfort. “Y’hear that?”

Click. Slightly louder. Trixie nodded and mimed zipping her mouth shut. As her mind raced, Applejack’s ears pivoted about like radar dishes.

Click. Where was it, where was it, where was it? She looked around the lab, but she couldn’t see anything that was making that sound, especially not in the dim half-light. Click.

“Oh, Celestia,” mumbled Trixie. She wiped her face down. “Something’s leaking on me.”

Applejack looked up. There was nothing above Trixie but a vent cover.

And two cold, blue eyes staring out at them.

Before she could think, Applejack was curling into a ball and bringing the gun up. She bucked Trixie away and fired at the same time as the vent exploded outwards in a hail of metal. She caught the drone in mid-jump and it awkwardly ragdolled to where Trixie had been. In spite of a gaping crater in its chest dripping oily black ichor, it unsteadily got to its feet. At least, it tried before Applejack shot it again.

But by the time Applejack was aiming back at the vent, another drone was already out. It landed on top of Applejack, too close for the gun, and roared, its tongue flicking across her face. Jaws snapping, it lunged past her hooves and sank its fangs into her neck.

Applejack didn’t feel anything, not physically. There were no cuts, no bleeding. But she was familiar with the haze that washed over her: burnout. It was like it was a struggle to think, to feel, to even care about the alien sucking her vitality away. She could push it off, but why bother? She was stuck on Golden Oaks and the only other living soul she’d seen was a convicted felon. Who was she kidding, she wasn’t going to get off. Might as well lie down and-

“Oh, no you don’t!”

The changeling squealed and its head jerked up as a ball of fire roasted its rump courtesy of Trixie blasting it with her flamethrower. Applejack’s thought processes and motivation came back in a rush. Before she could wonder what it meant, the changeling spun around and rasped at Trixie, who promptly turned tail and ran. The changeling flared its wings and moved to give chase. A move that put it beyond the barrel of the shotgun. BOOM. No more changeling.

On the ground. Several changelings were already dropping from the vent. Applejack brought up her gun, only to freeze when she saw the display: one shot left. Already? But the changelings were close. She grabbed the nearest monitor and swung it at the nearest drone. Its head snapped to one side, trailing spittle and shards of plastic. She bulled forward into the group, swinging the monitor wildly. She only got a few glancing hits that each reduced more of the monitor to crumpled plastic, but the changelings never risked getting past her.

“Applejack!”

Applejack looked up. Trixie was hefting some big, toolbox-sized gun (?) in her magic, its power cells glowing. Strange images kept flickering around the ba-

“DUCK!” screamed Trixie.

Applejack threw herself to the floor and the remains of the monitor, pressing her hat to her head. A changeling jumped on her; she rolled over to try and throw it off-

Her coat suddenly stood on end as everything was cast in a plaid glow. Plaid. The drone shuddered, released her, and stumbled away. Applejack glanced up; a bizarre, multicolored laser swept back and forth across the room as Trixie screamed like a maniac. The beam didn’t leave any marks anywhere, but the drones it hit were left dazed, like they’d been smashed across the head with a frying pan.

Abruptly, the beam cut out. “What?” Trixie yelled. “No! You stupid machine, don’t do this!” She smacked at it and metallic rings sang through the air. Literally sang; Applejack thought she heard snatches of words in there. The drone nearest to her was standing unsteadily on its feet and staring at a countertop like it held the meaning of life. No use in wasting an opportunity like this. Applejack pulled out her wrench and whacked it in the head.

It promptly exploded into jelly beans.

And whenever a jelly bean hit them, so did the other drones. Applejack didn’t get a chance to move before jelly beans smacked against her face, but she didn’t feel anything besides, well, jelly beans hitting her in the face.

Um. Well. Okay. She’d take it. She looked up; no more changelings were coming from the vent. “Hey, uh, Trixie?”

“Do you want Trixie to sing you a lullaby?” Trixie snapped at the laser. “Is that it?” Abruptly, the power cells doubled in brightness for a second. “Well, I’m sorry, but-”

“Trixie! We’re good.”

“-you’ll just have to- Hmm?” Scowling, Trixie looked up, only for all expression to vanish from her face in an instant. “Where, where, where are the changelings?”

“They’re… uh…” Applejack scooped up a hoofful of jelly beans and held them out to Trixie. “Right here.”

“Really.” Trixie examined the jelly beans closely. She picked a few up in her magic and turned them all over individually like a jeweller examining a diamond. “Really.” She absent-mindedly patted the laser. “Never mind,” she said. “You did good.”

Applejack took a step back as the laser hummed. Something about it felt… off. Out of step. “Uh… y’know what that is?”

Trixie sniffed at a jelly bean. “Chaos magic laser,” she said casually.

The bottom of Applejack’s stomach fell out and she cringed away as if stung. “What?” They might as well be bathing in radiation.

“Chaos magic laser,” repeated Trixie. She tossed the beam away and pointed over to where a frame had been ripped apart. “They called it the DisQord Beam — and that’s with a capital Q instead of a lowercase c. Given chaos magic, it probably wouldn’t work right if they gave it a ‘proper’ name.” She looked down at the gun. “You prissy little thing,” she said affectionately.

“Uh-huh.” Applejack backed away and half-fell onto a chair. Her legs were shaking from adrenaline. “Y’wanna… just… take a break for now?” She rubbed her neck. The changeling’s attack hadn’t left any physical marks, but she felt numb.

“Let’s. Usually, if I’m found, something went very wrong, and I need a moment to reset.” Trixie squinted at Applejack’s neck. “Didn’t you get bit there?”

“Yep. Mind went all woozy, but it didn’t leave no marks. Dunno why.”

“…Aliens?”

“Sure. Aliens.”

Trixie probably said something more, but Applejack’s mind just sort of folded in on itself. Changelings weren’t just animals. No, they’d been too smart for that. They’d tried getting one to flank her while her attention was diverted and, rather than taking the obvious one route into the lab through the door, had crawled through the vents to get the drop on her. They were intelligent, maybe as much as a pony.

And with that realization came a flood of questions, almost too many for Applejack to handle. Did the researchers know that their test subjects were sapient? What were they even doing with the changelings? Had they convinced whatever pony freed them to do it? Was it only the equinoid drones that were sapient or did that include the blobs? Had they both been studied? Were there any more “variants”? Was all this wreckage simple revenge or was it something more sinister?

Oddly enough, neither idea stung as much as it once would have. Maybe it was because Applejack had just fought off several of them, had seen them die, had taken them down herself. She knew they could be beaten, intelligent or not. Before, they’d been this enigmatic, faceless, unstoppable force of nature. Now, they were just freaky (if smart) aliens. Their blood might not be like any being’s on Equus, but they still bled. And as long as they hit her, she’d hit back.

But she still had an office to find.

“Hey,” Trixie said abruptly. “Thanks for. Um. Saving me.”

Applejack looked up, frowning. “Huh? Whaddya mean? I bucked you in the face.”

“Well, it’s-” Trixie twisted her mane around a hoof. “Ponies usually don’t have my back at all and- Thanks.” She blinked and looked away. “If not for you, I’d probably still be in that storage room.”

She’d only known Trixie a short while, but Applejack could guess how much those little sentences cost her to say. She’d been a thief and prided herself on working alone. And now she was thanking somepony else for helping her? Well, the least Applejack could do was return the favor. “Sure. Thanks for, uh, jellybeanin’ the changelings.”

“Um.” Trixie looked back at Applejack. Her ear twitched. “Sure.” She smiled a little.

Well, as much fun as getting buddy-buddy was, they couldn’t stay here. Groaning, Applejack hauled herself out of the chair. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get goin’.”

“Right. Maybe we got lucky and attracted all the nearby changelings to us, ha ha…” Trixie withered under Applejack’s glare and picked up the laser as she fell into line behind Applejack.

But Applejack twitched. “Eh, y’might wanna leave that here.”

“Really?” Trixie looked down at the laser like it was a treasured childhood toy, then stared at Applejack with one ear down. “Shouldn’t we take it with us? Such a laser would be an excellent tool.”

“Well, I guess you can take it,” said Applejack, “but I don’t trust myself with somethin’ if I don’t know how it works.” Honestly, breaking it would probably cause black holes to form at the bare minimum. As much as Applejack disliked the harvesters back on the farm, at least they were easy to understand. This was the battery, those were the motors, and that was the part that would never break any of the laws of magic even if you looked at it funny and insulted it.

“Hmm.” Trixie looked back at the laser. “Yes, that’s probably for the best.” She set it carefully on a table and stroked it. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “Trixie still likes you.”

The power cells buzzed.

They left the main weapons lab out the door opposite they came in. The lights were barely on, clearly in some sort of emergency mode. Applejack kept her ears peeled as they walked, but the station was quiet. As she loaded shells into her shotgun, she asked, “Y’know anythin’ ’bout the reactor?” Her engineering neuromods weren’t ultra-high tech, but maybe she could make a guess at the likelihood of the reactor exploding if she knew its design. Probably not, but worth a shot.

“No, Applejack,” Trixie sighed, “Trixie does not know anything about the reactor, since she is undergoing clinical testing and not reactor maintenance.” She gave Applejack a suspicious look.

“Alright.” Not reassuring, but not unexpected, either. Applejack glanced at the shotgun’s display. Back to 6. Good. Plenty to kill anything that moved. Even though nothing was moving.

They rounded a corner in these stupid modular hallways and were confronted with something different: two walls of doors, three or four to a side, too tightly packed to be labs, all with plaques next to them and locked with keycard readers. Applejack trotted over to one. “Hey, Trixie? Y’know a, uh…” She squinted at the plaque. “…Lyra Heartstrings?”

“She was a neuromod overseer. Up there in the ranks, but not quite all the way.” Trixie was already looking at the opposite door. After a second, she grinned and started bouncing in place. “And this, this one’s a lead programmer in our computer science division! This’s gotta be team leaders and their assistants! So maybe-” She dashed over to the next door, froze, and promptly began squealing. “Applejack!” She pointed at the plaque and flailed her free hoof in excitement. “Look look look!”

Applejack ran over immediately. Anything to get Trixie that excited that fast had to be big. And when she looked, it most certainly was.

Time Turner, Head of Research.

10 - Administrators

Janitors needed to get paid more, Applejack decided. They kept everything looking nice and tidy, they never got in the way, and they had access to absolutely everywhere. Time Turner’s office lock was protected by what was undoubtedly some top-notch encryption, but it all disintegrated beneath the awesome might of Applejack’s custodial keycard. Seriously, whatever they were making, it wasn’t enough.

The door slid open, smooth as silk. Applejack walked inside Time Turner’s office, and holy moly, it had carpet. Carpet was a major luxury item on board a space station, since it did literally nothing except make your feet a bit more comfortable. She looked around a bit, and her jaw got lower and lower with every square inch she saw. Wood panelling. Brass statuettes as decorations. Paper books. An absolutely top-of-the-line computer. A desk huge enough and solid enough to be brushing up against authority manifest. And a little Neighton’s cradle to tie it all together. This wasn’t just a good office; it was a spectacular office, perfectly fit for the head of research.

Shame about the body.

Applejack stumbled when she saw it. A brown earth pony in a black administrative uniform was sprawled across the floor next to the desk, his eyes staring blankly out, one of them bloodshot. His jaw was broken, hanging at an odd angle that somehow sent his entire face horribly askew. One side of his head was terribly swollen and blood was still dribbling from his mouth.

“C’mon, Applejack,” said Trixie, shoving her aside, “let’s get-” Her eyes fell on the body and she came to a halt. “O-oh, stars above, no,” she whispered. She dashed to the pony’s side and dropped onto her haunches next to him, leaning forward. Shakes wracked her entire body as she reached out, pulled back, reached out, pulled back. “N-no… Y-you can’t… No, no…”

Applejack hadn’t seen her own parents die. She’d just been finishing up her homework one fine spring day when Granny Smith had staggered into the house, sobbing. There’d been an accident out in the fields, with some timberwolves getting bold, and… well, that was that. Poof. Gone. It was so sudden, it’d taken a while for it to fully hit her. Even now, well over a decade later, she still wasn’t sure she “got” it; the funerals had had to be closed-casket. A loss that abrupt had more weight than an aircraft carrier. She didn’t know exactly what Trixie was going through, but she had a pretty good idea.

She took a seat next to Trixie, but didn’t extend a hoof. Let her make the first move; she’d want that. Applejack forced herself to look at Time Turner’s body. She recognized him, very vaguely. It helped get her emotions up. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Trixie could barely get the words out. “H-he was… I… Last, last night, he t-told me to…” She suddenly yanked Applejack over in an iron grip, buried her face in her shoulder, and screamed. Applejack reached over, patted her on the back, and let her scream.

When Trixie pushed away, her eyes were red and puffy. “Sorry,” she mumbled, wiping her face down. “You… probably don’t…”

“Take all the time y’need,” Applejack said. It wasn’t much, but it was all she could offer. “I get it.”

“…Thanks.” Trixie stood up straight, locking her knees, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, her voice a single notch calmer. “Nopony’s here. But his computer is. Let’s look at some email.” Before Applejack could say anything, she resolutely marched over to the computer and started clicking away.

“Are you okay?” Applejack asked as she took a spot behind Trixie. She tried to ignore the bloody smear on the wall right next to her.

“No,” Trixie said, not looking away from the login screen. “But Trixie is getting there. Programming helps her think. Is his password still…?” Trixie tapped out a password that Applejack thought looked something like eyeH8P3ars. For a second, it looked like she was in. Then another window popped up, showing Time Turner making a stupid face beneath the words TRY AGAIN, TRIXIE!

“Oh,” said Trixie distantly once it booted her back to the login. “He… personalized it again.” She blinked twice. “He…” Deep, shuddering breath in. Long, shaky breath out.

“Want me to leave?” Applejack asked quietly.

“No,” said Trixie, closing her eyes. “I… I’ll be okay.” She sucked in air through her nose like a bellows and opened her eyes again. “So… maybe…” She popped out her TranScribe and started tapping at that, constantly glancing between the screens. Within seconds, the computer emitted a good-sounding beep and the login screen vanished and turned to Time Turner’s desktop. Once they stayed there for five seconds, Trixie smirked, but only for an instant.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Email… Here we go, finally…” She went into some kind of mail management software, and-

We’re sorry. Golden Oaks is running on auxiliary power and the mail servers are among the non-essential services that have been shut down to preserve fuel. Please try again when full functionality has been restored. If you feel that keeping this service running is essential, please contact Engineering to re-enable.

And that was it.

Applejack could feel her will break. They’d been chasing ghosts this entire time. All those wild hopes that, somehow, she and Twilight had a grand plan to solve everything, were gone in an instant unless she wanted to gamble everything and hope she could fix the reactors. Alone. Really, though, had she ever expected anything more? It was a half-wit’s plan right from the start.

Trixie didn’t look much better. She stared blankly at the screen, her mouth working just enough to say, “That’s… That’s not fair… That’s not…”

“So, uh…” Applejack coughed. “Now what?”

“You tell me,” Trixie said flatly. It was obvious she didn’t want to think much. “You’re the reason we came here.”

Right. Great. Applejack’s head swam, her thoughts a pulpy mass. only one thing made any sort of sense. “Y’wanna… look for survivors?”

“Where?”

“I dunno. Habitation?” A vague memory tugged at her. “I think that’s where Twilight is.”

Trixie watched the screen for another moment, then sighed. “Better than nothing.” She half-climbed, half-fell out of the chair and loped over to the door.

The hallway hadn’t changed in the interim; no changelings swarmed around in it. Trixie pointed down one path. “I think that way will take us back to the lobby, so- CAMERA!”

Applejack nearly jumped out of her skin. “What?”

“Cameras!” Trixie said. She was calmer, but she was still giddier than Applejack had ever seen her. “Look!” She magically grabbed Applejack’s head and wrenched it around. A camera was in the corner of the hallway, looking straight at them, its red light blinking. “We’ve been trying for so long to figure out what happened when, but we could just look it up on the security footage!” Trixie clouted herself on the head. “Stupid stupid stupid! Why didn’t I think of it before?” She dashed back into Time Turner’s office.

“Whoa, hey!” Applejack ran in after her; Trixie was already at the computer. “Trixie, slow down!”

“Trixie slows down for no mare!” Trixie proclaimed. “She is far too-” The color of the light on her face changed. Trixie froze for a long second and her ears slowly went down, all energy sapped from her in an instant.

“Can’t access ’cause o’ the reactors?” guessed Applejack.

“Can’t access because of the reactors,” confirmed Trixie glumly. She slumped forward and bumped her head against the monitor, emitting a long, pained sigh. “One thing,” she muttered. “If just one thing went right, we could do this.” She sat back in the chair and pouted at the screen.

“Well, uh,” said Applejack. She looked back outside. Was it even worth going out if Trixie was going to have another brainwave and run back inside? “So. Um.”

Before she could continue, Trixie’s expression changed. Her jaw tightened and she narrowed her eyes. “We’re going to the reactors,” she said quietly.

“Turnin’ the email back on?” Applejack asked. “Trixie, we don’t-”

“Not the email,” Trixie said. “The security cameras. Applejack, listen. There is somepony on this station who is willing to kill everyone else. We need to know who. If there are any other ponies still alive, they’re in danger. And I- I don’t want Time Turner to have died for nothing.”

Applejack and Trixie looked at each other. It was crazy, right? Neither of them knew a thing about the reactor systems. They didn’t know how the computers worked, what sort of safeguards needed to be disengaged to access nonessential systems. They didn’t even know where the reactor was. Continuing to blunder through the station to try to find the reactor module and praying they could operate it was a long shot at best.

But a long shot was still a shot, and that was what they needed.

“Y’know what?” Applejack said. “You had my back all the way here. I never woulda got this far without you. So if you wanna go down there — wherever ‘there’ is — I’m with you, all the way.”

Trixie grinned. “Of course you are.” Her voice had regained a slight lilt. “Trixie’s plans are far better than yours.”

Somepony was feeling better. “So where’s the reactor?”

One of Trixie’s ears went down. “Um…” She did something at the computer. “Okay, you know the central elevator in the lobby? Maintenance crews can take it down another level. And among the services accessible there? The reactor.”

“Perfect. Lead the way.”

Were earth ponies “meant” to work? The stereotype of one was somepony who was diligent and wouldn’t quit until the job was done. The Apple family stretched back for dozens upon dozens of generations, each one producing hard-working farmers. Hay, half the reason Applejack was up here was so that she could do some real work with plants rather than relying on harvesters and seeders to do it all for her. And now, with a goal still in mind and some concrete information rather than nothing but a wing and a prayer, Applejack felt something resembling good as she walked through Golden Oaks.

Sure, it wasn’t the greatest. The place had still gone to Tartarus on a tanning rack. But they had a very clear idea on what they were doing — getting the security cameras back online — and Trixie was growing more and more sure of her route through Central Research as they walked and she recognized where they were. They weren’t just grasping at straws. Clarity was a heck of a drug.

“So around this corner,” Trixie muttered, “we should- Aha! Yes.” They’d reached another security checkpoint. “The lobby should be right through here.”

“Should be?” asked Applejack. She chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Temptin’ fate, are ya?” With their luck, that would lead straight to the vacuum of space.

Trixie tossed her mane confidently. “Fate already indulged itself upon Trixie back in the weapons lab. She has nothing more for it to feast on. This is the lobby.” She stalked forward and waved a hoof at the automatic door. She stepped back without even bothering to look as it opened. “Voilà,” she intoned, bowing like a magician on a stage.

It was indeed the lobby.

The lobby of Golden Oaks was a thing of Neo Deco beauty where even the poles holding up railings were nice to look at. Apparently, it’d made articles — multiple articles — in architectural magazines down on Equus. It was a carefully-cultivated cavern of opulence, grandeur, and conspicuous consumption. After all, it was the first thing visitors would see after leaving the shuttle bay; what better way to impress them?

The room was absolutely gigantic, stretching over seventy feet up — it was more an atrium than a lobby, to be honest — and with a floorplan big enough to hold a (small) buckball pitch. Small “stations” — central offices, a conference room or two, a medical bay, even a small museum — were dotted around three levels, connected by bridges and stairs. The infrastructure and walls were carefully concealed behind bits of filigree and art; the railings were real wood and the chairs were real leather and the gilding was real brass. Purely for effect, a bank of glass elevator shafts shot out from the middle of the floor and climbed all the way to the ceiling and burrowed through to the arboretum. An enormous sculpture of abstract art the size of a house hung above it all in the center point of the room, even wrapping around the elevator. And finally, one entire wall was taken up by a colossal window looking out over Equus. Even though changelings had clearly been through here, it was still largely intact and had barely lost any of its luster.

When she’d first seen it, Applejack had thought it an extravagant waste of resources. Now, it was her favorite place in Golden Oaks outside of the arboretum. At least, it had been.

She and Trixie inched into the lobby on full alert, but it was quiet. Too quiet. Applejack had never been to the lobby without at least some activity, yet now it was silent as the grave. The sound of the door closing behind them echoed dismally. Applejack glanced out the window; the sun was behind Equus and blobs of light dotted the continents. Home was a long ways off.

“We’re takin’ the elevator?” Applejack asked Trixie. “That one?” She pointed to the bank in the center of the room and tried to ignore the way the vast space made her voice sound.

“Right. It’ll take us down a level.”

“Good.” She knew those elevators, used them almost every day. They were-

Thud.

Applejack and Trixie both froze. It was a small sound, and quite far away, but it bounced ominously around the lobby. It almost sounded like a pony stomping.

“Tell me if’n y’see somethin’,” Applejack whispered as she brought the gun up.

“Uh-huh.” Trixie raised her flamethrower.

Thud. The tiniest bit closer. And maybe… above? Applejack looked up; nothing interesting presented itself.

Thud. “Excuse me!”

The two ponies froze again. Half because of the shock of hearing another voice, half because of who that voice belonged to.

“You there! Down there!”

Prince Blueblood.

A white-coated stallion, considerably worse for wear, poked his head above a railing up on the third level. Even from this distance, his blonde mane shone like a spotlight. “You ponies! Workers or whomever!” he yelled. “Could you come and get me? I am in need of help!”

Trixie made a Face. “Do we have to save that lout?” she mumbled.

As much as Applejack sympathized, her response was, “ ’Fraid so. I ain’t lettin’ anypony die, no matter how boneheaded he is.”

“We could kill him, you know. It’d look like an accident and-”

“Trixie!”

“Trixie is KIDDING! She couldn’t bring herself to kill any other pony. Not even him.” Trixie sighed. “Well, let’s go.”

They went to a staircase and wound their way up three levels to find Blueblood hiding and shaking beneath a table in a small conference room. His silken pajamas were falling apart where they weren’t smeared with grease and blood. His mane was a mess and he crawled out from under the table staring at Applejack like he’d seen a ghost.

She knew her ire wasn’t well-founded, but just seeing him made Applejack’s blood boil. How many good ponies had died today? How many families would have to have funerals without bodies? And then there was this airhead, this priss, this waste of space, this… stot. Why had he even been sent up to Golden Oaks in the first place? He wasn’t going to be useful. Never would be. Blueblood didn’t do useful.

“Hey,” Applejack said, with borderline hostility. Trixie didn’t even bother with a greeting, just a grunt.

“…I thought I heard somepony,” Blueblood said. He smiled, but it didn’t exactly reach his eyes. Or maybe it was just that his teeth weren’t their usual pearly white. “At least there seems to be some ponies still alive.” His mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments. “If we-”

Applejack wasn’t sure Blueblood would go on about, but she was willing to bet it was nothing she wanted. Escort to a secure location, probably, where she and Trixie would wait on him hoof and tail. In his own little world, he was the most important pony on the station and all of his whims needed to be catered to at once. Yeah, no. “We’re goin’ to the reactor,” she cut in. “If y’want our help, you’re comin’ with us. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“-try to- I, I’m sorry, what?” Blueblood cocked an ear towards Applejack. “We really can’t spare-”

“Long story,” said Applejack. “But we’re goin’ to the reactor. That’s that. Take it or leave it.”

From his expression, Blueblood would’ve blanched if he wasn’t white already. “You- You can’t be serious! We need to find somewhere safe where-”

“We need t’go to the reactor.” Applejack glanced over her shoulder. “Trixie, y’wanna go to the reactor?”

“Yes, Applejack,” Trixie said, her voice tense enough to be cut with a butter knife. “Trixie wants to go to the reactor.” She was glaring at Blueblood like he’d butchered her family, then declared the meat too poor to even consider saving.

“See?” Applejack said to Blueblood. “You’re outvoted. We’re goin’ to the reactor.” She turned around and exited the conference room without looking back. Trixie followed near-instantly.

She wasn’t leaving Blueblood behind, of course, no matter how much she rolled her eyes at the poncy twit. No, this was simpler: force him to come with them. He wouldn’t want to sit around alone. He’d complain, he’d lag, he’d moan, but he’d follow along. Applejack expected hoofsteps in three… two… one…

Clip-clop, clip-clop- And Blueblood was right next to her. “I, uhm,” he said in a well-practiced rump-covering tone, “suppose that, ah, sticking together is, eh, wise.” His grin was spectacularly feeble.

“Listen,” Applejack snapped, jabbing him in the chest, “we ain’t got time for any o’ your royal prissiness. If me or Trixie here tells you t’do somethin’, you’re doin’ it and that’s final. Got it?” Just because she was saving his sorry tail didn’t mean she needed to be nice about it.

Blueblood twitched back two or three inches. “But I-”

“Got it?”

“I just think-”

“Got it?”

“G-got it.” Blueblood nodded shakily.

“Good.”

Applejack led the trio back downstairs to the elevator bank and punched the button to call a car. As she heard the familiar hum of one slowly descending from the arboretum, she idly glanced at her companions. What a group: a shotgun-toting gardener, a self-satisfied hacker, and a prince in dirty pajamas. Well, desperate times and all. If they got out of this alive, their little motley crew was going to be the least strange thing about it.

Once the elevator arrived, they all piled in. Luckily, it was high-capacity, so they weren’t cramped, but Blueblood still didn’t look at either of them. Trixie whipped out her computer and a few seconds later, they were heading down. “How far’s it?” Applejack asked Trixie.

Trixie waved Applejack away. “Oh, not far at all. Twenty feet down? We’ll be there before I finish-”

The lights flickered and the car jolted to a stop.

“Consarn it, Trixie, not again.”

“This is not Trixie’s fault!”

Blueblood was already getting antsy. “Are we stuck? We’re stuck, aren’t we?” He trotted in place, flicking his ears and looking around like a monster was going to jump from empty space to devour him. “We’re going to be trapped here forever! Oh, I should’ve-”

“Shut up,” snapped Applejack. “We ain’t stuck, not yet.” Technically. Although, if Trixie wasn’t exaggerating and the maintenance levels really were that close… “Gimme a minute.” She turned her attention to the doors of the elevator.

They were like elevator doors on Equus, meeting at a crack in the middle. Hopefully, they weren’t secured shut by anything. Applejack wiggled her hoof wedgelike into that crack and shoved all her weight onto it. The doors budged open an inch. She pushed again and got two more inches. That was enough for her to force her wrench into the gap as a brace. With a heave and a ho and earth pony strength, she wrestled the door open another foot. And right behind that, the top two feet of the maintenance doors. Perfect.

“Trixie, Blueblood,” Applejack grunted. “Hold this.”

“But I-” began Blueblood.

“On it,” said Trixie. A haze sparkled into existence around the door and the pressure on Applejack’s hooves lessened. She released the first door and, in spite of the terrible angle, managed to work the second door open. Beyond, more maintenance corridors. Joy. At least they were on the right track.

“Alright,” said Applejack. “Blueblood, get on through.”

“But I-! Very well.” Blueblood gulped, dropped to his stomach, and shimmied backward towards the doors. With a bit of trepidation, he managed to work his way through the gap and dropped to the floor with a wimpy little grunt. A few seconds later, another glow enveloped the outer door. “I have it,” said Blueblood.

Huh. Applejack had thought she’d have to browbeat Blueblood into helping. Maybe he wouldn’t be so worthless after all. She wiggled into the hole (it was smaller than it looked) and lowered herself down without too much trouble. A few seconds and some door-swapping later, Trixie was out, too. She brushed herself down and said darkly, “Let’s not take the elevators again.”

“No,” said Blueblood. “Let’s not.” He opened his mouth, paused, and said, “Reactor?”

“Reactor,” said Applejack.

The hallway they were in was wide and utilitarian, clearly not much more than a conduit linking two modules together. It was also short, with a big door standing about twenty feet away. And on one wall were the doors to a large service elevator and its maintenance stairwell. Trixie trotted over to this; specifically, a small sign next to it. “It should be a straight shot to the reactor from here,” she said, skimming the sign. “And these are all the modules at each floor… Ah, here we are!” she said brightly. “Level 9. Reactor… level 1.” She pursed her lips so tightly you could almost hear them squeak. “Still. No elevators.”

Blueblood cleared his throat and forced a smile. “Well, let’s get to it.”

Applejack glumly nodded and opened the door to the stairwell. Metal steps wound down a metal shaft nearly out of sight, lit only by dim bulbs at the landings. She glanced at the number on the wall next to her. 9.

Hooboy. Already Applejack missed elevators.

11 - Short Fuse

How many stories had they gone down? Seven? Then Applejack really really really really really… really really missed elevators.

Behind her, Trixie was filling Blueblood in on the… details. “-going to try and get the security systems back up and running.”

“We are,” Blueblood said, a bit skeptically. “And that will help repel the… the changelings, will it?”

“Well… not really, no,” admitted Trixie. “Not directly, anyway. But it’ll help us track their movements! That’s really important!”

“Ah-ha.”

Applejack continued loping down the stairs, each step clinking loudly and rebounding up and down the metal walls of the stairwell. It was a lonely sound and Applejack couldn’t shake the feeling that, in spite of being on a space station, she was burrowing deep into the bowels of the earth to be swallowed whole. At least Blueblood wasn’t complaining (much); she’d expected him to be whining the entire way about how much his legs ached or something stupid like that. But, no, he was quiet, like he was thinking about something. But since when did Blueblood think?

Speaking of Blueblood, he trotted down to Applejack and coughed. “So, ah, do either of you know if… there are any survivors besides us?”

“Nope,” said Applejack. “Dunno.” Pause. “Well, I’m real sure Twilight’s still kickin’.” Was she still in habitation? Or had she moved? They ought to check the crew system again.

“Then maybe don’t you think we should find her first?” asked Blueblood. “Or- any other crewmembers?”

“Sure. Fine. And where would we start?”

“In- uh…” One of Blueblood’s ears went down. “The… ah… crew quarters?”

“The place where everypony already was when the changelings got out?”

Blueblood didn’t look at her.

Applejack stopped at a landing and rubbed her hat. “Look,” she said. “I, I wanna find survivors, too. I keep prayin’ somepony’s still alive out there. But this station’s a big place and I ain’t got a flippin’ clue as to where to look. I know gettin’ the cameras workin’ ain’t much, but it’s somethin’. ’Sides, we’re nearly there.” They’d just passed the 2.

“I… see.” Blueblood nodded slowly. “I suppose holing up in whatever computer labs the power plant has is out of the question?”

“Eh.” Applejack shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“If they have a security checkpoint,” added Trixie, “-which they should! — that would be a better place, but points for having an idea. Now let’s keep moving. Trixie is ready to melt.”

They exited onto level 1 at one end of an unassuming metal corridor just like the one above. It ran fifty feet to a door labelled Power Plant, but before that, along one wall, was a large, glass-paned room marked Reactor Monitoring.

“That one,” Trixie said immediately, pointing to Monitoring. “Trixie doesn’t want to walk any more and there’ll probably be computers set up inside.”

“Right.” Applejack brought her gun up. “I’ll go first.”

No protection by either keycards or keypads. When Applejack crept into the room, it looked like a wild bachelor party had been thrown in it, with tables flipped and the ceilings missing tiles and paper scattered everywhere, but it wasn’t too bad. As long as you overlooked the mare who had been strangled with a length of spare cable.

“Oh, Celestia,” gasped Blueblood when he saw the body. “What sort of monster would do something like that?”

Applejack and Trixie glanced at each other. Not necessarily a changeling.

The monitoring station’s computers were still working, so (after a quick look-over to avoid any suspicious duplicates) Trixie took a seat at one and began slicing in. But just as she got past the login screen, Blueblood tapped her on the shoulder. “Um. Maybe we should… search through location services and find where everyone is? So we’re not running around aimlessly?”

Trixie brushed the hoof away. “Later. We can do that after we get the cameras back up. Or after we fail to get the cameras back up. Whichever.”

“And how long will that take?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never used these programs before.” Trixie flexed her hooves. “Give me a minute.”

Applejack pulled up a chair and was ready to sit back and let Trixie do her thing, but Blueblood pulled her off to the side. “Are we really doing this?” he asked. “It seems…” He kneaded his hooves together and looked away. “What if this is more than we can handle?”

“Then, I dunno, we’ll try lookin’ for survivors,” said Applejack. “Have you seen what’s goin’ down? Bein’ able t’handle it ain’t really on the table right now.”

“But-” Blueblood flicked his ears. “If we… go get…” His voice dropped. “…somepony else…”

“Yeah?” snapped Applejack. “Like who?” Her patience was rapidly getting ground down. Ditching this clueless, pampered git was slowly looking more and more appealing.

“I… There must be…”

“There ain’t!” Applejack yelled, barely restraining herself from smacking Blueblood upside the head. “Most o’ the ponies I know are dead! Most o’ the station’s dead! And I ain’t gonna just sit back and hope that somepony else happens t’fix it for us! Maybe y’got servants waitin’ on you hoof and tail, but in the real world, sometimes you’re somepony else’s servant.” She groaned. “Don’t y’ever get outside the palace?”

“Sometimes,” Blueblood said petulantly. “Mother rarely allows me to leave Canterlot.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Applejack muttered.

Blueblood’s jaw immediately tightened and he folded his ears back. “Now see here,” he hissed venomously. “If I-”

“Huh,” said Trixie.

Applejack and Blueblood both snapped to look at her. “What sorta ‘huh’?” asked Applejack. “Good ‘huh’? Bad ‘huh’?”

“I… I honestly don’t know. I ran a scan just to see and it doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with the main reactor. Not to any great extent, anyway.”

“So what happened? Why’d the power fail?”

Trixie turned to look Applejack in the eye. “It was shut down.”

It was like finding a centipede in a butterfly display. Golden Oaks was falling to pieces, getting torn apart by aliens rampaging through it… and yet the reactor wasn’t damaged, but was shut down? Even with everything, the idea was wrong. Like a little catastrophe within a bigger catastrophe. Weren’t things catastrophic enough already?

“I know, right?” Trixie said, guessing at what Applejack was thinking. She turned back to the computer. “The quick scan I ran didn’t return any obvious errors, but the reactor still wasn’t reacting, so I looked into the logs, and there it was: a shutdown command.”

“Why can you turn a reactor off?” muttered Blueblood. “That seems-”

“Maintenance, mostly. We’re still a decade away from free energy,” answered Trixie. “But turning the main reactor off automatically turned the auxiliaries on, so there’s a stroke of luck.”

“Everythin’ runnin’ okay?” asked Applejack.

“Looks like it. And based on the current mana consumption, we still have at least a week before the power dies again.” Trixie snorted. “As if we’ll last a week. But…” She bit her lip. “I’m having trouble figuring out how to get power running to the mail servers again… and…”

Applejack really didn’t like the tone of that “and”. She held her breath.

“And the main reactor is missing its mana crystal,” Trixie admitted. “If we want to start it up again, we’ll need to go down there and load it manually.”

Hmm.

Applejack’s engineering neuromod had included some facts about Golden Oaks’ reactor. She’d never be able to do any intensive maintenance, but she knew mana rods. They were big, thaumatically soaked, and not too hard to mount and unmount into the reactor with a bit of oomph (something earth ponies had in abundance). The hard part was making them, which was why the manufacturing process took place on Equus and the crystals got shipped up by drone.

Could she do it? Get the reactor working again, all by her lonesome? There were a lot of unknowns: any changelings around, the condition of the mana rods or any spares, whether Trixie’s scans were even accurate. She might reach the reactor and find out there was nothing to be done.

But if she could do it…

Well. In for a bit, in for a bridle. “Bet I can load it,” Applejack heard herself say.

Blueblood’s jaw dropped and Trixie sighed as if she’d been expecting that response. “Of course you can,” Trixie muttered.

“No, really.” Applejack cleared her throat. “I, uh, I got some engineerin’ mods shot into me, and I know a little bit ’bout mana crystals. Loadin’ ’em ain’t that hard. Heck, it’s near automatic. So if I go in there…” Her voice trailed off.

Neither unicorn objected, though. Blueblood looked torn up about something while Trixie was thoughtful. She leaned back in her chair and frowned at the computer, drumming her hoof on the legrest. After several long moments, she took a breath. “If you can load it,” Trixie mused, “Trixie can start the reactor again from here. She could even add some extra encryption to keep it from being shut down again.”

“You could? That fast?”

A smirk. “Trixie is a very good programmer, Applejack. Anyway, I-”

Outside, the door to the power plant hissed open.

Everypony, even Blueblood, immediately dropped like a stone and flattened themselves against the floor. Applejack strained her ears and the footsteps she heard had a different quality than the usual changeling ones, closer to rubber-on-metal than muffled-metal-on-metal. She made a “stay down” motion at Trixie and Blueblood and cautiously poked her head above the computer desk to look through the window to outside.

A pony in a CelesTech uniform — with a style Applejack only vaguely recognized — was leaving the power plant, looking over her shoulder, a shotgun strapped to one of her hooves. She was wearing a helmet, so Applejack couldn’t see her face. Then the figure turned back forward, and through the helmet’s visor, Applejack saw-

“Lightnin’ Dust?”

A twitchy Lightning spun around and fired, shattering the window; even though she escaped the worst of it, a few pellets scored Applejack’s face. She yelped and dropped below the desk. “Whoa, hey!” she yelled. “Don’t point that thing at me! We ain’t aliens!”

Lightning’s voice was tinny through her suit’s speakers. “What?” She paused. “Come on out slowly.”

Applejack slowly raised one hoof above the desktop, then began standing up. She hadn’t even gotten all the way up when Lightning gasped, “It’s you. How-”

“Pardon?” Trixie asked. She stood up just enough to glance over the desk. “Do you-”

On reflex, Lightning jerked to aim at Trixie. But in one movement and casting, Trixie ducked back down and wrenched Lightning’s gun to the side. “Would you kindly mind NOT shooting us?” Trixie screeched. “Being not shot is vastly superior to being shot, I think we can all agree!”

“Well, excuuuuuuuuse me for being jumpy!” Lightning snapped. She pulled at her gun, but Trixie had a firm grip on it. “This whole place has gone to Tartarus on a tanning rack and-” She cut herself off and flexed her wings. “You know, what are you doing down here, anyway?”

“Getting the cameras back up! They failed after the auxiliary reactors turned on!” Pause. “And now Trixie would like to know what you are doing down here!”

“Let my gun go and I’ll tell you.”

“Fine.” And Trixie’s magic vanished.

Lightning flexed her leg to work out any crinks, licked her lips, and said, “After the, the lights went out, I… went down to the reactor to see if I could do anything about it. No-pe.” She popped the p. “Not without some sorta engineering degree. There were a lot of missing parts.”

“Really?” Trixie asked. Her eyes narrowed and one of her ears twitched.

“Well, that’s what it looked like. Look, I’m a bodyguard,” Lightning snapped. “I don’t get paid to understand gem-fired power plants or whatever this station runs on. I couldn’t understand that thing with the manual and a year to read it.” She gave her helmet a wiggle and popped it off her suit.

“Were there any changelin’s down there?” Applejack asked. SHe was already thinking: if the reactor was safe, if Trixie’s scans were correct-

“None I couldn’t handle,” said Lightning. One of her eyes was bloodshot; she gave it a rub, smirking a little. “Those punks didn’t know what hit ’em.”

Applejack and Trixie looked at each other. Trixie nodded and Applejack said to Lightning, “Bet I can fix it.”

Lightning blinked and her eyes twitched slightly. “You? But- How- You can’t-”

“Got some engineerin’ neuromods.” Applejack tapped her temple. “And if I can’t, oh well, right? Y’wanna come down and help me?”

Lightning blinked again, like she’d just been kicked in the teeth.

“Look, gettin’ full power back’s a big deal, right?” said Applejack. “And you already said it’s safe, so why not try? Trixie here and Blueblood can stay up here while-”

“Blueblood?” gasped Lightning. “He’s here?”

“Ahem.” Blueblood raised his head above the desk. “Yes,” he said tightly as he stared at Lightning. “I am here.”

“But- why didn’t- You were supposed to-” spluttered Lightning. “Why didn’t you-”

“Why didn’t you do your job?” Blueblood snapped. His voice had gained a layer of steel Applejack wouldn’t have guessed he had. “You were supposed to-” He cut himself and looked away from Lightning, his ears back and his lips pursed.

“Yeah?” snorted Lightning. “Well, if you’d had the guts to-”

“CAN IT!” screamed Trixie. “I don’t care about whatever stupid little quibbles you two had in the past, you-” She jabbed a hoof at Lightning. “-can escort Applejack into the reactor while I babysit the prince.” (Blueblood looked hurt, but said nothing.) “Then she can fix it, I can start it up again, and everything will be a little bit less in the toilet, okay?” She leaned forward a little. “Or are you just going to be a whiner who doesn’t care about anypony besides herself?”

Lightning glared at Trixie and flexed her wings. For all Applejack knew, that was the sternest reprimand she’d received in a while. She rolled her legs in their sockets, one after the other. “Fine,” she grunted. “Get a helmet, farmpone,” she said as she popped her own back on. “It’ll keep you from breathing any hexed air. Your suit should be good at keeping any lingering mana out.” She glanced at Applejack’s gun. “You know how to use that?”

“Like a dream,” said Applejack.

Lightning grunted. “There’s helmets right next to the airlock.” She pointed. “Pop right on.”

Indeed, right where Lightning had pointed, a row of helmets was hanging inside a cabinet. Several were missing; Applejack tried not to think about their wearers. She grabbed one of the spare ones and, with a bit of finagling, managed to get it over her hat. She’d only used one of these helmets in emergency vacuum drills before, but it still connected right onto her uniform automatically, complete with a heads-up display flickering to life on the inside. She recalled each and every one of the diagnostic tests it went through, right down to checking to be sure her own oxygen supply was still intact and full (it was both). Once all the tests passed, Applejack said, “Alright, I’m good.”

“Wait, hold on.” Trixie did something at the computer, and when she spoke again, her voice came through speakers in the helmet. “Can you hear me now?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good. I’ve patched into your communications systems, so we can at least talk while you’re down there. The mics are voice-activated, so anything you say above a whisper will get picked up automatically.”

Lightning hiccuped, then coughed. “Great, great,” she muttered. Her voice was coming through the speakers as well. “Come on.” She pulled Applejack toward the power plant door.

As Lightning had said, the door was just one part of an airlock, a big, solid room consisting basically of vents and doors with plenty of space for both Applejack and Lightning with room to spare. But before either of them could activate it, Blueblood stepped forward, looking more than a little sheepish. “I. Um.” He cleared his throat. “I hope things go well for you.”

Probably a mighty effort, coming from him. Still, Applejack appreciated the thought. She nodded back to him. “Thanks.”

Lightning rolling her eyes was practically audible. “Yeah, yeah, shut up, we’ve got a job to do.” She smashed on the airlock’s Close button and the room sealed up.

“Kinda snippy, ain’t ya?” asked Applejack as they waited for the air to cycle. She checked the readout on her gun out of habit. Still 6.

“Well, gee,” Lightning said, “it’s not like I already checked the power plant and now I’m going back through it all over again. Pfft. No.”

“Doin’ work and walkin’. Oh no. What a dang effort.”

“You haven’t seen the power plant, have you?”

“No. Why?”

Lightning’s smile held no mirth. “Oh, you’ll see. This is no cakewalk. More like a cake… Heh. No. You’ll see.”

The air finished cycling and the door to the power plant hissed open.

12 - Reboot

“Alright,” muttered Applejack, “who in the mother-lovin’ outhouse o’ Tartarus designed this mess?”

The reactor room wasn’t a room at all. It was a sunblasted pit, at least ten stories tall, pipes and cabling snaking around the walls, dimly lit by emergency lighting. Applejack and Lightning were up on a balcony at the top. And the reactors were allllllll the way down at the bottom. Applejack leaned over the railing of the balcony to try to get a better look, shuddered as vertigo overtook her, and quickly scooted a good ten feet back. Lightning scoffed and muttered something Applejack wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“It’s in case anything goes wrong in the reactor,” Trixie said in her earpiece. “It keeps any stray magic from reaching the rest of the station.”

“Although it makes getting up and down it a real pain,” said Lightning. “Especially since the gravity lifts are out.”

“You’re a pegasus. You can just fly down.”

“Heh. Yeah.” Lightning climbed over the railing and spread her wings, but twitched before she jumped. “Say, uh, I know these suits aren’t the greatest for holding onto, but maybe I could fly you down?”

Applejack thought about it and her heart rate immediately doubled. Images of her slipping, falling a hundred feet, and splattering across the floor filled her head. That seemed bad enough, but then she thought about falling fifty feet, breaking most of the bones in her body, and still managing to cling to life for several more agonizing hours. “Nuh-uh, nope,” she said quickly. “Too risky. I’m walkin’.”

“Alright. Fine.” Through the speakers, Lightning’s answer sounded almost like a growl.

Luckily, there was a service staircase off to one side of the room. Since it was running on emergency power, it had very little light, but it would do. Applejack swallowed and began plodding down. Good thing she wasn’t a unicorn, or else she’d still be aching from the trip down to the top of the power plant.

For the first time in a long time, Applejack could hear the low hum of machinery at work: the auxiliary reactors at the bottom were still… reacting. The pipelike nature of the room funneled these sounds like an organ, and while they weren’t very loud, the sound was low enough that Applejack swore she could feel the entire room vibrating beneath her, just a little. The sound was just enough that her footsteps on the metal staircase didn’t sound like they belonged in a tomb.

Outside the scaffolding, Lightning stayed level with Applejack, very slowly lowering herself down. “You’re sure you don’t want my help?” she asked. “It’s-”

“Nope. No help,” Applejack said. Step, step, step. “I’m doin’ just fine. Hate heights.”

“…You… hate heights… and you work onboard a space station.”

“Yep.”

Lightning snorted. “Weirdo,” she muttered in a voice the mic only barely picked up. Applejack ignored it and kept walking.

Blueblood’s voice crackled in, but he wasn’t talking to her. “Um… Trixie, was it?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Could, could you get me into a computer and show me where the location services are? I, while I’m waiting, I might as well make myself useful and see if I can locate any survivors.”

“…Sure. Hang on a sec.” Applejack could almost hear Trixie’s shock. Blueblood, voluntarily doing work? What was the world coming to? (A lot of things, actually, especially recently.)

Applejack kept walking as Trixie laid things out for Blueblood. She could tell when they saw the statuses of the crew for the first time; Trixie gasped and Blueblood went very quiet. Trixie’s voice grew more sobered after that. Blueblood seemed to know what he was doing once Trixie finished up, because Applejack didn’t hear anything more from him.

Down and down and down. (Lightning was audibly gnashing her teeth.) By now, the metal wasn’t vibrating so much as… humming. Vibrating felt wrong, but this felt like a well-oiled motor purring away inside a tractor. Good, smooth, safe as long as you didn’t stick your hoof near the moving parts. It was comforting, almost. Something on this station was working properly, even if it was just the auxiliary reactors. Soon, it might be the main reactor as well.

Finally, finally, finally, Applejack reached the bottom. On one side of the room hummed several large spheres, the auxiliary reactors. On the other was a set of garage-sized doors labelled Maintenance and Storage. And in front of Applejack was the main reactor itself, a gargantuan thing as big as a house. It was shaped a bit like a squat, lopsided hourglass, the bottom much bigger than the top. The surface was stamped with protective runes, although with the reactor inactive, they weren’t glowing at the moment. A set of doors on the front, almost seven feet tall, lay open, displaying an empty set of holding arms waiting for a crystalline rod. The rod itself lay on the ground in pieces, shattered to bits; its scattered pebbles still glowed fitfully, which may or may not have been a good sign. Applejack’s coat stood on end; how much worse would it be without the protection of her suit?

As Lightning settled next to her, Applejack asked, “Alright, Trixie. We’re down.” She clicked on her flashlight to get a better look at the reactor. “Don’t see any obvious damage, but you were right: someone smashed the mana rod to bits.”

“Or something,” Lightning said quickly.

Applejack ignored her and kept talking. “It’ll pr’y still work, but we’ll have to see. Y’know what to do next?”

“Yes, actually, Trixie does. She really has to hand it to the engineers, the rod replacement sequence is EXQUISITELY simple-”

“Cut the crap, pinhead,” snapped Lightning. “What do we do?” She made a face at Applejack.

“There should be a door to your… right. That’s the mana crystal storage bay and it’s where the drones load and unload crystals. According to the last inventory there were… over a dozen spares lying around.”

“A dozen?” Lightning gasped. Applejack nearly laughed. A dozen. Plenty of wiggle room, even if you smashed half of them.

“Yep. Just take one out and put it in the cradle. The system can handle the rest — with Trixie’s help, of course.”

“Heh. This’ll be easy,” said Applejack. Dragging a big, heavy thing to somewhere else? She did that all the time on the farm — entire trees, in very rare cases. This was the sort of thing earth ponies thrived on. “C’mon.”

The doors didn’t open when Applejack hit the button, but a few moments of looking led her to find a panel that had been ripped off the wall and the wiring inside ravaged. Fortunately, all the wires were color-coded. As Applejack spliced them back together as best she could without the dexterity of her mouth, she said, “Wonder why the changelings would do somethin’ like this. They ain’t animals.”

“Dunno,” Lightning said. “But they are aliens. Who knows what they’re thinking?”

Once the wiring looked decent enough, Applejack tried the doors again. This time, they opened easily and soon Applejack and Lightning were standing inside a large room with guttering lights. It was still enough for them to see the things inside, large arcane and/or mechanical components that Applejack presumed were for the reactor, plus some crates for the more delicate items. It only took a bit of looking for the two of them to find a rack full of about ten mana rods. They were huge hexagonal crystals, one foot thick and seven long (if you didn’t count their pointed ends), glowing with a constantly shifting rainbow hue. Luckily (for multiple reasons), they were all intact. Lightning went very quiet when she saw them. Applejack chuckled. “Big, ain’t they?”

“They’re usually moved with power loaders,” said Trixie, “but the loaders need keys. PHYSICAL keys, can you believe that?” She snorted. “And unless you know where to find them-”

“Nah, I’ll just carry one.” Applejack rolled her shoulders. “I’m an earth pony, for cryin’ out loud. I’m strong.”

“Right,” said Lightning quietly. “I just… Never mind.”

Applejack put a hoof on one of the lower rods, right about at shoulder level for her. “This one oughta be good. Think you can move it all by your lonesome?”

Lightning pushed hard, and the rod lurched, nearly falling off the rack. “Barely. Stand next to it and I think I can get it onto you.”

The weight of the rod as it rolled onto Applejack’s back was like nothing she’d felt in a long time. Everything she’d encountered in her time on Golden Oaks was supposed to be easy to use, to move around. Everything was light. Not so with the crystal rod. Oh, Celestia, no. It nearly made her knees buckle. It was a struggle to just stay upright, the thing was so heavy. Walking would only be accomplished with great difficulty.

It felt good. Like the farm. It’d been too long since Applejack had been made to physically work like this.

“Alright,” she grunted. The strain in her voice was magnified in the helmet to somewhat troubling degrees. “Keep her steady.” One step forward, two. The crystal didn’t wobble that much, although Lightning muttered several uncouth things as she fought against the weight.

“Right, that’s good,” said Applejack. She looked at the doorway. Too narrow for her to walk straight through. “Alright, I’m gonna go sideways. Don’t let it fall.”

Lightning grunted. Applejack assumed it was an acknowledgment. One step to the side. Another. Another. Another. Another. The heavy weight of her footfalls made them echo like the blows of a hammer. The rod pressed into Applejack’s back with the weight of a truck, but she stayed steady. Just go one step at a time. Another. Another. Okay. This wasn’t too bad. “Still got it?”

“Yes, I do,” snapped Lightning. “You can tell from the way I haven’t yelled at you to stop so I can get it.”

Applejack ignored the snip. “Just be careful. Don’t wanna break it.”

“Right. Yeah.” A long pause from Lightning. “Let’s keep moving.”

Step. Step. Step. Inch by inch, foot by foot, they approached the reactor. Applejack’s muscles were aching already, the good sort of ache.

Lightning cursed and the crystal tilted wildly on Applejack’s back. Pure weight pulled her to one side; she instinctively shuffled to try and keep it balanced, only for her legs to give out under her. One of the rod’s ends hit the floor with an almighty clang as Applejack toppled over onto her side beneath the crystal. The floor hit her like a freight train and, although she didn’t break anything, the crystal pressed down on her ribs to the point that it was a struggle to simply breathe.

“Sorry,” Lightning said quickly. “Slipped.”

“Are you tryin’ to break it?” bellowed Applejack. As close to bellowing as she could get, anyway. “Keep the dang thing steady!”

“Well, excuuuuse me!” snapped Lightning. “This thing is heavy!”

“And I’m carryin’ most o’ that weight!” Anger made it easier to breathe. “Don’t push and shove like that’s the only way to move it! Keep it slow, we got time! If y’wanna carry this and let me keep it steady, that’s fine by me! Now lift up this side so I can get back on my feet!”

“Applejack?” asked Trixie. “Are you oka-”

“Not. Now. Trixie,” growled Applejack. To say she wasn’t in the mood was… an understatement.

Lightning shot a dirty look at Applejack and sidled over to the higher side of the rod. With a few grunts and some help from her wings, she managed to pull the crystal up enough to let Applejack get back on her hooves, albeit crouched. After a few bracing breathing, Applejack clenched her teeth and forced her legs straight. Ever so slowly, she got back into a standing position. “Alright,” she snarled. “Pull the other end up and let’s get this goin’.”

They got back to walking, Applejack eyeing Lightning every step of the way to be sure she wasn’t slipping. Lightning was eyeing her right back. In spite of the shared animosity, they managed to haul the crystal over to the reactor.

Now came the tricky part. The holding arms for the crystal were arranged so that the rod had to be vertical. In other words, Applejack and Lightning needed to stand the crystal up straight while at the same time pushing it into position. At least one of them was a pegasus.

Applejack stood in front of the reactor, the crystal still across her back, one end resting on the floor right below the holding arms. If ever there was a time where automation was a good thing… “So how d’you wanna do this?” she asked.

“Dunno,” said Lightning. She looked back and forth between Applejack and the reactor, her wings constantly twitching. Then she popped her lips. “Maybe we… just push it up next to the reactor and stand it up? You at the bottom, me at the top.” She flapped her wings once. “Unless you’ve got any better ideas.”

“Nope.” None that they could do without a lot of risk, anyway. “You can hold it?”

“C’mon, I’m not that much weaker than you.”

Applejack grinned. “Y’sure about that?”

A crackly sigh filtered through Lightning’s speakers. “Let’s just get it done.”

The crystal ground along the floor as they pushed it to the reactor, but it didn’t look damaged. With Lightning’s help, Applejack got the crystal off her back and propped it up on her front hooves. It felt like she was holding up the sky, but she could push it up. “Ready?”

Lightning flapped to the upper end and hooked her hooves around it. “As I’ll ever be.”

“Right. 3… 2… 1… HEAVE!”

Applejack pushed with all her might as Lightning flapped up a hurricane. Slowly but surely, the crystal inched to an upright position, closer and closer to the cradle. Applejack grinned to herself as she pushed a little harder. Whatever happened to good, honest physical labor like this? She never got to really get down in the dirt on Golden Oaks.

And then Lightning’s grip slipped; she lost control of the crystal and her vigorous flapping slammed her into the side of the reactor. The weight on Applejack’s hooves skyrocketed and the crystal began to slide to one side. Cursing, Applejack dug her hooves in to support the weight, but the crystal began rolling. She shuffled to one side to catch the roll, but the crystal began dropping. “Help me!” she yelled.

Still dazed from the impact, Lightning didn’t respond as she hovered and tried to get her bearings. Applejack screamed in frustration and deliberately overcorrected, going beyond the crystal and pushing up at the same time. It was enough to halt both the downward and sideways motions, at least for a little while. She pushed and the crystal moved up a fraction. She clenched her teeth and pushed again; another tiny movement up.

“Applejack!” Trixie yelled in her ear. “What’s wrong?”

“Lightnin’- lost- the crystal- and I’m- tryin’- t’keep it- from breakin’,” Applejack said, each set of syllables a quick grunt before she breathed in again. Her strength was good for pushing, pulling, or carrying. Precision balancing was a lot harder. “Sun blast it, Lightnin’, get your act together, you pansy!”

Lightning shook her head and snapped to look at Applejack. “What did you call me?” she hissed.

“You heard dang well what I said, you stot! Get up there and lift the cotton-pickin’ crystal!”

“Why you little-” Lightning took a deep breath and slammed herself against the rod. It lurched up, almost slipping out of Applejack’s grip. She readjusted her hooves and pushed; a few more degrees towards the vertical. Lightning hurled herself at the rod again, wham. “I-” Wham. “-am not-” Wham. “-a pansy-” Wham. “-or-” Wham. “-a stot!” Wham.

By now, they were only a few inches from the cradle. Applejack’s heart was pounding in her ears and her muscles were twitching. Lightning was breathing heavily and loudly, so loudly Applejack could barely hear her own breath. “Well, I guess I might be a stot,” said Lightning. Wham. “But not that kind.” Wham, clunk. And the crystal was in.

Just as Applejack was about to wonder what to do next, the fingers of each arm curled around the crystal, locking it in place. A computerized voice echoed through the room: “Fuel rod detected. Please step away from the reactor.” Applejack and Lightning quickly both backed away. The arms shuffled up and down to bring the crystal into a better position, then the entire cradle slowly withdrew into the reactor. A set of doors closed behind it and the reactor’s runes began glowing, one at a time.

“Oh, yes,” Trixie whispered. “Very good, my pretty… Trixie will take excellent care of you…” She giggled shrilly.

“Y’know we can hear you, right?” Applejack asked, even though she was feeling quite giddy herself. A deep hum pierced the air and quickly dropped out of hearing range.

“Of course you can hear Trixie,” Trixie said shamelessly. “What makes you think she CARES?” She cleared her throat. “The reactor is already starting up. Trixie will do anything that needs to be done up here.”

“How long will it take?” asked Lightning. Her voice sounded a little nervous and she was walking in place. “Do we need to be up there?”

“Oh, no,” laughed Trixie. “No, you stay down there in case something needs to be fixed. Which it shouldn’t, we’re seeing green readings across the board…”

“But how long? An hour? Two?”

“HA! You don’t know anything about these reactors, do you? No, five minutes.”

“Five- Five minutes?” Lightning gasped.

“Max. This wonderful little device is a marvel of engineering, and I don’t use that word lightly. Did you know, it actually recycles some of the radiative mana to-”

Trixie babbled on. Applejack stared at the reactor. The runes were lighting up in distinct patterns, now, swirls and lines and maybe some larger runic shapes of their own? She took a breath and briefly tasted the air of the orchard back home. The reactor might not have been harmful, but it was still some very potent magic.

She glanced to one side. Lightning was standing still, staring at nothing and blinking. Applejack nudged her in the side. “Hey. Y’alright?”

“What?” Lightning twitched like she was jolting out of a slumber. “Oh, uh… yeah, just… thinking.”

“ ’Bout what? Can I ask?”

“No,” Lightning said quickly. “Personal.”

Applejack shrugged and didn’t press. She wouldn’t want Lightning to pry into her business, so she wouldn’t pry into Lightning’s.

“So far, so good,” Trixie said over her earpiece. “I think, I don’t know reactors, but the things that look like they need to be green are green… New security’s holding up… Yes, just a few more minutes, and-”

“What was that?” Blueblood asked suddenly.

Applejack froze and even held her breath. The reactor started whirring as it continued its startup, but it seemed muted.

“What was what?” Trixie asked, although her voice was quiet. “I didn’t-”

A pause. “That!” whispered Blueblood.

“Down!” hissed Trixie. Applejack thought she heard a thud as Trixie and Blueblood… what? Threw themselves to the ground, maybe?

Silence but for the reactor. It suddenly seemed deafening. Applejack couldn’t move. What would she do, anyway? It’d take ages to get back up.

“Oh, no,” Trixie whispered. “Applejack, there… There are so many of them…”

“So many of what?” Applejack asked. But there was only one answer that made any kind of sense.

“Changelings. They’re already entering the airlock.”

13 - Into Thin Air

Stuck at the bottom of a pit. Only way out blocked by bloodthirsty aliens. This day just kept getting better and better.

“Can you stop ’em?” Applejack asked. She reached up to wipe the sweat from her forehead, but her leg bumped against her helmet.

“Okay,” breathed Trixie, “let me- No, the airlock’s on a closed system, I don’t have access. Maybe-” She fell silent.

“Lightnin’?” asked Applejack. “Y’got any ideas?”

Lightning looked up the reactor shaft, at the spinning lights that marked the airlock far, far above. “Yeah,” she said solidly. She checked to be sure her gun had a round chambered. “Fight.”

“You…” For a second, confusion overwhelmed Applejack’s terror. “You can’t be serious. There’s a dozen-”

“What? A dozen animals? I can take ’em. Just because you’re helpless doesn’t mean I’m not.”

Applejack didn’t bother being offended. “There ain’t no way you’ll make it! We oughta hide and-”

“Hide? That’s your plan, just hope they miss you?” Lightning barked out a laugh. “Go ahead and cower if you want. Me, I’m going down fighting.”

“I ain’t goin’ down at all.”

“You’re not gonna be saying that when they find you,” Lightning replied, grinning crookedly. “Best of luck.” She threw a mocking salute, then looked up the shaft. “Oh, BUUUUUuuuuugs… I’m over HEEEEErrrrre…” she singsonged.

A faint hiss, and countless shadows streamed into the pit.

Almost on reflex, Applejack bolted back towards the cargo bay. The main floor was too open; the bay, at least, only had one way in.

Or out.

She’d worry about that later.

Applejack slammed the button for the bay door. As it began slowly sliding shut, she looked up. Changelings circled over her like vultures, not descending. It wasn’t much of a reassurance, though, not with the way they stared at her with those blank eyes. “Trixie,” Applejack hissed, her leg twitching in anxiety, “are there any ways outta the cargo bay ’sides the door? Vents, fire exits, anythin’?”

“I, I don’t know,” said Trixie. “Working on it.” Her keyboard began tacking.

The changelings kept hovering and staring down. Chewing her lip, Applejack kept looking between them and the door, hopping from leg to leg. C’mon c’mon c’mon-

When the door was a foot from the floor, Applejack ripped out the wiring she’d fixed earlier and it shuddered to a halt. No way was she going to make it easy for them to open it again. She tapped the open/close button, just to be safe. Nothing. Perfect. “Lightnin’!” she yelled. “Last chance!”

But Lightning was screaming up at the changelings. “Oooo, lookit you!” she yelled. “All big and scary and staying out of shotgun range, cowards! PAAAANSIEEEES!” She glanced over her shoulder and roared at Applejack, “Well, go on, get!”

That settled that. Applejack squirmed into the crack. The edge of the door dug into her back, into her suit. For a terrified moment, she thought she was going to tear her suit open, then she was through, her legs still aching.

BANG. “I’ve got bullets and I’m not afraid to use ’em!” Lightning yelled. “Come on! Let’s get this over with!”

Okay. What was there to block the door with? Crates. Lots of crates. Not perfect, but they’d do. Easier to push than the other stuff in the room. Applejack ran over to a crate and gave it a good, hard shove. It was lighter than it looked and slid several yards across the floor, sending Applejack sprawling. She got back up and, this time ready for it, pushed until it was in front of the door. Leaving only a good dozen yards still open and exposed. She ran to the next crate.

BANG. “Ha! Gotcha!” Lightning bellowed. “Come on! Get down- Son of-” Several somethings buzzed loudly. BANG BANG BANG.

Thanks to their lightness, Applejack had soon blocked off half the gap with a line of crates. Thanks to their lightness, they could be pushed aside with effort by someone crawling through. Applejack wrapped her front legs around a mass of machinery on a pallet that looked like some kind of mechanical arm and heaved. The arm was awkwardly shaped and the metal groaned, but it was nice and heavy. She hauled it across the floor with an unearthly screech of metal-on-metal.

“Hey!” Thud. “You- get- off me!” yelled Lightning. Dull impacts sounded in the room on the other side of the door. “You’re not-”

Crunch. Applejack froze as Lightning yelped out a curse and a shotgun blast rang out. “Gaow! Take that, you son of a-”

Something shattered. Something ripped. And Lightning began screaming, a bloodcurdling sound Applejack could barely imagine. It was so loud, she could hear it through her helmet; the muffled clarity of the real world and the staticy closeness of the radio mixed together and turned Applejack’s stomach over and over and over.

Then Lightning stopped screaming.

“Oh, Celestia,” whispered Trixie.

Static. And her radio cut out.

Swallowing, Applejack gave the arm a shove, bracing it against the crates. She jiggled them; not enough give to break through. She quickly slid another crate up against the door before-

A changeling worked its head through the crack right next to the crate, glared up at Applejack, and hissed angrily. She brought her gun up. BANG. No more changeling head.

“How’s it goin’, Trixie?” Applejack asked as she kicked the body back out. “Found anythin’?”

“Still looking,” Trixie said, her voice hushed. “But I don’t think-”

“The airlock,” Blueblood said. Blueblood said. “For the supply drones. Would, would it be possible to leave through that?”

“WHAT?” yelled Applejack. “That’s insane! That thing weren’t meant to be used by ponies. I’ll be blasted out like- No. It’s crazy!” She pushed a line of crates over.

“Enough to just might work,” muttered Trixie. Applejack could almost see her face. A few keyboard tacks, and- “Yes, Trixie can get in. And- Yes, the reactor’s atmosphere is completely separated from the rest of the station.”

A shotgun, still trailing restraints where it connected to a suit, slid through the gap beneath the door and bounced across the floor. Then another one, followed by a few shells. Applejack smashed them both with her wrench. The first one broke. The second one died. “I really don’t think-”

“Applejack, it’s the only way!” said Trixie. “The reactor module is SWARMING with changelings, and even if you get out of that room, they’ll get you as you’re waiting for the airlock to open.”

A changeling leg reached beneath the door; Applejack stomped on it and it withdrew. “And then what? Y’want me to come all the way back here?”

Trixie paused a fraction of a second longer than usual. “We can- Blueblood and me’ll go to the arboretum and that balcony off of the gardens. You know the one? There’s a maintenance airlock nearby. We’ll go there, and either you can wait for us or we’ll wait for you.”

One of the lighter crates was pushed as a changeling forced its way through. Applejack introduced the changeling’s face to the head of her wrench, repeatedly and enthusiastically. Her introduction was made more vigorous by the irate resignation that came by knowing that Trixie had a point; she’d all but backed herself into a corner and the changelings were threatening to overrun her before she’d even closed the room off. “How- d’you know- about- the airlock- anyway- Blueblood?”

“I had to spend HOURS listening to Twilight go on and on about this station on the way up. She was particularly taken with the reactor and made QUITE sure I knew how it was supplied.”

“As she should be!” added Trixie. “It’s a VERY clever design. See-”

One final wrench-on-exoskeleton thud. Applejack wiped ichor off her helmet. “Fine,” she panted. “Just open it up, will ya?” She ran for the back of the bay.

“Yes! Yes, on it.” The keyboard tacked. “Although… Ah… It was meant to connect directly to the cargo bay of a drone, so… There’s no pressure-equalization protocol.”

“I- What?”

“Once we open it, it’ll start venting atmosphere,” said Trixie apologetically. “So-”

“I don’t care.” Applejack’s heart was racing too fast for her to care. She looked over her shoulder. Two more changelings were through and in hot pursuit. “Just open it. Anythin’ else I need to know?”

“Probably no radio contact. Too far away. And here… we…”

A changeling dove on Applejack from above, sending her sprawling. They smashed into a forklift and broke apart from each other. It was only by pure luck that her helmet didn’t break.

“…go.”

An immense whirring started up as the changeling staggered to its feet. A high-pitched whistling filled the room for half a moment before dropping in pitch to a deafening howl. Wind began tearing at Applejack’s suit, higher than anything she’d felt on Equus and rapidly growing. Right next to her, the changeling began sliding across the floor, inch by foot by yard, in spite of its best efforts, before getting yanked away entirely. Struggling against the wind pressing her to the forklift, Applejack peeked after it.

A massive hole yawned in the side of the room, open to space, doors sliding back. The wind was unspeakably loud, drowning out everything like a jet turbine. Lighter objects were already getting pulled out; she couldn’t see the changeling at all. Trixie was yelling something inaudible, but Applejack could take a guess at what it was.

In for a bit, in for a bridle. Gulping, she threw herself away from the forklift and depressurization blasted her out into space like an artillery shell.

She was falling. She was falling and she didn’t have anything to hold onto and she was falling and she was going to die and she was falling and she was falling-

-and she wasn’t going to stop falling because you’re in orbit, dummy. She’d die of old age before she stopped falling. Earth pony old age.

Not that much better, all things considered.

The inside of her helmet had a glowing HUD that was doing more harm than good. The horizon was spinning like mad, around and around and around. A number in the bottom right corner that she assumed was distance from Golden Oaks kept rapidly ticking up. A dozen different statuses and gauges all screamed for her attention from every remotely empty place. Applejack could barely even see past them all. Which might’ve been a good thing, given the way the starfield beyond them was turning over and over. She could barely even make out where Equus was, let alone Golden Oaks. Disorientating vision plus weightlessness equalled severe nausea and Applejack wretched. She was lucky her stomach was empty.

But all CelesTech uniforms had simple EVA systems, just in case an accident left somepony adrift, and all employees had to know how they worked. It boiled down to some tiny, primitive mana engines on all four legs, but was enough. Applejack pointed her front legs opposite the direction she was spinning and triggered the telepathic controls. The engines firing jolted her legs like nothing else, but she slowed. A few more bursts, and she wasn’t spinning anymore.

Which meant she got a good, long look at the void.

The emptiness was more crushing than any claustrophobia she’d ever had. All around her was black, black, black, dotted with stars. Equus, a blue and green ball at this height, was so far away; nowhere looked like home. Even Golden Oaks, so close and so large, felt small, nothing but a miniscule ship trapped in an endless, hostile sea, completely at the mercy of whatever it encountered. And it was shrinking, soon to be lost to si-

Panicking, Applejack spun around and fired her engines full blast. The numbers on her HUD designating her distance from Golden Oaks slowed, stalled, stopped, spun back. Nearly half a mile (already?) wasn’t the greatest distance, but she could get back.

A few more bursts to get her speed up, a few more after that to face the station again so she would be sure she wasn’t going to smash headlong into it. Applejack didn’t know much of what Golden Oaks looked like normally, but this… wasn’t a complete disaster. She’d half-expected some of the modules to have huge, gaping holes in them, leaking atmosphere like a sieve. Nothing like that jumped out at her, but then, she was still a ways away. Maybe she’d see more when she was closer. Unfortunately.

But she didn’t. As time stretched on and she glided closer, no obvious damage to Golden Oaks presented itself. The two rings of the solar array and the magnetosphere projectors came into focus, and there was nothing obviously wrong there. No wreckage hung alongside the station. No shredded shuttles were drifting around. And it definitely wasn’t too dark to see anything; although it was still the middle of the night, station time/Canterlot time, at this height, the sun was well over the “horizon”, illuminating Golden Oaks like a beacon and casting long, harsh sha-

Something moved.

Applejack snapped her head around to see it, but whatever it was was already gone, slipped away into the infrastructure. The brief glimpse she’d gotten of it resembled nothing so much as an octopus, a bulbous center mass with tentacles growing outward. An octopus twice the size of a car.

Her spacesuit had never felt more like a cage before now.

“Trixie?”

Silence from her radio.

“Trixie, are… are you there?”

Nothing.

Applejack swallowed and slowed her approach.

Golden Oaks grew and grew and grew. It was hard to forget just how big the station was at times; Applejack hadn’t seen it from outside in ages, never at all from this perspective. The modules were huge, the smallest the size of multiple houses, most of them several times that. They were stacked over each other and each one sticking out from the central “trunk” like branches on a tree the size of several city blocks. On another day, it would’ve been awe-inspiring.

Then the radio spluttered with static. “Tha* tr*nsmi**ion, di* I *ear tr**? Pl**se ans*er me, I *eg of *ou!”

“Hello?” Applejack answered reflexively. “Somepony there?” The signal was weak and filled with distortion and whoever was speaking had a thick accent, but she could understand it, just barely.

“Oh, **ank the Qu**n’s celes*ial *o*ers! *’ve *een out *ere f*r *ountless h*urs!” The other person coughed. And now that Applejack was paying attention, their voice sounded awfully weak. “Th* ai**oc*s, to * one, *re **ut; I *annot *ake th*m o*en up! Y*u’ll fi*d me ne*r the shu**le bay, *ut-”

The signal dissolved into a haze of indecipherable hacking and static; the few letters Applejack could hear, she didn’t understand. She risked banging her helmet a few times, but nothing changed. Swallowing, she let herself keep drifting towards the station. She was pretty sure she’d heard “shuttle bay”; as good a place to start looking as any. Plus, there were airlocks near the shuttle bay. She could use them to get back in.

If whatever was out here didn’t find her first.

14 - Dead Calm

After what felt like too long, Applejack’s motion finally ceased as she reached Golden Oaks once more. She settled her hooves on the shell of the station and looked… Well, “up” meant nothing in space. She looked “up” relative to the station’s gravity, forwards relative to herself.

Applejack hated zero-G.

She couldn’t see much. Nothing was moving that shouldn’t. A vast metal plane stretched ahead of her, shiny and flat. Some lights, apparently meant to help ponies find their way during EVAs, winked across its surface, but if they said anything, she couldn’t see. She took a step forward for a better look. Forward and up, technically, since the force of her step was just enough to lift her off the plate.

Applejack hated hated zero-G.

And so, in spite of the wide, flat surface before her that was obviously meant to be walked upon, Applejack used her maneuvering jets to scoot forward, barely a foot away from the panel. Part of her felt like at any moment, she was going to suddenly spin out of control and slam into the station, splattering nicely across several dozen square yards. But she never did. Of course she didn’t; physics said she couldn’t. Then again, physics also said she was falling, the jerk.

Applejack hated hated hated zero-G.

Some of the lights came into view beneath her; she jetted to a stop a few feet above them. Yes, they were signs, as well as light trails to follow. Arboretum Maintenance and Shuttle Bay were both pointing upwards, the direction she was already going. Perfect.

But rather than continuing forward, Applejack put her feet on the panel, just to get something solid underneath her hooves again, however briefly. She couldn’t help herself; it’d stop her stomach turning over so much. She closed her eyes to shut out the bottomless pit surrounding her, did her best to ignore the way she was still technically falling, and just breathed. Unfortunately, the air in her suit was stale and recycled. Even the most sterile parts of Golden Oaks had something interesting to their air. The smell of chemicals, maybe. It was hard to relax between that and the strange vibrations running through the “ground”. Maybe that was a good thing, though, since relaxing would’ve meant-

Wait.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at her hooves. There should’ve been barely any vibrations out here. Nothing was hitting the station to make them.

Nothing except…

Applejack gave her jets another boost.

So, first destination: balcony or stranded pony?

The inter-suit radio signals didn’t have much range without the modems and antennas of Golden Oaks, so Trixie had said she and Blueblood would head for a certain balcony off the arboretum. Applejack knew the one: a big, almost library-like room meant for relaxation away from the sounds and lights of the game room. It was stocked with books (paper books, even, thanks to a generous donation from Princess Twilight) and had plenty of couches to sit in. She’d never spent much time in it, thanks to the massive picture window that looked out at space. But she figured she could find it out here.

But there was also that pony, not far from the shuttle bay. Maybe she should find them first? They might be in trouble; what were they even doing out here, anyway? And why hadn’t they gone back in? Not to mention the monster prowling around the outside.

It didn’t take Applejack long to decide: the pony. This whole situation had gone to Tartarus on a tanning rack, and she’d be damned if she didn’t do her best to save everypony she could. She’d protected Blueblood, hadn’t she? If they were okay, great. If they weren’t okay, she’d get them to safety somehow. If she couldn’t get them to safety because of this or that issue, she’d find a way to fix that issue. Maybe she could even get Trixie’s help somehow.

She cleared her throat. “Hey,” Applejack said to her mic, hoping the pony was listening. “You still with me?”

The pony on the other end coughed. “Al**ough, I *till am *angin* on,” she said weakly, “I *ear that w*ll not las* for lon*.” Her signal was clearer than before, but that’d been a low bar to clear. And was it just Applejack, or was the pony rhyming? With an unusual accent, too.

Recognition hit: this must be Zecora. She was a zebra, one of the arcane chemists, and had a tic of rhyming most everything. Distracting at first, but once you got used to it, her voice was almost musical. And, her being an immigrant from Zebrabwe, the accent fit.

“Zecora, right? What’s wrong? Maybe I can help. I, uh, didn’t catch it all before.”

“The airlo**s all are shut *nd closed. There is a lockdown, I s*ppose. Not one thing will make those doo*s part, and so I wait here in **e dark.”

The airlocks were shut? Why? What would that- To keep anything from escaping and leaving the station, maybe. At least now, the changelings would have trouble getting anywhere besides Golden Oaks. Maybe.

But the “why” didn’t really matter. The airlocks were closed, and that was what mattered. Trixie could probably get them open, at least. “Listen,” said Applejack. “I’m comin’ t’getcha, give you a little help. You’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

Zecora sighed. “Well, *ou are quite the o*timist. I’d lo*e it, though, if you’d assi*t.”

The shuttle bay was a big, blocky section of Golden Oaks with any docked shuttles hanging off of it. At the moment, the only shuttles there were Twilight’s Semi-Sacred Geometry and the exploded remains of the large crew transport ship. Yeah, no way off the station that way. Applejack pulled her way along the station and found the crew airlock in a small nook off to one side. A suited figure was floating freely, aimlessly inside, its helmet not looking at anything. Applejack cleared her throat. “Hey. Zecora?”

The figure twisted and turned to face Applejack. Yes, it was indeed Zecora; there were no other zebras on board Golden Oaks. Even through her helmet, she looked tired and ragged, with puffy eyes, and her smile was weak. But she was still smiling. “Are you my savior? Maybe not. At least alone I shall not rot.”

Was Zecora really that pessimistic or was she just keeping up the rhymes? “C’mon, now, don’t be like that,” said Applejack. “Y’still got air, don’tcha?”

A limp, almost bitter laugh. “ ’Twas hours ago I fled out here,” Zecora said, “for in my panic and my fear, I thought the changelings wouldn’t follow. A thought that now seems oh, so hollow. My oxygen is dropping fast and each new breath could be my last.”

Hours? Most oxygen tanks on the station didn’t have enough air to last for hours. Even if Zecora had had a full tank when she left, assuming she wasn’t exaggerating, she’d be on her last legs right about now.

As if knowing what Applejack was thinking, Zecora held up her leg. A red warning light flashed on her TranScribe.

WARNING! Oxygen levels dangerously low! Estimated time before oxygen depleted: 0:19:05

And the timer was perpetually ticking down.

Applejack swallowed. “A-alright, uh…” What was she supposed to say? That she was going to get help? Find Trixie in less than half an hour, open up the airlocks, and get them both in before Zecora died? While some alien she didn’t know about hunted them down? Was she going to say that? Give Zecora one last little inkling of hope to go out on? Right. A pipe dream. Even in her oxygen-deprived state, Zecora couldn’t fall for that.

But what would Applejack say otherwise? “Sorry, you’re boned. But I got a friend who’s gonna help me get inside and the air to wait for her. Toodles!” Yeah, no. It was likely, but going out and saying it was like kicking a puppy. A puppy who was dying. She’d taken down changelings inside, so what was a few more? She could get Zecora in, safe and sound as long as she just moved her tail. She was up here because she liked moving her tail, so no problem there. Well, aside from diving headlong into a fight against an unknown beastie in a setting that actively hated her. But those were all small issues, right?

Right?

Applejack took a deep breath. She was going to tell Zecora that she’d get the airlocks open before she suffocated, and she was going to say that because that was what she was going to do. Simple as that.

She wasn’t sure whether she was just that confident or lying to herself. A little bit of both, maybe?

“I, there’s somepony inside waitin’ for me,” Applejack said. She fumbled with her own TranScribe, setting up a timer and matching Zecora’s time. If she was going to move fast, she needed to know how much time she (didn’t) have to spare. “I’m gonna find her, and she’s gonna open up the airlocks, and, and you’re gonna be okay.” Before she could stop herself, she said, “I promise you.”

It was hard to tell if Zecora’s weak smile was hopeful, bitter or both. “Please find us entry to the station, ’fore I join the Last Migration. And be aware; you see, I fear that we are not alone out here.”

“I saw,” Applejack said grimly. “Sit tight, I’ll come get you all’s ready.” She pulled herself out of the nook.

She looked down at the navigation line to delay actually following it. Part of her wanted to find whatever alien was out here and blast it to bits, but she didn’t know where it actually was and she had a time limit. But if she didn’t find it, it might sneak up on her. And sneaking was much easier in space. Still, she didn’t have time to go crawling around; she needed to find Trixie ASAP. So she pushed off and jetted around after the navigation lights.

As she drifted, Applejack twisted around to look at all angles. All angles, especially the ones she didn’t usually consider. Forward, backward, left, right, up, and down (even though trying to parse “up” and “down” in zero gravity gave her a headache). Nothing. Yet.

0:17.

The structure of Golden Oaks suddenly looked like a thousand different hiding places, not helped by Applejack knowing nothing about the insides. What sort of thing could hide in there? Big? Small? It’d looked awfully big from far away. Was it anything like the other changelings? Was it even a changeling at all? She tried to pull her mind away from that train of thought, but she couldn’t help herself. Even if she didn’t know anything, she could still pretend she was being tactical about it.

Something rippled through her mind, an unwanted thought. Fear. But it wasn’t her fear; it was like it was being forced into her brain by… telepathy? Was that the term? She put a hoof to her chest and took long, deep breaths. The fear wasn’t hers. She had nothing to be scared of. She’d be fine. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t real. She had nothing to be afraid of.

An enormous tentacle slithered out of the infrastructure before her.

Applejack gasped and promptly jumped off Golden Oaks, activating her jets in the process. A writhing mass of oily tentacles drifted — no, flew — out from where it’d been hiding. It was huge, the size of two cars, and it didn’t even look like an animal, just a squirming ball of organic rope. In the middle, an “eye” looked out that resembled a hole filled with white light. It didn’t have any obvious method of locomotion, but it still advanced on her, that eye gaping at her.

Applejack blasted her jets again, only for another external thought to wash through her head. She needed to stay put. For a second, she almost believed it. For no reason, staying put seemed like a really good idea. But a strange combination of panic and logic overrode that idea and she gunned her propulsion systems full blast, rocketing away from the station without thinking.

The alien — telepath? — it picked up speed and an anger not her own punched into Applejack’s thoughts. For a second, she was irate, downright furious that she was even thinking of running- She punched herself in the chest and blinked away the feelings. They weren’t hers. They weren’t hers. They weren’t hers…

Somehow, the telepath kept accelerating, even as Applejack increased her own speed. A tentacle reached out for her, glistening sickly in the sunlight. She whipped her shotgun up and fired. She could barely hear anything from the gun, but the telepath’s small screams of pain as it withdrew its tentacle tore through her mind. It was oddly satisfying.

The recoil kicked Applejack in the shoulder and sent her spinning end-over-end. As the world gimbaled wildly around her, she instinctively reached out for something and, of course, came up with nothing. She fired her jets wildly to gain some semblance of control.

As she slowed and jinked around, the telepath rushed past her. Apparently, even freaky alien powers couldn’t overcome inertia. Applejack used more thruster bursts to slow herself down further and stop her multidimensional pirouette. She was almost still when she smashed into something and started spinning around again. When it briefly came into view, Applejack caught a glimpse of the ring of the solar array. That was what she’d hit? Was she that far out already?

As she attempted to stop spinning again, a burst of anger exploded inside her head. She started twisting with her rotation to get a better look at the telepath; it was coming to a stop some distance away, glaring at her with that not-eye so fiercely she could feel it. By the time Applejack had stopped spinning, the telepath was already advancing on her, her shotgun blast apparently just a flesh wound. She punched her thrusters full blast, aiming back for Golden Oaks. Of course, the telepath was still faster. She’d never reach the station before it caught her.

Good thing the station wasn’t her destination at the moment.

Right as she passed the solar array again, she stuck out her hoof and snagged an edge. Momentum swung her around until her hooves hit the back of a panel. She planted her shotgun against the panel and fired.

The solar panel shattered against the impact, crystalline shards blowing out like a frag grenade, and the telepath was caught in the middle. It keened shrilly through her mind like a shrieking motor. Ducking down, Applejack squinted through the hole she’d made. Yard-long slabs of glass, more like broadswords than anything else, were riddling the telepath like it was a pincushion. The telepath itself was still drifting towards her, but more slowly; it flailed weakly as black ichor dribbled hoselike from its wound.

Bracing herself against the array’s framework, Applejack pushed herself “down” and fired at an untouched section. The telepath wailed even more loudly in the new blast, but only for a few moments. Applejack changed position again and fired again. A whimper, then silence. Two mores shots, just in case. Call her paranoid; she’d rather be paranoid than dead.

When she looked again, Applejack nearly gagged. The telepath had been almost literally shredded in the repeated storms of glass and was very nearly mincemeat, barely even recognizable as a body anymore. Its ichor drifted around it like… Celestia, Applejack couldn’t imagine. She could practically smell it.

She glanced at her gun. The ammo counter read a big, fat 0. She briefly considered trying to reload with some of the spare shells in her pockets, but she didn’t have the dexterity of her mouth or the predictability of gravity. She’d probably fumble the shells, sending them spinning out into space. Pass.

Applejack waited a few moments longer. When the thing didn’t move, she climbed out of the framework and pushed off, gliding back to the station proper. Zecora still needed her help. But for that, she needed to get the airlocks open. For that, she needed Trixie. And for that, she needed to find that balcony.

She glanced at her fetlock. 0:14.

Applejack was getting the hang of zero-G maneuvering. Technically. She wasn’t playing it overly cautious anymore; she had a pretty good idea of how fast she could speed up or slow down. It felt like barely any time at all before she was back on Golden Oaks’ superstructure. (Time? 0:13.) Might’ve even been the same panel.

Now, to the arboretum. Applejack followed the lines, bounding across Golden Oaks like a frog across lily pads. It couldn’t be that hard to find the balcony. Indeed, once she looked in her general direction of travel, she spotted a certain section of the station that was sticking out more than usual. That looked like a balcony if ever there was one. Applejack abandoned her current path and jetted up to it.

0:12.

And it was indeed the balcony. Applejack would recognize that array of shelving and sofas anywhere. Trixie was already there, sitting in the middle of the floor. She was facing the only doorway in, her flamethrower pointed at it like a gun. Nothing was going to sneak up on her. Blueblood wasn’t around, but he might’ve just holed up in a more out-of-the-way place.

Applejack tapped the glass. “Hey. Trixie.”

But Trixie didn’t respond. She simply kept her flamethrower levelled at the door. Applejack rolled her eyes when she remembered what was up: even if her words got through her helmet, sound didn’t carry through space.

Although… if she couldn’t talk to Trixie… how was she going to contact Trixie?

0:11.

And Applejack’s blood ran very, very cold.

“Trixie! Trixie!”

Trixie didn’t even twitch.

“Hey! Hey, Trixie!” Applejack’s tone grew more desperate, hoarser. “I’m here, I need your help!”

No response.

Applejack pounded on the window, screaming her lungs out. “Trixie! Trixie! TRIXIIIIEEEE!”

Nothing.

0:10.

15 - This End Up

Applejack battered on the glass. Screamed. Begged. Sobbed. No response. Trixie stayed right where she was, unmoving.

0:09.

She was going to die barely twenty feet from her closest ally because they couldn’t speak.

For one wild moment, Applejack considered firing into the glass in frustration. But even if she hadn’t been out of ammo, it would’ve been a stupid idea. Too many risks and Trixie still wouldn’t have heard it.

Applejack pounded one last time on the glass and stopped. The exertion of her breathing echoed inside her helmet and she suddenly realized she was sweating when she wanted to scratch between her ears. Her throat was scratchy and her lungs were empty. She wasn’t going to get anywhere by punching the glass and screaming. No, she needed to think. Like that was going to be easy.

0:08.

So. What did she have? Nothing that made noise that could get through. A gun with no ammo. A stun gun. A wrench. Her suit. Anything built into it, like her TranScribe, or her flashlight, or her oxygen supply, or-

Her flashlight.

Applejack flipped it on immediately and waved it back and forth through the window. The white light danced across the walls and over the furniture, dim against the interior lights but definitely there. It was her only shot. Maybe, just maybe, if Trixie saw it-

Trixie moved. She glanced at the spot. Applejack stopped making big, sweeping motions and went to little wiggles. Then back to big waves. Clearly artificial. Clearly something worth investigating. Clearly. Please.

Trixie slowly turned around, keeping her flamethrower up. When she saw Applejack, her aura vanished and her jaw dropped. Applejack laughed aloud and waved. “Get over here!” she yelled. “Please!”

Moving like she was sleepwalking, Trixie stumbled over to the window. Once she managed to close her mouth, she tilted her head back and forth at Applejack, then breathed onto the glass and traced something in the fog with her hoof, big and clear: ⸮ႱA She frowned, rubbed it out, and traced something else, a bit more wobbly: AJ?

Applejack quickly nodded, exaggerating the motion so Trixie could see it. Trixie smiled, but it was short-lived. She put a hoof on the glass, staring out at Applejack, her expression flat. Her ears twitched. Applejack could see dozens of thoughts running behind her eyes, but she didn’t know what any of them were. She put her own hoof on the glass, opposite Trixie’s, and they looked at each other through a foot-thick sheet of quartz glass that might as well have been a mile of steel.

Then Trixie raised her head like she’d been hit in the butt with a taser. She grinned, made some “wait here” motions, and darted away without waiting for a response.

“Trixie!” Applejack yelled. “You’d better-” Better what? Trixie knew what she was doing.

0:07.

Hopefully.

They didn’t have analog clocks up here, only digital ones, but as Trixie failed to return, Applejack could hear a second hand ticking away. Tick. Tick. Tick. And with every tick, Zecora got-

“Applejack!” Trixie yelled through the earpiece. “Are you okay?”

Applejack nearly laughed out loud in relief. “I- Long story. Where are you?”

“Another security checkpoint, just like the reactor. Why haven’t you come in yet?”

“I tried, but, Trixie, the airlocks won’t open. There’s some- I dunno, some kinda lockdown or somethin’.”

“What? I… I suppose that MIGHT be possible, if you wanted to absolutely keep something from getting out of the station…”

“Thing is, there’re aliens already out here already. Killed one of ’em.”

“Wait, what? How-”

Never saw anythin’ like it inside. Some kinda telepath — is that the word?” Applejack rubbed her head against the inside of the helmet as best she could. “Mental magic or whatever. Only one I saw out here, though.”

0:06.

Trixie’s thoughtful humming was briefly too much for the system to take and her voice dissolved into a haze of static. “That’s-”

“Listen, Trixie, there’s someone else out here. Zecora. She’s-”

“Oh! Trixie knows her. She was quite smart and unorthodox. Is-”

“She’s runnin’ low on air. Real low, she’s only got like five minutes left. I-”

Trixie’s voice immediately dropped a few registers. “Are you still at the window?” she asked quickly.

“Yeah, but-”

“Hang on, Trixie is finding you an airlock.” Her typing sounded like a machine gun being fired. “Okay, the airlock nearest to here is… go about three stories down and a hundred feet to your right, if you’re looking inside. You should see signs. Trixie will open that one and we can meet up.”

“Thanks, I-”

“MOVE!”

Applejack didn’t bother with a goodbye. She bounced down the station, following Trixie’s directions. Soon, she spotted the airlock door, buried a short ways into the infrastructure: Arboretum. Perfect. She glanced at her TranScribe: 0:05. This was going to be close.

A network of lines spiderwebbed out from it, each labelled with a different module. Applejack followed the one marked Shuttle Bay and it took her right back to Zecora. She was resting limply against a bulkhead, probably dead tired. At least she wasn’t dead.

“Hey, Zecora!” Applejack eagerly. “We’re gettin’ an airlock open. You ready?”

No response. Zecora was barely even moving.

“Zecora?” Applejack jetted up next to her and squinted through her visor. “C’mon, let’s get movin’.”

Inside her helmet, Zecora’s eyes were barely open, and the only sign that she was even still alive was a slight twitching of the lips as she breathed.

Applejack’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t be… They still had time. “No, no, c’mon, y’ still got-” She looked at Zecora’s TranScribe, glowing bright red with a warning.

WARNING! OXYGEN DEPLETED! END YOUR EVA IMMEDIATELY!

“Oh, Celestia, no…” Applejack shook Zecora; her eyes fluttered weakly, but didn’t open. “No, no, no, don’t die on me now…”

Without thinking, Applejack grabbed at the connector hose for her air tank and screwed both sides of the connection shut. She sealed off Zecora’s suit and popped the empty air tank off, tossing it away. Her hooves shaking, terrible thoughts running through her mind, Applejack pressed her old tank into its spot on Zecora’s suit. Air hose connected. Tank open. And in two seconds, the warning on Zecora’s TranScribe vanished.

Almost immediately, Zecora’s breathing became deeper, more like she was sleeping. She blinked twice and groaned, sending a hail of static across the intercom. She coughed weakly, strongly, and gasped. She didn’t look alert just yet, but she had air.

Applejack grinned as her heart rate dropped. “Alright,” she whispered, praying the way her air was suddenly hot and damp was just her imagination. The air in her suit would last. It had to. “C’mon. Let’s get you safe.” She wrapped her forelegs around Zecora’s trunk and carefully jetted away.

As they slowly scooted around the station following the relevant line, Zecora began stirring more and her breathing grew stronger. By the time they reached the arboretum, Zecora was awake enough to object to being carried around. Applejack released her and squinted at the screen for the airlock’s computer, shining dark red: Lockdown in effect. No usage of the airlocks is permitted. Swell.

Zecora patted down her suit and found her oxygen tank. She glanced at Applejack’s suit, at where her oxygen tank ought to have been, and twitched. “You gave to me your air supply?” she asked. Her voice was still weak, but not as bad as before. “I… Thank you, but I must ask: why?”

“You were gonna die,” Applejack said without looking at her. “Simple as that.” She tapped the airlock button, just because she had to. No response. “I figure I got enough air to wait out a few minutes.” She did her best to ignore the way the warmth inside her helmet definitely wasn’t her imagination any more.

Was it going to be a few minutes, though? How long could it be to unlock an airlock? Trixie had been able to hack the reactor from a computer a long ways away. Was it harder to do airlocks for some reason? She was smart. She was fast. She ought to have them open by now. Unless she’d run into something she hadn’t expected.

Or had something happened to her?

“I got a friend,” Applejack said, hiding the dread that had started gnawing at her. “Trixie. She’s real good with computers and she’s openin’ the airlocks up right now.”

The airlock status screen stayed firmly red.

“This Trixie… She is able, yes? You think she’ll triumph ’gainst this test?”

“Yeah,” Applejack replied, her mouth dry. “She’s beaten worse.”

The airlock didn’t open. Applejack’s heart pounded like a metronome, ticking away the seconds. The air in her suit got hotter, wetter.

Applejack nodded in an attempt to do something. “She can do it,” she said. “She-”

The screen suddenly flickered from red to green; Applejack stomped on the button without bothering to read anything and the airlock rumbled open. The pair quickly darted in and Zecora punched the button on the inside. As artificial gravity slowly came back on and they settled on the ground, the wind from inrushing air ruffled their suits. When the green light signifying full atmospheric pressure came on, Applejack immediately popped her helmet off and took sweet, sweet gulps of ordinary atmosphere. She was never going to take air for granted again. (And she didn’t even risk anything, not like Zecora had. Wuss.)

Zecora leaned against a wall, breathing heavily, tears dripping down her cheeks. She patted the wall like it was a treasured lover. “I thought for sure I’d die out there,” she said. “My thanks to you, oh pony fair.”

Applejack’s face immediately felt like it was on fire and she looked away. “Um. Thanks. Name’s Applejack.” She swallowed. “I, I ain’t really sure I’m ‘fair’, though.” She kept babbling to get the conversation off her. “ ’Sides, Trixie’s the one you should be thankin’, she’s the one that got this open.”

She frowned and tapped the inside door. “Took a bit longer than I thought, though.” Pause, shrug. “Mighta just been harder than she thought. I’m sure she’s fine.”

When the door opened, a burning changeling corpse toppled into the airlock.

By the time Applejack and Zecora had scurried away from it, it was already smothered, blasted by extinguisher foam. “Is it out?” Trixie’s voice said.

“I… believe so…” Blueblood’s voice said. Another extinguisher blast. “I certainly hope so.”

“Good.” Pause. “Wait. The door’s-”

“Trixie?” Applejack asked.

“Applejack?” Trixie jumped over the dead changeling, through the foam in the air, and into the lock. She was lightly splattered with changeling blood, but appeared unhurt. Her eyes lit up. “Applejack! You’re okay! And- Zecora!” She let out a giggle of relief. “Thank Celestia! I was worried- Do you know how hard it is to try to hack a computer while an alien is trying to bash your face in?”

“Eh… no?”

“Well, Trixie does. And yet she hacked it anyway.” Trixie wiped a single speck of dust from her foam-smeared uniform and smirked.

By now, most of the foam had fallen to the floor. Outside the airlock was a small bay for astronauts to get ready to enter space or enter the station proper. Blueblood was standing there, levitating a fire extinguisher at the group. He lowered it when he saw that they were safe and half-grinned nervously.

“I offer you my greatest thanks,” said Zecora. She pushed off the wall; her stance was a bit wobbly, but she was standing and was able to walk into the bay alone. “You’ve surely rescued both our flanks.”

“Don’t worry about it. Seriously, don’t, we’ve got more important things to worry about. Blueblood and Trixie are…” Trixie glanced at Blueblood.

“…in acceptable condition,” Blueblood said. His clothes had received several large tears, although he himself didn’t seem to be hurt besides a black eye and a small, already-scabbed cut across his cheek. His voice had also lost a few layers of pompousness. “We could be more intact. But we could also be less intact. At the moment, ‘intact’ seems as good as we can hope for.”

Trixie nodded and turned back to Applejack. “We’re doing fine, but we think we saw other ponies in the arboretum.”

Applejack’s heart jumped into her throat. It was easy to forget just how many ponies had been on board Golden Oaks before the changelings broke out, and yet, she hadn’t seen that many bodies. (“That many” bodies. What was this night doing to her?) Who knew how many ponies had survived?

“But we were busy trying to get to you,” Trixie continued. “If you reached the balcony and we weren’t around, we’d never meet up again. Also, we…” She shifted her weight around and her voice grew low. “We saw another alien in there. Not like the changelings. Something else.”

With Applejack’s luck, it’d be another one of those telepath things. At least she had solid ground under her now. On pure neuromod-induced habit, Applejack began reloading her shotgun. “Is the somethin’ else lead-proof?”

“I… Trixie does not think so.”

“Right. I’ll take a look, but you all wait here.” She pointed at Zecora. “You’re recoverin’-” At Trixie. “-you don’t know guns-” At Blueblood. “-and you… bduh…” Her voice faltered as she tried to think of a response that wasn’t incredibly offensive.

Then he snatched it right out of her mouth. “I’m Blueblood,” he said soberly. “I know of my reputation, thank you.”

“Ehm. Right.”

“I wouldn’t be of much help, in any case,” he continued. “I lack the, ah… strength of will that everypony- everyone else has. And I- I apologize for my- behavior earlier. It was a… defense mechanism. To keep myself from facing reality.” Pause. “It works in Canterlot.”

Applejack stared at him. This was Blueblood? If he’d been like this from the start, he would’ve been… more than tolerable. “W-well, uh…” So what was she supposed to say now? “You’re forgiven, I… guess. Ehm… Y’all stay here, and you two-” She pointed at Trixie and Blueblood. “-make sure Zecora’s fine.” She checked her shotgun out of habit, even though she’d already loaded it. Full up. “I’m goin’ out.”

“Stay safe out there,” Trixie said. “Just- stay safe.” Blueblood opened his mouth, but the most he could manage was a nod.

Applejack nodded back and turned to the exit. Deep breath, a roll of the shoulders, then she took her first steps back into the arboretum.

It had taken Applejack a few weeks on Golden Oaks to pin down why she liked the arboretum so much. The wide-open spaces? No, the lobby and shuttle bay had those. The plants? Maybe, but she could spend plenty of time in the habitation decks. The color? No, just about every place she worked had some nice color scheme. All of those? Not exactly. Why, then?

The smell.

It wasn’t even a specific smell; she just liked that it had a smell. Everywhere else on Golden Oaks was sterile, altogether much too clean. But the arboretum, with its vines and trees and flowers and all those being the point, could never be sterilized. And so, with each plant giving off its own scent, nowhere else on Golden Oaks felt quite so alive as the arboretum.

Knowing that, Applejack braced herself for a pile of dead bodies as she re-entered the arboretum. The universe would love screwing her over with the irony. Miraculously, she didn’t see any. No pony bodies, anyway; she could see a few changeling bodies, here and there, maybe a few blood splatters, but altogether, nothing terrible. An hour or two of cleaning, and it’d be like nothing happened.

The arboretum maybe wasn’t as big as the lobby, but could still fit three or four good-sized houses. It was a sprawling slope, covered with grass and trees, with the greenhouse up at the top. Applejack was about to risk calling out when a gunshot rang through the arboretum.

“Shut the roof!” somepony screamed from the greenhouse. Rainbow Dash? “Shut the roof!” BANG.

“The computer’s frozen, it- AUGH!”

“Lyra! No!” BANG. “Get away from-”

Something smashed and Rainbow shrieked, shrieked like Applejack had never heard before. She promptly bolted up the hill, toward the greenhouse. She was done sitting around.

As she approached the greenhouse, she immediately knew something was up: the doors were closed and, from the red light above them, locked. But the voices had clearly been coming from inside. Who would-

A vague shape smashed into the window next to the door: Rainbow Dash. Her uniform was in tatters, blood trickled from the side of her mouth, and the shattered remains of a shotgun hung from one of her legs. One of her wings had just been crushed and it dangled at her side in some twisted shape that was barely recognizable as a wing. Whimpering, Rainbow managed to push herself up. She happened to look out the window. And she spotted Applejack.

For a brief moment, the pair locked eyes. Then Rainbow screamed, “Applejack! Open the door!” She looked over her shoulder and her good wing beat fitfully at the air. “Now!”

“What? Rainbow, what’s go-”

“Openthedoor!” shrieked Rainbow. When she whirled around, her eyes were huge with terror. She banged fruitlessly at the glass. “Openthedooropenthedooropenthedoor!”

“Opening!” Applejack ran to the greenhouse’s external computer and, with shaking hooves, opened up the services. It was a simple five-digit code to-

“IT’S COMING!” Rainbow was pressing herself against the window, cowering down away from something.

“Workin’ on it!” Applejack punched in the numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2- Her hoof twitched at the worst possible moment and she hit a 5. Cursing, wiping her forehead down, she cleared the fields and started again. 0, 1, 1-

“No,” whimpered Rainbow. “P-please don’t-”

-2, 2. The console beeped and flashed an Unlocked message. “Got it!” Applejack darted back to the window. “Rainbow, I got-”

Her heart nearly stopped. Another telepathic alien was hovering over Rainbow, restricting her body and delicately caressing her head with its tentacles. Rainbow was struggling, but limply, and each thrash was weaker than the last. When she shuddered and went still, the telepath released her and set her down. But when she stood up and stiffly turned back around to face Applejack, her eyes had turned bright red, the whites were glowing green, and purple magic was trailing from them, smokelike. The telepath backed off, as if to survey its handiwork.

“R-Rainbow?” whispered Applejack.

“Don’t get too close,” Rainbow choked out, “or we’re both dead.” Her face was oddly flat and her jaw was clenched shut, but her lips were still moving. She blinked; tears ran down her cheeks as her entire body shook.

The greenhouse door hissed open.

17 - Survivor Group

Applejack led her group from the airlock over to Spike. Lyra was leaning against his side, blinking rapidly at nothing in particular, and he himself was lightly smacking Rainbow to get her awake. As they approached, Rainbow groaned and reached vaguely up; Spike grabbed her hoof and pulled her to her feet.

“Hey,” said Applejack. “They alright?”

“Lyra’s more than a bit woozy from whatever you stunned her with, but I think she’ll be fine,” Spike replied. “Still waiting on Rainbow.” He snapped his claws. “Hey. Rainbow. You there?”

“Wish I wasn’t,” Rainbow mumbled. Her voice had a slight lisp she normally didn’t have. “That… thing…” She rubbed her face and shuddered.

Applejack immediately trotted up to her and laid a hoof on her shoulder. “Listen,” she said softly. “You’re gonna be okay. You got-”

“Applejack?” Rainbow’s eyes focused and she spasmed. “Applejack!” She jumped forward, grabbing Applejack in a hug, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” she yelled. “Please, I, I didn’t mean-”

“Whoa, hey!” Acting on instinct, Applejack returned the hug. “I know you didn’t mean it, ’cause it weren’t you that did it. It was that alien thing.”

“I- I could’ve- I n-nearly-”

“But y’didn’t, and it wouldn’ta been you anyhow.” Applejack pushed them apart and looked Rainbow in the eye. “Look, we gotta get goin’. Spike said somethin’ about the cargo bay-”

“Uh, yeah.” Sniff. Rainbow wiped her muzzle. “We, we’re holing up there, getting the survivors we can find. It’s got supplies and we can defend it and-”

Spike coughed meaningfully. “We do need to go,” he said. “Killing that octopus alien might attract other changelings. C’mon.” He set off down a path, towards a small, out-of-the-way door at the bottom of the hill Applejack normally didn’t pay much attention to. He went slowly enough so that Lyra, still leaning against him, didn’t need to hurry.

Rainbow looked after him, then looked at Applejack’s group. Her eyes narrowed slightly at Blueblood, but she didn’t say anything. Everyone quickly followed after Spike, heading to the entrance to the GUTS.

The arboretum’s loading bay was… something. It was practically coated in bodily fluids — mostly ichor, but also a not-insignificant amount of blood. No bodies, though. Applejack risked sniffing and nearly vomited from the stench. Everything in the room — crates, machinery, rubbish — had been pushed aside to create a clear path from the door to the GUTS themselves. Pushed aside so regularly, in fact, that Applejack suspected there was a system to it.

Before they entered the room, Spike stopped them. He looked over the room, squinting at each object in turn. At one point, he stepped forward and stomped on one of a pair of innocuous cardboard boxes, which promptly squealed and melted into a dead changeling. That act seemed to satisfy him, though. “C’mon,” he said, and led them into the GUTS.

The Gravity Utility Tunnel System (somepony was really happy when they came up with that acronym) was, among other things, the main cargo transport network for Golden Oaks. During construction, somepony had had a clever idea: moving heavy things took a lot of work, so what if they weren’t heavy? One thing led to another, and eventually the GUTS were born. There were no artificial gravity spells in there, just a conveyor-like system of cranes (was that the right word?) to move gigantic crates from one level of the station to another. Applejack had heard of it, but she’d never wanted to go in there herself. She liked down to be down, thank you.

But blasting an alien and saving a scientist’s life in outer space meant she had some experience in zero-G, now, so she could at least tolerate it.

The seven of them stepped from the arboretum and floated into a bare, utilitarian tunnel that looked almost like a gigantic laundry chute more than anything: all metal walls. The systems for moving storage crates from zero-G to one-G were silent, but the conveyors were still whirring away. The tunnel stretched away into dim maintenance lighting like a cave.

“Alright, everybody,” Spike called out, “if you don’t know zero-G maneuvering, grab onto me and I’ll pull you all along. It’s a straight shot to the cargo bay.”

Most of the ponies found some part of Spike to latch onto, until he looked like a strange Hearth’s Warming tree. Applejack decided not to add any weight to him, since she could use her propulsion systems fine; Rainbow was free-floating, too. After confirming that everyone had a tight grip, Spike dug his claws into the conveyor and shot away. Even with her best jetting, Applejack had trouble keeping up with him. At several points, side tunnels split and she could only glance briefly down them, reading things like Magnetosphere, before they were gone. There weren’t any changelings around. No live ones, anyway; they passed several corpses.

As the tunnel whisked past them, Rainbow maneuvered herself next to Applejack. “AJ,” she whispered in a shaky voice, “I, I really am sor-”

“I know, Rainbow,” said Applejack. Spike began getting a lead on them, but she needed to talk to Rainbow more than she needed to catch up. “But, listen, it weren’t your fault.”

“I know,” Rainbow mumbled. “It’s- I felt it using my body, AJ. If it’d broken your legs, I would’ve felt it like I’d done it myself, and it not being me wouldn’t’ve mattered one bit! I feel terrible for what did happen, and if something worse had happened to you-”

“You tired?”

Rainbow’s trajectory went a little zig-zaggy as she looked at Applejack. “Wha-? I… I guess so. Why?”

“ ’Cause I know ponies don’t think straight when they’re tired,” said Applejack. Had Rainbow been escorting ponies to the cargo bay? For how long? She might’ve been at it for hours, enough to wear all but the hardiest ponies down. “You need to get some rest — real rest. You’ll feel better after that. And I- I know it wasn’t your fault, but I forgive you.”

A pause. Rainbow attempted to smile. “Thanks.”

“Hey!” Spike hollered down the GUTS. “You okay back there? We’re here!”

They exited the tunnels onto a good-sized, dimly-lit landing with a thick door and still more changeling corpses. Spike banged on the door as only a dragon could, sending deep booms throughout the room. “Spitfire? It’s Spike! We’re back!”

A pause, and with a whirring of machinery, the door ground open — to reveal several ponies pointing their guns at the group.

But before Applejack could jump, everyone had been pulled through, while the guns stayed levelled at the outside until the door was closed again. One of the guards, a yellow pegasus with flaming-orange hair Applejack could recognize but not name, wiped her forehead down. “Sorry,” she said in a tired but strong voice, “but we almost had a changeling get in here a while ago and we’re not taking any chances.” She squinted at the group. “Where’s Misty Fly?”

Rainbow and Lyra looked at each other. Lyra hung her head as Rainbow said, “She didn’t make it.”

The pegasus sighed and muttered something obscene. “You did your best. At least you got Lyra,” she said. “And…” She began pointing. “Applejack. Dr…. Zecora, right? And… Yeah, I don’t know your name.”

Trixie immediately drew herself up and puffed her chest out. “Trixie Lulamoon,” she said haughtily.

“…Don’t recognize that, sorry. And Blueblood.” The pegasus banged her chest. “Spitfire. Head of Security, back when titles meant something. Make yourselves at home.” She pointed into the cargo bay. “You’re gonna be here a while.”

Applejack got a good look at the bay for the first time; ponies, about fifteen, were spread around, either working on machinery or talking with others or sleeping fitfully on improvised cots. Large cargo containers had been moved to, presumably, block off potential entry points. Others had been broken into for supplies and food. In the back of the room, Applejack could see lights from other open doors. Unlike most of the rest of Golden Oaks, the place was fairly clean. At least it looked like a decent place to stay.

Spitfire glanced at Rainbow’s mangled wing, but didn’t flinch. “If you need medical attention, go through that door and ask for Fluttershy. She’s overseeing first aid at the moment. If you’re hungry, we’ve got food through that door. If you’re tired, I can help you get something resembling a bed.”

As most of the group dispersed, Trixie poked her hoof up. “And if Trixie wants to use computers?”

“Uh…” Spitfire flicked one of her ears. “Not sure. Ask Fluttershy, I think she’ll know.”

“Are they connected to the network?”

“…Dunno. Why do you need to know?”

“Long story. Ask Applejack.” And Trixie was gone.

“Wait-!” Spitfire groaned and glanced at Applejack. “Is she safe?”

“Sure. She’s probably just…” A pause. What had Trixie needed a computer for? It took Applejack a long moment to recall. “…checkin’ my email.”

Spitfire grew more and more confused with every word. “Checking your email? What…” She looked at where Trixie had disappeared to. “What is up with that mare?” She turned back to Applejack. “And what’s up with you? Your suit’s tracker kept jumping around the station like I don’t know what.”

“Well, it’s long a story, so be ready. See, I don’t remember much o’ the past week…”

Applejack covered it all: waking up in the trash compactor, Twilight’s message getting cut off, meeting Trixie and Blueblood and the rest, trying to find some stupid way to access her stupid email (or the security cameras), rebooting the reactor, everything. It felt like it’d taken ages. Part of Applejack ached and wanted to lie down, but most of her felt… not exactly invigorated, but ready to go. She was so close to seeing whatever Twilight had wanted, lying down now would be stupid.

“…then Spike led us down here and yeah.” Applejack shrugged. “Trixie pr’y just wants to get into the mailboxes or cameras and see what’s up.”

“…So… let me get this straight,” said Spitfire incredulously, flexing her wings. “You fought your way through the station. You rebooted the reactor. You ejected yourself into space to avoid getting killed by changelings. You killed an alien while in space. And you beat up a different mind-controlling alien that’s been hounding us for over an hour… all so you could read some email?”

Applejack blinked. Phrased like that, it sounded like she was some big-shot action heroine. “I… guess?”

“…Huh. Talk about hardcore.”

“Trust me, it ain’t as neat as I’m makin’ it sound.”

“That still leaves it pretty nifty. Seriously, after the reactor went down, we thought it was something a lot worse. You have no idea how good it was when it came back on. Restored a lot of nonessential systems that made things comfortable. So thanks.” Spitfire patted Applejack on the shoulder. “You’ve been a big help, trying to read your email.”

“Um. Alright.” Applejack lightly pushed Spitfire’s hoof off her shoulder.

“Also, uh…” Spitfire flattened her ears and her voice dropped. “Just so you know, Princess Twilight’s here-”

“What?” Applejack yelled. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I need to talk to her now!”

“Yeeeaaah, uh…” Spitfire rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s not that simple.”

What had been turned into the “medical bay” was closer to a utilitarian break room for the cargo bay’s workers. The tables had been pushed aside to leave room for the ponies who had volunteered to be medics to work. It was mostly clean, which surprised Applejack; you’d think there’d be more blood, given the circumstances. Rainbow, Zecora, and another pony she didn’t recognize were all there getting checked up on. Rainbow was wincing as a butter-yellow pegasus bound her mangled wing to an improvised splint. Zecora was slowly breathing in and out as another pony listened to her lungs. The last patient was chatting with her doctor as a bad gash on her leg was bandaged up.

At the back of the room, apparently unnoticed by anyone, was a window. It wasn’t that large, but it was big enough to look out on the starfield beyond and provide a change of scenery from bare metal. Equus seemed even farther away than usual.

And Princess Twilight Sparkle sat in front of that window, staring out, barely moving.

“Shock is what we’re thinking,” said Spitfire. “She… She responds, sometimes, so she’s not comatose, but we can’t look at anything deeper without better equipment and… well, you see our situation.”

Applejack only barely heard the words. She sat down next to Twilight and examined her. Her chest was moving and her wings were flexing subtly, but other than that, she barely looked alive. Her eyes were unfocused and she was just so still. She didn’t react when Applejack got close to her or put a leg over her shoulder. Her uniform was mostly intact, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Twi?” Applejack asked quietly. “Y’alright?”

There was a brief burst of hope when Twilight turned to look at her. But from her eyes, Applejack knew Twilight wasn’t seeing her. And when Twilight went back to the window, Applejack’s heart sank.

It just didn’t make sense. What had happened to Twilight to make her like this? Even Blueblood was up and vocal, and Twilight was stronger-willed than him. It could’ve only happened in a few hours, between recording the message and now, since Twilight had been in tip-top shape back then. Had she just lost so many ponies? Seen something worse happen? Was this all part of her plan, somehow? What?

“We found her in Neurothaumatics a few hours ago,” Spitfire continued. “Just… completely out of it like that. We’ve tried getting through to her, but nothing’s worked. She’s not even eating.” She sighed and shook her head.

Applejack blinked tears out of her eyes. Seeing a friend like this… “Twi,” she gasped out, “I… I dunno if you can hear me, but… but we’re workin’ on makin’ this right. You and me, we made a plan, remember? I… I can’t remember one lick of it, but I’m gettin’ there. I got that email we sent to me. Remember that?”

Twilight didn’t respond.

“And I know that sounds bad, but I think it’ll work. ’Course it will. You made it.”

Nothing.

“And I… We… I’ll… leave you to it, then.” Applejack got up and left Twilight behind.

Spitfire led Applejack out of the med bay, whispering, “I’m sorry.”

Applejack tried to say that it was alright, these things happened, but what came out instead was, “Th-thanks.” She swallowed her grief and asked, “So, uh, you got any plans?”

“Effh. Some, but they’re not looking promising. Communications are down, and if it’s because of physical damage, there’s not much we can do without risking becoming alien chow. I sent somepony to the shuttles, but he said they were all wrecked and- never came back. Something’s up with the escape pods, we don’t know what, but we can’t launch them. And if this blackout keeps going, Equestria’ll send a shuttle up to- Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not done! They’ll send a shuttle up to investigate in like a week, and those poor guys’ll have no idea what they’re getting into.” Spitfire groaned. “It’s bad, no matter which way you look at it.”

So Twilight’s plan — whatever it was — was still probably the best course of action. Great. And they still needed to get into Applejack’s email to find out what it was. At least Trixie was on the case and they had a nice place to hole up in. But for now, all Applejack could do was wait. She wasn’t much for waiting. “Anyway, uh, y’got anythin’ for me to do to help?”

Spitfire shrugged. “Feel free to ask around, but probably not. We’ve got everything we can squared away.”

“I’ll give it a try, anyway.”

But Spitfire was right. Everyone Applejack asked had nothing for her to do. Not even pushing cargo containers into a better position for barriers. Food? Organized, rations already set out. Medical supplies? Organized and allotted. When she got desperate, bathroom? Cleaned from top to bottom. Multiple times. What did a mare have to do to find some work?

She slouched against a wall in the main bay area. Her hooves shook, not from fear or adrenaline, but an overpowering urge to do something, anything. At least out in the rest of Golden Oaks, she’d been walking around and had a goal. This almost felt like a step back.

Suddenly, Blueblood sat down next to her. He’d given up on keeping his pajamas and was wearing a CelesTech uniform that was only slightly ill-fitting — and since that was true for most employees, he didn’t look half-bad. “I know that look.” His voice sounded much less… structured? Rigid? Like he’d stopped playing a role Applejack hadn’t known he was playing in the first place. “The ennui of uselessness.” He smiled nervously. And genuinely. Applejack had never seen him smile like that before.

“Erm…” Applejack blinked as she thought it over. To her surprise- “Yeah, I… guess. Never woulda pegged you for knowin’ that,” she said before she could stop herself.

Blueblood laughed, but it was bitter, and when he spoke, his voice was distant. “Believe me, the two of us are very close acquaintances. I am a prince, and yet Mother never taught me how to be a prince besides the ideal smile-and-wave form. Responsibility was never a priority for her, especially not once she found a replacement in Twilight.” He pulled his legs close to his body and stared off at nothing. “She’s never so much as let me leave Canterlot without a minder, but she’s done no work to make me not need that minder,” he muttered.

“And you… actually wanted to do somethin’?” Applejack heard herself ask. Blueblood wanted to do something. The concept seemed more alien than changelings themselves.

“I wanted to be… more than a waste of space. But I’ve never been given the chance.”

“Oh.” Pause. “Sorry.”

And she was, surprisingly enough. Down on Equus, as Sweet Apple Acres had reluctantly gathered those harvesters, she’d felt shoved to the side. Worthless. Pointless. Yes, the harvesters needed somepony to work on them, but that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She’d grown up bucking apples. She wanted to buck apples. Blueblood must’ve had it even worse than her, growing up not doing anything. Yesterday, she would’ve claimed that he didn’t want to do anything, but now…

Blueblood swallowed. “Applejack?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“I-”

Even halfway across the cargo bay, they heard Trixie scream. “SUN BLAST IT!”

Applejack was on her hooves in an instant. “Sorry,” she said quickly, “but I gotta check this.”

The cargo bay had a small room full of computers where workers could coordinate deliveries, send messages to different departments about the status of their shipments, make orders of their own, and so on. And that was where Applejack found Trixie screaming her lungs out at a computer screen.

“Trixie?” asked Applejack.

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Y’alright?”

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Y’don’t sound alright.”

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Sheesh,” Spike muttered, making Applejack jump in surprise, “how big are her lungs?”

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

“Pretty dang big, I’m guessing.” Applejack stepped forward and smacked Trixie across the head.

Immediately, Trixie stopped screaming. She blinked, took several long, deep, wheezing breaths, and croaked, “Trixie needed that.”

“So…” Applejack pulled up a chair and sat behind the computer, face-to-face with Trixie. “Why’d you need that?”

“Because the SERVERS WEREN’T PROPERLY REBOOTED!” Trixie shrieked. “If they lose power like they did, they go through all sorts of automated checkups to preserve the integrity of the data and communications once the power comes back on.”

“So?”

“So there are a lot of computers down there,” said Spike, “and the checkups take a lot of time. They won’t be done for a while. Hours, at the very least.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t… that bad, in the grand scheme of things. Not great, but they just had to wait, and now that they had a secure location, they could afford to wait. She’d hate every last second, but she could manage.

However, Trixie didn’t seem to see it that way. “At this rate,” she groaned, “we might as well just go to the servers directly, pull out the data tapes, and look at the mail from there.”

“I mean, we could,” mumbled Spike. “Deep Storage isn’t far.”

Applejack and Trixie both turned to stare at him.

“What?” Spike asked defensively. “It’s not! Just a quick jaunt through the GUTS and we’ll be there! We could do it!”

“And you could find what we need? Like, physically,” Trixie said skeptically. “You know the system well enough for that?”

“Are you kidding me? I helped design it!”

“You helped design it?” Applejack looked at Spike’s muscles, as thick as logs, and raised an eyebrow. “You helped design it,” she said skeptically.

“You know Twilight, right?” Spike asked. “How she’s, like, totally taken with knowledge? If you spend all day, every day with her, it’ll rub off. I didn’t know how computers worked when I first started working for her, but after a year, she was asking for my input on library structures. Both physical and digital! And knowing where to find something for her is a big plus, so I know databases like the back of my hands and the Hoofy Decimal System like the insides of my wings. I guess you could say I’m a real… book wyrm.” He grinned toothily.

Neither Applejack nor Trixie deigned to respond.

“But seriously,” Spike continued, “this place’s databases run on SDTL-Massive, right?”

“Ye-esssss…” Trixie said suspiciously.

“I helped write that language from scratch. I know how it works, right down to how the bits of data are stored.”

“Oh, really?” Trixie stood up, her ears rigid. “Then why in Tartarus does everything depend on relationships?”

“Because once relationships are set up, it makes table joining much faster!” Spike snapped, quite draconically. “Filters can propagate across-”

And from the computer terminology, Applejack knew it was safe to tune them out for a bit; she’d never know what they were talking about. Assuming Spike was right… going to get the data physically wasn’t a bad idea. It sounded like the place was safe enough and he’d already proven himself more than capable of taking care of all of them on his own. And it meant less sitting around.

But what really pushed Applejack over the edge was the simple fact that this meant they’d have a plan. As Spitfire said, the most they could hope for now was to wait for another shuttle to check up on them in a week and pray the crew survived the first encounter with the changelings. That email gave them a chance at something else, no matter how slim. And if Twilight’s plan didn’t work? Well, setting around was a decent enough backup plan.

“-keep the cardinality down,” Spike was saying loudly, “or else the query time will be too large to-”

“Fine!” yelled Trixie. “Trixie… acknowledges that that particular design aspect has some merit.” She glared at the computer screen for a few seconds, then turned to Applejack. “Trixie doesn’t want to waste time staring at a computer waiting for a connection. She’ll go to the servers if you will.”

“Alright,” said Applejack, nodding. “Let’s do it.”

18 - Data Scraping

“You’re gonna what?” asked Spitfire flatly.

“Get the data we need outta the servers,” said Applejack. “The tapes themselves, I mean.” She, Trixie, and Spike had all agreed that telling Spitfire their next course of action was a good idea.

Spitfire sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I mean… we’ve never had any changelings come from that direction, so that’s something… Look, do you need to go there? I don’t want to lose any more ponies. I- My job is keeping the people on board safe, and nine out of ten people on board are dead. It’s- If you run off and get yourself killed-” Her voice caught in her throat. “Can I at least convince you to bring along another guard?”

Applejack shrugged. “Sure. Just in case, right?”

Spitfire nodded, then waved Applejack off. “Hang on, let me find somepony who isn’t half-dead from exhaustion.” She started loping around the cargo bay.

“Do we need them?” Trixie whispered. “We could be off already.”

“I’d rather have ’em and not need ’em than need ’em and not have ’em,” Applejack replied.

“Yeah, I’m with her,” Spike said. “You always want backup. Physical, emotional, and informational, for that matter.”

It wasn’t long before Spitfire returned, an orange pegasus in tow. “Say hello to Flash Sentry,” she said. “Probably the most energized pony in the entire station.”

“I ate half a quart of coffee beans!” Flash said cheerfully as he jogged in place.

“And if that doesn’t keep him up, nothing will,” said Spitfire. “Be safe. All of you.” She looked at each person in turn, then saluted.

Spike led the group out of the cargo bay and into the GUTS. He hooked onto the conveyor again, taking them back up, only to kick off and head down another tunnel before too long. They quickly came to a stop at another landing, similar to the cargo bay but much smaller: Deep Storage. The door was locked, but Trixie had it open in seconds.

“So,” Flash whispered to Applejack as they entered the dark room beyond, “what’s this about email?”

Spike began flipping switches and overhead lights came on, one by one. The room they revealed was small, mostly taken up by several floor-to-ceiling computers that were whirring away — probably the servers. He marched across the room to another door.

“Long story,” Applejack whispered back. “Twilight and I sent me a message sayin’ we had a plan. ’Cept I don’t remember sendin’ it and Twi ain’t here. Didn’t get a chance to read it all, so we’re gettin’ it outta storage.”

“Huh.” Flash flicked his ears. “I guess that makes as much sense as anything else does recently.”

The room beyond was nothing that special, a few computer banks like you’d find in any office. But one side was taken up by a massive window overlooking a veritable cavern the size of two or three houses. Structural pillars reached up and down and across it like stalagmites that had met their stalactites and small lights blinked from every wall. When Applejack looked closely, she could spot pieces of minor debris floating around. That room had zero gravity.

Trixie looked at it with big eyes. “Ooo,” she said quietly. “So zero-G does make the tapes last longer?”

“It’s looking like it, but not by much,” said Spike. “The extra lateral friction barely causes any wear at all.” He noticed Applejack’s puzzled look and clarified, “This is the central repository. It stores all the data in the station. The computers in there read the tapes and the computers in there-” He pointed at the room they’d just come from. “-process the data and send it out.”

“Big,” said Flash in an I-don’t-know-what-else-to-say tone of voice.

“We’re storing petabytes of data in there,” said Spike. “Of course it is. Everypony, look around. See if you can find some kind of… I don’t know, catalog. It might be on a computer. We don’t want to spend hours looking through there, trying to find the right tapes.”

Privately, Applejack would’ve preferred hours of tedious work to hours of waiting, but if it got them going, fine. Unfortunately, she didn’t know where to begin, knowing as little about computers as she did — and from the look on Flash’s face, neither did he. They exchanged glances and he shrugged helplessly before they both sort of meandered to opposite corners of the room.

And yet Applejack had only done some preliminary poking around when Trixie yelled, “Hey! Trixie thinks she’s found something!” They reconvened around her, at a computer that had a large, unfinished-looking hologram projector next to it. A progress bar was filling up on the screen and Trixie was sitting back in her chair, looking very pleased with herself. “I did some searching and found a program called ‘Catalog v1.2’,” she explained. “Aaaand…” The progress bar hit 100%; she pointed at the screen and smirked. “Go.”

Immediately, a hologram flickered to life above the projector: a smallish purple alicorn, only a tiny bit larger than most ponies. Lines of code ran across its body and through its mane, occasionally twisting into starlike nodes, and its eyes glowed softly. “Hi there, hello!” it chirped in a voice not dissimilar to Glimmer’s. “Thank you for using the Thaumaturgical Archive and Network Traversal, Access, and Browsing Utility System! As a state-of-the-art mixture of magic and computer technology, I allow for quick, easy, and — above all — intuitive access to any connected database! Simply ask me a question and I’ll do my best to find what you’re looking for!” The hologram sat on its haunches and smiled an endearing smile.

Already, Applejack found herself grinning, but to her surprise, all smugness drained from Trixie and she fell back into her chair. “Don’t believe it,” she said glumly. “AI hasn’t gotten that far yet. It’s probably just a prerecorded greeting.”

“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”

“Let’s give it a shot,” said Spike. “What’ve we got to lose?”

“ ’Less you wanna drift around a server room jugglin’ data tapes,” added Applejack.

“Mmmrrh,” said Trixie. “Can you bring up security footage, then? Any footage.” She asked the question reluctantly.

“Working on it!” The hologram tilted its head back and forth a few times, then frowned. “Hmm. I can’t seem to find what you’re looking for.”

Applejack and Spike exchanged glances as Trixie asked, “What error message did you get? Is it a permissions issue?”

“Sorry.” Shrug. “No data available.”

“Really.” Trixie’s skepticism was growing. “What about emails?”

“Working on it!” The hologram ran through the head-tilt-frown routine again. “Hmm. I can’t seem to find what you’re looking for.”

“Again? That sounded pretty prerecorded.”

“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”

“Okay, bad idea,” said Spike, a touch of disappointment in his words. “C’mon, let’s-”

“No, wait,” said Trixie. She peered at the hologram and said suspiciously, “Prerecorded.”

“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully-”

“Prerecorded,” Trixie repeated.

“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”

“It’s a Winter Wrap-up treat,” Trixie sighed. “It’ll go through that speech every time we say ‘prerecorded’, even if-”

“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am-”

“MUTE!” screamed Trixie. With a flash of its horn, the hologram’s mouth vanished and it went silent, but it didn’t seem to notice, still moving and gesturing like it was speaking. “You two better go on in and look for yourselves,” Trixie said. “Working with this thing’ll be a nightmare. Or maybe… Unmute.” The hologram’s horn flashed again and its mouth reappeared. Squinting suspiciously at it, Trixie asked, “What’s your operational status?”

“Eh…” The hologram rubbed the back of its neck. “Placeholder,” it admitted. “I’m just a proof-of-concept at the moment. These animations and responses are all prebaked and prerecorded as the actual AI gets completed. Language processing is up and running, though! It’s why you can talk to me, even if my responses are limited.”

“Pre- Prebaked?” Trixie yelled. “You’re looking sheepish! That’s prebaked? Who in Tartarus makes placeholders that detailed?” she screeched.

The hologram’s voice suddenly turned male, high-pitched, and a little nasally. “Starlight Glimmer is an obsessive,” it said. “And if you’re finding this highly specific message, it means I, Sunburst, am vindicated in telling her to stop making placeholders so detailed!”

“Oh dear Celestia,” Trixie moaned, hanging her head in her hooves. “Nerd wars. Nerd wars.”

“Blame Glimmer,” said the hologram.

On a whim, Applejack stepped forward. “D’you at least know where the data’s stored?” she asked. “Like, physically. So we can get at it.”

“Oh, sure!” The hologram said, back in not-quite-Glimmer’s voice. (Trixie’s head snapped up and she grinned.) A 3D diagram of the central repository popped up next to it, a flashing dot near the top displaying where they were. “What are you looking for?”

“Ehm… my emails and security footage.”

Two lines immediately ran through the diagram from the dot. “Emails are in rack DB32S,” the hologram said promptly. “Which tape an individual user is stored on is marked on the rack. Let me know if it’s not and I can help you find it! Security footage is in racks LT5N, O, and P. Which tape a module’s footage is stored on is marked on the rack. Let me know if it’s not and I can help you find it!”

“And all tape cartridges are hot-swappable, right?” asked Trixie eagerly.

“Absolutely,” replied the hologram. “There’s an integrity check, to be sure the tape isn’t degrading, but that never takes more than a few seconds.”

Trixie rubbed her hooves together and cackled. “Yes…” she whispered. “Okay, maybe AI is a little bit further along than Trixie thought… Needs more speech synthesis, though.”

“E-excuse me.” Flash pushed his way forward and gawked at the hologram. “All of this got recorded beforehoof?” he asked. “All of this. Including that phrasing. Including that specific phrasing for that specific question.”

“Starlight Glimmer is an obsessive,” the hologram repeated.

“And that’s downright mild compared to Twilight,” said Spike as he looked out over the central repository again. “In projects like that, she wants to cover everything, no matter how pointless. Trixie, Flash, why don’t you two stay here and keep this place safe? Applejack, come with me.”

“Uh-” Applejack almost objected, but what the heck. She just wanted to find out what was in that message. She shrugged at Trixie and Flash, then followed Spike through a door into the central repository.

Entering the zero-G space of the repository made her head spin again, but after spending time outside Golden Oaks, it wasn’t as bad as it had once been. Thankfully, the walls were crisscrossed with runglike hoofholds so she didn’t even need to worry about using her maneuvering jets. She hooked herself onto the wall and said to Spike, “Which d’you want? Email or cameras? I really don’t care.”

Spike looked totally natural hovering in the air, small twitches of his wings keeping him in place. “I know we’re looking for you’re email,” he said, “but I didn’t hear which modules you wanted footage from. So you get the cameras and you can pick what you want without us yelling back and forth, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“LT5N, O, and P, remember!”

Spike flew away as Applejack pulled herself along the wall. Simply having something firm she could latch onto was doing wonders for her zero-G anxiety. Outside was terrible, but this wasn’t so bad. She slowly but surely worked her way across the racks of tape reels, various lights winking at her. The whirring of tapes filled the air, thousands of unique strips echoing back across each other. Luckily, every column of reels was clearly labelled. LR… LS… LT, there. She was at LT1A, at the moment. She pushed herself down. LT1F, J, P…

As she drifted down, Applejack began noticing little… oil loogies. That was the best way to describe them; they were small globs of some black, oily substance, about the size of a pineapple, clinging to the racks. Not enough to be worried about, but definitely noticeable. On a whim, Applejack pulled out her wrench from her uniform and gave one of the larger globs a poke. It didn’t react. Applejack looked at the wrench. No damage, nothing sticking to it. Well, if it wasn’t going to hurt her, she wasn’t going to hurt it. Honestly, having something not hurt her was a novel experience, given recent events. She kept her wrench out, though, Just in Case.

LT4Y, LT5G, K… LT5N through LT5P. Sure enough, those racks were marked: Security Footage, then a list of modules. Neurothaumatics? Yes, she’d take that. Central Research? She’d take that, too. Even better, they were both on the same tape. There wasn’t any specialized deployment procedure that she could see, so she tapped the Eject button on the machine. Some high-pitched whirring, and a platter-size cassette, complete with a convenient handle, popped on out. She bit down on the handle.

And then the first glob hurled itself at her.

Applejack yelped and instinctively ducked; the motion nearly shook her off the ladder as the tape slipped from her grasp. The glob flew over her head, then somehow stopped in midair and flew back at her, rolling over and over. For the first time, Applejack spotted spikes across its surface. She wildly swung her wrench, hitting the glob like a baseball; it smashed against a wall and splattered to pieces.

She quickly looked up, down, side-to-side; two more balls were coming at her, one each above and below. Applejack bucked downward, crushing the lower blob in an instant, then aimed for the tumbling cassette and pushed off the wall.

“OI!” Spike yelled from across the room. “You little-!” A dull, wet squish of something fleshy getting crushed. “And that!” The hot roar and orange glow of a furnace.

Applejack reached the cassette and managed to snag the handle in her mouth. Luckily, it seemed untouched. She pivoted around in the air, scanning the area for- She twisted away and the second blob zipped past her by mere inches. It circled around and was ready to come back at her when a perfectly-aimed bolt of green fire jetted out from behind a pillar and vaporized it. “You okay, Applejack?” Spike yelled.

She let go of the cassette for a second to tell, “I’m good!” She snatched it back and quickly fired her maneuvering jets to get back to the main room. She wasn’t going to be in here any longer than she had to be, not anymore, regardless of how few blobs she saw. Another one threw itself from a dark corner, but a quick jet-propelled twist and solid hit from a wrench ended that.

She reached the “landing” at the same time as Spike, who was no worse for wear, as long as you ignored his smoking nostrils. “Got it.” He held up his unharmed cassette. “You?”

“Got it.” Applejack held up hers.

“Good. Let’s get going.”

Trixie and Flash didn’t seem to be having any problems. Trixie was working on something at her computer, while Flash was doing his best to look interested. She turned to the hologram and asked, “So, according to your patch notes, v0.5.0.23 was the first major language update. What were you like before then?”

“I’m sorry, my responses are currently limited,” the hologram replied. “I don’t have an answer suitable for that question.”

“Figures,” Trixie snorted. The hologram shrugged in response.

“Hey!” Spike yelled; Trixie and Flash both turned to him as he held up his cassette. “We got ’em.”

“Yesssss!” Trixie immediately snatched the tape from Spike’s grasp with her magic and pushed it into the slot. A pause, then she grinned. “Tape is intact. Aaaand… Looks like emails.” She stepped aside. “Would you do the honors, Applejack?”

Swallowing, Applejack stepped up to the computer, where a login screen flashed. She put in her credentials; up came the email screen. She clicked on the most recent one, the message from herself, waiting for some sort of error. None came; she brought up the video she’d opened all those hours ago. Still no error message.

“Hey, AJ,” her screen self said. “Sorry, but… y’ain’t gonna like what’s comin’ next.”

She still looked awful without her hat.

“I don’t know how much y’remember, Maybe everythin’. Maybe-”

She’d seen this before. Applejack fast-forwarded.

“That’s Princess Twilight!” Flash gasped. “What’s she doing there?”

“That’s what we’re findin’ out,” Applejack replied. She reached the right section and hit Play.

“-isten to yourself, right?” Screen Applejack continued.“You better. Anyway, we’re in the neuromod labs. Twi here thinks that, with the same stuff we use t’make those things, maybe we can teach ’em how t’be nice.”

Twilight lightly shoved Applejack aside. “It’s more complicated than THAT! Listen, I was lucky enough to get a look at some of the studies done on changelings before everything went to Tartarus. One of the things I found is that they don’t have mirror neurons. They’re incapable of empathy, and it’s not their fault. They LITERALLY can’t see us as anything other than food. Oh! And speaking of food, they eat mental energy. Emotions, thoughts, that sort of thing. They could actually kill a pony without leaving a physical mark on-”

Real Applejack and Screen Applejack coughed at the same time.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “And changelings ALSO have some sort of hive mind,” she huffed (only Twilight could huff educationally). “If one of them learns something, all of them do. So…” She grinned in a somewhat mad-scientist fashion. “What if we injected one of them with mirror neurons from a pony? It would stop seeing us as concentrations of foodstuff, or at least be able to not see us that way, and maybe we could reason with it! And then either it can communicate with the other changelings, or that understanding can propagate through the hive mind, and there we go!”

Applejack stared at the screen, her mind racing, and she could practically feel the emotions shift around her. This was their plan? It wasn’t much more than a wing and a prayer. They’d need to get some mirror neurons first. Okay, how? Then they’d need a changeling to inject those neurons into — somehow. Probably a drone; those little octopoid beach balls didn’t look like they had brains (and where would brains go when they shapeshifted?). And then all they could do was hope it caused the changelings to stop attacking them. This was what she’d risked life and limb for? This was what she’d traipsed across the station for? THIS was Princess Twilight’s grand plan?

As if she’d known what Applejack was thinking, Twilight’s grin slipped more than a little. “It’s not much, we know. But it’s probably worth a shot. If it works, that’s that. If not…” A brief pause. “I’m working on a Plan B. No idea if it’ll work or not.”

Screen Applejack leaned back into view. “I’m donatin’ the neuron thingamajigs,” she said. “Shouldn’t be no problem, but Twi thinks it MIGHT give me some amnesia.”(Trixie glanced at Applejack.) “That’s why we’re makin’ this video. Just so you don’t have to go on her word for it; y’also got mine! Ain’t much, but c’mon; y’came up here based on ‘ain’t much’ in the first place, y’gotta be able to trust Twi on this.”

“So,” said Twilight, “in case something goes wrong — which it… probably will, considering everything — we’re in the neuromod removal chamber. I’ve figured out how to repurpose it to safely extract mirror neurons, and holy sun that sounds awful, and if there’s a neuromod gun in there, it’s what you need. Well, and also a changeling, but…” A nervous laugh. “…we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, right?”

“Right,” Screen Applejack said. She pinched her mouth shut and nodded slowly. “So, uh… let’s get to it. AJ out.”

And the video ended.

You could hear a pin drop in the room. The only sound was the fans of the computer stacks behind them whirring away; Applejack swore she could feel their wind. Everyone was just letting it sink in. Not only was Twilight’s plan a long shot, it was based on something they didn’t even have: the neuromod that (if they were lucky) had Applejack’s mirror neurons. The neuromod that, at best, was way up in Neurothaumatics Maintenance.

Then: “Sun blast it,” Applejack muttered. She’d seen that neuromod, picked it up and put it aside when she’d first gone to the removal chamber, right after meeting Trixie. Just because it was in the way. If she’d kept it with her… She tried to tell herself she couldn’t have known, that lugging around (or injecting yourself with) an unknown neuromod was just asking for trouble, but that didn’t change the fact that doing that then would’ve saved her a lot of trouble now.

“Well. Uh…” Flash coughed. “That’s, that’s um… something.” Pause. “Now what?”

“Applejack,” Trixie said quietly, “I know this isn’t much, but… but Trixie is behind you, all the way.”

“Thanks,” Applejack muttered. Seriously, now what? Was she supposed to just walk up to Spitfire and say, “Guess what! Twilight’s plan ain’t gonna do jack squat!”? Explain just how much it relied on what-ifs? True, they could still wait, but… after all this time, being left with nothing was disheartening.

Spike, however, didn’t seem too put out. He gave everypony a confused look. “You, uh… do know, Twilight, right? She kinda… thinks sideways. But she’s hardly ever wrong. If she thinks this’ll work, I think it’ll work. I mean, Applejack. You saw what you were like in there.” He gestured at the computer and the last frame of video. “Do you think the you who knew everything was scared about it not working?”

Not really, Applejack had to admit. Her past self had seemed… confident enough. And Twilight was still Twilight. That had to mean something. She wasn’t one to half-bake her plans, no matter how out-there they seemed.

“Look,” said Spike. He flexed his wings. “I trust Twilight. She does not cut corners on things like this. I think this has a good chance of working. Don’t you trust her?”

“I dunno,” said Applejack. Her head was still spinning. “Let’s… Let’s check the cameras and get back to the cargo bay and decide then, alright?”

Spike shrugged. “Alright.”

Trixie swapped the email cassette with the security footage one, but was promptly stopped with a check for her credentials. Nevertheless, she smirked. “Finally.” She wobbled her neck back and forth, working on the kinks in it. “Let’s slice some-”

“Username is ‘ArkaneMaster’,” said Spike promptly. “Capital A, capital M, no spaces, K instead of a C. Password is ‘LookingGlass0451’. Capital L, capital G, no spaces.” In response to the looks, he said, “Twilight got admin privileges and shared her credentials with me.”

“Well, you’re no fun,” Trixie pouted as she typed everything in. She pouted even more when the archive opened, first try.

“Take a look at the labs,” Applejack said. “That was where-”

“The changelings were being kept, I know,” said Trixie. She began flicking through the different views. “I wonder if that particular lab even has cameras…”

It didn’t, as it turned out. Not that specific room, anyway. But with a lot of jumping about and a little discussion, Applejack and Trixie soon found the larger lab it was attached to. This particular camera was mounted above the entrance to changeling containment. Trixie skipped to the end of the tape and began jumping back from freeze frame to freeze frame, minutes at a time.

One particular grainy shot made Applejack jump. “Hey, it’s you!” Flash said. Indeed, she was backing up, pointing a gun at a changeling at one side while keeping an eye on one on her other. “Wow, you two really messed that place up, didn’t you?”

“Eh. It happens.” Trixie shrugged and kept scrolling back.

And then they saw it: over a dozen of the tetrapoidal blobs scurrying out of the lab and into the station. Everyone gasped in surprise at the spectacle; Applejack had never seen so many changelings in one place before.

Immediately, Trixie got up close to the screen and began jumping back again. “C’mon, where are you,” she muttered. “Where are you…”

There it was: two ponies, visible only as silhouettes in the darkness of the labs. Trixie jabbed the Play button and the tape began creeping forward. There was no sound, but the ponies appeared to be arguing about something. They hung back from the entrance to the changeling containment rooms, making big, angry gestures at each other. Trixie’s hoof hovered over the Skip button, but never pressed it.

The ponies began walking towards the camera, still arguing. Even though it was still dark, their shadows slowly got sharper, more defined. They looked familiar to Applejack, but she couldn’t quite place them.

When the pair passed beneath the camera and the group saw who they were, silence fell like an anvil.

Blueblood and Lightning Dust had let the changelings out.

19 - Know Thine Enemy

Reaching over Trixie’s shoulder, Applejack jumped back a few seconds in the video and leaned closer to the screen. The image was dim and grainy, but it was impossible to mistake those silhouettes. Blueblood and Lightning Dust.

“No,” said Trixie quietly. “They didn’t… Did they? But…”

Applejack let it play. They seemed to be arguing about something. Blueblood looked small, withdrawn; his pajamas didn’t help. Lightning was big, her wings flared, making long, sweeping gestures and was definitely leading the pair. Whatever they were saying, Applejack couldn’t tell; the tape didn’t have sound.

“How did they…” muttered Spike.

They vanished into the labs and Applejack scrubbed forward. The changelings swarmed out; forward again. Blueblood and Lightning exited the labs. Lightning’s head was high, and was she actually smiling? Blueblood’s head was low and his ears were back. Lightning clapped him on the back and it became clear that his knees were shaking.

There were some other places they’d wanted footage on. What about them?

Tap tap tap. Applejack went to outside Time Turner’s office; there were no cameras inside. After a bit of searching after the changeling breakout, she saw Time Turner run in. A few minutes later, she saw Lightning arrive, pull out a keycard, and head on in. A few more minutes later, she saw Lightning come out, her hooves coated with blood.

“O-oh, Celestia, no,” whispered Trixie. “He…” She sounded on the verge of tears. Flash reached out a wing, paused, then pulled her close. Trixie buried her face in his shoulder.

Tap tap tap. Neuromod storage. Lightning walked up and down the aisles, snatching up neuromods willy-nilly. By the time she had a pile, she started injecting herself, swapping eyes each time. Sweet Celestia, from the number of neuromods she had, she could’ve learned… just about anything. Was it safe, using so many so fast? Applejack would’ve guessed “no”. Lightning, apparently, didn’t care.

Tap tap tap. One last selection, the neuromod removal chamber. The angle was awkward, looking down at it from the outside, but Applejack could see well enough. As Thunderlane stood guard outside, her video self and Twilight were recording a certain video at the computer. Finally, she turned away and nervously got into the chair. Twilight strapped something to her head; she shuddered and went limp. Something began moving for her eyes, and the real Applejack nearly looked away. She made herself focus on Thunderlane. He seemed alert.

He glanced down the hall, twitched, then waved. Lightning Dust walked into view, a pistol strapped onto one of her front legs. They exchanged a few words and Thunderlane pointed at the neuromod removal chamber. Lightning’s eyes went wide and Applejack felt her throat tighten.

The procedure on video-Applejack was complete, the machine withdrawing from her face. It deposited a vial in something that looked an awful lot like a neuromod. Applejack herself wasn’t moving. Twilight patted her cheek, lightly shook her. When she got no response, her wings tightened up and her hoof went to Applejack’s neck. After a few moments, her wings relaxed again. She grabbed the neuromod-esque device in her magic and began examining it.

Lightning pulled something like a ball from her uniform and tossed it at Thunderlane. Before he could react, it’d emitted some sort of colorless shockwave; static briefly flooded the image. Twilight gasped and put a hoof to her head as her magic vanished, the neuromod dropping to the floor. Thunderlane nearly collapsed outside. As he gathered himself, Lightning ran up and rammed him into the wall. He fell to his knees, clearly gasping for air.

Then Lightning grabbed Thunderlane’s head in both hooves and smashed him repeatedly against the doorframe.

She’d guessed it already, but Applejack nearly screamed as she watched Lightning pound Thunderlane’s face in, over and over and over and over. Every impact made the door bloodier, and soon Thunderlane was barely recognizable as Thunderlane anymore. Bile crept up her throat.

Lightning tossed Thunderlane’s still-twitching body aside and turned to the door. But before she could do anything, it was already open, Twilight rushing through and body-slamming Lightning against the opposite wall. For a princess, she could move. Taken by surprise, Lightning could only put up her hooves in a weak attempt to shield herself. For a moment, it actually looked like Twilight was winning.

Then both ponies froze and their heads snapped to one side. Something offscreen had gotten both their attention. Lightning shook with laughter. Twilight backed up a step, then rocketed away. A dark shape rushed by the camera, and Lightning was alone, chuckling on the floor.

“What was that?” gasped Flash.

Trixie began, “It looked like-”

Then Blueblood walked into the frame, nearly stumbling over himself. As Lightning got to her hooves, Blueblood said something to Lightning, who snapped back, making him cringe. She pointed at the neuromod removal chamber and Applejack’s unconscious body, then undid the straps connecting her gun to her leg. She shoved the gun at Blueblood. He apparently made some protest, then nodded reluctantly. Lightning was gone immediately.

Handling the gun like it was going to explode in his magic (still sputtering from the effects of the grenade), Blueblood walked into the chamber and stood over Applejack’s body. Applejack felt her skin crawl. All that had happened only a few yards from her, and she didn’t know. And now, one of the saboteurs responsible for the whole mess was standing next to her with a gun. Applejack held her breath, waiting for Blueblood to shoot her in the head.

But he didn’t.

He stared at her, at the gun in his magic. His gulp was visible even at this poor angle. Carefully, almost delicately, he pointed the gun at Applejack’s head. He turned his head his head away, closed his eyes, bit his lip, and-

-did nothing. He took long, heaving breaths, yet never did the simple action of pulling the trigger. Suddenly the gun dropped from his grip and he turned to look at Applejack again. He picked up the gun, examined it, turned it over and over. Grimacing, Blueblood dropped it and went to the computer. Whatever he did there, Applejack couldn’t see, but he soon picked up the gun in his magic, hooked his hooves under Applejack’s armpits, and dragged her out into the hall, out of sight of the camera.

Applejack switched cameras to follow him down the corridor. Eventually, he and her unconscious body vanished into a door labelled Non-Chemical Waste Disposal. The trash compactor. Where she’d woken up. Not long after, Blueblood came back out, alone. He blinked at nothing, then banged his head against the wall. It looked like he was… screaming? He shook his head and ran off.

Pause. She’d seen all she needed to see. Applejack collapsed back into her chair and stared blankly at the screen.

“Well, um…” Flash whispered. “Dang.”

“Yeah,” said Trixie. “Dang.”

“So what’s up with Blueblood?” asked Spike. “If he did this, why… And why’s he…”

“We don’t know,” said Trixie. “And…” She rubbed her forehead. “We have what we came for. Let’s get out of here and ask Blueblood ourselves.” She stood up and made for the door, Spike and Flash following her.

But Applejack didn’t move. Something was nagging at her. She was missing something, she knew it. She didn’t even know what she was missing. She closed her eyes and kneaded her temples. Think, think, think…

Twilight. It had something to do with Twilight. But what? Where she’d run to? But-

“We found her in Neurothaumatics a few hours ago,” Spitfire had said. But Applejack had distinctly remembered seeing Twilight’s location tracker in Habitation not long after getting out of the compactor. Why would she go to Habitation, then go back to Neurothaumatics, and still escape physically untouched?

Unless…

“You’re still,” Trixie said suddenly from the door. “You’re never still.” Pause. Then in a small voice, “Trixie does not like this.”

“I think somethin’s wrong with Twilight,” Applejack whispered.

“You think?” snorted Spike. “You saw her!”

“No. Worse’n that.”

Because they were dealing with shapeshifters.

Her hooves were shaking as she backed out of the security footage, her heartbeat growing louder and louder with every second, her mouth growing drier and drier. She brought up location services… Guests… And…

“Oh, sweet Celestia,” she breathed.

Twilight Sparkle — Princess — Wounded (mild) — Habitation Decks

The lavender alicorn they had in the storage bay wasn’t Twilight.

Spike nearly ripped their manes off, grabbing them and dragging them back to the GUTS. He’d had a brief — very brief — moment of panic before snatching them up like grocery bags and bolting. The moment they were in the GUTS, he hauled himself hand over hand along the conveyor. His claws ripped deep gashes in the metal. “Gonna kill it,” he growled. And a dragon growl was far more dangerous than a pony growl. “Took Twilight… Gonna kill it…”

“Wait!” Applejack yelled, tugging at Spike’s wing. “Wait, hold on!”

“Gonna kill it… Monsters…”

“Wait!”

“You think you can take my friend from me? Let’s see-”

“Spike!” She tried slapping him across the face. It didn’t do much in zero-G, especially not against a dragon, but it got him to stop tearing his way through the station like a madmare. He managed to bring himself to a stop, blinking as if he was trying to dispel some haze. Clinging to a wall by his claws, he whipped around to glare at Applejack, green fire burning in his eyes. “What?” he snarled. Smoke curled from his nostrils with each breath.

Applejack swallowed. Staring down a dragon was something for an army to do, not one gardener, yet here she was. “Listen,” she said, “stay calm. We don’t know what that- thing can do. Maybe it’s smarter’n the rest of ’em.”

Spike breathed through his nose like a bellows, but he didn’t say anything.

“So we can’t just go chargin’ in. It’ll see us comin’ and be ready. And we got one to pump full’a the mirror whatsits, so-”

“You want us to knock it out,” growled Spike.

“I-” Applejack blinked. “I… honestly wasn’t thinkin’ o’ that, but sure, yeah, let’s do that. Lemme handle it, I’ll think of somethin’.”

At least Spike’s snort was amused.

“I know you wanna get Twilight back,” said Applejack. “Believe me, I do, too. But just throwin’ yourself at what y’think hurt ’er ain’t gonna do much! Y’gotta slow, think a little ’fore you go in, claws blazin’.”

Spike looked at one of his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Fine. But once we’re done with that thing, we’re getting Twilight back.”

“Damn straight. No argument there.”

Animals showing teeth was often a threat display. Spike’s grin reminded Applejack of that fact very much. “Then let’s get going.”

They arrived back at the cargo bay without further incident. Spitfire was already waiting for them, biting her lip so hard Applejack was surprised she wasn’t bleeding. “Are you all okay?” she burst out, apparently waiting to say it. Before Applejack could answer, Spitfire had already looked them over. “All okay. Good.” She let out a long breath and let her wings go limp as she wiped her head down. “So, did you, uh, find what you were looking for?”

“We did.” Applejack held up the data cassettes. “And, uh…” She exchanged a look with Spike.

“She needs to see Twilight,” Spike said quickly. “Just… make sure she’s still alive.” He shuddered, but it was so slight Applejack would’ve missed it if she hadn’t been looking for it.

Flash opened his mouth. “She’s a-”

Trixie immediately covered his mouth with a hoof. “An inspiration to us all and it’s a shame she’s like this and she’s a reminder of what we’re fighting for!” She gave Flash a Look.

Flash blinked, then nodded. Pushing Trixie’s hoof away, he said, “Yeah. That.”

Spitfire looked at everyone suspiciously. Then she sighed. “Go ahead,” she said. “It’s hard, seeing her like that.”

“Also,” said Applejack, “you… pr’y oughta come with us.”

“…Fine, whatever.”

The “med bay” was emptier this time around, with only a pony sleeping soundly, a bandaged leg on her chest. Twilight — well, “Twilight” — was still sitting at the same window, still staring out. It was like she’d never moved. She probably hadn’t.

Applejack sat next to her and squinted. She looked like Twilight. She looked exactly like Twilight. But she wasn’t Twilight. How did the changelings manage something like that so easily? Magic? Probably magic. She missed the days when the only magic she needed to worry about was good old earth pony magic. She cleared her throat. “Um. Hey. Twi?”

“Twilight” looked at her and blinked. How had she missed how dead those eyes were? Had she really attributed it to shock? Twilight turned back to the window.

“I, uh, don’t know if you’re in there,” said Applejack, “but, uh, things’re goin’… They’re goin’ alright. For starters…” A high-pitched buzzing filled the air as Applejack leaned close. “I know what y’are,” she whispered.

“Twilight” inhaled sharply. Ears up, she turned to Applejack, opening her mouth.

Just in time for Applejack to zap her with the stun gun.

Spitfire yelped as “Twilight” keened, a high-pitched screech nopony could make. As “Twilight” flopped to the floor, Spitfire jammed a gun against Applejack’s head. “Stand down!” she roared. “Now!”

Applejack immediately put her hooves up in surrender. She could hear other safeties getting clicked off behind her. “Wait, wait!” she yelled. “Before y’all do anythin’, take a look!” She pointed at Twilight’s body.

Or, to be more precise, what had been Twilight’s body. Now, it was a large shape, similar to the equinoid changeling drones, covered in tiny black cilia. The shape of Twilight’s body was unraveling into nothing, almost like an illusion. The changeling wasn’t moving except for the twitching of its cilia.

All the guards gasped. The gun on Applejack’s head was pulled away. “What in the…” muttered Spitfire.

“Twi’s bracelet says she’s in Habitation,” said Applejack. She took a few steps away from Spitfire. “She’s hurt but still livin’. I don’t know how the changelings’re doin’ this, but… well, you’re seein’ this.”

Spitfire stepped forward and nudged the changeling’s body with her gun. No response. She nodded. “Right. In that case…” She put the barrel to the changeling’s head.

“Wait!” Applejack pushed the gun aside before Spitfire could shoot. “Don’t shoot it! Twi — the real Twi — she’s got a plan! It was in the mail!”

Immediately, Spitfire grinned. “She does? Why didn’t you say so? Let’s hear it!”

“Well, uh, it, it ain’t that easy.”

Applejack laid out Twilight’s plan, and Spitfire’s expression grew more and more dour with each new word. By the end, she looked ready to punch something. “Son of a…” She took a deep breath. “So you need a changeling and a certain neuromod,” she said flatly. “And you want to use this changeling.” She tapped the drone with her gun.

“If it means I don’t hafta go back out there and knock one out myself… yeah,” said Applejack.

“But you still need to get that neuromod.”

“Right.”

Spitfire sighed and ran a hoof through her mane. “You know,” she mumbled, “if we were on Equus, I bet you’d remake the entire rail system just to be sure your mail got through, only to find out your mail was an anthrax bomb or something.” Another deep breath. “Considering what you’ve done so far, sure. We’ll lock that thing in a storage unit, I’ll give you some guards and-”

“Hold up.” Applejack’s lungs felt heavy. “ ’Fore I leave, there’s somethin’ else you should know. About… About Blueblood.”

They found Blueblood in a back room, sitting alone among some crates, staring at the ground in thought. It was lit by a single lamp with a harsh, cold light. The air was still as a tomb’s and what few sounds there were echoed deeply; you could still hear the reactor thrumming away, even half a station away. The entire place was the sort of grimy clean of a room that didn’t get used much. It was a place you went when you wanted to be alone.

Blueblood looked up as the group approached him: Applejack, Spitfire, three security guards, all five ponies armed. He looked… tired, Applejack realized. Hollowed. Burned out. Had she missed it before? Or had she ignored it because that would mean caring for Blueblood? Of course, even if she’d noticed, she would’ve just put it down to the stress of the situation, never guessing that he could’ve…

Although her head was swimming, Applejack spoke only the words she needed to: “We know what you did.”

To her surprise, Blueblood smiled sadly. “Well. Finally, a secret I can get off my chest.”

“That’s what you’re calling it?” yelled Spitfire, bringing her gun up. “Over two hundred ponies on this station are dead because of you, and that’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“You’d never listen,” said Blueblood. He hung his head again. “I don’t think I’d deserve it, anyway.”

“Of course not,” said Spitfire, her voice getting tighter by the second. “Not after what you did.”

“See what I mean?”

As Blueblood and Spitfire exchanged barbs, something kept nagging at Applejack. He looked remorseful. He’d seemed to be growing up before she’d left for the servers. Maybe another pony could lie, but subtlety had never been Blueblood’s specialty, so it seemed strange that it could be a lie. He’d looked unwilling in the video footage, only going along with Lightning because-

Then it hit her. “Why didn’t you kill me?” asked Applejack. She spoke normally, yet her voice rang through the room unnaturally.

“W-what?” Blueblood flinched back. The guards’ guns twitched, but nopony fired.

“In the neuromod removal chamber. I’d been workin’ with Twilight and I was out cold. I bet Lightnin’ told you to kill me. You coulda just shot me right then and there. But you dragged me to a garbage chute and tossed me in. Why?”

“How did you-” gasped Blueblood. Then he sighed. “Cameras, I suppose,” he muttered to himself. “I- Murder isn’t as easy as it sounds. I could convince myself that it wasn’t my fault ponies were dying to the changelings, but if I’d killed you- Blood would’ve been on my hooves, no question. But I couldn’t let you live, so- I dumped you into the trash compactor and turned it on. And if that sounds like a painfully poor excuse…” He nodded sadly. “It absolutely is. It was shortly after that that I realized what a mistake I’d made.”

“But y’didn’t do it yourself,” said Applejack. Spitfire gave her a confused look.

“N-no?” Blueblood asked, one ear down. “That’s… what I said.”

“But if it’d been up to Lightnin’, she’da done it, no questions,” said Applejack. Was she thinking out loud or explaining her reasoning to the room? Both, maybe. “I saw her.”

“What’re you on about?” snapped Spitfire. “We should-”

“Quiet,” said Applejack, and she was surprised when Spitfire complied. “It’s… I dunno.” She took a seat in front of Blueblood. They looked into each other’s eyes. Deep breath. “Why’d you do it?”

Blueblood snorted. “Does it matter?”

“Kinda, yeah. To me, at least.”

A pause. Then: “Fine.”

A sigh. “Do you know what it’s like to be… ignored and untrusted by your own mother?” Blueblood asked, his voice distant. “I think the Queen always wanted a daughter. Princesses are traditional,” he spat venomously. “Mother always doted on me, but she never taught me. I was given everything I wanted, never anything I needed. And as I passed through my teenage years, I began noticing that, for all I was told about the importance of the Cosmic Thrones in Equestria, Mother wasn’t doing a damn thing to prepare me for either of them. When I asked her for the smallest whit of responsibility and experience, she said she wanted me to be happy and changed the subject. By the time I grew up, what would’ve made me happy was being useful. But by then, Mother was already grooming Twilight.”

The harsh light of the cargo bay cast dark shadows across Blueblood’s face. “I wouldn’t have minded if Mother had been honest with me,” he said. “If she’d drawn me aside and told me that she didn’t think I was fit for carrying out the duties Harmony required and was looking for a replacement. Equestria’s never had a tradition of the crown passing to family simply because they’re family. I just wanted to be more than- than an obligation. After Twilight was granted Ascension, Mother stopped treating me like her child and started treating me like a pet long past his prime.”

His voice was growing lower and lower, more and more growly. “I am inept. I won’t pretend anything else. I’m not blind. But I was never taught anything! Twilight was always given the best: the best tutors, the best assignments, the best bodyguards, the best press. And she deserves it! Don’t get me wrong! She will be a fine queen when the time comes. But I wasn’t even given her crumbs. When Twilight steps out of line, she is gently guided back. When I step out of line, I’m given a scolding and shoved back. And if nothing I do will ever measure up, why bother trying?” He chuckled bitterly. “Acting like a clueless, entitled ponce drives most unwanted ponies away, and after I adjusted, the shame did nothing but remind me I was still alive.

“And then… on the way up here, I… heard a voice in the back of my head. It promised me power, respect, the chance to get back at those who had wronged me. I was told it had contacted Lightning Dust the same way; she was assigned to me as a punishment detail, remember. At first, I wanted nothing to do with it. I could make it on my own, surely. Then I spent the entire week of my supposed job getting pushed aside and told to let the big ponies handle it. I- I gave in and did as it said.”

Blueblood raised his head and looked out with eyes so piercing it made Applejack take a step back. “So, yes. I did it, with Lightning Dust’s help. I let the changelings out. I’m not going to justify it. I made a mistake and sent everything on this station to Tartarus, and by the alicorns, I wish I hadn’t. I know it’s pointless by now, but I’m sorry.” He blinked and wiped his watery eyes down. “Do with me what you will. I deserve it.”

Applejack and Spitfire looked at each other, exchanging words without speaking. Spitfire groaned and stowed her gun. “What, exactly, happened?” she asked.

Blueblood looked quizzically at her, then shook his head. “On the trip up here,” he said, “I felt a… pressure on my mind. Telepathy. Are either of you familiar with it?” He shrugged and continued on. “A voice in my head told me it had seen my pain and offered a chance to make it right. ‘Make it right.’” He made air quotes with his hooves. “A euphemism if ever I’d heard one. I wasn’t about to make a deal with a draconequus, so I nobly turned it down. Then we reached Golden Oaks and I spent a week getting shuttled around from place to place, never allowed to get involved with anything. All while that voice kept whispering in my ear.”

He adjusted his position on the floor. “It was after a long day and a great deal of drinking when I finally gave in. I told the voice I’d do as it asked. I was told to go to a certain part of the station, and it was there that I met Lightning Dust. She’d been hearing the same voice and she said she was through with being pushed around. I began having my doubts immediately, but I managed to convince myself it wouldn’t be so bad. We let the changelings out.”

Swallow. “It was so bad,” he said quietly. “I immediately knew I’d done wrong, and I couldn’t stop it. The best I could do was sit back and let it blow over. Lightning, though? She reveled in it. She told me she’d jam herself with every neuromod she could get her hooves on, turn herself into a peak pony. I heard she did work in security to cover our tracks and make sure communication was cut down as much as possible.”

“Why, though?” asked Spitfire. Applejack was surprised to see that she wasn’t as angry as she had been. “What do the changelings want?”

“I cannot say. The voice merely told us that everyone on board needed to die and that word could not get out. The reactor shutdown? The destruction of the mana rod? Those were both Lightning.” Blueblood looked Applejack in the eye. “Getting locked out of email? Also Lightning. She wanted to prevent different modules from communicating, so she did it in the fastest, messiest way possible.”

“Hold up,” said Applejack. “Down in the reactor, I- We both heard the changelings kill Lightnin’. Why-”

Blueblood smirked. “Did you see the body?”

Applejack didn’t have an answer to that.

“You wouldn’t go looking for her if you thought she was dead. You heard exactly what you were supposed to hear. She’s probably still out there.”

Spitfire snorted. “Well, that’s super.” She glanced at Applejack and nodded at Blueblood. “So what d’you reckon?” Her gun leg twitched.

It took Applejack a moment to realize what Spitfire was asking: What should we do with him? And for a while, Applejack wasn’t sure. She’d never held a pony’s life in her hooves before. Killing Blueblood wouldn’t solve anything. Just another dead body among hundreds of others on board a little station in the void. And… did he even deserve to be shot? He’d spilled everything with an ounce of prodding. He was repentant. That was halfway to recovery, right? Not like Lightning. There were better punishments for him than a bullet to the head.

“I’d say leave him be,” said Applejack finally. “He ain’t gonna cause nothin’, so he's either gonna die up here from the changelings or get jailed on Equus. Justice either way, I'm thinkin’.” It didn’t extend all the way to forgiveness, but she was sympathetic. She’d come up here to escape from her troubles on Equus, just like Blueblood. Even if her methods of escaping were... cleaner. “But you’re the security chief. Your call.”

“Dangit, stop delegating my delegation.” Spitfire glared at Blueblood, who looked neutrally back. Gritting her teeth, she groaned. “You're lucky we’re in the thick of it,” she snarled to him, “but if you put half a hoof out of line, I’ll blow your head into so many pieces we won't be able to find them all.”

Blueblood grinned, and for a second, Applejack was reminded of the wannabe-debonair ladies’ stallion he was supposed to be. “Perfect.”

Spitfire shot him another stinkeye. “You are going to tell me everything you can about that voice. If it has a favorite color, I want to know it. I’m sick of being in the dark about these things.” Then she turned to Applejack. “But first, let’s get you some guards. You're going to find that neuromod and you're going to find Twilight and you’re going to get these monsters off our station.”

20 - Detour

They settled on five guards (Flash, Bon Bon, Spearhead, Fleetfoot, Welded Aegis), plus Spike. Spitfire had said she wanted to go with them, but needed to stay behind and keep the cargo bay calm, especially with a changeling drone that had once been Twilight locked into one of the storage units. Fair enough. Applejack figured five ponies and a dragon ought to be enough to protect her.

For Applejack was going with them. Sure, she could stay in the cargo hold, all nice and safe and cozy, but she wanted to help. She’d be moving. She’d be following her plan through. And she felt responsible for Twilight’s predicament. Absurd, she knew, but that was the way it was. Getting Twilight out of that predicament would help put her fears to rest. Luckily, the guards had accepted her when she’d volunteered.

Spitfire paced back and forth in front of the assembled group. After their preparations — food, water, getting ammo, making sure all their limited equipment was up to snuff — she was ready to give them one last pep talk. “Mares,” she said, “stallions, drake. Your mission is simple: get to Neurothaumatics, find a certain neuromod, get to Habitation, find Twilight, and get back here. But changelings are still all over the station, so you need to do this as fast as possible. Don’t let yourselves get distracted by anything. This mission might be our last chance of surviving this nightmare.”

She stopped and looked at each individual in turn as she kept speaking. “Now, by now, you’ve heard about Lightning Dust and Blueblood. The jury’s still out on him, but as far as I’m concerned, Lightning has joined forces with the enemy and should be considered a threat. If you see her, kill her. Because she’s more dangerous than she looks. She’s armed, she’s shot herself up to the gills with enough neuromods to teach an army, and she’s got some sort of anti-magic devices-”

“Nullwave grenades.”

Everyone turned to look at the voice. Trixie was standing near the doorway, watching them. “Nullwave grenades,” she repeated. “They’re some of the prototypes the scientists were working on. They don’t do anything physical, but they keep magic from working in a small area for a little while. Kind of like magical flashbangs. It’s been very, you know…” She smirked and winked. “Hush-hush.”

Spitfire blinked, shrugged, and returned her attention to the guards. “She’s got nullwave grenades,” she said, as if nothing had happened. “Watch your backs, or you might find yourself without magic. And if you think you can handle something as trivial as that, you probably haven’t lost your magic before.” (Spike conspicuously shifted his weight around.)

“And Applejack here thinks she saw something on video,” Spitfire continued, “that even Princess Twilight ran from. You’re all familiar with what she’s done since ascending, so I don’t need to tell you what that means.” She paused and shuffled her wings. “Stay sharp and keep watch over each other, and you’ll all get through this. Dismissed.”

The ponies and dragon saluted her (Applejack included; it felt right) and turned for the exit. But just as they were leaving, Trixie yelled, “Wait!” and galloped up to Applejack. She seemed more serious than Applejack had seen her before. “Hey. Um.” Trixie looked at the ground and twisted one of her legs. “Just- Be safe, okay? Trixie would miss you if you didn’t… come back.”

“I’d miss me, too,” said Applejack. “Thanks for your help gettin’ me here to start with. Trust me, I’ll be back.”

Trixie smiled and nodded as the door closed between them.

They didn’t go through the GUTS. It’d take them too close to what Spike only described as a “hive”: “They’re swarming everywhere,” he said, “we’d be dead before we got ten feet.” Applejack decided she didn’t want to know. And so they had to take a detour through Life Support.

Applejack had never been in Life Support, never heard of any problems in it. Which, since Golden Oaks was a space station, was good. Hearing about life support in a space station out of nowhere was like hearing a doctor start talking about your heart out of nowhere: never a good sign. The only real interaction Applejack had had with the ponies who worked in Life Support was to tell them that a bunch of plants had just been planted in the arboretum, so they might see a very slight drop in CO2 levels around the station (apparently, they didn’t).

Right before they entered the Life Support module, Spike held up a hand to stop them. He’d been sort of unofficially designated the leader by virtue of being in front and the one among them most likely to survive being shot in the face. “If you see anything moving, watch your shots. These systems have plenty of redundancies, but let’s not test them.” The guards nodded. “Just as a reminder, we’ll be heading right through and taking a maintenance stairway into neurothaumatics. Simple.” Another set of nods, and Spike punched the button to open the door.

The first thing Applejack heard was a lot of fans. Like, a lot of fans. It was like the entire room was a giant HVAC machine. Then she noticed a nearby sign: Atmosphere Control. So she was pretty much right.

Two giant, square columns, each with the footprint of a house and double the height, stretched up to the ceiling of the massive room. Walkways stretched around them, leading to the occasional door, and most of the humming was coming from inside them. Applejack could only imagine what was going through those columns: all of Golden Oaks’ air, recycled and cleaned and purified over and over. She had no idea how that was being applied, but then, she wasn’t working there.

Spike waved the group forward and they crept into the room. The guards swept their guns around with practiced efficiency. Did they have drills? Applejack wondered. For the most part, the station was peaceful. The last major disturbance had been seven moons ago, when two doctors got into a shouting match over some of their work in the lounge. So major that Applejack had had to move to a nearby table. The horror. Yet these ponies moved like they’d seen this every day.

Nobody spoke. It let them hear things better, even if those things were mostly the atmosphere units. The ponies’ ears were swiveling every which way to pick up every sound possible, but Spike didn’t have any ears, as far as Applejack could see. She found herself moving her own ears about, not out of nervousness, but to fit in. Just in Case.

A small skittering wafted into Applejack’s ears and she froze. So did everyone else. Just as she was trying to figure out where it had come from, Welded Aegis said, “On top of the vents, left side high.” A few ponies, including Applejack, looked up. Indeed, ventilation was hanging from the ceiling up there, shrouded in shadow. It’d be the perfect place to hide if you were into that sort of thing.

“I’ll watch it,” said Bon Bon.

“Copy that.”

They inched onward, Bon Bon keeping her gun aimed upward. The atmospheric processors slowly moved along, and soon they rounded the far corner. Spike stayed at the head of the group, striding confidently along, but never moving so fast that the rest of the squad couldn’t keep up. In fact, Applejack was sure-

BANG. Applejack flinched at the gunshot, then flinched at the dead changeling drone that fell from the duct above. “One bug down,” Bon Bon said tonelessly. “Still looking up.”

No one responded and everyone kept moving. For the first time, Applejack couldn’t help but feel a little out-of-place. Sure, she knew how to use guns thanks to neuromods, but it was in a rote, muscle-memory sort of way. These ponies knew the ways to use guns beyond “point and shoot” and the best situation for each gun. These ponies understood guns.

“Coming up on a door,” Spike said. “Might be a chokepoint.”

Applejack glanced over her shoulder. It was one of the few doors in the outside wall, rather than leading deeper into the processors for control stations or whatever. She looked at the sign above the door. Waste Processing; she wrinkled her nose on pure reflex.

At the door, Fleetfoot and Spearhead took up places on opposite sides of the frame and another prepared to open it on their signal. The second the door was open, the two of them swept their guns across the room beyond. A few rapid-fire gunshots, and they both yelled out, “Clear!” Flash and Aegis moved forward to cover them while they reloaded. When the squad moved into the room, they stepped past three still-bleeding drone corpses.

For a place labelled “Waste Processing”, the room didn’t smell that bad. In fact, Applejack assumed the pine air freshener dangling above the doorway was a joke. It smelled like… well, any other part of the station. The room was quite long and most of it was taken up by several horizontal cylindrical machines — probably pumps — that, while large, weren’t the gargantuan behemoths of the atmospheric processors. Pipes snaked out from them, above and beneath the floor, and-

A drone jumped out at Spike from behind a pipe. He grabbed it, crushed its head against a beam with his bare claws, and tossed the body away in seconds, all without breaking his stride.

-and Applejack could hear water rushing through them. More pipes reached up for the distant ceiling, either taking water from the plumbing all around the station or moving it to the waterworks for further purification. Various control and analysis stations were scattered around the room to examine this or that specific aspect of the treatment process.

“Hold up,” Flash said. “Two of the same toolbox over there.” He pointed off at one of the stations. “Bon Bon, you take left, I’ll take right.”

“Got it.”

Two near-simultaneous gunshots later, the two guards had destroyed a toolbox and a disguised changeling without going anywhere near them. Applejack hadn’t fired a shot yet. Not that she was complaining, of course; the less she felt like she needed to use her gun, the better. The professionalism of the crew and general lack of pony bodies was also a plus.

The group moved between two of the pumps, down an aisle narrow enough to prevent four ponies from walking side-by-side. They organized into a nearly single-file line and kept moving. “You know,” Aegis said, “this would’ve been nice the first time around.”

“Yeah,” said Fleetfoot. “Just one or two changelings at a time, all lined up nice and-” She whipped her gun up, paused, and blasted a barely-visible changeling off a pipe drenched in darkness. “-nice and neat. Why do they gotta ruin that?” A small burst of tight laughter rippled through the group. “I mean, if they sat where I expected-”

Every light in the room went out.

The group froze and all talk stopped. They fanned out into a circle as best they could, pointing their weapons in every direction. Soon, half a dozen flashlight beams were sweeping across the room. They provided light but were no proper substitute for the room’s actual lighting. Applejack’s skin began to crawl. There were too many places to hide; who knew what was lurking a few inches outside the beam’s circle?

“Is that the reactor again?” Fleetfoot asked quietly, preempting Applejack’s first question. “Did it-”

“No, look at the door.”

With a rustle of uniforms, everyone turned to look at the door they’d entered the room from. Light was leaking out from the edges, easily visible in the gloom. They all looked at the door they were heading to; same deal.

“They cut the power…” Flash said. “And only to the lights of this room…”

“Do they know how to do that?” Aegis asked. “Aren’t they animals? Maybe it’s just Lightning.”

“They’re smart enough to do this,” said Spike. “Trust me.” Pause. “We need to keep moving.”

They crept down the aisle, more slowly than before. They kept their breathing quiet. In fact, aside from humming machinery, the entire place seemed unusually quiet. Time after time, Applejack thought she saw something moving, only for it to turn out to be a notification light winking in the black or somepony else’s light moving about. She wanted to break into a run for the next room, but that was probably what the changelings wanted: for them to panic and separate. No. They were not going to split up.

Something dripped on Applejack’s face. She grimaced and instinctively looked up; nothing but steel pipes and darkness her flashlight had trouble reaching. She moved to wipe the stuff off.

When her hoof touched it, she froze. It was sticky.

She scraped some of the goop off and squinted at it in the dim light. It was clear, like water, but it clung together weirdly. It was tight and stringy and bubbly and beady and warm and-

-and it was saliva. No, not just saliva. Drool.

Silent as a whisper, something massive fell from the ceiling above her.

Applejack yelped and brought her gun up, but the thing had already landed on Fleetfoot, the guard at the end of the line, sinking its teeth into her neck before she could cry out. In the mere second it took the rest of the guards to focus on it, she’d been yanked off her feet and into the darkness with barely a sound. Beams of light swept back and forth, but a lot of things could hide in those shadows.

“Hold your fire!” barked Spike, even though his nostrils were smoking. “Hold your fire until you see it!”

But although the guards weren’t shooting, they didn’t seem to be paying him much attention, either. Panicked phrases were being thrown back and forth. “-you see it?” “-big as Celestia!” “-fangs! I’m telling-” “-totally black-”

Applejack hadn’t seen enough of it to make a guess. It’d been vaguely equinoid, but far too thin and spindly. It might’ve had wings; it was hard to tell. She had her gun up, but her leg was shaking too much for her to properly aim.

“Keep! Moving!” yelled Spike. He was trying to sound in control, but Applejack caught a hint of a waver in his voice. “Get to the door, keep your guns up! Whatever it is, it’s too scared to face us in a straight fight!” Somehow, it didn’t sound all that convincing.

The squad shuffled down the aisle, their flashlights flicking across the room. Nothing was moving except them. The breathing of everyone was suddenly very audible, Applejack noted. Including her own. The blank smell of the room was slowly tinged with the aroma of blood.

They reached the door. Bon Bon smacked the Open button, but nothing happened. A curse, and she punched it several more times. Nothing. “Door’s shut,” she said. “Must be out of power, too.”

“Great,” mumbled Spike. “Can we pry it open?”

“I don’t kno-”

Something banged in the dark above them, too loud to be accidental, and everyone reflexively whipped around to look. But as the numerous flashlight beams converged, they didn’t reveal anything. Just pipe after pipe after pipe, snaking up towards the invisible ceiling. More bangs, hidden just barely out of sight.

Fleetfoot’s body was flung down at them.

Fleetfoot’s head followed an instant later.

Gunfire filled the air as the ponies, Applejack included, unloaded at where the body had come from. In a burst of green flame, Spike literally opened fire. But Applejack couldn’t see anything, and, when the barrage died down, didn’t hear anything dying. She glanced at her ammo counter; she’d expended five shots in a few panicked seconds.

“Someone get that door open,” Spike growled.

“On it,” Bon Bon whispered. She scrambled past Applejack and to the door. Metal started groaning as she pried it open with induplicable earth pony strength.

“Everyone else, hold,” said Spike. “Stay calm. Remember your training.”

“Training never covered this,” mumbled Flash, low enough that Spike couldn’t hear it.

For a few interminable seconds, Applejack felt like she couldn’t move. She didn’t know where her target was and she couldn’t breathe without inhaling gunpowder fumes. She couldn’t even run. All she could do was sit here on her rump, surrounded by ponies just as scared as she was, waiting for a monster to jump from the dark and eat her. The dark outside their flashlight beams twisted around itself, creating shapes where Applejack knew there weren’t any. It was all too easy to see an army of those monsters, prowling on the pipes above, waiting for the best moment to strike.

Light flooded the room as Bon Bon pushed the door up three feet. “Got it!” she grunted, holding it on her shoulder. “Hydraulics trying to push it shut! Go!”

Spearhead rolled through the gap. Flash. Spike grabbed Applejack and shoved her through. By the time she was on her feet again, Aegis slid on through. And finally came Spike.

But then something slammed into the floor on the other side of the door. Before anyone could react, dozens of tiny, glinting, hair-thin tendrils whiplashed around Bon Bon’s neck, hard enough to draw blood. She tried to pull away, only to get yanked into the darkness, the door slamming shut behind her.

The squad backed away as her screams echoed through the room. But they only echoed for a moment.

21 - Dawn of the Hunter

Pumps chugged and ponies breathed, but no sound came from the opposite side of the door. Bon Bon was gone, as was whatever had taken her.

Maybe.

Every guard had their guns pointed at the door, Applejack included. But her aim was shaking back and forth as her heart pounded and she gasped, air moving in and out. It was over so fast, just a few seconds. Bon Bon had been there, then all of a sudden she wasn’t there anymore. What was that thing? Was it what Twilight had run from?

Spike slapped the floor with a hand. “E-everybody!” he yelled. “On your feet! We need to keep moving!” He couldn’t hide the shaking in his voice, not entirely.

Nopony complained as they got to their feet, but Applejack suspected they were just too scared for that. They all seemed quiet and oddly precise with their movements, like they were forcing themselves to move.

Applejack stood up, took a few long breaths, and turned around, getting a better look at the room they’d tumbled into. At least this one was lit. It was a broad, tall room, not unlike atmospheric maintenance. Much of the floor space was taken up by water tanks — truly enormous water tanks, several dozen feet across and more than three times that tall, each surrounded by a dense latticework of struts and girders to support the weight and connected to many, many pipes. Each tank had several panels to monitor and control it; it wouldn’t do to have the water contaminated, after all. On the far side of the room, Applejack could make out a door that looked more like an elevator door than the others she’d seen. Above them, not far below the (thankfully visible and well-illuminated) ceiling, ran a series of catwalks, connecting a control room with the water tanks.

Spike jerked a finger up. “There’s an exit up there,” he said gruffly. “That’s where we’re leaving.”

Spearhead opened his mouth as if to protest, paused, then closed it again, set his jaw, and shouldered his gun.

They’d started with seven people. Now they only had five: Applejack, Spike, Flash, Aegis, and Spearhead. The squad organized into an outward-facing wheel, every direction covered by someone. Applejack was facing “right”, relative to the direction they were traveling, but kept looking at the door they’d entered through. She suspected she also wasn’t the only one. Right on the other side of that…

But she heard nothing.

Somehow, it wasn’t very reassuring.

They zigged and zagged up a set of stairs to the catwalks. All the while, their hooves (or claws) clanked loudly on the metal. The stairs were narrow; their circle became a line and Applejack felt boxed in, constantly getting jostled onward until it was all she could do to keep up with everyone else.

They must’ve gone up seven or eight stories by the time they reached the catwalks and the floor was very far away. Swallowing, Applejack shuddered and resolved to not look down any more than she had to. Easier said than done, though, especially when their footsteps rang hollowly throughout the room and the echoes very clearly came from below them. She kept herself busy by reloading her shotgun.

The door wasn’t far, practically right next to the staircase and a control room. “I got the door,” Spearhead said gruffly. He took a step towards it.

Something clanged nearby; everybody whirled around, guns up, searching. Another clang, then another, and another. Applejack’s ears twitched this way and that, listening, listening. Was it the monster? It sounded big enough. But there was something off about the sounds. It was like they were… in the walls.

Then the pitch changed. It was above her and getting louder.

The thing was in the vents and it was getting closer.

Spearhead seemed to realize this at the same time Applejack did; in a panic, he bolted for the door, stomped the button to open it, and immediately dove on through.

Right into the waiting maws of a horde of drones.

They were sitting right beyond the doorframe, waiting. The second Spearhead was through, before anyone could react, they descended on him like a flood. Spearhead screamed as he went under, changeling after changeling bursting from the shadows. And for a moment, Applejack looked past the pile, and all she saw were more changelings. Watching them.

Her survival mode kicking on, she ungracefully lunged forward, landing on the floor just close enough to hit the button again. The door slammed shut, cutting off Spearhead’s dwindling screams, and Applejack shot the panel. That was how you sealed these sorts of doors in the movies, right? Right. Something banged hard against the other side of the door, again, then again, yet it stayed shut. Still, she shuffled back on her rump, keeping her shotgun on the door in case it opened.

It didn’t.

She bumped into Aegis; he helped her to her feet. “They were… waiting,” he whispered. “Like-”

Clang. It was right above them.

“Down the stairs, move!” yelled Spike. No organization this time; Applejack and Aegis dashed madly down. Spike and Flash, being lucky enough to have wings, simply leapt over the catwalk railings and fell, fluttering their wings just enough to keep pace with the groundbound ponies.

“They were waiting for us!” babbled Aegis as he stumbled down. “That- That was deliberate! It has to be! That monster was driving us into a trap!” It sounded like he was making excuses, trying to convince himself.

“That doesn’t matter!” yelled Spike.

“Doesn’t matter?” said Aegis. “We’ve got something smart enough to coordinate with other changelings and set traps for us, something that’s already killed two of us by itself, and you think it doesn’t matter?!”

“Technically, no, it doesn’t.”

By now, they’d all reached the ground floor. Aegis started pacing, staring at the ground, and muttering under his breath. Spike continued, “Even with that monster, the mission stays the same. We still need to get to Neurothaumatics and find that neuromod. We just- need to be more careful.”

“So… uh…” Applejack glanced up, her ears back. “I… guess I shouldn’ta shot that door?”

“That’s alright,” mumbled Spike. “We couldn’t’ve got through them all, anyway. We’ll- find another way around. This isn’t the only way through-”

Something slammed down into the ground next to one of the water tanks, not far from Aegis. Everyone whipped around, weapons up. But Applejack let out a breath of relief when she saw that it was just a spare oxygen canister. The impact with the floor had buckled it, and she could hear gas hissing out from a crack in the tank, but no one was hurt.

His ears folded back, Aegis glared up at the control room. “You call that an attack?” he yelled. “Aim properly next time!”

The only response was something red and glowing, sailing down through the air.

For one second, Applejack had a weird thought: Is that a Molotrot cocktail?

It impacted next to the leaking oxygen tank and shattered.

When the oxygen canister exploded, Applejack felt like she’d been hit by a train. Then the water tank ruptured and thousands of gallons of water were bearing down on her.

If it wasn’t nailed down, the colossal wave picked it up and tossed it aside like it was made of styrofoam. Applejack was pounded against a wall like a nut caught between a hammer and an anvil. She instinctively took a breath and only barely managed to cut it off before she inhaled water. The water swept her aside and she flailed blindly for a grip on anything solid. She managed to grab onto a control panel and thrust her head above the water. Something washed past her: the charred, twisted corpse of Aegis after he was caught too close to the explosion, shrapnel wounds puncturing his body. She barely paid him any attention, gulping down huge breaths of air.

As water poured out of the room through the doors and other unseen gaps, it kept pouring in from the massive tank. Currents tugged at Applejack and did their best to peel her away from the panel, to throw her into helplessness again. And her hooves were blunt; she couldn’t hold on for long. She blinked enough water from her eyes to get a brief look around. One of the intact tanks was nearby. Good enough. She pulled her rear legs in and kicked off the panel.

The current wasn’t as strong as some of Equestria’s rivers, but it was still plenty strong. Applejack was immediately picked up and carried away by the water — straight toward the tank, exactly how she’d aimed. A bit of precise flailing kept her upright, and she’d soon hooked her legs around one of the tank’s vertical struts. It was slippery, but she had a good enough grip. She managed to curl up against the current and brace against one of the diagonal struts, and with that, she began climbing.

She was out of the water in seconds; it cascaded through the room harmlessly below her. More water had collected in her suit, but that couldn’t be helped for now, so she ignored it. Slowly, carefully, she clambered around the supports, back to the center of the room. “Spike?” she yelled out. “Flash?” One of her hooves slipped on a beam and she wrapped her front legs more tightly around their own strut.

Something burst from the rushing water ahead of her, like a breaching whale. A coughing Spike hauled himself out on another tank, his wings flailing like mad to shed water. A changeling leapt from the water below him and latched onto his tail; a few solid thwacks against the girders later, it limply dropped back into the water.

“Hey!” Applejack hollered over the current. “Hey, Spike!” She waved to get his attention.

When Spike noticed her, one enormous flap of his wings took him to her scaffolding. With his fingers and claws, he had a significantly better time of hanging onto the metal than she did. “Applejack! Are-” He doubled over, hacking out globs of water. “You okay?” he rasped.

“Good enough!” Applejack looked around the room, squinting at the water. “Flash! Where’s Flash? He’s gotta-” Then she spotted a blur of orange near the door. Water whisked it away before she spotted it again. Flash was attempting to swim towards them against the current, beating his wings in vain to get above the water.

Something yanked him under. A moment later, the currents exploded with red before they, too, were washed away. Applejack bit her lip and turned away, shaking. Spike tensed up next to her and metal groaned as he clenched his claws.

Even a tank as large as that didn’t have unlimited water, and the rush slowed. Gradually, the water level dropped as it filtered out of doorways and through vents. Soon, the floor was visible again. There weren’t any bodies around. Applejack wasn’t sure whether that made things better or worse. Step by step, Applejack and Spike climbed down the trusses, Spike’s gaze darting every which way. The sound of dripping bounced around and around the room as water droplets fell from walls and supports.

They reached the floor. Applejack dropped from the supports and into a puddle. “Now what?” she whispered to him.

“I- I don’t- Give me a sec to think,” Spike hissed, unfolding and refolding his wings.

Right. A second. Thanks to the adrenaline running through Applejack’s body, every second not spent moving was another second wasted, another second the monster could spend getting closer to her. She was shaking all over and started trotting in place. Anything to get her energy out, even if-

Something landed on the upper catwalks. Spike grabbed her and yanked her over to the wall, plastering them both flat against it. Applejack looked around jerkily, but the light was too dim to make anything out on the catwalks. Her ears twitched this way and that and failed to pick up any sounds. In desperation, she groped at the wall, pleading to find something, anything useful. Was that a button? Button. She reflexively pressed it.

A soft chime. She glanced up; a panel with numbers had illuminated above her. It was the elevator button. The panel binged as the elevator trundled to their position.

“Come on out!” roared Spike. “I’m game! How ’bout you?”

The only response from the room was the ever-present dripping.

A louder bing than usual, and the elevator opened up. Spike suddenly grabbed Applejack and wrenched her inside, where he pummeled the Close Door button. As the doors slid shut, a dark, spindly figure dropped from the catwalks, green eyes flashing in the gloom. Somehow, Applejack pictured it grinning at them. It didn’t move.

The second the doors were shut, Spike hammered on the Emergency Stop button, making Applejack yelp. “What’re you- Spike, if we stay here, we’re deader’n a slug on a salt lick!”

“Good thing we’re not staying here, then.” Spike dug his claws directly into the metal walls, pulled himself up to the ceiling, and simply punched out the maintenance hatch. He hoisted himself up, then reached down. Applejack gave him her hoof and he pulled her on top of the car.

“Legs around my neck and hold tight,” Spike said. The second Applejack had a halfway-decent grip, Spike was climbing down the service ladder (still dripping from the rush of water) and she was bumping across his wings. He reached the next floor down, paused, shook his head, and continued. “Too obvious,” he muttered.

A rage-filled scream rent the air above them. Something pounded, the sounds echoing up and down the shaft.

“Spike…”

“Working on it!”

They came to another floor. “Off my back,” hissed Spike. Applejack clambered up, over his head, onto the ladder, and Spike shimmied over to the door. Gripping a beam above with one hand, supported on an inch-wide ledge with just his toes, he began wiggling the claws of his free hand into the crack of the doors.

CRUNCH.

The entire shaft shook; Applejack wrapped her legs tightly around the rung as something groaned above. Spike finally got his claws fully into the gap and pulled. His muscles bulged, harshly corded, as the doors inched apart. “Almost… got it…” he grunted.

A ear-splitting screech filled the shaft and sparks illuminated the box of the car above them. Then the elevator plunged downward.

By the time Applejack had recoiled, it was already gone. It raced past her, broken brakes screaming and throwing sparks, rocking the ladder in its wake. That infernal shriek wailed on for an eternal two or three more seconds, cut short only by the elevator smashing into the water below. Her heart pounded and she refused to let go of the ladder. It was only by being on that ladder, with the space it afforded, that she was still alive. If she’d been in the shaft-

Terrified, breathing heavily, Applejack looked at the door.

Spike was gone.

Applejack couldn’t remember climbing down, but suddenly water was lapping at her uniform and the top foot of the elevator was sticking crookedly out of the water next to her. Spike was nowhere to be seen. She looked up; nothing was crawling down after her. Taking a deep breath, she ignored the water that spilled into her suit over the collar and dove beneath the surface.

She heard it almost immediately: a banging, coming from beneath her. She flicked on her suit’s flashlight and a beam of white pierced through the water. Blood curled through that beam like a curtain caught on the wind. She pulled herself down the elevator car.

Spike was pinned at the bottom of the shaft, his legs trapped beneath the car, blood swirling around him. He attempted to push the car away and pull his legs out, but even a dragon could only do so much with no leverage. It was amazing that he was even conscious, let alone that he’d managed to hold his breath. He looked up at Applejack’s flashlight and waved frantically at her. He banged on the car again and Applejack nodded. She pulled herself to the bottom.

The water had absorbed most of the impact, but all that meant was that the car hadn’t smashed through the floor completely. It rested askew, partially off its rails, some of the floor beneath it twisted and bent. There was barely any gap to get her hooves in; Applejack cringed at what Spike’s legs felt like. But she was an earth pony. She was strong. She could do this.

Although her lungs were beginning to ache, Applejack wiggled her front hooves into the tiny, tiny crack. She used that little bit of leverage to orient herself, placing her rear hooves on the “ground”. Then she heaved, lifting with all her earth pony might.

But the car didn’t move. Didn’t even budge, not one millimeter. She redoubled her efforts. Nothing.

Spike frantically tapped her on the shoulder and held up three fingers. He lowered one, another, the last one, then mimed lifting with both his hands. He had to do it again before Applejack got what he was trying to say: 3, 2, 1, lift at the same time. She nodded and worked her hooves in deeper.

Spike banged the elevator car with three claws. Then two. One. And the two of them, each a fine specimen of one of the strongest species on Equus, lifted with all their might.

Yet strength could only get one so far in situations like this. The car refused to move, and a second stretched into an hour as Applejack tried and tried and tried to lift. Suddenly it moved a millimeter and for a second her heart soared; then her vision was obscured by a swirl of ribbony red and she heard bubbles as Spike failed to hold in a scream.

Her lungs were burning as Applejack released the elevator. Spike was rocking back and forth, clutching at his legs, where fresh strands of crimson were flowing out from beneath the car. She tapped him on the shoulder; when his attention was on her, she put her front hooves together and slowly pulled them apart. She pointed at the elevator and did it again.

Lifting the elevator up wasn’t going to do anything. What about levering it away and pushing it to the side?

Spike nodded and Applejack swam back to the surface. She gasped down massive breaths of the sweet, cold air the second she had the chance. Spike was barely three feet under. Just three feet. She could get him out.

But she couldn’t find any good spots around the elevator to brace. Either there wasn’t enough space, or there was too much space, or she wouldn’t be pushing the car properly. She swam back and forth, getting more and more panicked, trying to find a good spot, any spot, to push.

There wasn’t any.

Applejack began hyperventilating. It couldn’t end like this. She could… She could do this. She had to. She took a deep breath and plunged beneath the water. By now, it was very red.

Spike was still tugging at the elevator, but weakly, and his wings were limp. He looked up when Applejack tapped him on the shoulder; his eyes were already terribly bloodshot. Applejack shook her head sadly. Spike clenched his jaw tightly and nodded.

Out of options, they looked at each other through the swirling crimson haze. Applejack’s head was swimming, but she somehow knew that Spike’s was running as fast as it could.

Then he pointed up, out of the water. Applejack shook her head and tried pushing at the elevator car one more time, no matter how fruitlessly; she couldn’t leave him, no matter what. Spike pointed again; Applejack shook her head again. Spike glared at her.

Then he opened his mouth and took a deep breath of water.

Applejack screamed, massive bubbles escaping her. Already Spike was spasming, coughing, reflexively reaching for air he couldn’t get. Applejack almost tried lifting again, but after that scream, she needed air. She pulled herself up the elevator. Every cough, every water-irritated hack, she felt through the metal. Less and less with each foot she went up.

She broke the surface and gasped, taking in huge gulps of air. She almost went back down, but what was the point? She couldn’t move that elevator, not if she had a year. And Spike…

Spike.

And everyone else with her.

Dead.

She was alone.

Somewhere along the line, Applejack’s gasps for air became sobs and tears mingled with the water running down her face. Weakly, almost on autopilot, she grabbed for the top of the elevator and pulled herself onto it. She curled into a ball on that hard metal surface, bits and bobs sticking out here and there, chilled to the bone by the water that filled her suit, and wept in the darkness.

22 - Isolation

The monster hadn’t come down the shaft. Why would it need to? There was nopony alive down here.

Applejack lay on that elevator, curled up, eyes blankly staring at nothing. Water dribbled from her suit, pooling on the roof or trickling back down into the shaft. She’d cried herself out some time ago. The cold water in her uniform had whisked heat away from her body at first, but now it was an unpleasant sort of lukewarm. Her breath came in long, slow draws not unlike a death rattle as her chest moved up and down. Sometimes, she tried to think, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts in line for more than a few seconds at a time. She didn’t move much. Staying still was easier.

When was this all going to end? She was so tired, getting battered down whenever she seemed to be making headway. It’d only been a few hours since she’d woken up in the trash compactor, but her mind felt like she’d been at it for days. She just wanted to roll up into a ball and rest. Right here seemed to be good. If she did her resting right here, she wouldn’t need to move.

But if she stayed right here, she’d be found eventually. Changelings were still prowling the station. So was Lightning Dust. So was that… thing. How long before they broke into the cargo hold? Maybe hours. Maybe minutes. Maybe they’d done it already. Maybe she was the only pony left alive on board the station.

Except Twilight.

The thought jarred Applejack’s mind so hard it made her physically twitch. Twilight was probably still alive. If the changelings knew where she was, they’d’ve killed her already, right? So she had a good chance of staying safe. And she was the one who’d made the plan. She knew how to run it. She could get everything working again.

What would happen if Applejack laid back and let the changelings take over the station, anyway? Would they just stop and sit around, twiddling their tentacles? For all Applejack knew, they might figure out how to fly shuttles and get down to Equus.

Yeah. No way was she going to let that happen. Maybe it was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t care.

All those thoughts were a dozen little adrenaline shots to Applejack’s system, none of them much good on its own, but they all slowly built up. Breathing deeply, she got up. She’d headed up here to work and keep moving around, she was going to keep working and moving around until it was the death of her (har har). Water sloshed inside her uniform; she awkwardly got on her back and held her legs up to let it trickle out. Once she didn’t feel like she was walking around in her own personal skintight bathtub, she got back up. She couldn’t believe she’d felt so determined to do nothing before.

Her hat was floating around the elevator, having been knocked off at some point. She fished it out, plonked it back on her head, and immediately swelled with determination.

Spike had wanted to rescue Twilight. She was going to rescue Twilight.

She looked up the shaft. It stretched into the darkness. Even with the ladder, the top was a long ways away.

Better start climbing.

Applejack didn’t know how long she climbed, but she did it slowly, to make as little sound as possible. Maybe the thing wouldn’t hear her.

She really needed a better name for it than “the thing”. It seemed like some sort of super-changeling. A king? A queen? “Queen” sounded better. It was a queen, then.

Maybe the queen wouldn’t hear her. But, as Applejack climbed, another problem reared its ugly head: she was still in an elevator shaft. There were only so many ways to get out, most of them very visible doors. Not to mention the changelings in the stairwell. And, of course, the queen had already shown herself to be quite intelligent. Anything Applejack could think of, the queen had probably thought of it, countered it, and countered any possible counters. Although… she could only be in so many places. She was last in Water Treatment. How many ways out from there were there? Unfortunately, Applejack didn’t know.

She craned her head up. Just how far up did this shaft go? Very far, apparently; she couldn’t see the top. Good enough. If she climbed far enough, she might be able to get above Water Treatment, bypassing the changeling-infested stairwell entirely. And from there? Well, “figuring it out when she got to it” had worked well so far, and Applejack wasn’t about to fix what wasn’t broke. She’d see where she got out.

Applejack climbed and climbed and climbed, hearing nothing, alert for everything. If she’d been anything other than an earth pony, it would’ve been incredibly tiring, but she barely noticed any aches or pains. She just kept climbing through the dark. She had a job to do, and by gum, she was going to-

-skrskrskr-

She froze, ears up.

-skrskrskr-

It was a chittering sound, not very loud, but just barely loud enough to be close. Muffled; it was coming through something, not in the shaft. Clinging to the ladder, Applejack slowly pivoted around, scanning the walls of the shaft. She was a few feet above the level of a door. She wiggled her ears to get a better sounding. It did certainly seem like the changelings were right on the other side of the door.

While Applejack hadn’t been planning on going through the door, it did make her think: changelings were probably swarming up and down the outside of the shaft in the station proper. They could be waiting for her to come out. It might’ve only been luck that she heard them now at all. So: it would probably be best if she found a way out of the shaft that didn’t involve doors. Somehow.

She nearly groaned, but that would’ve been made louder by the shaft. She settled for swinging back to a normal ladder-climbing position, resting her head against a rung, and sighing. At least, that was the plan, but she only got a third of the way through; she was mid-swing when she saw what was right in front of her. She leaned to one side to get a better look.

A vent cover. She could feel a slight wind coming out now that she was paying attention. It didn’t look particularly heavy-duty, either; maybe she could bash it in with something. It was big too, tall and wide enough to walk in if she kept her head low…

What the hay. It was a doorless way out. Granted, she didn’t have the slightest idea of where she’d be going, but there it was. Actually, how could the queen predict her plan if she didn’t have a plan to predict? Genius! (Ha ha, yeah, right.)

Applejack brought her hoof back, then swung it forward with all the might she could manage without falling off the ladder. The cover dented. A few more solid thwacks caved it in completely. She pushed it aside and clambered into the ventilation system.

Almost immediately, she began coughing. Dust had gathered in the vents and not been blown back out. Not until a certain pony had decided to go traipsing around inside. But the ducts held her weight and she wasn’t too loud. It was cramped, but she could still walk. Barely. Thank Celestia for the huge amounts of air needed by space stations. It was dark, but her flashlight solved that problem quickly.

She crouch-walked in a little ways and turned the first corner she found. After a brief pause to listen for anyone else (nothing but her own echoes), she kept walking. Where was she going? Didn’t really matter at the moment, but she probably needed to figure it out soon. So… some ways in, then up several levels. She didn’t know where Life Support was in relation to Neurothaumatics, but “down” seemed good.

She shuffled along, wincing at the sounds of the vent flexing beneath her. Soon, she came to another junction. This one actually had a vertical component, a narrow shaft reaching both up and down out of sight. There were actually rungs in the walls. Meant for maintenance crews, perhaps? She wasn’t about to worry too much about that. Up she went.

One set of horizontal cross shafts. Two. Three. Applejack got off the ladder at four, took a moment to re-orient herself relative to the elevator shaft, and set off away from it. She didn’t have the slightest idea of where she was, but she’d find out soon enough. Hopefully. She almost felt reassured as she turned a corner and ran smack dab into a changeling drone.

Both quadrupeds were walking when they hit each other. They instinctively raised their heads, only to bang hard into the vent top immediately. Their legs collapsed beneath them and they fell to the ground. Stars swam in Applejack’s vision and the world tilted as she tried to focus on the changeling. She couldn’t marshal her thoughts well enough to react to anything.

The drone blinked twice, shook its head, and narrowed its eyes at Applejack. As it got to its feet, it bared its teeth and hissed. Applejack reflexively shoved her hoof forward in an awkward punch. Thanks to the cramped space, it was a light hit, barely doing any damage. Then she realized it was the leg her gun was attached to.

At point-blank range, the buckshot round nearly annihilated the changeling’s body, reducing it to not much more than sludge in an instant. The contained blast was so loud Applejack heard it for only a fraction of an instant before temporary deafness kicked in. The slight wind in the vents blew the smoke back in her face and, eyes watering, she sneezed at the smell of burning powder. Then she retched at the stench of mulched changeling. Well, that was certainly a way to get her brain focused again. Ugh, she needed to get out and away from-

Hold up. What were the odds that she’d run into a changeling in the vents? There had to be miles of ductwork in the station, and one found her right here? Okay, maybe she was making a lot of noise and it had heard her from the outside. (Hay, her making a lot of noise was probably the reason she hadn’t heard it in the first place.) But if it had heard her from the outside, it had to have come in somewhere. And if it’d come in, maybe that entry point was near. So maybe…

Grimacing, Applejack stepped through the remains of the changeling’s body. Just because she was wearing a suit didn’t make it any less squicky. She managed to shake the thought off when she spotted a junction ahead. Three options: forward, left, right. Better than one, she supposed. Once she reached the junction, she took a look down each possible way. Right: nothing. Forward: nothing. Left: a little patch of light shining down from above. Left it was.

When Applejack reached the patch, it revealed itself to be a narrow opening into a bathroom, the cover ripped away by the changeling. Applejack squinted through the opening, but she couldn’t see any changelings in the immediate area. After taking a psych-up breath, she squeezed on through and wiggled onto the damp tiling. As bad as it smelled, it was still better than a vent full of gunshotted changeling. She took a few deep breaths of relatively clean-

There were two identical rolls of toilet paper in front of her. Applejack whipped up her gun and- Click. No ammo. She hastily patted her suit down, looking for- Wrench. She swung it at the less likely roll.

It crumpled like any toilet paper roll would. The other roll chittered and suddenly bounced away. Applejack pounced, trapping it beneath her, and pounded it into the floor, over and over. At some point, it stopped being a screaming, skooshy roll and started being a silent, skooshy corpse.

Right. Don’t get cocky. The little shapeshifting buggers were still around. She needed to find that neuromod and Twilight, fast. She trotted to the door, poked her head into the hall, and-

No.

No way.

She recognized this hallway. It had the right bloodstain. She was already in Neurothaumatics proper. Well, probably. She looked to her left and- Yes, there was the checkpoint to the hardware labs. Huh. She wouldn’t have expected ascending from Life Support to get her this close. But that route was chosen for a reason, so-

No, bad time for musing. She reloaded her shotgun (she only had a single spare shell left when she was done) and set out for the neuromod removal chamber.

Which was less than a changeling-free minute away. Soon, she was standing in front of the doors, right where Thunderlane had died. His body still lay there, but it didn’t cause Applejack’s bile to rise like it had before. For better or worse. The door was still unlocked from when Trixie had hacked into it. Small favors. She entered.

For a moment, Applejack was terrified that she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for, that the neuromod had been spirited away since the last time she was in the chamber. But, no, there it was, sitting on the table, right where she’d left it. She picked it up, turned it over. It didn’t look particularly special. It glinted at her in the light, just like any other neuromod would.

But somewhere in this one, somehow, was one half of the key to the ponies’ salvation. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could still get out of this alive. She just needed the other half.

“I’m comin’ for ya, Twilight,” she said, staring at the neuromod.

On a whim, she bit it. When the metal didn’t squeal in pain, she assumed it wasn’t a disguised changeling and pocketed it.

Okay. One down. One to go.

She could’ve gone back to the storage bays and dropped the neuromod off, but the quickest way was back the way she’d come, which… wasn’t looking too hot. At that point, detouring to Habitation was barely anything.

The habitation decks were accessible through the arboretum. Probably other ways, too, but that was the way Applejack knew. It gave the crew something nice to look at before they left for their jobs. The main elevator up to the arboretum from the lobby was wrecked, but there were emergency stairs.

Applejack reached the lobby quickly. Not much change from when she’d been here before. It was strange, how peaceful it all looked. So grand and majestic and utterly at odds with everything that had happened. It was… uncanny, a façade over something terrible. Something she could fix, though. Maybe.

The emergency stairs were in a back corner of the lobby. So many stairs. Applejack went up and up and up until her head was spinning and she was barely even halfway there. Thankfully, the only two changeling drones she encountered on the way up went down quickly with a combination of shotgun shells and a wrench to the face. They were barely even hiding; they came stampeding down the stairs so loudly Applejack could’ve heard them from a mile away.

The arboretum hadn’t changed much by the time she reached its floor. She could still see the remains of her fight with the telepath there. It made her think: maybe the changelings were avoiding her. She’d taken down one of the biggest, baddest among them; were they scared of her? She liked the feeling, but she couldn’t rely on it.

The entrance to the habitation decks was right at the top of the arboretum, not far from the greenhouse. Applejack hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but now she flinched at the debris — natural and artificial alike — around the door. Equipment, clothes, books, even a lamp or two, all trampled. There’d been a stampede to get out when the changelings invaded. Swallowing, Applejack stepped up to the door and tapped the button to open it.

The smell hit her first.

Applejack cringed and put a hoof to her nose, but the uniquely metallic stench of blood still drifted through the air. It wasn’t as overpowering as she had feared and still more so than she had hoped. Most of the crew had probably been asleep and only the lucky ones had gotten away.

When the lights flickered on every few seconds, Applejack got a glimpse of the sort of devastation she hadn’t seen in a while. Windows had been broken. Doors, forced open. Panels had been ripped from the floor and ceiling, letting wiring, vents, and lamps dangle freely. If it hadn’t been nailed down, it’d been thrown about, and even if it had been nailed down, it might’ve been ripped up and thrown about anyway. Right near Applejack’s suit was a broken flower pot, the dirt and ceramic crunching beneath her hooves.

And, of course, the blood and bodies. Blood smears coated the walls and floor. Applejack could only imagine what had made some of them: swirls, straight scrapes, pools… And right within range, she could already spot three bodies. Unlike some of the others, which had been oddly woundless, these had been… torn. Applejack shuddered and turned her eyes upward.

But Twilight was somewhere in here. She had to move. So move she did.

The top of the two habitation decks was for high-to-midlevel employees and was divided into a series of rooms. There were three or four real beds to a room, along with a small recreation area in case privacy, peace, and quiet were urgently needed when playing foosball. Each room connected to its adjacent rooms with doors, and a slim hallway, barely wide enough for three ponies to walk side-by-side, ran down the middle between two sets of rooms. Windows let the inhabitants see into the hallway (assuming they weren’t blackened for privacy).

It was down this hallway that Applejack set off. Somehow, she got the feeling that Twilight was at the very end, in the sleeping pods of the typical employees like herself. It was where you’d end up if you kept running. Not the most logical of reasons, but then, tonight hadn’t been very logical. Applejack walked, doing her best to ignore the destroyed paneling, the bodies, the skittering in the ceiling above, the power outages, the-

Applejack froze and snapped her ears upward, her breath frozen.

Nothing. Definitely not the skittering she’d heard before.

Or had she been imagining it?

No. Even if she had, she couldn’t take that chance. She waited.

And waited.

And waiSkrt.

It was literally right above her. Applejack quickly took a step back as she whipped her gun up and fired. A shrieking changeling, leaking ichor, plummeted down when the ceiling panel it’d been hiding above shattered. It hit the floor hard, writhing-

Stomp. It stopped writhing.

Applejack swallowed and popped the last shell into the gun. She hadn’t expected this to be easy, had she? She continued on.

She’d walked down this hallway practically daily, but in this new environment of flickering lamps and dead ponies, it seemed to stretch on for ages. Still, finally, Applejack came to a small, short stairwell. She shone her light down. Nothing. She inched down like she was walking on eggshells.

The lower habitation deck was technically for low-level employees, but was arguably more high-class. The spaces were bigger, the diversions more varied, and the bathrooms were down here, anyway. Even the hallways were wider, to accommodate more ponies. The lighting was dim, but that didn’t matter; it was a place Applejack knew practically based on muscle memory.

Except, at some point, an entire pool table had been thrown through the wall of the recreation room, semi-blocking the hallway off. Applejack easily climbed over it, but she might need to detour through the rec center on the way back. No telling what state Twilight was in.

She shuddered and did her best to ignore that little fact.

Right at the end, it opened up into the main “sleeping quarters”. Over half a dozen rows of personal sleeping pods, not much more or less than tightly-packed bunk beds, lay before her. They were more comfortable than they looked, but they were obviously focused on saving space. The lights were just as bad as before, but, again, Applejack knew it well enough that that didn’t matter. She just had one more thing to do. Twilight was probably in here, somewhere. Where would that somewhere be? In one of the pods, most likely. Which pod?

…Huh. Hmm.

There were a lot of pods.

Her heart sinking, Applejack stared at the aisles. What was she thinking? There was no way she could search all-

Yes there was. Slowly, deliberately, painstakingly, one at a time. It’d take a while, but what was she expecting? That just left the question of which pod to start with. …Her own. Why not?

Pods were labelled alphabetically and Applejack, as an “A”, had the bad luck to be near the back of the room. At least it wasn’t far. She trotted down the aisles, her ears twitching back and forth for any possible sounds of changelings. Nothing.

Why was that so ominous?

Applejack reached her pod quickly. She crouched down to get a better look at it — it was one level above the floor — and inhaled sharply. Something reeked of blood and there were smears on the lower ledge. She swallowed and slowly reached for the handle, not sure she’d like what she’d find. Her hoof was shaking when she finally touched the handle. Gritting her teeth, Applejack yanked the door open like she was pulling off a bandage.

Twilight was lying inside, staring up at the ceiling. Her uniform was torn and she was covered in blood, but she was there. And she was breathing.

“Twi?” Applejack asked, giving her a light jiggle.

Twilight’s eyes fluttered and she turned her head over. Her eyes were glazed, but she managed to focus them enough. “Applejack?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, but steady.

Applejack grinned. Twilight was going to be okay. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t… think so…” Twilight rolled over and weakly tugged herself out of the pod. A large gash lined with dried blood wound its way across one side of her trunk, narrowly missing her wing. She only managed to stand up for a moment before her legs collapsed.

“Well, I’ll get you outta here anyway. C’mon.” Applejack carefully maneuvered Twilight to drape across her back. When Twilight didn’t scream in pain, Applejack assumed it was good enough. She set off back for the hallway, ready to leave these dark chambers and get back to the cargo bay.

Bang.

Applejack froze. It wasn’t a gunshot, more like a hard impact in-

A vent cover smashed out of the ceiling in the hallway, hitting the floor so hard it twisted. Something seemed to drip from the vent. Something that looked like a head.

Biting back a curse, Applejack shuffled sideways into an aisle, flipped her flashlight off, and dropped onto her stomach. How many shots did her gun have left? Just four. And she didn’t even know what she was up against. She peeped around the corner to get a better look.

It was indeed a head; she could see the eyes as it slowly looked around. Its pupils were glowing red in the dark, like a cat’s, and its irises were glowing green, not like a cat’s. Then that head turned a full 180 degrees to be oriented right-side-up and the rest of the body followed it out.

The queen didn’t crawl out of the vent so much as flow, boneless liquid held in a vaguely equine shape. Its legs stretched a little as they came down the floor, like rubber. Its skin — if you could call it that, it looked more like oily chitin than skin — shone a dark, dark green when what little light there was reflected off it. As the rest of the body followed, Applejack saw membranous wings, a carapace of rubbery black bone. Its tail hit the floor and a million tiny somethings clicked, like dozens of pins and needles being dragged across metal. The tail was still equine, but whenever the light touched it, it sparkled with the danger of a field of glass shards.

Then the monster spoke.

“I know you’re in here, little pony,” it lilted, spitting out the last word like a slur. It took a too-fluid step forward; the sound of its footfall was oddly flat. “Come out, or I will find you.”

Applejack twitched back into her aisle and hugged Twilight’s body close. She was shaking all over, terror running throughout her body. It was all she could do to not cry in fear.

She was alone in the dark. Her only weapons were a wrench and a shotgun with a dwindling ammo supply. A monster was stalking her. And she needed to drag Princess Twilight out before they were both found and killed.

Fuck.

23 - Escape From the Habitation Decks

“The longer this takes,” the queen said sweetly, “the angrier we get. And the angrier we get, the worse it will be for you!”

Move. Move. Move.

But Applejack couldn’t move. Her legs had locked up in fear. It was all she could do to breathe. She’d seen that monster kill three ponies and Spike. What chance did she have? She hugged Twilight’s body close, biting her lip so tightly she tasted blood, shaking. She couldn’t do this. She might as well just walk out now, waving. It’d be easier.

The queen’s footfalls were oddly heavy for its size. It spoke again: “Did you know, this entire facility is all about moving knowledge from one of you primitive aliens to another?” The thing laughed. “As it turns out, we can receive that knowledge as easily as you! Everything your so-called neuromods were developed for — engineering, combat, language, computers, even singing and dancing, ugh! — we know all of it! Every single bit of information!” Another laugh. “Your world — Equus — will be such a joy to assimilate!”

Equus.

The earth.

The ground.

Her farm.

Something clicked in Applejack. It was a strange feeling: the taunt was supposed to encompass her whole planet, and yet she focused on one single thing. But that one single thing was hers. Her most treasured thing in the world, the thing she loved the most. Before coming to Golden Oaks, it’d been her whole life. She’d always thought she’d die on it.

Dying for it was acceptable, she supposed. If she had to die.

Taking as deep a breath as she dared, Applejack forced herself to poke her head around the corner for about a second. By some stroke of luck, the queen was still two aisles away, looking down one of them.

“Stay quiet,” Applejack muttered to Twilight. Could Twilight hear her? Was her voice too low? Was Twilight even conscious? Whatever. She hoisted Twilight across her trunk and crept down her aisle towards the far wall. There was another cross aisle on the end there that she could use to hopefully bypass the queen. What little light there was was still just enough for her to avoid rubble.

Thud thud thud. Footsteps resounded through the room as the queen moved to another aisle. Its breathing was low, a borderline hiss.

Applejack reached the cross aisle. She ducked around the corner, but rather than continue on, she waited, plastering herself and Twilight on the column between pod aisles. Even if the queen looked down, she wouldn’t be able to spot them.

“Oh, don’t make this any harder than it has to be!” laughed the queen. But something had changed in its voice. It was… angrier. “We both know this is only going to end one way!”

Maybe not.

More footfalls. The queen was coming down the aisle on Applejack’s… left. She darted into the aisle on her right and ran as fast as she dared. She heard the footsteps get louder and louder, then softer and softer as she passed the queen. A grin briefly made its way onto her face as she slowed to a walk at the end of the aisle, turned, and made for the exit right in front of her.

A low rumble echoed through the room. No, a growl. Holding her breath, Applejack picked up the pace-

-and quickly came to a halt. The pool table she’d climbed over was still blocking the hall. She couldn’t get over it without making too much sound and alerting the queen. She spun around and darted into the rec room. They could get around the debris in there.

The jostling made Twilight stir. She batted at Applejack’s side and her eyelids fluttered. “Applejack?” she mumbled. “Wha’s goin’ on?”

“Quiet!” hissed Applejack. She put a hoof to Twilight’s mouth. “It’ll hear-”

One of Applejack’s hooves caught on a piece of debris in the dark. Already unbalanced by being on three hooves, she stumbled and toppled over. She hit the ground loudly.

An instant of silence, then the queen’s screech keened from the sleeping pods. Then footfalls. Getting louder.

Biting back a curse, Applejack spared a second to raise her head and look around. There was a table not far in front of her, low to the ground. She scrambled forward, dragging herself and Twilight under it just as the footfalls reached the rec room.

Everywhere was dark, yet the queen somehow seemed darker still, a silhouette of pure black against the sooty gray of everything else. Its eyes glinted out from that black as its gaze darted around the room. In the thin space between the table, Applejack felt very trapped; she had to fight to keep from bolting. “Don’t play with us,” the queen snarled as it took a step forward. “We heard you in here.” It began doing a circuit of the room.

By luck, that circuit was not in the direction of the table. But the queen’s search was methodical and it looked beneath every table, chair, piece of furniture, and bit of debris it passed. If Applejack and Twilight didn’t move, they’d be found out sooner or later. Probably sooner.

Holding her breath, Applejack watched the queen through the gloom. It moved slowly; its gaze roved about the room, examining every inch. When it came to something that had even a chance of hiding a single pony, it rooted through quickly to dig through every corner.

So maybe…

Applejack looked at the area around her. There was a foosball table a few yards away, big and thick, but with no cover between there and here. But maybe it was close enough.

She squinted at the queen. Looking, looking, looking. It came to a halt near the remains of the entertainment center. It crouched down and lifted up what was probably the TV-

-and Applejack seized her chance. Hooking her hooves beneath Twilight’s armpits, she hastily dragged her across the floor towards the foosball table. It was barely ten feet, but it felt like a mile. All the queen had to do was turn around and they’d be in plain view. But Applejack dragged and pulled and dragged and pulled as she clenched her teeth and her heart pounded and she held her breath and she knew that she was going to-

She collapsed behind the table. A few quick breaths, and she gave another yank to Twilight, just to pull in anything sticking out. She caught the distinctive swinging of cabinet doors and a low growl; the queen hadn’t found them in the cabinets. Then: thud, thud, thud as it moved on, blissfully unaware of Applejack’s movement.

It wasn’t much. But it was something. Applejack grinned to herself.

Okay. Where was the next hiding place? Applejack poked her head around the corner. A card table, right between two couches. Perfect. Where was the queen? She couldn’t see it from her. She craned her neck over the table. The silhouetted queen was on the opposite side of the room, looking at the remains of several armchairs. Applejack knew it wouldn’t be there for long, though. It was only a matter of time before-

The queen looked right in her direction.

Applejack froze, bit her lip, and prayed. It was dark and they were far away. Maybe, if she didn’t move, it wouldn’t see her.

No movement from the queen.

No movement from Applejack.

The queen’s eyes flickered as it blinked.

Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me…

The queen turned away, continuing its route. Applejack ducked back down below the table. A few deep breaths to psych herself up. She wrapped her front legs around Twilight and peeked out again. The queen was occupied; Applejack did the closest thing to a dash she could muster and pulled herself and Twilight beneath the card table. The couches shielded them from the sides.

Twilight twitched and exhaled. Applejack nearly jumped out of her skin; she’d forgotten Twilight was still awake. She awkwardly patted Twilight on the neck. “You’re doin’ fine,” she whispered in Twilight’s ear, “but y’need to stay quiet. Got it?”

Even in the dark, it was easy to see that Twilight was bleary as she looked at Applejack. But she nodded and put a hoof to her lips.

Crammed beneath the table, Applejack awkwardly kicked against the floor to pull them along, the scrape of their uniforms on the floor sounding like a buzzsaw to her, but the queen’s footfalls stayed distant. She wasn’t sure whether the trip took an eternal second or an instant hour, but both sooner and later than she expected, she’d reached the far end of the table. She squinted out. Nothing between the table and door. A longer run than the others. Did that matter? Maybe.

Okay. Deep breaths. Applejack looked around the corner of the couch. The queen was approaching where she’d first hidden. Hard to say how long it’d take to look through that area, but it was a risk Applejack would have to take. It crouched down-

Applejack bolted and scrambled for the door, somehow managing to keep a grip on Twilight while still staying quiet. They were so close, getting closer, ducked through-

A roar keened through the habitation decks, raspy and shrieky and beyond angry. “WE SEE YOU!” screeched the queen. And it started running.

Applejack gave up on being quiet and threw herself into a gallop. She didn’t know how fast the queen could move and she wanted to delay finding out as much as possible. As she panted from the exertion, she squinted in the dark, trying to-

The stairs came far more quickly than she remembered them. Before she could raise her hooves enough, she’d gotten one caught on the bottom step and tripped. She slammed her forehead into the edge of a step and Twilight slid off her back. In a panic, she rolled onto her back and raised her gun to fire blindly outward.

The queen was right behind her, already dropping into a crouch to pounce. The wild shot wasn’t quite a miss, with several pellets ripping through a shoulder even as the muzzle flash near-blinded it. Screaming, the queen quickly backpedalled. Applejack fired off another shot, but the queen had already ducked back into the rec room.

Panting, breathing in the gunsmoke, Applejack could only sit there and try to blink away the muzzle flash’s afterimage. Shock; that had been too close. She was brought back to reality when something trickled onto her nose. Blood. She’d split her forehead open when she tripped. And how many shots left? Her head swam for a moment before she remembered: two.

A series of dull thuds came from the rec room. Then those thuds became hollow — and above her. The queen was in the vents.

A quick checkup confirmed that Twilight was still breathing, although Applejack wasn’t sure whether she was also conscious. She pulled Twilight across her trunk and awkwardly climbed the stairs. The hoof she’d tripped on throbbed, giving her a slight limp.

A landing where the steps made a U-turn, then kept climbing. Applejack ducked around it, her gun up. Nothing in the darkness. Nothing she could see, anyway. Comforting.

The vents clanged above her. She whipped her gun up, but stopped herself from shooting at the last second. Might just be echoes. Right. Sure. Yeah. She adjusted Twilight’s position on her back and kept moving.

They reached the top of the stairs without incident. Back on the high-class deck, with its rows of private rooms. Still dark. From there, it was a straight shot out of the habitation decks. Just a single hallway, and they’d be out. Applejack wasn’t taken in for a moment; she knew something would go wrong the second she put a hoof in the hallway. She grit her teeth and half-ran for it.

The vents clanged, and Applejack didn’t even wait to see what would happen before ducking into one of the rooms. She just wanted cover. After a second’s thought, she tapped the lock closed. Couldn’t be too careful. She dropped down below the hallway window and snuggled up against the wall with Twilight. Without movement to distract her, she slowly became more aware of the pain in her hoof.

The queen hit the ground outside hard. Its voice was muffled by the walls, but Applejack could hear it well enough. “We are growing impatient, you little pest,” it snarled. It had gained a few high registers and didn’t sound like a pony’s voice anymore; it was too animalistic. “We give you one last chance: come on out, and we will go easy on you.”

Applejack suspected the queen’s “going easy” was still rather intense. Even if it wasn’t, there was no way she was speaking up.

“…Very well,” snarled the queen. “We know you’re still in here. Let’s see how long you can hide.” More thick, thudding footsteps, then a muffled hiss. It was one of the bedroom doors.

Applejack tried swallowing, but her throat was dry. (Hiss, went another door.) Blood trickled down her muzzle. (Hiss.) She couldn’t look out into the hallway without opening her own door and alerting the queen. (Hiss.) So all she could do was wait. (Hiss.) At least the lock would give her a little warning. (Hiss.)

“Stay quiet, Twi,” she whispered. “We’re gettin’ through this.” (Hiss.)

Twilight didn’t say anything, but she did nod weakly. (Hiss.)

Applejack’s ears twitched as she heard the queen right outside the room. Something hit the wall and she heard a negative sort of beep. A brief pause, then suddenly the window exploded inward. Shards of glass shattered against the opposite wall and small slivers rained down on Applejack and Twilight. Shielding her face with a leg, Applejack looked up. The queen looked back down at her, showing glinting fangs in a grin. “Hel-”

By now, Applejack’s gun reflexes were getting pretty good. BANG.

This time, the shot tore a chunk from the queen’s neck. It withdrew, screeching. Applejack let go of Twilight, rolled away from the window, and stood up to aim her gun out into the hallway. The queen was already gone, probably vanished into the vents again.

She unlocked the door and dragged Twilight out into the hall. Panting, she looked both ways. The lights were flickering, but there was no sign of the queen.

Clang clang clang.

On the floor. There were plenty of signs above.

The scuttling impacts in the vents above ran back and forth, back and forth, like the queen was darting to and fro to confuse Applejack. Well, it was working. As she began inching down the hall, her bad hoof twingeing with every step, Applejack snapped her gaze and her gunbarrel back and forth, trying to catch where the queen would drop down. But she didn’t hear any change, just the constant, rhythmic banging.

The door to the arboretum was forty feet away. Forty feet of debris and flickering lights. Applejack wanted to run, but that was just what the queen wanted, for her to panic and put her gun down. Her knees were knocking together and her heart was racing, but she forced herself to keep standing and walking and blinking blood out of her eyes. She could do this. She had to. And so she kept walking.

Thirty-five feet. Clang clang clang. The queen’s running was thudding into Applejack’s head, forcing other thoughts out. Whenever an idea was forming, a metallic impact would jar it to pieces. Good thing you didn’t have to think much to walk. And so she kept walking.

Thirty feet. Applejack kept alternating which way she was looking down the hall and never spent more than a few seconds in either direction. The constant, rapid spins did a number on her neck while Twilight’s shifting weight did several numbers on her back, but she ignored them. She wasn’t going to be taken by surprise. Not this close to the end. It was barely anything, really. And so she kept walking.

Twenty-five feet. Still the clanging from above continued. The queen hadn’t come down yet. Could it see from the vents? Did it know precisely where Applejack was? Or did it only know that she was in the hallway below? Applejack couldn’t see any holes in the ceiling, but with all the darkness, that didn’t mean much. Still, if there weren’t, that meant the queen wouldn’t know where she was as long as she kept walking. And so she kept walking.

Twenty feet. The clanging changed tone slightly. More distinct. Like-

There was a vent cover right above her.

The door next to her was closed, so Applejack reflexively and awkwardly threw herself through the window next to it. She did her best to shield Twilight as flying glass nicked at her face and tore at her suit and gained three or four new cuts across her face as a reward. Still, far preferable to being below the queen as it dropped from the ceiling. For drop it did, with a fractured, slavering hiss that melded with the sound of shattering glass, landing with the impact of a boulder.

Applejack rolled onto her back next to Twilight and pointed the gun at the window. She couldn’t see the queen in the dark. Gone again? Just crouching out of sight? It was impossible to say. For all its size, that thing could move.

Her leg was shaky and the gunbarrel jumped around. The adrenaline rushing through her veins didn’t care for fine-motor control. She knew she needed to run, but there was only one way out. The queen was probably waiting for them right outside. Or worse, she was-

Hiss. The door slid open.

Applejack instinctively jerked her gun over and fired out the door. At nothing. The queen wasn’t there and Applejack had wasted a shot.

The thing’s head slid into view, then almost immediately jerked back. But in her panic, Applejack tried to fire at it.

Click.

Empty chamber.

That fact had barely registered in Applejack’s mind when the queen burst out laughing. “Oh, that is rich!” It sidled into the doorframe, ducking to fit inside. In the cramped space, it felt even larger than before. Its mouth was technically in the position of a smile, but somehow, all Applejack could think of was that it was showing its teeth. “Is your one weapon out of ammo, hmm? Well…” A deep chuckle. “We have no such problems.”

Applejack didn’t say anything. She was too tired. She just panted and stared at the queen. Up close, it looked less like a pony and more like clay molded into an equine shape by someone who’d only had ponies described to them. Its legs and body were too thin, its neck too long, its head too angular, other things Applejack didn’t have words for. It was… wrong. That was the best way to put it. Wrong.

Not that that mattered anymore.

“So!” the queen said. “We have one question for you.” Its smile vanished. “What would you like your last words to be?” it snarled. “Because you won’t be able to speak once we start on you.”

Applejack still didn’t say anything, but Twilight’s eye cracked open. It focused on the queen. “Oh,” she mumbled. “It’s you.”

And suddenly the queen was thrown across the hallway by a magic blast so potent Applejack was sure she smelled lightning. It slammed into the opposite wall so hard it crumpled like goo, completely bonelessly.

“Keep running,” Twilight mumbled. “She won’t stay down long.” She wiggled against Applejack. Eventually, Applejack realized Twilight was trying to push her. She got to her hooves, draped Twilight over her trunk, shuffled into the hall, and staggered out of the habitation decks and into the arboretum.

The air smelled wonderful and the light was bright, but Applejack didn’t bother enjoying them. She didn’t want to stop for anything. As they stumbled down the hill, she asked, “How’re you doin’?”

“Been…” Twilight coughed. No blood. “Been better,” she wheezed. “Been worse, too.”

“How-? Never mind. Long story, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll-” Several deep, hacking coughs. “I’ll live.”

Privately, although she didn’t want to, Applejack doubted that. But there was no point in worrying about that now.

The GUTS wasn’t far. Applejack managed to carry them both across the entire arboretum without anything else jumping out. Whatever Twilight had done to the queen, it was effective; no crazed monsters burst from the habitation decks to chase them down. Applejack didn’t let her guard down, though. She didn’t have a gun to fall back on anymore.

Yet they made it to the GUTS bay without a hassle. Applejack felt goosebumps. Something was wrong here. Wouldn’t the queen have other changelings around her?

Before entering the bay, Applejack opened the door and looked around. Same deal as before: covered in changeling ichor, boxes pushed aside. Were they in the same places? Maybe. Maybe not. Any suspicious duplicated objects? No. A second look, still no. Seemed safe. She took a step inside. Nothing. Another. Still nothing. Two more. Nope. Anoth-

She felt the tripwire through her uniform half a second before there was a hum and the world turned over.

The sensation wasn’t like anything Applejack had felt before, a strange emptiness, like she was missing something she never knew she had. There was a space in her awareness where something needed to be, she knew, but she didn’t know what that could be. She was unmoored, her head swimming with something that wasn’t quite nausea. At her side, Twilight moaned and coughed. Gasping for air to clear her head, Applejack collapsed onto the damp floor. Her exhaustion — physical and emotional both — had finally gained a foothold. She could get up in a moment, but for now, she had to-

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”

A voice pierced through Applejack’s tinnitus. Why was that voice familiar? Someone came walking out from behind a box, crouched down, and squinted at Applejack. “How in Celestia’s pus-stained mane are you still alive?” asked a befuddled Lightning Dust.

24 - Treachery

Lightning wrenched Applejack’s head up so they were looking each other in the eyes. Applejack squirmed, but she was too tired to pull herself from Lightning’s grasp.

“You went into space,” said Lightning incredulously. “I put the airlocks on lockdown. All of them. But you got back in anyway. And you… You just escaped from the queen. How?”

“Long story,” mumbled Applejack. She rubbed her head. “What jus’…”

“Nullwave grenades!” Lightning said a bit too cheerfully. She waved a strange red spherical device beneath Applejack’s nose. “This place’s greatest achievement — even with neuromods. Briefly kill off magic in an area. Changelings don’t like it, but that just means more for me. And if you’re not expecting it, it really packs a punch! So how’s that earth pony stamina working out for you now?” She chuckled.

And just like that, Applejack knew what the emptiness in her was: no magic. It wasn’t that she was suddenly tired; her magic had just stopped warding that tiredness off. No wonder she couldn’t tell what it was; she’d never imagined a life without magic. Something had been cut off from her and she was flailing around like it was a lost limb, trying to find what had been severed.

“I would’ve tried ’em earlier,” Lightning said, “but the changelings, ah… They really don’t like them. The queen nearly bit my head off when I first showed them to her. Literally. I don’t mind.” Then her grin twisted into a snarl and she put a hoof on Applejack’s neck, pushing down just enough that it was hard for Applejack to breathe. “Why couldn’t you have stayed down, you farmer?” Lightning growled. “It would’ve made things so much simpler for us!”

“I’d be dead,” wheezed Applejack.

“Yeah! Simpler! Just like this whole thing was supposed to be simple, but that stupid queen just had to draw it out. Couldn’t even kill a bunch of eggheads while they were sleeping.” Lighting snorted and shoved Applejack away. “Why did I even bother…”

That phrase pierced through Applejack’s haze of weariness. Blueblood, she got. Treated like dirt his whole life, never given a chance to rise above it. And he still realized that he’d messed up. So what had happened with Lightning? “Why did y’bother?”

“Oh, like you’d know,” spat Lightning. “The Guard’s a noble position, you know. I protect lesser ponies and stand for Equestria. I shouldn’t be held back by anything! But there’s so much red tape, and you ignore it a few times, dump a little style into your job, suddenly you’re stuck babysitting some stupid Canterlotian fop.”

Right. Thunderlane had mentioned something like that a week ago. (A mere week?) Yet that was all it took to release the changelings? And she was still on their side? “Lightnin’,” Applejack gasped. Maybe she could reach her. “Lightnin’, listen. It ain’t worth it, it’s just a little-”

But Lightning just rolled her eyes. “Pfft. To be honest, I really don’t care anymore. If no one’s going to appreciate me, they can all rot. The changelings here, the queen? They get it. They know I have something to offer.”

“S-somethin’ t’offer?” Applejack sputtered. “Land sake, Lightnin’, d’you really think they’ll let you-”

“I told them everything!” Lightning roared. “I set them free!” She kicked Applejack in the ribs, over and over; Applejack screamed and curled up in agony. “If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be sitting in that cell! Can’t you see that, you stupid idiot? I am the pony responsible for giving them what they want! They’ll give me whatever I want! I-”

As Lightning kept ranting, her kicks stopped. Her legs pulled close to her body, Applejack stared at nothing, breathing deeply, trying to ignore the pain lancing through her trunk. Nothing Lightning was saying was making sense. Her reasoning for her actions was off, insane. At first, Applejack’s rational part chalked it up to her not being able to think straight.

But as the pain kept dwindling, Lightning kept ranting, and Applejack was able to think more, Lightning still made no sense. In fact, she started making less sense. She really thought this… swarm would reward her for this one action?

Then it hit Applejack: Lightning was just that stupid, just that egocentric, just that petty.

Equestria might die because one mare didn’t like being disciplined.

Suddenly, Lightning’s ranting stopped. Smirking, she leered down at Applejack, curled up and panting on the ground. “But, y’know, that all comes later. I’ve got some things I want that I can get now.” She raised a hoof over Applejack’s head.

Lightning was correct in the way the nullwave grenade worked. She was correct in assuming it had disrupted Applejack’s magic. She was correct in claiming Applejack was weaker than she usually was. She was correct that Applejack was exhausted. There was, however, one problem with her overall assessment.

Indeed, the bulk of an earth pony’s strength came from magic. With no magic, an earth pony was just as strong as an identically-built unicorn or pegasus. But Applejack had grown up working on a farm, and although most of her duties had been consumed by automation, there were still times when she had to (or got to) drag this or that machine part across the fields to fix something, or even just do some heavy lifting she had no machine for. Magic or no, physical exercise worked the muscles. Even without magic, Applejack was still stronger than the average pony.

And as Lightning had talked, with every word that had come out of her mouth, Applejack had begun caring less and less that she was tired. When her life was finally threatened, adrenaline kicked in again.

In the split second before Lightning stomped, Applejack hastily lashed out at her hooves. She caught the leg still on the ground and Lightning toppled forward. Her nullwave grenade rolled away from her and bumped against Twilight; still, she managed to catch herself by flaring her wings, but Applejack was already coming up. She caught Lightning around the chest, lifted her, then slammed her into the ground.

The entire room shook from the impact and Lightning screeched. Applejack barely heard it. She definitely didn’t feel any sympathy, not for this psychotic. She picked Lightning up, slammed her again. Lightning battered at her head, squirmed, managed to wriggle free. She fluttered backwards to try to get out of Applejack’s reach, only to bump into some of the pushed-aside crates. The sudden impact brought her flight to an end and she fell to the ground in surprise.

Lunging, Applejack was on her in an instant. On a reflex, she wrapped her front legs around one of Lightning’s wings and squeezed. Lightning roared and thrashed in her grip, but Applejack held on tight. She kept squeezing and squeezing, harder than she ever had in her life, until-

CRUNCH.

Lightning’s screams of rage became those of pain and fear. Bile suddenly rose in Applejack’s mouth as she felt the bones splinter in her grip and pure revulsion made her let go. Lightning kicked ineffectually at Applejack’s face and scrambled into the arboretum, howling, sobbing, her good wing flailing at the air as her bad one twitched grotesquely.

Applejack immediately jumped to her hooves and made for the exit. She couldn’t let her go. Lightning was the one responsible for all of this. She needed to die. And worse. She needed to-

Twilight coughed.

Applejack immediately wheeled around and staggered over to her. It was like the jewel of her rage had shattered. Maybe Lightning did need to die, but that wasn’t important right now. Twilight was. The way things were going, if she left to catch Lightning, Twilight would be dead by the time she got back. No. Not that. As she pulled Twilight up, Applejack said, “Hey. Twi. Y’still with me?”

A moan. Weak, but not distressingly so.

“Good.” After scooping up Lightning’s dropped nullwave grenade (just in case), Applejack pulled them both into the GUTS.

She barely remembered the trip back down to the cargo bay. She didn’t encounter anything she needed to fight, anyway. But all of a sudden, she was outside the doors, hammering on them, hollering, “Hey, open up! I got Twilight!”

Immediately the doors were pulled open. Spitfire came out first, a big smile on her face that quickly slipped away. She looked at Twilight, to Applejack’s left and right. She opened her mouth.

“Dead,” Applejack said. She felt choked up, a knot forming in her throat. “All of ’em. I- I’m sorry.”

Spitfire stared at Applejack for a long while, making little sounds of questioning. Then, her eyes glistening, she blinked and nodded. “Well,” she said quietly, “you- got the princess. Let’s get her some medical attention.” Several guards rushed forward, taking Twilight from Applejack and gently carrying her into the bay.

“She’s still alive,” Applejack said lamely. “Real strong. Dunno how she’d holdin’ on.”

“Yeah,” said Spitfire. Her voice was quiet, distant. She took a long, shuddering breath and wiped her face down. “You… also got the… the thing, right?”

“The neuromod, yeah.” Applejack pulled it from a pocket and held it up. Even after all it’d been through in Applejack’s suit, it barely looked damaged.

“Good. Good. At least…” Spitfire’s neck suddenly went limp and she held her head, eyes tight shut, barely holding back sobs. “Let’s get inside. And… tell me everything.”

“Everythin’? Even…” Applejack let her voice trail off. There were lots of things a pony might not want to hear.

Spitfire’s nods were short and quick. “Everything. I… need to know.”

The worst part was how short it all was. From start to finish, the entire squad had died in… five minutes? At most? As they sat in one of the storage bay’s side rooms, Applejack barely had any time to let any one pony’s death sink in for Spitfire before she was on the next one. Spitfire remained silent the whole time, almost motionless except for the occasional ear-twitch. She tried to remain expressionless, but tears kept falling from her eyes.

When Applejack was done, Spitfire heaved a long, wavering sigh. “You know,” she muttered, “we were… holed up in for so long, safe and sound, I… kinda forgot… I thought I’d been numbed to all the death, but I guess I just stopped thinking of it as a risk. And now…” She hung her head in her hooves, muttering obscene nothings between choked half-sobs.

After a moment’s hesitation, Applejack reached out and awkwardly patted Spitfire on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Spitfire nodded without looking up. “I- I know. It’s just- so…” She sat up straight so quickly Applejack jumped in surprise. “But you got Twilight,” she continued in a voice that was clearly trying to keep her emotions down. Her face was streaked with tears, but she ignored them. “It could be worse.”

Applejack went with the flow and the change in subject. “Y’think she’ll be alright? She seemed real outta sorts when I found her.”

“I got a decent look at her when you brought her in, and honestly? She’d probably be dead if she wasn’t an alicorn,” said Spitfire. “But mix an earth pony’s endurance with a pegasus’s metabolism and a unicorn’s passive magic, and you’re left with some pre-tty hardy ponies. Now that she’s actually getting medical attention, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s up and walking soon.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know those stories of old queens and kings tanking ballista bolts or machine gun fire? Not just stories. My grandmother saw the assassination attempt on Queen Selena. The assassin actually hit her, but because she was an alicorn, it didn’t do much.”

“Dang,” Applejack said quietly. She’d known alicorns were something else, but never actually seen it beyond the extra magic necessary to move the sun and moon.

“I know, right?” Spitfire glanced out the doorway. “Still, I should probably see how she’s doing…” She looked briefly at Applejack, then left the room.

Normally, Applejack expected this would be the part where she curled into a ball and slept for twenty hours, but she felt… awake. Battered and beaten, but if she tried taking a nap, she’d be restless. She definitely felt better than when fighting against Lightning, more full, more complete; was her magic back? Hopefully. Imagine going through all this, only to get back to Sweet Apple Acres and being unable to buck the five or six trees she reserved for bucking. Maybe she just wanted to do the thing with the neuromod and get this all over with. Might as well talk to Twilight, then.

But just as she was getting up, Trixie came into the room, looking very… unsure of herself. She was rubbing her hooves together and looking at the ground. She wrenched her head up and said, sounding unsure of herself, “I… don’t know how to do this, but… are you… feeling okay? I… was listening outside,” she added guiltily.

Applejack just shrugged. “Dunno. I think so. Guess I’m gettin’ numb.” Was she? Maybe. It was nice to pretend she was, anyway.

One of Trixie’s ears twitched. When she spoke again, she sounded more confident. “Are you sure? Because you’ve been running around playing the hero for a long time. You’ve been the hero for a long time. You helped Trixie get here, and Trixie doesn’t want to lose her savior to something as boring as burnout. You just told Spitfire about some of her ponies’ deaths and she didn’t ask about YOU once. Are you really doing okay?”

Applejack bit down on the reflexive response and pulled her thoughts together. She was tired and scared, but that was pretty much par for the course, now. It wasn’t like it was any worse than what she’d felt before, no matter how much worse things had gotten. In all, “I ain’t doin’ great,” she admitted. “But I ain’t doin’ that bad, either, compared to most folks ’round here. I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on.” Shrug. “All I can do, really.”

“…Why do you have to sound so gosh-darn folksy?” demanded Trixie. “You could shrug off getting killed and being resurrected with necromancy!” Groan. “Sorry, sorry, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’re just keeping up appearances or if you really mean it.” A pause. “Trixie thinks you mean it, by the by, but she thought she’d ask.”

“Well, thanks for askin’, anyway.” Applejack raised a hoof to walk away, then said, “Y’know, you don’t seem like the kinda pony to do this.”

“Of course not, but Trixie threw you into space and you’re still talking to her. It’s kind of obligatory that she offers you a shoulder to cry on, especially if nopony else will.”

“Oh. Uh…” That… kind of made sense, in a very strange sort of way. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Trixie gave a small bow. “Now, Trixie is sorry, but she needs to get back to work. None of these idiots knows anything about tech support…” She walked away, shaking her head and muttering angry nothings.

That settled, Applejack made for the not-med-bay. She passed Spitfire on the way, who confirmed that Twilight was recovering quickly. Still, Applejack wanted to see for herself.

The room was mostly empty, the ponies Applejack had seen earlier gotten moved out. Twilight was resting on her side, her wings spread out, breathing steadily. The wound on her side had been sutured shut, and Applejack could catch a hint of magic around the threads. It still looked bad, but it wasn’t horrifying anymore. “Hey,” Applejack said — not too loudly, in case Twilight was sleeping. “Twi. Y’up?”

One of Twilight’s eyes cracked open, then she opened them both wide, smiling. “Applejack!” She pushed herself up into something resembling a sitting position. “Spitfire says you’re the hero of the night.”

“Eh.” Applejack wanted to downplay it, to say that she wasn’t anypony special, but… she had done a lot, hadn’t she? Getting the reactors up, finding Twilight, rescuing ponies… But she didn’t want to come right out and say it; she was never any good at bragging. She settled for shrugging. “I guess.”

Twilight’s laugh wasn’t strong, but it was still stronger than Applejack would’ve expected. “You really need to take some more pride in your work, AJ. You liked to brag about your farming, and why should this be any different?” She pushed herself up and glanced around. “Where’s Spike? I thought he’d want to see me ASAP.”

Applejack tensed up immediately, her ears folded back. Twilight noticed and put a hoof to her mouth in horror. “Oh, no…”

“You-” Applejack choked out. “You probably don’t wanna hear how just yet.” Immediately, she regretted her words; just what ideas were running through Twilight’s head now? But she knew Twilight wouldn’t want to know.

“I- Alright,” Twilight said. “I…” Her ears and wings were limp. She clenched her jaw — whether from pain or just trying to stay in control, Applejack couldn’t say — and pushed herself up. She loped over to the room’s window, where she leaned against the wall and looked down at Equus.

Applejack walked up to her, but didn’t say anything. She knew this mood. A deep, thoughtful one, where Twilight dove so far into herself she basically forgot the outside world. And who could blame her? Right now, it was best to let her think and sort things out. It wouldn’t take that long.

At least, that was what Applejack thought. Seconds stretched into moments stretched into a minute, and Twilight was still sitting there. Her brain worked fast; just how many thoughts had she turned over as sat? How many of them were about Spike? How many of them were about everyone else on board Golden Oaks? How many of them were about her subjects down in Equestria?

And just what could Applejack hope to offer all that?

A friend, maybe.

“Twi?” Applejack asked eventually. “Y’alright?”

Twilight said nothing, but she started blinking and her wings twitched. For a long moment, she just stared out into space. Then she took a deep breath, wiped her face down, and said quietly, “I used to wish we weren’t alone in this universe.”

Applejack put a hoof on Twilight’s. “I’m sorry.”

Smiling sadly, Twilight patted Applejack on the shoulder. “T-thanks.” She sniffed, then said in a surprisingly businesslike voice, “So, how much do you remember? About our plans?”

“Our-” It took Applejack a moment to realize what Twilight was thinking. “Princess, d’you really think y’oughta be thinkin’ ’bout that? Get some rest.”

“I can rest and think at the same time,” Twilight said resolutely. Princessly. “While I’m healing, I’ll be sitting around doing nothing except thinking. Besides, I need to know sooner or later. There’s more ponies than just me up here and the sooner we get them all out safe and sound, the better. Might as well get caught up now. And- And the more I’m thinking, the less likely it is that I’ll go to pieces.” In spite of her voice tripping over itself, it didn’t waver.

Applejack looked Twilight in the eyes. Twilight looked back, not an ounce of weakness showing. Applejack suspected Twilight was putting on a brave face for the crew, making sure to keep their morale up in an impossible situation. Maybe, after everything she’d been through, she was finally breaking down inside.

But if that was the case, it was a pretty dang convincing brave face.

“Alright,” said Applejack. “Take a seat, it’s a long story.”

Okay, maybe not that long. But just because Twilight wanted to hear things right then didn’t mean Applejack was going to let her stand the whole time. She still had a gash the size of a plowed furrow in her side, after all. A gash that seemed to be getting smaller every time Applejack stole a glance at it. Alicorns.

Applejack went through a vastly shortened version of everything that had happened since she’d woken up in the trash compactor. Finding Trixie. Finding Blueblood. Rebooting the reactor. Saving Zecora. Saving Rainbow. Getting the security tapes. Stunning the changeling. Get the neuromod. Saving Twilight. All that jazz. Twilight hung on every word, nodding slowly with each new development. From the way her ears were flicking, her mind was working like mad as she catalogued everything.

“So, uh…” Applejack said. “I, uh, got the neuromod-” She held it up. “-and I dunno what we do now. Just blast the changelin’ with it?”

“Well, not ‘blast’ so much as ‘inject’,” said Twilight, “but… basically, yeah.”

Applejack looked at the neuromod. It was tiny, barely anything. And Twilight thought it could save what was left of Golden Oaks. She remembered how it worked: using mirror neurons to teach the changelings empathy. Somehow. Maybe Twilight had explained it to her better before she got amnesia, because… Well. All that, from this one vial.

Of course, before she’d moved to Golden Oaks, the idea of neuromods themselves would’ve been crazy to her. Now, she knew how they worked firsthoof.

And she trusted Twilight.

“You feelin’ up for it?” Applejack asked. “Right now? I’d sure like a princess behind me when this all goes down.”

Twilight stood up straight. “Absoloof!” She winced, slouched, and rubbed her side. The gash was still getting smaller, but it was still there. “I’m fine,” she said too quickly.

“Are you?” Applejack asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

Applejack fixed Twilight with her best steely glare. Twilight’s return glare was much more effective. “Alright,” Applejack said, taking a step back. “Let’s tell Spitfire we’re doin’ this. Might want the extra help. Y’know… just in case.” She left the room, Twilight following close behind.

Spitfire was pacing in front of the exit from the cargo bay, apparently just to get rid of some of her energy. The second she saw Applejack and Twilight, her eyes went wide and she flap-galloped over to them. After a quick bow to Twilight, she snapped, “You’re letting her come around with you? She’s still healing!”

Applejack shrugged. “She wanted to come. You’re head o’ security, you stop her.”

Spitfire glanced at Twilight, who set her jaw and lit her horn. Spitfire twitched back an inch. “Fine,” she said. “So… what are you doing?”

“Y’still got the changelin’ we captured?”

“Ah. Right.” Spitfire’s wings tightened. “That. Um… Princess. Your Highness.” She bowed stiffly. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s the only idea,” said Twilight.

“That doesn’t make it good. Princess, I have… no idea what we’re going to try here. Just something about hive minds and empathy and an awful lot of maybes. It’s… And okay, let’s say I trust you and it works and that… thing in the cargo container over there-” Spitfire pointed a wing towards a large metal container. “-apologizes and everything. What then? Are we gonna make friends with it?”

“Well, yeah.”

The answer was so quick, so confident, so sure of itself that even Applejack did a double take at Twilight. It wasn’t that surprising, coming from her, and yet…

Spitfire’s ears went up in surprise, then folded back. “Seriously?” she gasped. “Your Highness, that thing’s part of the reason everything went to Tartarus up here! Most of the ponies onboard are dead, and you were almost one of them! It pretended to be you so we wouldn’t go looking for you! And you still want to kiss up to it?”

“Did I stutter?” Twilight asked. She didn’t raise her voice, but it’d gained an edge it hadn’t had before. “Changelings literally can’t see us as people. It’s part of their biology. But if I can give them a chance to apologize and they take that chance, why not forgive them? Believe me, I know it’s hard. These are my ponies as much as yours. But there’s more than just Golden Oaks at stake here. If we can turn them into allies-”

“You better make a better argument than that,” growled Spitfire, “ ’cause I’ve got a lotta ponies wanting payback, and if friendmaking takes too long, I sure as sugar ain’t stopping them from taking it.”

Twilight blinked. Then she pulled herself to her full height and flared her wings and reminded Applejack of just how big alicorns felt, even when they were small. She intoned, “I am Princess Twilight Sparkle of the Liminal Throne and of Friendship. I have made allies of some of Equestria’s fiercest enemies. I know full well what beings like him are doing to this station. But I will not see one single cell of that changeling harmed until I have offered him forgiveness. And if you want to dispute that…” Her grin was predatory, threatening even as she struggled to stand up straight. “You’re welcome to try to stop me. Emphasis on try.”

Spitfire nearly squeaked and flinched backward. She tried matching Twilight’s gaze, then grimaced and turned away. “So what about you?” she asked Applejack. “You think this is a good idea?”

“Look, I spent this whole time lookin’ for her,” Applejack said. “I’m gonna listen to her.” If Spitfire could change the subject, so could Applejack.

“Of course you are,” mumbled Spitfire. She flexed her wings. “Fine. We’ll let you inject that changeling with… whatever. But I’m keeping some guards nearby, and if it goes for you, we’re shooting it, period.”

“Fair enough,” said Twilight.

Spitfire gathered her guards and a ring formed around the storage container the changeling was in; Applejack wiggled her way in to get a good look. Twilight took a step forward; lighting her horn, she opened up the container and delicately levitated the changeling out into the open. It was very still, not even moving to breathe. Did changelings need to breathe in the first place? Some of them had survived in space just fine. Still holding it in place with her magic, Twilight took a few tentative steps forward, just enough to lightly put a hoof on the changeling’s neck. After a moment of waiting, she slowly moved her hoof up and down the changeling’s body. Then she froze, her ears twitching. Whatever she’d found, Applejack couldn’t tell.

“Is it even still alive?” asked Spitfire.

“Yeah,” said Twilight. She twirled the neuromod in her telekinesis and took a deep breath. “Here goes.” Slowly, cautiously, she pulled up an eyelid with magic, placed the neuromod against the changeling’s eye, and pulled the trigger.

She quickly backed away, but for a moment, nothing happened. The changeling lay there, unnaturally still. Then it spasmed and sat bolt upright, blinking. The guards raised their guns, but didn’t fire yet. The changeling gazed at the wall like it was a window. Then, slowly, almost painfully, it curled up into a ball and whimpered like a newborn foal, a confused gurgle of sound and emotion. Its wings twitched, buzzing fitfully like a leg shaking from fear.

Biting her lip, Spitfire waved for the guards to lower their guns. Twilight took a step forward, her ears aimed at the changeling, her wings ready to spring open. Applejack caught herself holding her breath. Would any of this be worth it?

The changeling lowered one of its legs and looked fearfully at the assembled ponies. Its eye had no pupil, but Applejack somehow knew it was jumping around. “I-I’m sorry,” the changeling said in a small voice. “I d-didn’t know.”

25 - The Dark Forest

It was a thin and reedy yet also somehow raspy voice, partially assembled from semirandom grunts and clicks and buzzes and other sounds no pony could make. But it was Ponish. The changeling was speaking perfectly understandable Ponish.

“You’re…” the changeling whispered. “You’re all… I’m sorry.” It blocked its face with a leg and made little croaking sounds, sobs from a creature that might not be biologically capable of sobbing. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-”

As the changeling babbled, Applejack and Spitfire exchanged glances. Spitfire looked a bit red, but set her jaw. Just because Twilight was right on one topic didn’t mean she was right about everything.

“-I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m-”

“Hey,” Twilight said softly. She stooped down next to it, throwing a leg over what looked like its withers. Even next to a barely-equinoid alien, the action looked natural on her. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. You couldn’t know. Biologically, I mean.” Pat pat. “You couldn’t know.”

The changeling didn’t try to pull away, but it didn’t return the gesture, either. “I’m sorry,” it mumbled one last time.

“Take your time,” Twilight said, running her leg up and down its back.

Silence. Twilight sat next to the changeling, letting it stew. Spitfire and the guards fidgeted with their guns, but they didn’t look ready to shoot. Applejack still couldn’t believe this was all happening. All this time, she’d figured she was grasping at straws, and suddenly, those straws held her. Would it be enough, though? It wasn’t easy to avoid pushing the changeling for more, but she managed. Twilight knew what to do. Or at least, she was better at this than Applejack.

Suddenly the changeling rubbed its head. “It’s so lonely in here, without the Swarm. How do you stand it?”

“We’ve never known anything else,” said Twilight. “We’re always alone in our own heads.”

The changeling blinked as it looked at Twilight. It tilted its head. “Why didn’t I know you were you before? How come I-” Its eyes suddenly grew huge. “Oh, no…” Its voice dropped with each word. “No, no, no, no, no…” As if overcome with grief, it hunched forward, hanging its head in its hoof-equivalents. “We didn’t… All of them, they’re… Why did we kill them?”

“You tell me,” grunted Spitfire. Twilight shot her a glare, but Spitfire forged on. “You’re the ones that killed them. Why did you do it?”

“Not you,” whispered the changeling. “Not here. All the other creatures.”

Spitfire rolled her eyes, but Applejack caught Twilight’s wings tensing up, just a little. “Others?” Twilight asked.

“In the other systems,” said the changeling.

The atmosphere immediately turned frigid and Applejack suddenly felt very, very small. The changeling couldn’t be talking about what she thought it was… could it? That was too… No. It couldn’t.

Right?

“Other- systems,” Twilight said slowly. “Solar systems?”

“We killed them all,” moaned the changeling. “The Queen told us to. We said they were dangerous.”

“Are you talking about alien civilizations?” Twilight whispered, aghast.

“Yes.”

The silence was oppressive. Twilight stumbled back, landing on her rump, staring off into the middle distance.

“We’ve killed dozens of them,” the changeling said quietly.

Applejack knew, logically, that this shouldn’t affect her. She didn’t know anything about aliens, not until a few hours ago. But just the idea of so many… peoples out there — maybe like Equus, maybe not — just… dying when changelings got into them… She had to put a hoof on her chest and force herself to take long, deep breaths. She’d thought so many ponies had died on Golden Oaks, but it was just part of one headstone in a massive cemetery.

And if they didn’t stop the changelings here, the rest of that headstone would soon be carved.

“Frak this,” Spitfire muttered. She raised her gun. “Step aside, Princess, I’m-”

Twilight snapped back to lucidity in an instant. “No,” she said firmly. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. “I’m not done yet.”

“He’s committed galactic genocide dozens of times over,” Spitfire snapped. “He said so himself.”

“So?”

Twilight and Spitfire glared at each other. No magic was flying, but Applejack flinched at the tension between them. Spitfire blinked first; she took a step back and grunted something that might’ve been, “Fine.” But she didn’t lower her gun.

“She’s right,” said the changeling. “I- I don’t deserve to-”

“I don’t care,” Twilight said. “Even if the universe is cold, I won’t be.”

“So why d’you do it?” asked Trixie.

Everyone jumped and whirled around. Trixie had wiggled her way into the ring of guards and was on her knees, looking at the changeling with far too much interest for Applejack’s liking. When everyone stared at her, Trixie gave them all — individually, personally — bland looks of defiance. “You’re all going to dance around it,” she said defensively. “Trixie has never been one for dancing.”

Her brow furrowed in anger, Twilight opened her mouth, paused, and grimaced as if in acknowledgement. (Trixie smirked at that.) Reluctantly, Twilight turned back to the changeling. “So… why? What do you get out of that sort of destruction?”

The changeling pushed itself up on quivering legs. “It’s the only way to guarantee safety for the Swarm,” it said.

“How?”

“It’s…How do I put this…” Taking a deep breath, the changeling said, “Imagine you’re in a dark forest. It’s filled with creatures that might be hostile to you. Or maybe not. You don’t know. No matter what you meet, there’s a chance that it will want to destroy you. You don’t want to risk that. A-at least, the Queen didn’t. So you destroy it, as soon as possible, as completely as possible. You don’t want to leave behind anything that can hurt you. Everything must go, no matter what. To stay completely safe, you absolutely must kill everything you find.”

The changeling took a deep breath. “And according to the Queen, everything else in the universe is thinking the same thing. Strike first. Hit it before it can hit you. Destroy it. And you’ll be safe.”

It looked up at the ponies. “Those creatures are civilizations. I- We- It- They- Whenever the Swarm discovers a civilization, it destroys it in a preemptive strike. They- We’ve been across the galaxy, snuffing out world after world, just in case.” He looked out the window, at the green and blue marble far, far below. “There’s nothing special about Equus. It was just the next stop on our list.”

Applejack followed the changeling’s gaze to Equus, then to the starfield beyond. Twilight had sometimes talked about contacting alien races — it was virtually certain they’d exist, given the size of the universe — but it was always in the context of possible alliances (or “political friendships”). She couldn’t imagine the default response to anything alive being, “It might hurt us. It needs to die.” Spitfire was the hostile one in this group and she was still holding back. So to have one’s entire existence be centered around that… Was the universe such a hostile place?

But Twilight had said changelings were incapable of empathy. No mirror neurons. They couldn’t be anything else. Maybe other aliens did have those neurons and could ally with ponies. Maybe changelings were just an unlucky roll of the dice.

Well. That was for another time. This one changeling was capable of empathy, anyway.

“And I…” The changeling clenched its eyes shut and rubbed its head, rocking back and forth. “I never thought, never imagined… I’ve killed s-so m-many… I n-never thought they could th-think, they were just supposed to be f-food… Why can’t I do that anymore? You… You’re all people. You… You’re all so… nice.”

“You’ve had guns pointed at you this entire time,” Trixie said incredulously.

“And they haven’t been fired!” said the changeling. “Like, you.” He pointed a shaking hoof-thing at Spitfire. “You you you. You’re angry. Even I can tell that. You probably hate me. And you haven’t shot me yet!”

“Princess’s orders,” grunted Spitfire.

“And that’s all it takes?” asked the changeling. “We killed everyone in this station, and one person asking nicely is enough to not shoot me?”

Two of the guards exchanged glances. Spitfire coughed, rubbed one leg against another, and looked away. “It’s… not that simple…” she mumbled lamely.

“But the Swarm always thought other species would attack us just because we were fighting for resources! And you- Compared to what I thought you’d be, yes, this is nice.”

Spitfire eyed the changeling for a little bit longer. Then she sighed. “Stow your weapons, mares. It’s not dangerous.” There was a brief pause before all of the guards slowly, cautiously lowered their guns. They trailed away from the area, one by one.

Twilight flashed Spitfire a winning smile, but Spitfire just snorted, dropped onto her rump, and stared at the changeling. “What happened to you is… complicated,” Twilight said to the changeling. “Changelings — that’s what we call your species — you don’t have… these things called mirror neurons, which means you can’t empathize with anyone else.”

The changeling tilted its head. It was a remarkably ponylike expression, Applejack thought. “Em-pa-thize?”

“Understand the feelings of another,” Twilight said without missing a beat. Her voice was picking up speed; as a pony explaining things to a new friend, she was in her element. “But we were able to give you mirror neurons by…”

For an answer to a simple question, Twilight went on for a remarkably long time, going into far more detail than was necessary. Applejack was sure she might have a degree in neuroscience by the time it was done, with plenty of talk of magical bonding and memory transfer and skills transfer (“-which is probably why you can already speak Ponish!-”). As she went on, more and more ponies filtered away, until she was left with only Applejack and Trixie, and Trixie didn’t look particularly invested. The changeling, on the other hoof, was eating it up.

Finally, Twilight was able to pull herself back to the main point. “…so since you have a hive mind,” Twilight said, “we were hoping that once one changeling learned empathy, the others would, too. So… any luck?”

Applejack caught herself holding her breath. This was it. This was everything she’d worked for. Hopefully…

But the changeling folded its ears back and looked away. “I’m… not part of the Swarm anymore,” it said. “The Queen cut me off when I… started understanding.”

Twilight’s wings sprang open and she very nearly shot upwards into a standing position. “Cut you off?” she yelled. “You’re not a part of the hive mind anymore?”

The changeling shook its head and Twilight said something uncouth.

“Sorry,” the changeling mumbled. “I wish I could do more.”

Applejack groaned and fell over onto her back. It wasn’t really that much of a surprise, if she was being honest, just… She’d hoped for so much more. She just wanted to be… done with all of this. Done, safe, secure, asleep. Every time, every time she got near her goal, the universe threw up another hurdle for her to jump. She was just about ready to gather every shotgun shell she could find in the cargo bay, stuff them all into a bag, and scour every single cubic millimeter of Golden Oaks until she was sure that there wasn’t a single changeling alive on it. By now, spite at the universe was her main source of energy.

But to her surprise, Trixie didn’t seem all that upset. Maybe she was just super-chill about everything. “Oh, we’ll find another way,” she scoffed. “Or maybe we won’t and we’re all going to die up here.” (Why was she so dang chipper?) “But until then…” She trotted over to the changeling and sat down next to it. “I have some questions for you,” she said.

“Uh…” The changeling looked up and down at Trixie. “Um, okay, if it’ll help you…”

“How do you change shape?” Trixie asked. (Twilight perked up immediately and leaned forward intently.) “The little… squirmy ones, Trixie means. This big?” She held up her hooves.

“Heh. Um. Those.” The changeling licked its lips. Why did it have a tongue, anyway? “That’s, uh, those… parts of us- of me- of us use thaumatic energies to… project the… gestalt of nearby objects to hide.” Pause. “I. I think. Language is…” It rubbed its head. “Still a bit funny for me.”

“Thaumatic energies? You use magic to change shape?” asked Twilight. She sounded far more curious than Applejack was comfortable with her being.

“I… think ‘magic’ is the right word,” said the changeling. “It… It’s how I do… this.” There was a burst of blue light, and suddenly there were two Twilights looking at each other.

Applejack jumped in surprise and nearly raised her gun, while Trixie squeaked and shuffled back on her rump. The real Twilight, though, flared her wings slightly and peered at her double the same way one would to closely examine a priceless work of art. The changeling leaned back. “The, the Queen wanted to… keep a close eye on you all,” it said nervously. “And keep you — you you-” It pointed at Twilight. “-from being found. And this is, it’s all magic.”

“In-ter-es-ting,” enunciated Twilight. She reached out a hoof to touch the changeling’s wings, but it shied away. “It’s not any way we’ve used it… I don’t think so, anyway.”

“If that’s what you call it, we use magic for a lot of things,” said the changeling snippily, dropping Twilight’s shape. For the first time, it displayed an emotion rather than apology or fear: irritation, like this should be obvious. “Eating, holding our bodies together, living… We can travel between star systems without spaceships. How do you think we survived?”

“Some as-yet-to-be-identified physical process?” asked Twilight rhetorically. “I’m actually surprised you can use magic at all, since-”

Suddenly, her eyes went wide and she clamped her wings tightly at her sides. Her lips were moving, but she wasn’t making a sound. Applejack awkwardly cleared her throat. “Uh, Twi?” But Twilight waved her down as her ears twitched.

“She’s like that,” muttered the changeling. “How do I know she’s like that?”

“ ’Cause I know she’s like that, I guess,” grunted Applejack. “I was the one who-”

“-donated the mirror neurons, yeah,” muttered the changeling. Then it twitched. “How do I know that?”

Applejack gave the changeling a Look.

“…Right.”

“So let me get this straight,” Twilight said suddenly. “Changelings need magic to live?” Her voice was low, thoughtful, somehow devious.

The changeling must’ve noticed. “I, I think so,” it said, shuffling back from Twilight. “I, the Queen uses magic to form us into new shapes as needed, and-”

Twilight suddenly leaned in and jabbed her glowing horn at the changeling. It yelped and pulled away. “What was that?” it squawked, shivering. One of its legs quickly swelled and shrank, like a balloon getting partially inflated and deflated. “What are you doing?”

But Twilight was barely listening. Her eyes were half-closed and she was looking at nothing as she rambled in scientific-sounding terms. “-curl of the thaums is negative… But if they run along a four-brane… And hold enough caloric to-”

The changeling gave Applejack a Look, and even on that nonequine face, she knew what it meant. “Musta scanned ya or somethin’,” she said. “She’s big on science and whatnot. She’d pr’y be workin’ up here herself, ’cept she’s a princess, and-”

Suddenly, Twilight’s eyes went wide as her mouth formed a tiny “O” in surprise. Then she whirled on Applejack, a huge, aggressive grin plastered on her face. “You still have that nullwave grenade, right? The one Lightning dropped? Right before the GUTS?”

“Uh, I…” She remembered that? Applejack had thought she’d been half-dead. (Maybe she had been and good memory was an alicorn thing.) “Yeah, I… think so.” She pulled the largish ball from her pocket and held it out for Twilight. “Why? What d’you want with-”

Without a word, Twilight snatched the grenade from Applejack’s hooves and began fiddling with the fittings around it. “So, changeling. You don’t have a name, right?”

“I- We- I didn’t need one in the Swarm,” the changeling said.

A small metal panel popped from the grenade and fell to the ground. “Do you want one?”

“Would it help? …That’s not sarcasm, I really don’t know.”

“Probably.” Another panel fell. “It’d give ponies something to think of you as besides ‘the changeling’.” (Applejack squirmed slightly. Nobody seemed to notice.)

“Well… Okay.” The changeling’s wings buzzed. “I don’t know what sort of a name I want, though…”

“Hmm… How about Thorax?” Twilight suggested. “In ponies, the thorax holds the heart. You’ve got heart, now, something other changelings don’t have.”

The changeling looked at Applejack. It took her a moment to realize it was looking for approval. “Sounds fine,” she said quickly. “Kinda odd, but it ain’t that odd.”

“Or, if you prefer,” Trixie said, “it’s not odd, it’s special. ‘Trixie’ is not an odd name, ‘Trixie’ is a special name. Just like Trixie herself.”

The changeling’s ear-fin-things twitched back and forth. “It does sound nice,” it said wistfully. A pause, then it nodded. “Okay. I’m Thorax.”

Twilight carefully peeled away another set of panels from the grenade. “Glad to hear it, Thorax.”

As the newly-christened Thorax preened, Applejack leaned over to investigate the grenade. It was a muddled mass of wires, tiny circuit boards, and devices she couldn’t make out. “So how’s it comin’, Twi?” Whatever “it” was.

“Effh. Slowly,” Twilight said. Her voice dropped to an irate mutter as she delicately extracted some wires. “I wanted to see it.” Her horn started flickering in ways Applejack had never seen before and magic ran up and down each and every component. “I asked if I could see it. But they’re all like, ‘Noooooooooooo, it’s too sensitive, it’s too secret…’” She pulled out a small gyroscope-looking device from the grenade and squinted at it. “I’m a princess! I think I have access to state secrets! And this isn’t even a state secret!” Her magic fluttered as it danced across the gyroscope and she smirked briefly. “So now I’ve got to figure all of this out from the ground up, and-”

She stopped, staring at one particular part of the grenade. To Applejack, it looked nearly the same as any other. Twilight, however, whispered, “Oh. Oh my. Oh, yessss…”

Applejack had lived on Golden Oaks to recognize a pony falling into mad-scientist-hood when she saw it. It was a lot of little things: slightly wider or narrower eyes than usual, an almost-grin, little twitches everywhere, audible breathing. Twilight had all of those and more; she was deep in its throes. But given the situation, that might not be such a bad thing. “What’d you find?” she asked.

Twilight turned to Applejack, smiling widely enough to swallow a foal whole. “I know how to get rid of the changelings.”

26 - Last Ditch

“It’s simple,” Twilight said to Spitfire. “We repurpose the magnetosphere’s shield generator to briefly emit nullwaves instead of the usual radiological shields. Since they cancel out magic, the nullwaves will disrupt the changeling swarm’s hive mind for long enough to essentially permanently lobotomize them. Since they depend on magic for their biology, it might even do more than that. But even in the worst case, it’ll render the changelings harmless.”

“Just like that?” asked Spitfire skeptically.

“Just like that,” Twilight replied with a nod.

Spitfire didn’t look all that convinced. Applejack couldn’t blame her. How often had they run around chasing simple fixes in… the past hour alone? How long could you chase nonfunctional solutions before you just gave up entirely? And, unlike them, she was also working to keep all the ponies in decent mental shape. She was juggling so many things at once, it was a miracle she was still functioning at all.

But, eventually, she sighed. “And the science works out?” she said in a tired voice. “You looked at that grenade for barely a minute.”

“The science absolutely works out,” Twilight said. “Nullwave theory’s actually pretty well-studied down on Equus, it was just that Golden Oaks was the first place to produce them with such miniaturized emitters. They discovered it’s actually not that different from an arcane mana pulse or even the radiological shields around the station, they just needed to use a different catalyst for the-”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said Spitfire vaguely.

“But the fact that they did use simple catalysts means I know how to reconfigure the shields, at least for this one-time use,” Twilight forged on. “As long as we keep the duration low enough, we won’t be in any danger from cosmic radiation — and since ‘low enough’ is on the scale of days at the bare minimum, a minute won’t be a problem. We won’t even be harmed by the nullwaves, outside of some headaches, since they only work with magic and we don’t depend on magic the same way changelings do.”

“Good, good,” Spitfire replied, nodding automatically. “And what about your new friend?”

“You mean Thorax?”

“‘Thorax’? You named- Who am I kidding, of course you did. What about it? Won’t it get killed, too?”

Twilight rustled her wings. She looked over her shoulder, to where Thorax was in deep conversation with Trixie about… something Applejack couldn’t remember. “He might,” Twilight said quietly. “But if the changelings get to Equus, the pony species is gone. Every species down there is gone. And I can’t put an entire planet in jeopardy for one person.” She turned back to Spitfire, her eyes wet but also set. “I won’t like it at all. But if he dies, he dies.” A pause, then her voice sped up dramatically. “I was actually thinking, if I know the nullwaves are coming, I might be able to-”

“Don’t need to hear it,” grunted Spitfire. “You’ll save him somehow, I know it.” She popped her lips a few times in thought. “So what all do we need to do?”

“You don’t need to do anything,” said Twilight. “Not yet, anyway. I am working on reworking the nullwave grenade tech to be compatible with the magnetosphere generator. So sit tight, and I’ll be with you as soon as I can be.” She strode away, whistling some folk tune.

“Good,” said Spitfire to the air. She glanced at Applejack. “I want to sleep,” she mumbled. She rubbed her face. “I know it’s only been a few hours — stars above, I don’t even think it’s 7 o’clock yet — but… Holy Thrones.” When she put her hoof down, she was blinking a lot. “This posting was a reward for me. Did you know that? Over a decade of pristine service, so I get assigned a cushy job up here. Worst thing that can be expected is some drunken spats, and I didn’t even see any of those. Then suddenly, aliens, and in just one sunblasted night…” She sniffed and looked away. “I’m doing everything I can, and…”

“Yeah,” said Applejack. Spitfire had been concerned with the whole station while Applejack had been running back and forth, concerned only with herself and her immediate friends. It was hard to imagine what she was going through, what she had been going through.

“Do you want some coffee?”

Applejack twitched while Spitfire spun around. Blueblood was standing behind them, ragged and beaten, yet self-assured and… humble? It was a strange look on him, not entirely unbecoming. He probably looked more like a prince than Applejack had ever seen him. “What?” asked Spitfire. But although she growled the question, it sounded like she was genuinely surprised.

“Coffee,” repeated Blueblood. “I can make some, if you so desire. I do have some skills, after all.”

“And it’s one of the important ones,” Spitfire half-mumbled.

“I know I am responsible for… everything,” said Blueblood, his voice both smaller and firmer than it’d ever been before. “Lightning’s involvement does not excuse my own. And I know I can never make this right. But if you’re tired, I can at least make you some coffee.”

Spitfire glared at him for a long moment. He didn’t quail. Then she grunted, “Black. No sugar.”

“Black,” repeated Blueblood. He glanced at Applejack.

“Nothin’ for me,” Applejack said.

“I see. Very well.” Blueblood nodded to both of them, then walked off.

“So, uh… how’s he been doin’?” Applejack asked.

“Ufh. Fine,” said Spitfire. “He’s mopey, but now he’s been doing what I say, and…” She rubbed her head. “Look, can we not talk until he gets back? Tired.” She loped over to a nearby table and collapsed into a chair.

“Sorry.”

At the very least, when she got her coffee, Spitfire seemed to perk up. She chugged the first gulps down like somepony desperately in need of caffeine, but the next few sips were those of somepony who genuinely liked the taste of the coffee itself rather than drinking it because they needed to finish it off. “This is actually good,” she said to Blueblood. Sip. “Where’d you learn to brew coffee like this?”

After a moment, Blueblood shrugged. “Experience. After one particularly long party, Mother deprived me of morning food servants in the hopes that a lack of coffee made by them would prevent me from sleeping in until 11. I simply learned how to work the machines myself.” He laughed bitterly. “It wasn’t like I had anything to get up for, nor any obligations to fill my evenings.”

Spitfire suddenly became even more interested in her coffee than before. Applejack swallowed and stammered, “I- I’m sure she didn’t mean-”

“I already feel abominable,” Blueblood snorted. “It is not as if you can make things any worse.” He glared at the bulkhead, in the general direction of Equus. “When I get down, I shall have some choice words for Mother.”

And Queen Celestia would have some far, far choicier words for him, but Applejack suspected he didn’t care, and that his words would hurt her more than hers would hurt him. Lacking anything to add, Applejack looked down and fidgeted in her chair.

Blueblood looked over at Spitfire. “If I may ask, how were you able to keep yourself together after you learned the truth about me? After all, I did…” His voice trailed off.

Spitfire briefly pulled her muzzle from her cup. “Until the situation on this station is under control, that ain’t my problem,” she said. “Too much else to worry about. Stay in line, and I don’t care who you are.” Sip. “Step out of line and I’ll blow your sunblasted head off faster than you can blink.” From the tone of her voice, that wasn’t hyperbole in the slightest.

“Duly noted,” Blueblood said. He said it dryly, of all things.

Suddenly, Twilight burst in their little group, grinning from ear to ear. “IIII goooot iiiit!” she singsonged, waving a sheet of paper at them. She slapped the paper on the table; Applejack quickly pulled it over for examination. “The magnetosphere!” Twilight declared. “Totally ready for reworking into a nullwave emitter with just a few easy steps!”

“Easy” was overselling it, but only by a little. It was a jury-rig that wouldn’t last for long, but they didn’t need it to last for long. Applejack could… mostly understand it, and the bits she couldn’t understand were all cutting-edge, PhD-level physics, so she wasn’t too worried. Even the physical parts were simple to perform. She could do it herself if she needed to.

Downing the rest of her coffee, Spitfire sat up a little straighter. “And you’ve got all the materials you need?” she asked, wiping her mouth down.

“Aaaaand to spare!” Twilight said. “We can get going as soon as you’re ready.”

Applejack and Spitfire looked at each other. Applejack shrugged and Spitfire nodded. “Let’s do it,” Spitfire said, standing up. “I’m tired of sitting around.”

Spitfire called together all the ponies in the cargo bay. Golden Oaks had once held over two hundred ponies; here, where most of the survivors were, there couldn’t’ve been more than thirty. The station had never felt quite so empty.

She laid out Twilight’s theory and plan, sounding confident and sure all the while. Applejack caught a few ponies not looking quite so morose as Spitfire’s speech went on. Even when she acknowledged she didn’t know the science (“…now, I sure as hay don’t know what she’s talking about, but she sure does, and she says the math works out…”), she managed to sound like she knew what she was doing.

Finally, she said, “So here’s the plan. We’re going to take some ponies to the magnetosphere generator, Twilight’s going to install her doohickey, and then…” A pause, and Applejack saw Spitfire’s brave mask slip a little. “Well, we’ll see. Wings crossed. Now, is there anyone here who knows how to work with the generator, on the off chance Twilight bites it?”

For a long time, nothing. Someone coughed. Then Applejack slowly raised her hoof.

“You’re kidding,” Spitfire said flatly.

“Engineerin’ neuromods,” said Applejack, almost guiltily. Knowledge of Golden Oaks’ magnetosphere was right there, had been there for ages, waiting patiently to be accessed, and Twilight’s changes were simple enough. Relatively speaking.

“It’s always you,” Spitfire mumbled, rubbing her temples, “why is it always, always you?”

“Believe me, I’ve been askin’ that myself.”

Spitfire shook her head, then raised her voice again. “So that’s where we’re going. If you’re not involved in this, you can go. I just needed to update you all on where we stand.”

Slowly, ponies dispersed. Applejack caught some mutters, but they weren’t the angry, rebellious sort; just the anxious, stress-filled ones she’d been expecting. Once they were gone, there were only eight or nine ponies left, plus Thorax. Not much, but it could still be enough.

Spitfire paced back and forth for a long moment. She was moving oddly; Applejack wasn’t sure whether that was because she was so tired or because she was so tense she was barely keeping herself in check. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Alright, I’m gonna need some volunteers for this mis-”

Every single pony put their hoof up. Spitfire grinned a little. “Heh. Can’t fault your dedication, I’ll give you that. Alright, you three.” She pointed at three guards. “Hate to break it to you, but you need to stay here, keep everyone else safe.” With drooping ears, the guards stepped back.

Spitfire nodded at the guards, then frowned at Thorax. “So what’re you doing here?” Her voice wasn’t accusatory, just blunt.

“I…” Thorax shuffled its weight from foot to foot. “I… can help. I have… experience from the Swarm. I… I want to help.”

“Really?” Spitfire asked. “It might be best if you stay back.” Then her ears twitched and she looked at Twilight. “Unless you think you need it for… something,” she said. Applejack’s mind went back to the question of whether Thorax could survive the nullwave. Maybe Spitfire was…

“That might not be a bad idea,” Twilight said quickly. “Just in case.”

Huh.

“You’ll let me come?” asked Thorax. “But… I thought you might…” Its voice trailed off.

“I’m well past caring by now, and Twilight trusts you,” said Spitfire. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Thorax smiled and what might’ve been its wings buzzed.

Spitfire looked at the remaining guards and nodded. “Well, you all know what to do. Princess Twilight is VIP 1, Applejack is VIP 2. And since VIP 1 is an alicorn, focus most of your protection on VIP 2.” (Applejack thought she heard a few snickers in the audience.) “The magnetosphere isn’t far, but anything can happen between here and there, so stay alert.”

“Yes’m!” said the guards.

“Alright, let’s-”

Wham.

It wasn’t loud, not very. But it had the dull tenor of a sound that had bulled its way through thick walls and was still loud enough to make everypony freeze.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

They were deep, impactful, the unmistakable sounds of heavy footfalls. And they were getting louder.

“It’s coming from the door…” somepony whispered.

Then something big knocked on the doors, those big doors to the cargo bay that could keep out anything. “Oh, ponies!” the changeling queen warbled. “We think it’s time we all stop playing, hmm?”

27 - Intrusion

The queen’s voice was still echoing when Twilight threw up a shield to block off the doorway. “Get behind me,” she said. Not that she needed to, since just about everypony was behind her already. Guns up, yet the princess was the one in front. Funny how alicorns skewed things like that.

Bang bang bang. Applejack tensed herself for the moment the door would buckle, yet it held. It didn’t even shake. “We both know that there is only one way this can end!” the queen yelled. “Give up now and we’ll go easy on you!”

“Not a chance!” Twilight shot back. “If you want this station, you’re gonna have to work for it!”

A high-pitched, two-toned laugh. “Do you honestly think you can win this?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But we’re not going to just give it up.” Pause. “Maybe we can talk this over.”

Every single person around stared at Twilight. Even the sounds the queen was making went silent. “What are you doing?” hissed Spitfire.

“Trying something new,” Twilight whispered back. “I don’t think it’ll work. But we can try.”

“Do you at least have the nullwave thing ready?”

“I had to take the grenade apart for the catalyst.”

Spitfire cursed so much it seemed her name was about to become literal.

“Talk?” asked the queen. “Talk? What sort of… Oh, we don’t even have the words. What can you possibly hope to accomplish?”

“Finding common ground, perhaps finishing this with no more death, maybe starting an alliance?”

“Oh, that is rich. With this introduction?”

“I’ve done better with worse.”

The queen laughed. “Well, aren’t you precious. Very well. Open the door and-”

Spitfire was shaking her head, but Twilight’s horn pulsed. After a moment, she said, “First, tell the changelings around you to leave. You’re coming in. No one else.”

A pause. A very pregnant pause. Somehow, Applejack got the feeling that the queen had been shocked for the first time. “How do you… Never mind.” A high-pitched squeaking and clicking, and then some muffled rustling. It went on for nearly thirty seconds before dying down. How many changelings were there outside?

Twilight’s horn pulsed again. “That’s better,” she said. A lavender glow surrounded the bay door’s controls and the door slid open a mere two feet before stopping.

Immediately, sound picked up again outside and something black blurred through the gap, smashing into Twilight’s shield. Twilight fiddled with the controls again and the doors closed back up; Applejack could hear something squishing in the crack. Good riddance, yet she still shuddered at the thought.

The queen was inside the door, screaming as it battered at Twilight’s shield. It was, if anything, even bigger than before, downright towering over the ponies. Whatever Twilight had done to it back in habitation, it hadn’t slowed it down; Applejack couldn’t see a single out-of-place bump on its carapace. The guards immediately fanned out, all of them aiming their guns at it, but none of them fired. Not even Spitfire. Not yet.

Twilight grit her teeth. For a second, Applejack was worried that she wouldn’t be able to hold the shield, then she said, “I said we could talk. If you don’t talk, I’ll crush you against the doors.” To punctuate her words, she pushed the shield a bit closer to the steel.

The queen’s attacks slowed to a stop. She blinked at each pony in turn, making them quake, then turned a smile of sugary malice on Twilight. “Oh? Just like time, we suppose? Which didn’t stop us?”

“It delayed you,” said Twilight. “That’s all we need.”

“Hmm.” The queen frowned. “So you have a plan.” The squint she gave Twilight was predatory. “What is your plan, we wonder?”

“Talk to you,” said Twilight. She sat down, giving the queen a glare every bit as intense as the one she was receiving.

“You- You were serious?” barked the queen. “We knew you were naïve, but this?” (Spitfire and a few other guards gave Twilight a Look.)

“It’s worth a shot,” Twilight replied, shrugging. “If I-”

The queen laughed again, high-pitched, screeching, warbling, mocking. “You are something else, pony,” it cackled. “There is nothing you possess, nothing you can offer, that we cannot take for ourselves. We have devoured entire star clusters. We are legions of legions. You are nothing compared to us.”

“No.”

Applejack whirled. Thorax, of all people, was stepping forward, obviously scared, yet standing there all the same. “D-don’t do it,” Thorax said as it shook. “They’re… Every one of them’s a Swarm to themselves.”

“Oh. You,” spat the queen. It began pacing inside the shield, prowling, glaring at Thorax all the while. “There was a reason we cut you out, you know.”

“This is wrong!” protested Thorax. “Do- Do you know what you’re doing?”

The queen hissed in impatience. “Spreading. Devouring. Destroying. Providing sustenance and security for the Swarm. You say we’re killing other Swarms? That’s the idea. What if that one-” It jabbed a foot at Twilight. “-is lying? It’s in her best interests.”

“She’s not!” yelled Thorax, but it didn’t sound very sure of itself.

“Of course she’s not,” the queen said sardonically.

“Do you really think that’s all life is?” Twilight asked. If she was straining to keep the shield up, it was impossible to tell. “Just a struggle to survive? Maybe if you-”

“We do not care,” said the queen. “Why should we? Do you know how little you mean to us? Perhaps you don’t.” Its eyes glinted as it leered at Applejack, who took a step back. “You know that friend of yours?” the queen continued. “Lightning Dust, we believe her name was?”

“She ain’t my friend,” said Applejack weakly. Those eyes were like lasers, piercing straight through to her heart, rooting her to the spot.

“Oh, how can we tell, your relationships are all so pointlessly complex.” The queen waved a leg dismissively. “After her encounter with you, she came to us, begging for help. She deserved it. She’d gotten us this far. We’d be nothing without her. And everything she said was true. It was only logical. But, heh, why bother with the pathetic pleas of food?” It licked its lips with a tentacle-like tongue. “Her mind was delicious.”

Applejack swallowed. She wanted to say that Lightning had gotten what she’d deserved, but the idea of her thoughts getting eaten was terrifying. And the queen was looking at all of them like they were a buffet spread.

Then Twilight spoke up again. “So, just to make things totally clear,” she said, “you’re not, in any way, ever going to consider making friends with us?”

The queen rolled its eyes. “By this point, we’re amazed you can even stand up straight, your kind misses the obvious so much.”

“Alright,” said Twilight casually. “Just making sure.”

She immediately crushed the queen between her shield and the bulkhead.

Applejack jumped at the squishing sound, but Twilight didn’t notice a thing. She just moved the shield out a little, then pushed it back in, gathering it up and constantly pushing it in and out until the queen had the consistency of paste. When that was done, she compacted the inky, oily mess into a ball, barely two feet across.

“Whoa…” said Spitfire, nearly awestruck. “That’s… something.”

“Good riddance,” came Blueblood’s voice.

Applejack turned. At some point during the talk, Blueblood and Trixie had come up behind them. Trixie was shocked and pale, while Blueblood had his jaw set and his eyes were hard.

“What’re you doing here?” demanded Spitfire before anypony else could say a thing.

“Uh,” said Trixie, flattening her ears. Her eyes darted around. “We were…”

“Seeing you off,” Blueblood said smoothly. “Trixie here is the proud sort and, as such, has, ah… difficulties expressing sympathy for other ponies.” Trixie shot him a glare and he continued, “Make no mistake, it’s there, it’s simply something she’s not used to doing.”

“Yes!” Trixie said quickly. “Trixie, ah, Trixie is… grateful that you’re… doing this and she… wants to wish you good luck.”

“As do I,” said Blueblood.

“Oh,” said Spitfire. She and Applejack exchanged looks. “Uh… thanks.”

Blueblood nodded, then looked at Twilight, still holding the queen in her magic. “Are you okay?”

“Okay enough,” said Twilight. Her breathing was a bit heavier than normal, but at least she wasn’t sweating. “Keeping that thing contained is tricky, but I can hold it. If I let it go, I’m sure it’ll just slide off somewhere and reform. But I can do this.” She put another shield up in front of the doorway. “Get ready. The changelings aren’t right up next to the door, but I bet they’ll charge it once we open it.”

“Form up!” yelled Spitfire. The guards immediately fell into a line; Applejack found herself delicately shoved to the middle. Trixie and Blueblood stepped back to give them room, and with a little twist of magic, Twilight opened the bay doors enough for them to move through. Darkness yawned beyond and Applejack swallowed. Yay.

Still keeping the queen imprisoned, Twilight sent a ball of light out through the crack. When it revealed nothing, the line started moving forward, step by step and bit by bit. Nothing. A little more. Nothing. Still more. Nothing.

And before Applejack knew it, they were all outside. The dark seemed oppressive, but they were okay for the moment. “Close it!” Twilight howled back. A few moments later, the doors slid shut with a portentous thud.

And they were alone.

One by one, the ponies clicked their suit lights on. “Think the changelings destroyed the lightbulbs?” Spitfire asked.

“Maybe,” said Twilight. “I don’t know how well-”

“We can see in the dark,” said Thorax quietly. “Actually, we don’t even need to see. We can… your language doesn’t have a word for it.”

“Uh-huh,” said Applejack. Her light danced across various surfaces, all of them with no traces of changelings. “And how many little buggers’re around us right now?”

“None.” Pause. “That I can tell.”

“Ominous,” Spitfire said casually. “Keep moving.”

They crept up the stairs, flashlight beams dancing across every surface. Applejack was struck by how clean it all was. She’d been seeing black-smeared surfaces for so long, it was almost unnerving to see a place where no changelings had… left anything. She wanted to say it was because no changeling had been able to come down here, but given how quickly the queen had found them, more likely, no changeling had bothered to come down here.

They reached a small maintenance room that connected to the GUTS, stuffed with tables and tools that had been pushed aside on previous visits. Spitfire called a halt and immediately turned to Twilight. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Twilight said, nodding. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Spitfire squinted at her. “I mean, you look okay.” (A sentiment Applejack agreed with; Twilight barely looked like she was straining.) “But less than an hour ago, you were inches from death, and now…” She gestured at the ball holding the queen’s body.

Thorax suddenly cleared its throat. “Um. Guys?” it asked quietly.

Twilight shrugged. “Alicorn. Plus, I’ve got something to focus on now.”

“Guys?” Thorax’s voice was only slightly louder.

Spitfire’s nod was skeptical, but she still nodded. “Well, let me know if you think you’re gonna-”

“Guys!” squeaked Thorax. It was high-pitched enough to make everyone jump. “We need to leave. Now.”

“Why?” asked Twilight. “What’s wrong?”

“I, I don’t know,” Thorax said, looking around. “But I’ve got this bad feeling, it’s like a pressure on my head, that if we stay here-”

A wrench suddenly flew from one of the tables at Twilight, melting into one of the tetrapodal changelings with a shriek. Twilight yelped and batted it away, but before it had hit the floor, another one had leapt from a shelf, wrapping itself around her horn.

Disrupting her magic.

Breaking the shield.

And before Applejack knew what was happening, the changeling queen was devouring Thorax.

The second the shield had fallen, the… mass of slime that the queen was had grown tentacles and blindly swung out for the nearest body. That body had proven to be Thorax, and the queen immediately flowed over it, around it. Thorax opened its mouth to scream, but the queen was crushing its trunk so hard it couldn’t draw breath. The black mass rolled over Thorax’s mouth, then both of them tumbled down the stairs, out of sight, into the darkness.

It had only taken seconds. Twilight hadn’t fully wrestled the changeling off her horn. Nopony had managed to get a shot off or even raise their guns. They gawked down the stairs, at the black from which wet sounds were coming. Twilight blinked, her mouth slightly open, then snatched her wings shut. “We need to move!” she said with more authority than Applejack had heard from her before. “If the queen gets its biomass back-”

Just like that, everypony was moving again, like a wave that nearly swept Applejack off her feet and into the GUTS. The group grabbed onto one of the container clamps and shot off, so quickly Applejack needed a moment to reorient herself.

In one direction, she heard a loud scream. A familiar one. One of triumph and hatred mixed together. Whatever the queen had been doing to Thorax, it was done, now.

So that direction was toward the bay. Good to know.

“There it is!” said Spitfire, pointing. A tunnel branched off from the main shaft some distance away, clearly labelled Magnetosphere. “Not much farther-”

Then a black mass came pouring in from the far end of the GUTS. For a second,

The shaft was, almost literally, clogged with changeling drones. They came pouring in from the end, from side tunnels, from vents, nearly everywhere they could. It must’ve been every changeling on the station, there were so many. The air buzzed with the sounds of their wings and their cold blue eyes glinted from every corner, always advancing, always coming for the ponies, always moving to cut them off.

It was too many. They could never fight that horde off.

But before Applejack’s blood could freeze, Spitfire yelled out, her voice somehow still steady. “We’re not letting them stop us!” she roared. “Let ’em have it!”

With that, every pony pointed their guns at the oncoming horde and fired.

The sounds of the barrage filled the shaft, bounding and rebounding, folding back on themselves. Gunsmoke threaded through the air before them. It was like the atmosphere was shaking. Twilight added her own blasts of magic, complex spells Applejack knew she couldn’t comprehend. And with that many changelings coming, ponies barely needed to aim. So they kept firing and firing and firing.

And, miraculously, the rush slowed. As bullets ripped through the drones’ bodies, they twitched, their flight paths altered just a bit, and they bumped into the drones next to them. The jam cascaded from changeling to changeling, clogging up the GUTS and slowing them down. Just enough.

Behind the ponies, the queen roared. Louder. Stronger.

“GO!” yelled Spitfire. She shoved a pony towards the magnetosphere. Applejack kicked off the rails and glided through the air, going straight for the tunnel but briefly helpless-

She flew in and bounded diagonally off the wall. It wasn’t much of a tunnel, just a brief entryway for gravity reorientation before the actual door. Applejack managed to twist so she was rightside up when gravity reasserted itself and landed like a pro. She swung around and pulled the nearest pony into the gravity field, then stepped aside as more ponies came in. A few guards. Then Twilight. More guards. She hit the button and the door to the magnetosphere hissed open.

Spitfire wasn’t moving. She’d fire two shots at the oncoming changelings, then spin around, graceful in zero-G, and fire a few shots down toward where the queen had to be coming. Each shot slowed the changelings a bit more; maybe it was doing the same for the queen. “Spitfire!” Twilight yelled. “Come on!” The other guards were already inside the magnetosphere.

“Just go!” Spitfire shot at the confused mass of changelings again, taking a drone in the head. She swung around for the queen. “I’ll hold them off for-”

Click.

It was a very quiet click. But Applejack had been expecting a bang, and that made that click the loudest sound in the world. Everypony froze.

And as Spitfire started fumbling with reloading, the queen came charging.

Compared to what it had been, it was emaciated and thin, yet Applejack had never imagined it could be so angry. It flew through the air, fangs bared, eyes burning, roaring with fury. Spitfire faltered and looked up at it, agape. Applejack wanted to do something to help, but her legs had locked up in fear.

The distance between the two was closed in mere seconds. The queen lunged at Spitfire and-

A lavender haze yanked Spitfire away and the queen hit the wall. Spitfire tumbled across the floor, into the magnetosphere control room, and came to a stop right next to Twilight. As Twilight stomped on the button to close and lock the outer door, she scowled down at Spitfire. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself, you know,” she said disapprovingly. “If you can save us all and still live, why wouldn’t you?”

Spitfire’s ears twitched, like she hadn’t thought about that. “…Dunno,” she said. “Caught up in the heat of the moment, I guess.” She rubbed her face. “I’m tired.”

“Well, c’mon.” Applejack stepped forward and offered Spitfire a hoof. “We’re almost done.”

Something smashed against the outer door. It didn’t shake.

“Almost only counts in balefire bombs,” Spitfire muttered. But she got up, and when Applejack smiled at her, she smiled back.

Something buzzed electrically, and it wasn’t from outside. Applejack turned around and got a good look at the magnetosphere.

It was a large control room, with banks upon banks of computer stations. Off in one corner, a staircase led up to a maintenance catwalk. And taking up the bulk of the room was the magnetosphere generator itself: a colossal glass cylinder surrounding a glowing column of machinery and crystals. A rune-inscribed ring, lightning dancing across its spokes, was running up and down the column, humming all the while. Every now and then, the lightning would crackle a bit more than usual. It kept cosmic radiation away from Golden Oaks, and that was all Applejack knew about it. Even with her engineering neuromods, some of the specifics of the process escaped her, it was so complex. Yet in spite of that complexity, Twilight’s switch could be done in seconds. Supposedly.

The guards swept the room for several moments. No (obviously visible) changelings. Twilight stepped forward. “Alright,” she said, “we just need to-”

Wham. The queen screamed outside and the doors began groaning. Immediately, Twilight spun around and put up a shield around the door to hold it shut. “They’re trying to break through,” she grunted. “I can hold them off, but I don’t know for how long.” She fished around in her spacesuit and passed a small mess of wires and arcane components to Applejack. The thing that would create the nullwaves once it was properly installed. “You’ll need to make the changes to the shield generator, Applejack.”

Applejack gingerly took the device as everypony looked at her. All their hopes were riding on this little doohickey. She’d read and memorized the instructions, the ones that had seemed so simple down in the cargo bay but now felt weighty. And why wouldn’t they? Even if she wasn’t working against time before the changelings broke in, all of Golden Oaks was depending on her.

But no pressure.

28 - The Signs of the Cosmic

So. Applejack needed to replace a component she’d never seen before of a device she’d never worked with before while working with the stress of aliens trying to come in and eat her face off. Easy-peasy.

Wham. Outside the door, the queen screeched.

“Hurry!” yelled Twilight. “There’s a lot of them!”

Easy. Peasy.

“Look around,” Applejack said to the guards. “There’s gotta be an off switch or somethin’. ’Cause I sure as sugar ain’t goin’ in that-” She pointed at the magnetosphere generator just as the lightning flared up again. “-while it’s workin’.”

“You two!” Spitfire said, pointing at a pair of guards. “Keep on the door, get ready to fire if the princess’s shield fails. Everypony else, fan out!”

Wham.

There were a lot of workstations around, but everypony moved methodically. Applejack found herself examining the area around the columnic shield generator itself. In spite of the importance of her mission, her gaze kept getting drawn back to the generator. The glass cylinder was massive, almost fifteen feet across and over three stories high. Even as she watched, the runewheel passed near her and her hair stood on end. It almost felt like something she shouldn’t be messing with. But messing with it, she would do.

She ripped her gaze away from the column and went back to searching. She found what she was looking for on a nearby wall: a nice big red button labelled, Rapid Magnetosphere Shutdown — FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY.

Wham.

“I’d say this is an emergency,” Applejack said, and hit it.

Immediately, the lightning within the magnetosphere’s shield generator began dying down. The runewheel slowed and slid to the bottom of the column, little bolts of electricity still twined about it. “Operation suspended,” crooned a computerized voice. “Please wait for runewheel discharge to complete before entering the chamber.”

WHAM.

“Yeah, that ain’t happenin’,” muttered Applejack. She’d just have to avoid the thing. Or tough it out. She’d toughed the rest of this out, hadn’t she? “Got it!” she yelled to the guards. “Now I just gotta-”

-skrtskrt-

Applejack’s ears pricked up. She’d heard a hollow scraping, just barely on the edge of hearing, coming from the walls. Like-

“Watch the vents!” she yelled. She bolted up the staircase to the maintenance catwalk. “Watch the vents! They’re in the walls!” She reached the top of the stairs, ran for-

A vent cover burst open. Applejack didn’t look at what was inside before blasting it twice. A dead changeling drone flopped out, pushed from behind by another changeling coming out. She charged, whipped around, and gave it the strongest buck she could manage, right in the head. The changeling crumpled like a balloon. Applejack didn’t spare any time to be disgusted before running to the generator’s access door. She wrapped her hooves around the handle keeping it shut and pulled.

And jerked to a stop. The handle didn’t budge. Applejack blinked at it, then tugged again. Still nothing. She looked up; above the door was a readout: Runewheel discharge complete in 9:38, the timer always clicking down. Stupid security measures. Applejack groaned, mumbling, “Sonuva-”

Bang; a changeling screeched and Applejack was splattered with ichor. She whipped around to see a guard with a bloody nose pointing a smoking gun at where a changeling had once stood. Keeping his eyes on the changeling, he asked, “What’s up? What’s wrong?”

“Door’s locked,” said Applejack. “I can’t get inside for another nine minutes. Safety measure.”

The guard did a double-take. “Nine minutes? I don’t think we have that sort of time.”

“Yeah, well-”

Metal screeched from the entrance and Applejack heard Twilight scream in effort. “Ah, Tartarus,” muttered the guard. He bounded back down the stairs; after a moment, Applejack followed him.

In spite of Twilight’s best efforts, the door to the control room was slowly getting pulled open, millimeter by millimeter. Several guards were on the floor, pointing their guns through the crack, ready to fire if a changeling tried to poke through. Twilight herself was sitting on her tail, sweating and breathing heavily as she forced more and more magic at the door.

Yet still it inched open.

Applejack glanced around. Over a dozen changeling drones lay dead on the ground, but two guards were dead as well. If the changelings got in, they’d overrun the ponies in less than a minute.

She readied her gun. Might as well go down swinging.

“We will rend your bones from your flesh!” screamed the queen. “We will feast upon your thoughts until reason itself flees from you! You won’t even-”

Then it stopped. Changelings started screaming outside and the door slammed back into place, Twilight wincing. Nobody moved. The screaming faded, replaced with… laughter?

“Ah ha ha! Flee, foolish aliens!” A deep fwooshing rippled through the door. “Flee before the awesome, fiery might of the Great and Powerful Trrrrrrrixie! …And also Blueblood.”

Oh, no. No way.

A moment of silence, then somepony rapped on the door. “Hellooooo? Trixie believes it’s time for you to thank her for driving away the changelings!”

Spitfire and Twilight exchanged glances. Then Twilight let the door slide open.

Trixie and Blueblood were standing just outside, Trixie doing so proudly, Blueblood self-consciously. In their magic auras, they each held a lighter and several cans of hairspray. “Greetings, friends!” Trixie immediately said. “Rejoice, for we have-”

The guards yanked them inside in an instant and Twilight slammed the door shut again. Huffing, Trixie brushed some of her mane out of her face as she got back to her hooves. “A ‘thank you’ would be nice,” she mumbled.

“For what?” asked Spitfire. But Applejack was looking from Trixie and Blueblood to the door. The door where countless changelings had been trying to get in. They couldn’t have possibly… Could they?

“We, ah, drove the changelings off,” said Blueblood. He kept switching his gaze between the ponies and his hooves as he shuffled his weight around. “It was Trixie’s idea.” (Trixie preened.) “She thought that the changelings would try to pin you down, and if we came at them from behind some time after you left-”

“Shock and awe!” Trixie interrupted. “All of their focus was on you, so when we came at them from behind, blasting great balls of fire, they panicked and fled. Simple psychology, really. And you got some breathing room.” She nodded in a very self-satisfied sort of way.

“And you-” Twilight groaned and rubbed her temples. Applejack wasn’t sure it was from the stress of keeping the door shut, the stress of dealing with Trixie, or both. “How did you even come up with that idea in the first place.”

“Hairspray was lying about the cargo bay,” Trixie said. “Hairspray is flammable. Animals flee from fire.” She shrugged. “The conclusion was obvious.”

“That,” hissed Twilight, her ears turned forward, “is immensely dangerous, especially in zero-G.”

“If Trixie lived the safe life, she wouldn’t be up here. Besides, she used more than manespray. Some fireworks-” Trixie’s horn sparked. “-helped.”

Twilight opened her mouth again, but Spitfire shoved her. “Your Highness, we don’t have the time to be picky. If she wants to drive off dozens of bugs by doing something risky, let her.” She glanced at Blueblood. “So what’s your excuse for being here?”

“I started this mess,” declared Blueblood, “and I would rather die trying to fix it than survive cowering in-”

“Good enough.” Spitfire pulled a shotgun from one of the dead guards and tossed it to Blueblood. “You know how to use one of these things?”

Astonishingly, Blueblood caught it easily and strapped it to his leg with a practiced ease. “Of course,” he said as he checked the ammunition counter. “Target shooting is a favorite pastime of the idle rich.”

“You any good at it?”

“Above average.”

“Good enough. Stick with Applejack, make sure she doesn’t get taken by surprise. Speaking of AJ…” Spitfire switched her focus. “What’s up?”

“The door to the generator’s shut tighter’n a whistle,” said Applejack. “Gotta for that wheel thingamabob to power down.”

“No, you don’t,” mumbled Twilight. “Runewheels are great at dispersing energy. Don’t touch it and you’ll be fine.”

Applejack continued, “We’ve still gotta wait somethin’ like eight minutes ’fore-”

“Where’s the main computer?” Trixie immediately demanded. “Trixie can fix this.”

Within moments, Trixie was at a computer, tapping her way through the systems as Applejack and Blueblood hovered behind her. “The function to open up the doors is somewhere in here,” she said, half to herself. “All Trixie needs to do is-”

“ ’Scuse me,” said Applejack. “But when y’all sent the changelin’s runnin’… d’you see where they ran to?” Because there’d been a lot of changelings out there and only two ponies.

“Oh, you know,” Trixie said vaguely. “Away.” She waved her hoof off in some vague direction.

“Further down the GUTS,” said Blueblood. “Towards the… top, I suppose. There were numerous changelings attempting to get in here, but they fled with a little fire. Animal instincts kicking in, I presume. Fire does that.”

“Numerous” changelings attacking the magnetosphere. Not anything like “countless”. Just “numerous”. Hmm.

“We didn’t run into any coming up from the cargo bay, if that’s what you’re asking,” Trixie said. “If you’re going to kill the changelings with this plan, the changelings wouldn’t bother trying to get into the bay. Trixie certainly wouldn’t waste her time- A-ha! Boop, boop, boop.” She hit a few buttons and Applejack heard something click somewhere above. “You’re good,” Trixie said smugly.

“Great,” said Applejack. But as Trixie showed her how to restart the shield generator, her thoughts were distant. It couldn’t have been that easy, could it? All of those changelings suddenly fleeing from a little bit of fire. But Trixie and Blueblood hadn’t taken a look at the mass of changelings and decided they couldn’t handle it — which meant the number of changelings at the door had to have been far smaller than the number of changelings first swarming down the GUTS. And-

A bad thought suddenly made her stomach churn. “When y’all were attackin’ the changelings,” she said, “did y’see any… real big ’uns? I mean, Queen Celestia big?”

Trixie and Blueblood looked at each other for a moment. “No,” Trixie said. “At least, Trixie certainly didn’t.”

“Nor did I,” said Blueblood. Unlike Trixie, his voice was low and his ears were twitching.

“The queen was attackin’ us seconds ago,” Applejack murmured. “Where’d it-”

There was more than one way into the control room.

Changelings could move quietly. Why’d they made sound in the vents before? To make the ponies associate that sound with the vents. To make them pay attention to the vents when they heard that sound and make them not pay attention when they didn’t hear that sound.

Like now.

On reflex, Applejack’s head snapped up. There was a vent cover right above her.

Without thinking, she yanked Trixie and Blueblood to the side. Silent as a cat, the queen dropped from the vent, landing right on the floor where Trixie had been sitting. It was already facing them by the time Applejack hit the floor, murder in its eyes. It didn’t hiss at them, didn’t taunt them, it simply spread its wings and-

BANG.

Applejack clapped her hooves over her ears as Blueblood’s shotgun went off. Not wildly, not in some random direction; right in the queen’s face. Pellets ripped through its flesh and splattered ichor everywhere as the stench of gunsmoke filled Applejack’s nostrils-

BANG. The next shot went into the queen’s chest. More ichor and smoke. The queen barely even resembled itself anymore, its body was so mangled. Where once had been a face and oily chitin, now there was not much more than ground pulp.

The queen didn’t even notice.

It dove for Applejack, legs up, ready to crush her. Before she could move, a haze of Trixie’s magic surrounded Applejack and she was yanked to one side; the queen hit nothing but floor. Its body was already flowing back together as it glared at her.

One of the guards yelled and fired; they hit, Applejack could see the impact, but the queen didn’t twitch. Fangs bared, jaws snapping, it lunged at Applejack. She rolled over and the queen ripped a hole in her suit, but missed any actual flesh. She bucked blindly, nailed the queen in the face, and scrabbled to her feet. She knew what she needed to do, and she needed to do it as fast as possible.

The queen roared, but before it could move, Twilight grabbed it in her magic and tossed it against the wall. “Run!” she yelled across the room. “I’ll hold it-”

With a grinding screech, the control room door began sliding open again. Twilight cursed and forced it back shut with her magic. But the diversion of attention was enough to let the queen break free.

Trixie shoved Applejack towards the stairs and yelled something; Applejack didn’t bother listening as she ran. She didn’t have time for that. Something exploded in purple and green behind her and gunshots rang out. She didn’t look back.

The door to the generator still had the timer counting down above it. Praying Trixie’s hack had done the trick, Applejack pushed on the latch, so hard she nearly fell over when it swung open easily. At least one thing was going right. She yanked the door open and jumped inside.

The area inside the glass column was a zero-G zone; Applejack was briefly struck with vertigo as her sense of balance went nuts and a static electric hum made her coat stand on end. But she quickly managed to reorient herself: this way was up and that way was down. To change the shield generator’s catalyst, she needed to go up.

Trying to ignore the sounds outside, Applejack bounded back and forth up the column. This close, she could see the circuits printed onto the crystalline pillar in the middle and it almost looked mechanical, with the crystals just being a covering. The neuromodded part of her was a bit curious as to how the design actually worked, but the rest of her kept pushing her upwards.

At the top, she yanked open a small hatch on the pillar. Some metal formation she didn’t recognize rested in the alcove, nestled in a confusing bramble of wires and cables and control panels: the current catalyst for generating the magnetosphere. Guided by her neuromod’s knowledge, Applejack fiddled with the controls to disengage the catalyst, plucked the wires from their sockets, then yanked the catalyst out without a second thought and let it bounce away. A quick look-over of Twilight’s improvised catalyst yielded no problems. Good. Applejack put it insi-

The entire pillar lurched and the new catalyst slipped out of its slot. Below, the queen had charged into the generator and slammed into the pillar at exactly the wrong moment, dislodging Applejack’s grip. Its gaze snapped up and locked on her.

Fear shot through Applejack. Acting on instinct, she kicked off the central pillar to the outside wall as the queen twitched; that twitch was a prelude to a pounce, and the queen missed Applejack, soaring past her to alight on the “roof”. After a moment of reorientation, they both pushed downward. This time, the queen planned for Applejack’s dodge and caught her in mid-air, right around the trunk. She yelled and twisted, trying to wriggle free, but it had too tight a grip on her.

Suddenly they jolted to a stop; an agonizing buzz shot through her as the queen twitched and screeched. For a second, its grip slackened; thanking her lucky stars, Applejack managed to squirm out, kicking the queen in the face as she did. They’d hit the runewheel at the bottom of the column and been slapped with a massive electric discharge, the queen apparently taking the worst of it. Applejack could smell something burning and her entire body ached, but adrenaline pushed those thoughts to the side before they’d fully formed.

As the queen struggled to put itself together, Applejack spotted the nullwave catalyst drifting around above them. She pulled herself up the pillar in spite of the way her muscles screamed and her tongue was dry. The room seemed to rotate around her. She didn’t care. She didn’t have the energy to care. Snatching the catalyst from the air gave her a brief burst of satisfaction, then she kept crawling. A quick downward glance told her the queen — which was smoldering — still hadn’t fully recovered from the jolt.

Top of the pillar. Praying it wouldn’t be a repeat of the first time, Applejack pulled the hatch open again. Her hooves were shaking, but by some miracle, she managed to slot the catalyst into place. Red lights began winking to green as she plugged the wires back in, changing ports to account for the design of the new catalyst and altering parameters on the control panels. Without her neuromod, it could’ve taken minutes rather than seconds, there were so many, but she flowed through it with the ease of muscle memory. She shut the hatch with no problems (for once). Okay. Okay, good. Now she just needed to turn the generator back on. She turned her head to look outside the pillar.

Changelings were crawling from vents into the control room, one by one, just as fast as the pony guards were taking them out. Bodies and blood and ichor were in every corner and gunshots flashed intermittently. By some miracle, the ponies seemed to be mostly holding, but it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed and Twilight was clearly struggling to hold the door shut.

Get back to the computer. In that. Great.

Applejack only realized she was sweating when some of the droplets wicked off her coat into zero-G. And had her heart always been beating that hard? She did her best to ignore it. She pulled herself back down the column, aiming for the exit.

The queen was back on its feet, avoiding the runewheel. It glanced at Applejack, then its eyes flicked to the exit. Applejack tried pulling faster, but the queen moved like a blur. It reached the exit in seconds and placed itself right in Applejack’s way, looking up at her with a wide leer. It was actually licking lips.

Then something barrelled into it from out of the control room. Blueblood had awkwardly tackled it around the trunk, just enough to dislodge it from the doorframe. He yelled something, but Applejack couldn’t make out what; she was too busy rushing for the exit. It was hard to imagine that that was the whiny Blueblood she knew, yet she found herself imagining it anyway. She’d need to say something to him once this all was done.

Her head reeled once she re-entered gravity, but she quickly found her hooves. The sounds of fighting were still coming from down below, but the entrance seemed safe. She turned around; the queen was wrestling with Blueblood, pulling him off itself. Almost contemptuously, it tossed him away and snapped to look at Applejack. It spread its wings to move-

Blueblood’s horn glowed and the entrance door slammed shut, its latches clicking into place.

Applejack gasped in surprise and jumped back. She instinctively reached forward to undo the latches. She couldn’t just leave him there.

Then Blueblood plastered himself against the glass on the side of the door. Even muffled, through the wall, Applejack could tell what he was screaming.

“Turn it on! TURN IT ON!”

And Applejack found herself running back down to the control level. She gawked at Blueblood, true. What was he thinking? He was still in there. There was no way he’d get out in time. But at the same time, she knew exactly what he was thinking. And why. If he thought it was worth it, it was worth it.

The queen reoriented itself, pushed off the glass, and barrelled into Blueblood. They rolled around the inside of the pillar, and every time it had the chance, the queen smashed Blueblood’s body against the glass, over and over and over. A dotted trail of blood soon smeared across the interior of the shield generator.

Applejack reached the floor, slipped on ichor, stumbled for the main computer. The lights continued to flash, the alarms continued to blare, ponies continued to grapple with changelings, guns continued to roar. She could barely tell where the workstation was in the sensory overload, yet she found her way there, somehow. She slammed her hoof on the button and a computerized voice rang throughout the room. “Rebooting…”

For a moment, it was like everything stopped. All the changeling sounds went quiet and the ponies stopped moving. Even the queen froze. Then it slammed what was left of Blueblood’s body against the glass and darted for the door. But the safety locks were already secured; the door didn’t budge.

The column began glowing again, the runewheel spinning once more as its spokes sizzled. The queen smashed against the door again, to no avail. It whirled around and grabbed at the runewheel, clearly intending to break it.

The spoke wasn’t moving that fast, yet it cleaved through the queen’s legs like a plasma blade through butter. The queen withdrew, howling, its wounded leg dripping like melted slime. In desperation, it lunged again, only to backpedal when the same result happened.

The runewheel suddenly lit up like a firework: only for a moment, yet so brightly. An empty sort of feeling washed over Applejack for that one moment. No magic. It was working. Around her, changelings suddenly began screaming, lurching drunkenly, twitching spasmodically.

The queen was catching the worst of it, its entire body jittering and its skin moving in ways nothing ever should. It saw Applejack and, eyes full of fury, lunged at her in one last vain attack. It scrabbled at the glass in front of Applejack in impotent anger, regardless of how little damage its legs did. Up close, Applejack could see something she knew she’d never want to see again: the queen’s body was bubbling.

The queen banged on the glass, shrieking at Applejack. In rage, in fear, in hate, in desperation, in everything. It was a harsh, discordant wail that danced across frequencies in an unnatural manner. All she could do was watch as the queen began boiling and decohering.

The shield generator fired again and Applejack went numb.

1 - Alone in The Void

The overpowering stench of uncleanliness assaulted Applejack’s nostrils, bullying her back into consciousness. She groaned and rolled over. The ground shifted uncomfortably beneath her and any exhaustion vanished in an instant. She opened her eyes. Blackness surrounded her, so deep it didn’t even look black anymore. Where was she? What had she been doing? Why was she still wearing her CelesTech uniform? Applejack blinked her weariness away and pushed herself up. Or tried to; one of her hooves slipped on cardboard (cardboard?) and she fell back down, biting her tongue. She blinked again, clicked on her suit-mounted flashlight, and forced the world into focus.

She was sitting on top of a pile of garbage: used plastic tubing, copper wire, banana peels, fried circuit boards, and Celestia knew what else. Sheer metal walls surrounded her on all sides and her flashlight cast a harsh glow on everything. It wasn’t a large room, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet, but it was tall. She looked up; there was a circular hole the ceiling, several yards out of reach. “Hoo-ee, AJ,” she muttered, “whatcha doin’ in the heat melt compactor?” She didn’t even have her hat.

She swept her flashlight around the walls. At least the maintenance hatch was clearly labeled. Applejack wobbled to her feet and awkwardly stumbled down the pile. It was a very porous heap and objects kept slipping out from under her. More than once, she lost her grip entirely and faceplanted. But she made good tim-

Clunk. Whrrrrrrrr…

Applejack froze at the sound of humming machinery. The pile began to rumble. Scraps fell down it in tiny avalanches. And the walls began moving inward.

She scrambled across the trash as best as she could, fighting through the scraps. She couldn’t hear anything except for the roar of the motors. Her light flicked back and forth, alternately showing and hiding the hatch. She reached the ladder; the level of trash began rising as it was forced into a smaller and smaller space. The ladder was shaking enough to almost dislodge her as she climbed.

The walls were three feet away and still advancing when she reached the hatch. “Sun blast it,” she cursed as she forced the lever up. The hatch hissed open, but Applejack couldn’t hear it over the walls. She forced herself into the tiny space as trash threatened to swamp her.

Two seconds after Applejack was in, the walls stopped with a thud, a mountain of trash compressed between them. Applejack lay in a crawlspace barely large enough to fit her and stared at the solid wall of crushed trash, panting. What was going on? Was that a murder attempt? Who’d want to kill her? Like that? At least she was safe for the mo-

Wait. Maybe not. There was another stage to the heat melt compactor…

Applejack pulled herself forward through the crawlspace frantically as the temperature in the compactor started to rise. The exit hatch was only a few yards ahead. The metal grew uncomfortably hot beneath her hooves. Sweat trickled down her face. She touched the handle and immediately pulled away from the heat. She swallowed, forced the handle up (burns be damned), nearly headbutted the hatch open, and tumbled out into the maintenance hall. The cool air on her face felt like wine.

“What- in- the blazes-” she panted, “happened- to- the safeties?” She dragged a hoof down her face, trying to rein in the shaking of her entire body. Her heart pounded in her chest like a piston, no matter how she willed it to slow. She could barely even think straight without getting her mind yanked back to the compactor.

Breathe, AJ, she told herself. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out…

Applejack looked up to get a handle on where she was, but that wasn’t any help. She was in some maintenance area she’d never seen before, all tight corridors and steel struts and exposed piping and bare metal flooring. Most of the lights were off, except for a few red warning lights that spun around and around and around. A low alarm blared incessantly in the background.

“Hey!” yelled Applejack. “Anypony out there? Helloooooooooo!”

Only the alarms wailed back, like some techno dirge. Where was everypony?

Applejack groaned. She had a splitting headache and one of her eyes wouldn’t stop watering. She flexed her legs, one at a time. Nothing hurt too much. She stood up and stretched. Again, nothing too bad.

Out of reflex, she woozily got up to stumble to a window to get the time. She was several yards down a hallway by the time she remembered that looking outside was useless for telling time in space (if there was one thing from terrestrial Equestria she missed besides the farm, it was the slow beauty of sunrises and sunsets), she didn’t know where any windows were, and the maintenance sections probably didn’t have many windows, anyway. Poop. She slouched against a wall and glanced at her watch instead (2:23 AM; figured), but did a double-take when she saw the date. March 15? That couldn’t be right. She was missing almost a week if that was true. She could’ve sworn that just a few minutes ago, she was sitting in the Yellow Tulip Bar a day or so after Princess Twilight’s arrival to the station, and she knew that the princess had come on the eighth.

“What the holy haybasket is goin’ on?”

Only the alarms responded, and those responses weren’t useful. She’d need to find answers on her own. So: left or right? Applejack looked left. She saw a dark hallway with exposed infrastructure and metal flooring, illuminated only by warning lights. She looked right. She saw a dark hallway with exposed infrastructure and metal flooring, illuminated only by warning lights, that took a sharp turn about twenty feet down. Left it was. At least she wouldn’t get surprised by something jumping out from around the corner.

The world had stopped spinning by the time Applejack got to her feet. One of her legs twinged a little, but she pushed on through. She kept her ears up, desperate to hear somepony, anypony else, and was sorely disappointed. She was stuck in a part of Golden Oaks she didn’t recognize with nopony around and a hole in her memory. Maybe the parts she did remember would help her figure out what went wrong. Applejack turned back time in her mind, trying to find the gap.

“Alright, turn ’em on,” Applejack hollered to Rose. Rose hollered back, and a few moments later, the sprinklers came on in the greenhouse. Applejack squinted through the artificial rain as she walked up and down the aisles, closely examining which rows of sprinkler heads were and weren’t spraying water. “One’s good,” she muttered. “Two’s good… Three’s good…”

Keeping the greenhouse’s sprinklers up to snuff was quietly one of the gardeners’ most important jobs; all the fresh fruits and vegetables in Golden Oaks came from the greenhouse. No sprinklers meant no fresh food, which meant the station’s researchers would have to fall back on prepackaged stuff. Researchers without good enough food got cranky and did subpar work. Subpar research work meant funding getting slashed, which would eventually mean no more Golden Oaks. So those sprinklers better stay fixed. (Or at least, that was what Applejack liked to joke. In reality, planting the seeds and caring for them personally was satisfying enough for her.)

Up and down and up and down and a few minutes later, Applejack was giving her report to Rose. “Six’s workin’, but only barely. Twelve an’ thirteen’re completely shot. But other’n that, we’re all good. Fourteen’s just fine, so I’m bettin’ the problem with the last two’s got somethin’ t’do with the heads themselves, not the pipe.”

“Six… twelve… thirteen,” muttered Rose, typing the numbers into the greenhouse’s computer. “Do we still have hydration coverage on those areas?”

“Ain’t no problem for six, but I can’t say for the other two. Want me t’start checkin’ it this evenin’?”

“If you could, that’d be great. Aaaaand…” Rose tapped in a last few words and tapped the Send button. “Bing. Repair request sent. How long do you think it’ll take Engineering to get to it this time?”

“Two days,” said Applejack.

“Oh, come on, two days? That’s crazy. It took them four days last time!”

“Yeah, ’cause the airlock in Hardware was messed up and that was their prior’ty!”

Rose shrugged. “Eh. Maybe, but with the VIPs arriving tomorrow, I think we’ll be lucky. Anything else we need to do tonight?”

“I don’t think the tomatoes’re ready to be picked, d’you?”

“Oh, no. Definitely not. Give them another week.”

“Then no, not ’sides loggin’. We’re good.”

“Finally.” Rose stood up and stretched, from her nose to the tip of her tail. “Urrffh! Sorry, it’s just been one of those days for me. Cherry Berry had me running back to her lab every ten minutes since she’s been… Well. You know her.” She rolled her joints, each one producing an audible pop.

“If it’s that bad, want me t’get everythin’ set for the night?” Applejack asked. “I can get it done in a jiffy.”

“That’d be great, thanks. I’ll be in the clearing.” Rose didn’t quite waddle out of the greenhouse, but she was definitely stiff.

After over two years of working on Golden Oaks, Applejack knew the proper logging procedures like the back of her hoof. It only took her five minutes to record everything in the system and lock the greenhouse up. She wiped the worst of the dirt off her face and looked up. A dome of titanium latticework and yard-thick glass reached out far above her, holding in the air of Golden Oaks from the vacuum outside while still providing a good view. The glass even had anti-glare enchantments on it to keep it from being mirrored by the brightness below and the blackness above.

She looked past the glass, at the stars beyond, trying to stargaze. She’d done it numerous times before, but she could only manage a few long moments before the vertigo hit. The blackness of space was so vast, so thought-defying, that it felt like it was going to swallow her up. She tried handling that, but then she remembered how big the space she wasn’t seeing was. She was a microscopic dot near Equus, which was a microscopic dot in their terrestrial system, which was a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot on another-

Applejack pulled her eyes away and put a hoof on her chest. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. A worker on a space station who was afraid of space, even after over three years of working there. Who’da thunk?

Once her heart slowed down and the floor was level again, Applejack walked away from the greenhouse, deeper into the arboretum. The cobblestone path (real stones, too!) wound its way through the miniature sort-of forest, with very little obvious artificiality. If Applejack closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the only thing keeping her from being back on Equus was the slightly echoic quality of the sounds and perhaps fewer birds than she would’ve liked. There was even enough dirt to satisfy earth pony magic. She could spend all her time in the arboretum if she had the option.

After a deliberately-slow minute, the trees gave way to a hallway of metal burrowing into a hillside, the stones merging into tiles. One wall was taken up by a security checkpoint, manned by Rainbow Dash. Except that Rainbow was engrossed in a magazine; her eyes were practically glued to the epaper. Applejack didn’t try to hide her footsteps as she walked up, but she still didn’t get Rainbow’s attention. She took a breath as quietly as she could. “RAINBOW!” she yelled.

Rainbow didn’t flinch. “AJ, if I was that inattentive, I’d’ve been thrown out my first week.” She looked up, grinning cockily. “And I mean that literally. Nice try, though.”

“Eh. Figures.” Applejack shrugged, then reached into one of the pockets on her uniform. She put a plastic bag holding an apple on Rainbow’s desk. “Anyway, the latest apple type ripened today. Lemme know what you think.”

“Already? Nice!” Rainbow tossed her magazine away and practically ripped the apple from the bag and devoured a quarter of it in a single bite. She nodded to herself as she chewed. “Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Mmm! Dff tfftf whwwy ghh.”

“…Huh?”

Rainbow swallowed some of the apple in her mouth. “I fed ih taytff guh!” she said indignantly.

“Pardon?” Applejack asked, tilting her head.

Another swallow, this time complete. “It’s good!” protested Rainbow. “Really good!” She took another, smaller bite and chewed slowly. “It’s juicy, but not too juicy. It’s crispy, but not too crispy. And the taste…” She swallowed and smacked her lips. “I wish I could say something besides ‘it’s good’, but trust me, it’s good.” Another bite.

“Great. I’ll let Cherry know and maybe we can get ’em added to the fruit. Thanks for tryin’ it, and-”

“Wait. While you’re over here, could you also look at the door? It’s been screwy recently.” To demonstrate, Rainbow hit a button in the booth. The door to the booth slid open a few feet, then stopped. She smacked the frame and it opened the rest of the way. “See? Like that.”

Applejack sighed. “Really, Rainbow? Nothin’ I do’ll make it last as long as havin’ Engineerin’ fix it.”

“C’mon, you know they take super long to get to anything!”

“Alright. Fine.”

Applejack had never opened an engineering manual in her life. Never attended any relevant college courses (or high school courses, for that matter). Never gone through any apprenticeships. Never dreamed she’d be doing any mechanical or electrical work beyond what Sweet Apple Acres needed, which Granny would teach her.

And yet, the second she stepped into the booth, before she’d even looked at anything, she knew what the problem was from the smell of crisping plastic. “Was the door not workin’ earlier and you figured you’d jus’ fix it yourself rather’n wait?”

“No,” said Rainbow promptly. Pause. “Yes.” Pause. “It was my idea but I wasn’t the one who fixed it.” Pause. “Okay, I helped a little in the actual fixing.” Pause. Pause. Done.

“Right. Wirin’ problem?” Applejack glanced meaningfully at the cup on Rainbow’s desk. “From water damage?”

“No!” Pause. “Grapefruit soda damage.”

“Great.” Applejack sniffed her way through the booth. She quickly found a panel three-quarters of the way up the wall. She screwdrivered the panel off and hacked at the smell of charred plastic. Melted insulation, long since re-solidified, had dripped down the inside of the panel and gotten smeared around. More troubling was a tiny bit of molten copper dribbling down the inside from a thin strand that had obviously been added later and would barely qualify as a wire in a world of mice. “Consarnit, Rainbow,” Applejack muttered to herself, “don’t you know anythin’ about wirin’?”

“Nope.”

“Y’need thicker wires’n this. Volts melted it like ice on a hot day.”

“The repair kit doesn’t really have any thicker wires…”

“Then we’ll hook ’em up in parallel, spread the voltage out. It’ll do ’till you get it fixed. For real. You got any solder?”

“Sure, hang on a sec…”

Neuromods. The way of the future. Instant expertise in a needle. Just one quick shot of the right arcanochemical mix, and bam! You could have whatever skills you wanted, your brain literally rewritten to make it as if you’d always had it. What skill did you want? Computer programming? Mechanical engineering? Biotechnology? Singing? Ballet dancing? Painting? You name it, CelesTech probably had it. Or at least they would, once the mods were mass-producible. They could sell such mods to the rich right now, but Sun Queen Celestia IV was adamant about getting the cost down to the point that the poorer-than-the-average pony could afford it. The scientists complained until Celestia started signing off on every grant that was pushed in front of her. Money was to researchers what pacifiers were to babies.

Such a thing was obviously too good to be true, right? About a year into her contract as gardener, Applejack had voiced her worries saying so in the Yellow Tulip Lounge. And, through a complicated series of events that involved being overheard by one of the researchers, some intense union negotiations, and a side bet with a princess, every worker’s bonus that year had included a free neuromod of their choice as proof that what they were doing was working. Applejack, not taking it all that seriously, had gone with mechanical engineering, in case she ever needed to fix some of the harvesters back home once her contract was up. (Not that she really wanted anything to do with those darn machines.)

Before the mod, Applejack couldn’t take apart a messenger drone with the manual in front of her. After the mod, she could take one apart and put it back together blindfolded.

It was surreal. Applejack had barely ever touched mechanical stuff, yet now she knew it all inside and out. Forget fixing the harvester; she could build her own, and probably make it run better, too. Applejack had never liked being lied to, and now she knew for certain that the work she was abetting was real.

(Of course, while neuromods worked all the promotional materials about them had been vague enough to not mention a few things: That the spells needed a direct connection to the brain to rewrite synapses. That the “connection” had been found via the optic nerve, the nerve with the shortest distance to the brain. That installing a neuromod therefore necessitated stabbing yourself in the eye with a needle holy mother duck. Just a minor detail, really. Applejack totally hadn’t had nightmares about it for a week after the injection.)

As a nice bonus, now that she could do mechanical work, she could get paid for doing mechanical work. She’d been made an official honorary engineer for the arboretum, occasionally fixing or diagnosing minor issues that didn’t require anything more than what you could find in a toolbox and making money for it: frayed wires, jammed gears, leaky pneumatics. And sometimes, if she liked the pony who needed help, she’d do a little bit of extra work on the side for free.

Like helping friends fix grapefruit-soda-damaged door circuits.

“So,” Applejack asked as she soldered in another wire, “how’d you manage gettin’ this bit wet?” (Clear speech with a soldering iron in her mouth had, to her astonishment, been among her neuromod-provided skills.)

“I… really don’t remember,” said Rainbow, her ears back. “I think — I think — it involved Spitfire and a reployer. Somehow? Maybe? I can’t really remember.”

Was that enough solder for that wire? Probably not. Applejack snipped off another length of solder. “I probably don’t wanna know.”

“I don’t wanna know. Except what the heck a reployer was doing there.”

Applejack positioned the last wire and readied her iron. “Those things end up in the strangest places. Never got ’round t’askin’ Engineerin’ what they do.” She squinted at the wires. Good? Good. She punched the Close Door button; it slid shut without any problems.

“Awesome!” said Rainbow, grinning so brightly she was practically a second sun. “Thanks, AJ. You’re a lifesaver.” She smacked the button twice; open, shut.

“Meanin’ it ain’t gonna last forever and y’gotta find a better fix soon.” Applejack shut the panel. “Seriously, Rainbow, shoot an email t’Engineerin’. I did my best, but this’s a fire waitin’ to happen.”

“Eh.” Rainbow shrugged. “I’ll let the next gal get it.”

“Rainbow!”

“Whaaaaat? Shifts are getting rotated this weekend anyway! I’ll be gone in three da-”

Applejack glared at Rainbow, frowning fiercely.

“Alright, I’ll do it,” grumbled Rainbow. “Now get outta my checkpoint.”

Applejack found Rose at her usual spot, a clearing off the paved path in the arboretum. There was no bench, no amenities, absolutely nothing in the way of artificial comforts. Yet Rose was stretched out on her back, lying on the grass, gazing up at the stars. She waved as Applejack entered the clearing.

Applejack lay down on the far side, on a certain not-quite hill, and wiggled into her usual groove. The grass was nice and cool against her head (the only part of her not covered by her uniform), and if she closed her eyes, she could, for a few moments, imagine she was back on Equus.

She rolled over and idly, instinctively looked up to cloudgaze, only to get yanked out of her reverie by the black void of space. Something Rose still seemed charmed by, somehow. Applejack swallowed. “Y’ever think about what’s out there?” she asked. “Not way out there, like aliens, but… just a mile or two?”

Rose’s voice was easy, conversational. Definitely not full of vacuum-induced existential dread. “Applejack, we’re in space. There’s nothing out there.”

“Exactly! Nothin’! Not even air! And that don’t scare you?”

“No. It’s the same up here as it was down there. Just a bit closer.”

Applejack wasn’t so sure. It was the same reason she got seasick: sure, one could know the ocean was miles deep, but it was another thing to be on a ship with no land on the trackless horizon, look over the edge, and see nothing but deep blue all the way down. If she went over, she’d never be found. And space was infinitely larger than that. Literally. At least you’d stop sinking once you reached the abyssal trenches of the ocean. Not so in space, where she’d keep drifting forever.

Having the vacuum be closer, with constant reminders of how close it was — airlocks, shuttles, spacesuit drills — only threw how dangerous it was into sharp relief. Whenever she thought about it too much, it seemed more and more likely that a small failure in some trivial system would spell doom for all of Golden Oaks. There was nothing out there, less than a driveway away, and it was much more dangerous than something.

But Applejack wasn’t sure Rose got that. Knew how little really stood between her and the void. No, the arboretum was safe right now, meaning the oblivion outside didn’t matter.

And so Applejack stayed quiet, staring into the stars as much as she dared.

16 - Missing Persons

After a single moment of despairing panic, Applejack bolted, scrambling down the hill. She didn’t know what was up with Rainbow Dash and she wasn’t about to stick around and find out, not after… that.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Rainbow stumbled out of the greenhouse like a puppet with a bad puppeteer. Her good wing was twitching spasmodically. When she looked after Applejack, it was more like her head was getting pulled in that direction than she was actually turning to look. Applejack only barely heard her whimper, “Don’t make me… I don’t wanna do that… ”

It wasn’t much of a forest, but a lot of the grass was tall. Applejack dove in and crawled along the ground, hoping it would hide her from view. She wasn’t aiming for anywhere in particular, just away. Normally, she would’ve relished the scent of life, but not now.

Rainbow’s shaky voice echoed through the arboretum. “I’m over here… I can’t see you… P-please keep moving…”

Applejack’s mind was a blur, her thoughts refusing to come into focus. How in Tartarus was she supposed to handle this? Killing monstrous aliens was one thing, but stopping Rainbow Dash? She knew Rainbow. Shared drinks with her. They worked near each other. And it didn’t even seem like it was Rainbow’s fault. Who knew those telepaths had mind control?

And then it clicked: the telepath. It was controlling Rainbow. Kill it, free Rainbow. Simple. Applejack had already killed one. In space, too. She just needed to get back to the greenhouse and introduce it to Mr. Shotgun. Face-first, enthusiastically, and repeatedly. How hard could it be?

“Shut up… Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP…” Rainbow’s voice was closer.

Right.

Applejack kept crawling. She sort of had an idea: lead Rainbow around the edges of the arboretum. But suppose she failed and Rainbow caught her; what then? Don’t get too close, or we’re both dead. What did that mean? Did she even want to find out? After all the aliens had done, probably not. Could she knock Rainbow out? Movies said a good tap on the head did it just fine, but reality said a good tap on the head gave ponies concussions. Not a good option. What she really needed was some kind of stun gun, but good lu-

She plunged her hooves into her pockets and rooted around. Sure enough, the stun gun that she’d found in that security checkpoint hours ago was still there. Charge? Full. She smacked the clip around her free fetlock and another telepathic trigger appeared in her mind. Apparently, her gun neuromod also included experience for multiple simultaneous guns, because it didn’t feel uncomfortable or confusing in the slightest. Even better, in spite of what it looked like, the stunner (RSV-77 Neuroelectric Disruptor, if she was being technical) actually had a decent range. Granted, three yards would be pretty poor for a shotgun, but for this sort of thing? Just fine.

She just needed to let Rainbow get close.

“I can’t stop myself… Do you understand?”

Yaaaaaaaay.

Applejack peeped through the grass. Rainbow was staggering in her general direction, looking like she was being pulled along by a hook in her nose. Applejack’s throat went dry and she struggled to swallow. But Rainbow didn’t see her. Right?

Rainbow stumbled into the grass and started weaving back and forth in an unsteady search pattern. “You need to run!” sobbed Rainbow.“I have to listen! I HAVE TO!”

Applejack had to bite her tongue to keep from calling out. She wanted to tell Rainbow Dash everything, but, well, that’d be telling the telepath everything, too. She tensed up, waiting for Rainbow to get close enough. Back… forth… back… forth…

Closer. Closer. Soon, Applejack could hear the whisking of grass-on-grass from Rainbow’s passage. She was almost within range. Holding her breath, Applejack pulled the telepathic trigger on the stun gun, holding it “down” to charge it up.

Almost immediately, a high-pitched whine rippled through the air. It was quiet, but Rainbow’s head snapped towards Applejack’s hiding place. Her ears twitched and she began lumbering in Applejack’s direction.

The element of surprise was shot. Nothing for it. Applejack popped out of the grass and raised the leg with the stunner on it, making sure Rainbow and her “passenger” could see it. She immediately came to a stop as her legs locked in place. Applejack released the trigger on the stun gun, sending a prong of magically-conducted lighting lancing outward. It stopped and fizzled out mere inches from Rainbow’s muzzle. Applying the trigger again, Applejack took a step forward as Rainbow took two back. Spluttering, like she was choking on something, Rainbow hacked out, “Can you help me? Can you make me stop?”

“I sure can,” said Applejack. “I’m gonna get you safe, no matter what.” Somehow, it didn’t sound as hollow as she’d expected. “And, that thing wearin’ her face? I bet you’re listenin’. I don’t know what you an’ your friends’re up to, but the second I save her, I’m comin’ for every single one o’y’all.”

For the first time, Applejack realized just how angry she was. She wasn’t the biggest fan of working on Golden Oaks. It was in, well, space. She had to keep going through the same hallways, day after day after day, over and over and over. But she’d met ponies, made friends. She’d been made to try a thing or two she never would’ve looked at on Equus. And, in an age of industrial automation, she had her own little garden she could tend to by hoof. She could grow some pretty neat things in that garden, thanks to Golden Oaks’ resources. Juicer apples, bigger apples, more colorful flowers… She’d love being back on Equus, but there were some things up here she’d miss.

And now, these aliens had swept through the place, taking what little pleasures she had. They’d killed her friends and colleagues. They’d taken her memory. And now they were taking over ponies’ bodies. Applejack was scared, true. Nearly petrified. But all that was buried beneath a sudden outburst of rage. They shouldn’t do that. This shouldn’t happen. It just wasn’t right in the world, like growing corn in an orchard. Just as weeds didn’t belong on a farm, the changelings didn’t belong here.

So she was going to do to the changelings what Apples always did to weeds, whether with automated trimming drones now or by hoof and mouth millennia ago.

“I swear, I’m gonna kill y’all so hard the Pale Horse herself ain’t gonna recognize you,” Applejack continued. She stepped forward, Rainbow stepped back. “This is our station. You ain’t gonna keep us down, no matter how hard you try. Nothin’ thrown at me has hurt me, not one bit. You can’t stop-”

Rainbow’s eyes twitched slightly to the side. “B-behind you…”

Applejack whirled around. Lyra, her sclerae green just like Rainbow’s, had been inching through the grass behind her and was only a few yards away. Lyra, the pony whose name Rainbow had screamed out barely a minute ago. The two froze when they locked eyes, like they’d collided when going opposite ways around a corner, as their brains tried to catch up with reality. But just as Lyra raised a hoof, Applejack’s reflexes kicked on; she whipped her hoof up and released the trigger. The stun shot caught Lyra full in the chest; she crumpled without a sound.

Something rustled behind Applejack and she threw herself to the side, awkwardly tumbling over a rock and knocking herself breathless. Rainbow landed right where she’d been. As she got to her hooves, Rainbow choked out, “Don’t let me die like this…” Her good wing twitched open, closed, open, closed as she crouched.

Applejack struggled to get air into her lungs as she staggered back to her feet. Focus. She needed to focus, find that telepathic trigger. But reflex told her to keep breathing-

Rainbow lunged, tackled Applejack; they rolled over through the grass. When Rainbow started shaking and screaming, it was like a kick in the face to Applejack’s unconscious: she and Rainbow were not going to die. Even as she fought for breath, she located the trigger in her thoughts, jammed the stun gun into Rainbow’s jaw, and fired.

Rainbow spasmed all over and blinked twice. Her eyes cleared, then rolled back in her head and she went limp, collapsing on top of Applejack. Applejack delicately pushed her off, careful to keep her on her good wing. Her eyelids were fluttering and foam had gathered around her mouth, but her breathing was steady. Paranoia made Applejack put a hoof on her neck; Rainbow’s pulse felt a little bit weak, but only a little.

Applejack looked up toward the greenhouse and her jaw tightened. The telepath was still in there and she had a shotgun. Dirt was coating her from her tumble; it made her feel at home. She stood up and marched up the hill, her gaze flicking back and forth in case any other ponies were about. Nothing.

Deep breath. She set off up the hill to the greenhouse. She looked every which way and her ears pivoted around this way and that. She wasn’t totally sure what she was listening for; the telepath floated, it didn’t make noise. Maybe it was just to give her racing mind something to do, because otherwise, it kept conjuring up terrible images of things like her brain melting out of her ears. Delightful.

She reached the greenhouse with no problem, if you didn’t count the way her heart pounded so hard it was battering her ribcage apart as a problem. She crept to the doorway and peeked around. The telepath was floating in the center, its tentacles twitching in something that registered as agitation. Was it thinking about what to do, with its puppets down? Whatever the case, it wasn’t looking at the door. Applejack dove from the doorway and scrambled under a table.

She thought she’d been quiet, but dirt crunched. The telepath moved; even though it wasn’t pushing against anything, its sheer size meant Applejack could hear dozens upon dozens of its pulsating strands rubbing against each other and the normally-still air rustled. She held her breath and cradled her gun close. Maybe she’d gotten lucky. Maybe it hadn’t heard her well enough to find her.

Then the table was wrenched away and Applejack was face-to-eye with the telepath.

She screamed and brought up her shotgun, but with a single tentacle, the telepath pushed it away as casually as she would a feather. Another tendril pressed down on Applejack’s nose and mouth, so securely she couldn’t breathe. She battered at it with her free leg, but it squished and refused to give. The telepath scrutinized her with its eye like she was some pristine artifact ready to go in a collection.

An invasive little thought began worming its way into her mind. Well, no, it wasn’t invasive, was it? It was welcome. Yes. Not like her so-called friends. (Her vision began swimming.) No. They were terrible. She needed to find them, to rend them limb fr-

“HEY, ASSHOLE!”

And when the telepath turned to look at the voice, an I-beam buried itself in its body like a javelin.

The thing’s screech was half an auditory hooves-on-a-chalkboard wail, half knives lancing through Applejack’s mind. It pulled away, floating up into the air, and Applejack’s thoughts fell back under her control as she gasped for air. She crawled under one of the nearby tables and rolled over to the next aisle.

“HOLD STILL, YOU SCUMBAG!” Unusually heavy footsteps pounded into the greenhouse; a grunt, and the telepath was screaming again. Applejack peeked above the table.

Spike, Twilight’s dragon bodyguard, was hanging onto the telepath and tearing into it with his claws as it thrashed around in a vain attempt to throw him off. Oily black fluid coursing from its wound spurted everywhere, coating everything in sight. A particularly large gouge made him lose his grip, but as he fell, he grabbed the I-beam that was still embedded in it. He yanked the six-foot-long beam out with a sweep of his wings, twirled it like a baseball bat, and smashed the telepath hard enough that the sound echoed through the arboretum. Even though it was capable of flight, the telepath was knocked ten feet back through the air. It came to a halt and hovered up out of reach, staring down at Spike; whatever it was thinking, Applejack couldn’t tell.

“That’s right,” snapped Spike. Smoke curled from his nostrils. “And there’s more where that came from.” He held the beam in a swordfighting pose. “I’d say pick on someone your own size, but you can’t even handle me! Come on, you coward! Get got!”

The telepath moved tentatively forward; Spike grinned rakishly and wiggled the beam. “Come a little closer, why don’tcha? I’ve got you a present: pain!”

It was like some bizarre version of a medieval duel. Two people facing off against each other, all focus on their opponent. Except the people were Spike, a sunblasted dragon who was handling an I-beam bigger than claymore as easily as he would a saber, and a telepathic, mind-controlling alien mass of tentacles. The station was quiet as they stared at each other. Neither one moved. Applejack found herself holding her breath.

Eventually, Spike chuckled. “Too chicken to make a move? I can work with that.” He stepped forward. The telepath inched back. Spike moved forward. The telepath moved backward. Spike moved forward-

No less than three flower pots on a nearby shelf exploded into changelings and latched onto him.

Spike roared in surprise and whirled around, blindly swinging his “sword”, but the changelings held on tight. One wrapped itself around his legs, another clung masklike over his eyes and mouth, and the last apparently tangled around his wings. He dropped the beam and dug his claws into the changeling on his face. Squealing, it did its best to hold on, but Spike had strength and sharpness on his side; he quickly and literally ripped the changeling apart.

But in the few seconds he was stalled, the telepath advanced on him. By the time Spike had freed his head, it was already extending several tentacles. He only managed a single breath before he was constricted again, his limbs all pinned and his head wrenched forward. As he fought to breathe, one of the tentacles stroked his head. And his eyes began turning green.

Nothing to it. Applejack broke from her hiding place and charged the telepath. Much as she wanted to, she didn’t roar; she needed surprise on her side. At point-blank range, still unnoticed, she whipped her shotgun up and blasted the telepath. It roared out in shock, twisting away from the impact. Applejack fired twice more; the telepath recoiled, its tentacles going limp, then whipped around to glare at her with that ghastly eye.

It didn’t notice that Spike was free.

He was on his hands and knees, wobbling, sucking in massive breaths. Shakily, Spike shoved his hand in his mouth and bit. Hard. A few droplets of steaming red leaked out from around his teeth, which meant he had to be piercing through dragon scales. As he blinked, the green in his eyes dimmed and he stood up straight again.

The telepath didn’t notice, concentrating as it was on Applejack. A tentacle whiplashed out and caught her in the chest; she smashed into the outer wall and fell onto a row of tables and plants. As she struggled to get up, dirt sliding beneath her hooves, another tentacle wrapped around one of her legs and squeezed, as strong as a vise. Applejack screamed as her leg burned more and more, never quite breaking. The telepath hoisted her upside-down into the air and turned her around to face it. Unstoppable fear was pushed into her head as a tentacle slithered out. She tried to aim her gun, but her own mind wouldn’t let her. She needed to keep still. She needed to keep still. She ne-

And then the telepath was engulfed in green flame.

It twisted, writhed, and shrieked, but the fire stayed on it, even as the sprinklers kicked on. Applejack shuffled across the planting tables, one leg up to keep the heat of the fire from drying her eyeballs out. The telepath whipped blindly around, hurling tables through the air as it flailed; Applejack ducked and one shattered against the wall above her head. She breathed in and promptly gagged at the grotesque scent of frying alien. She blinked through the rain, the smoke, and the blinding light.

Spike was a flamethrower, his jaws open wide and exhaling more flame faster than fire hoses did water. He didn’t have the slightest bit of trouble keeping the telepath in his sights, not even with that much smoke in his eyes and that close to the fire. But then, what sort of dragon was bothered by measly fire? Just when Applejack thought he couldn’t breathe out any more, he stopped and slouched forward, his hands on his knees, panting like a bellows. But even though the fire had stopped, the telepath was still aflame, the sprinklers barely helping put it out at all.

Although the telepath’s mindless thrashing wrecked everything around it, it began slowing as the fire spread, its position in the air more and more unsteady. It reeled around like a drunkard, more reflex than aim. It bobbed downward, brushing against the floor, dragging against the floor.

Another breath from Spike, another burst of flame. The telepath dropped out of the air completely, didn’t even move as fire at it up. Spike didn’t stop, advancing on it through the smoke and keeping the flame full blast. After what felt like forever, he stopped his assault. His chest heaved as he breathed like a piston, loud and steady. He stared at the telepath’s body, but it didn’t move. One moment, two, then he said, “And stay down.” He snorted and hocked a loogie on the corpse.

Applejack clambered off the table and walked up to it. It was shriveled, charred, and bubbling. “I don’t think it’s gettin’ up.”

“Can’t be too careful,” Spike grunted. He picked up his I-beam from the floor and brought it down on the telepath, clublike. Applejack only barely managed to get her hoof up before smoldering ichor splattered everywhere, including almost her face. He gave a few more smacks before stopping. “Sorry about that. Uh… you’re Applejack, right?”

“Yep. And you’re Spike?”

“I sure am.” He flexed his wings in a way Applejack recognized from pegasi as self-satisfaction. “Thanks for your help. That thing’s been hanging around here for… whoof. I don’t know, an hour. Really messed with our rescue efforts.”

That last sentence rang through Applejack’s head like a bell. Had she heard it right? “Rescue efforts?”

Spike noticed the look in her eyes and quickly said, “It’s not shuttles, sorry, we’re still working on that. But we’re getting any survivors we can find to the main cargo bay to hole up. It’s going…” He looked off at nothing for a bit. “It’s going,” he said quietly.

Even if it wasn’t shuttles, an entire group of survivors was a lot to hope for. Applejack had been shocked to just see a few ponies in the arboretum. Maybe they had some guards to help keep it secure? Just having a place to stop and rest for a few minutes would be a boon. Trixie would have a nice computer lab to work in, Zecora could rest, maybe even get some medical help, and Blueblood could… Applejack almost thought “get foisted onto somepony else”, but by the airlock, he’d been tolerable. Blueblood could work on his people skills, then. “Y’all got room for four more?” she asked.

Spike’s frills (ears? Who knew) twitched. “Four…?” he asked quietly.

“Me, and there’s three others near the airlock.” Applejack pointed. “We, uh, had some… problems.”

Spike stared at her, then grinned; in spite of his many very sharp teeth, it seemed friendly. “Space isn’t a problem,” he said, almost chuckling. “It’s just… wow, we thought we’d never be able to find anyone else. Things are just crazy, and… Yeah. Just- feels good. Say, uh…” His voice dropped slightly and his grin vanished. “You… didn’t happen to see Rainbow Dash and Lyra, did you? They-”

“They should be alright. It’s…” Applejack’s throat suddenly closed up. She didn’t feel right saying everything just yet. “It’s complicated, but last I checked, they were out cold, but alive. Down at the bottom of the hill.”

And Spike’s grin was back. “Good. Good. You’re a miracle, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“You go get your friends, I’ll see if I can find Rainbow and Lyra.”

“Sounds good.”

Applejack trotted down the hill, her heart feeling ten times lighter. She didn’t know how many other ponies survived, but the fact that there was any pony alive at all made her feel great. Finally, she was going to get a chance to rest. She stepped into the airlock room almost whistling. Everyone inside seemed alright; they all looked up as she opened the door. “Applejack?” asked Trixie. “Is… something wrong?”

Applejack grinned. “Not at all. C’mon. We’re all about to get a whole lot safer.”

29 - Everything is Going to be Okay

Applejack’s head swam.

“… … …?”

Why were sounds muffled like that? Couldn’t they speak up?

“… … … … …!”

And how was she resting on the ceiling? Shouldn’t the artificial gravity- Then her balance corrected herself and Applejack realized she was jammed on the floor, right next to a console.

“… … …ar me?”

Ah. It wasn’t them that was muffled, it was just her own hearing. Good to know. Applejack attempted to declare that she was okay.

“ ’M ’kay!” she croaked.

Close enough.

She flailed her legs awkwardly and managed to roll onto her hooves. As the world spun, she licked her lips. They felt a bit numb, but otherwise fine. “I’m okay!” she called out. Still hoarse, but much better. She took a deep breath-

-and immediately gagged. Sweet Celestia, the stench. Oil and blood and vomit and sweat and pus, all mixed together. She blinked again, bringing the world into focus.

There weren’t any changelings left. There was, however, an awful lot of black goo left. Everywhere. Literally everywhere. On the floors, on the walls, on the ceilings, on the control panels, everything. Within that goo, there wasn’t anything left that looked like it could’ve been a body. The guards that were still alive were pulling themselves out of the muck, trying to shake their hooves clean.

“Try not to get any of that stuff in your mouths or in any wounds!” Spitfire yelled. “We don’t know if it’s toxic!”

Applejack turned; Spitfire was limping towards her with a broken wing and a hoof pressed to a bloody gash on her neck. She grinned, an expression Applejack couldn’t remember seeing on her before. “Hey, AJ,” she said, sounding on the verge of a coughing fit. “Good j-”

“Whoa, hey.” Applejack pointed at the wound on Spitfire’s neck. “Is that safe? I can look for-”

“Missed the carotid. I’m fine,” wheezed Spitfire. At least she sounded strong beneath that wheeze. “See?” She pulled her hoof away; blood trickled out from her cut, but it wasn’t the spurting that’d come from a cut artery.

“Alright,” Applejack said tentatively. “But lemme know if y’need somethin’, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Spitfire waved a hoof in Applejack’s direction. Somehow, that dismissal sounded happier than anything she’d said in ages. “Good job with the…” She gestured vaguely at the shield generator. “…thing.” With a shiver, she added, “Even if having no magic feels weird.”

“Worth it, though,” said Applejack.

“Heh. Yeah.”

Because it was. It’d worked. The changelings had been reduced to this… mess in seconds. Based on Twilight’s calculations, all throughout the station, this had happened. Wherever changelings were hiding, wherever they could possibly be, they’d been affected. They were dead, harmless, incapable of anything more.

It was over.

Truth be told, Applejack nearly curled up and went to sleep right then and there. She could’ve, if she’d wanted to, and nopony would’ve blamed her. But this needed to get mopped up, or at least something vaguely resembling mopped up. Just like on the farm, you couldn’t quit the second after you crossed out your last checklist item. There were all sorts of other things you needed to do. At least she didn’t need to worry about getting killed, now.

But then, suddenly, a jolt raced down Applejack’s spine. “Where’s Twilight?” she asked. If she hadn’t been fast enough in getting the generator running again…

Spitfire came to the same realization and her eyes went wide. She immediately staggered over to the door, Applejack following.

Yet, when they arrived at the door, it was still closed. Twilight was slumped against it, breathing heavily and apparently unharmed. But when she looked up, her eyes weren’t quite focused and there was something strange about her smile.

Applejack slowed to a stop as caution reasserted itself. For all she knew, Twilight had been affected in some non-magical way. “Uh. Twi?” she risked. “Y’alright?”

“I’m fine, Grandma!” Twilight chirped blearily. “I’ll get the cookies out of the oven in juuuuust a minute!” Still smiling, she toppled onto her side.

“Her horn’s intact, so she’ll be alright,” Spitfire said gruffly. She rolled Twilight onto her back to keep her mouth free from any changeling remains. “Magic overload. I’ve seen it before. She’s swimming through happy memories while her mind sorts itself out. Give her… I dunno, five minutes, I’ve never seen it on an alicorn before.”

Applejack was still a little dubious, but she said, “If’n you say so.”

“I do say so.” Spitfire looked back at the room. “Gimme a sec, I need to check on my ponies.” Without waiting for a response from Applejack, she walked over to the nearest coughing pony and engaged him in conversation.

Which reminded Applejack of something important. She waded back through the gunk to where Trixie had hacked into the computers, hoping that- There she was. Trixie was sitting against the wall, cradling a leg that really shouldn’t have been bending that way and gritting bloodstained teeth. When she saw Applejack, though, she twisted that grimace into something that decently resembled a smile and waved. “Hey,” she gasped.

“Hey.” Applejack sat down next to her; she looked at the leg and cringed. “Y’alright?”

“Not really. But Trixie will live.” She grinned and clouted Applejack on the shoulder. “Because we did it.”

Applejack found herself grinning. They had, hadn’t they? “Well, I did,” she responded lightly.

“Trixie helped!”

“By openin’ one door?”

“Helping is helping,” Trixie declared. A pause. “It… was mostly you. But Trixie. Helped.”

“Heh. I guess y’did.”

“Where’s Blueblood? He helped, too.”

Applejack’s cheer immediately bubbled away. She looked at the floor, her ears folded back. “He, uh…” Swallow. “He didn’t make it. Died savin’ me from the queen.”

“Oh,” Trixie gasped in a small voice. “That’s…” She looked away, blinking. “…unfortunate.” Her tone implied she was too shocked to find another word. Applejack couldn’t blame her.

“Yeah.” Applejack looked at the shield generator. Disgusting globs of black stuff were floating around inside, along with a mangled thing that was vaguely recognizable as Blueblood’s body. “Let’s get ’im out.” She needed to swap the nullwave catalyst with the magnetosphere catalyst, anyway. With a groan, she got to her feet and hit the shutdown button again.

With nullwave generation shut down, her magic bled back into her as she climbed the stairs, and with it came her stamina. Her head stopped spinning and her muscles stopped burning. She still felt beaten down, but now, she could handle it.

Trixie’s hack to unlock the door was still working, and Applejack was soon drifting around the inside of the shield generator, through the muck that had once been the queen. She had to wave around blindly to find the hard frame of the magnetic catalyst. By luck, it still seemed to be intact and the generator didn’t make any beeps of protest at being fed a bad component.

Then Applejack hover-waded through the muck again and found the second thing she was looking for: Blueblood’s body. She cringed when she felt it; the skin was charred from the shield generator, sticky and bloody from the queen’s attacks. But he didn’t deserve to rest in here. Swallowing her bile (easier said than done in zero-G), she pulled him out.

Trixie had followed her up and helped move Blueblood from the shield generator to an open spot in the room. The remains of the queen weren’t sticky and quickly dripped off the body. Blueblood was still wearing his pajamas, if you could call those dirty rags “pajamas”. His body looked even worse when halfway clean, mangled and fried and shredded and broken.

This was one of the ponies that had doomed them. This was one of the ponies that had saved them.

Applejack’s emotions were in turmoil as she tried to sort out what she thought of him. But she crouched down and closed his eyes. She knew he deserved that much, at least.

“What do you think they’ll do about him?” Trixie asked quietly. “The… Crown, I mean. He was…”

“Dunno. Too tired t’think.” In all honesty, Applejack couldn’t have begun to think even if she weren’t tired. Things were so much simpler as a farmer or an engineer. No PR, no juggling family members in important positions, nothing beyond the job. She’d never encounter anything remotely on this level. “Good thing it ain’t my problem.”

Trixie nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s… It’s a shame that…”

“Yeah.” What more was there to say?

“Ponies!” Twilight yelled out. She didn’t sound loopy anymore. “While the changelings are probably all dead, Spitfire wants to be sure. If and only if you feel up to it, she’s going to be organizing some search groups. Get over here and she’ll assign you part of the station to search. Or don’t get over here and take a rest. I won’t blame you. In the meantime, I’ll head to the bridge and see if anypony’s awake at mission control on Equus.”

With magic running through her body again, Applejack realized she didn’t want to rest just yet, not with her heart pumping like this. A scouring for still-alive changelings (that was looking less likely by the second) was just the sort of work to bring herself down that she was looking for. “Sounds like somethin’,” she said to Trixie. “I’ll see if’n I can get the arboretum. What’re you thinkin’?”

“Trixie is returning to the cargo bay. She should get this looked at.” She wiggled her bad leg.

“Yeah, that’s pr’y for the best. Say, you take care, alright?”

In spite of her leg, Trixie grinned. “Trixie always takes care, Applejack. And she’s seen enough to know that you will, too.”

Applejack found herself grinning. “Yeah. Thanks.”

The next hour or so fell into a blur. Applejack dug through the arboretum, looking through all the nooks and crannies she knew, trying to find a live changeling. She found plenty of horrible-smelling gunk, sometimes well-hidden, but no actual changelings. She’d feel bad about the mess once she’d had some rest. Every now and then, she’d be contacted over her suit radio by other teams, all reporting nothing. Every single changeling on Golden Oaks had been liquefied

Once she’d combed over the arboretum as much as she could, Applejack collapsed on the grass and stared up into space. It didn’t seem nearly as frightening, now. Terrible monsters had come crawling out of the abyss, creatures that had destroyed civilizations, and she’d beaten them back. It was still lonely and empty, but now she knew that whatever it threw at her, she could handle it. And even if she couldn’t, she already knew for a fact that she’d go down swinging.

She’d still prefer to not go down, though. And she wasn’t down yet.

Suddenly, a chime ran through the arboretum, Golden Oaks’ stationwide PA system. “Fillies and gentlecolts,” Twilight said, “we’ve made contact with ground control. They’re already working to get a relief shuttle up. It should be here in no more than five hours.”

Help. It was far too late, and still Applejack grinned. With every minute, she got more and more evidence that the nightmare was over. At least once the shuttle arrived, she wouldn’t be worried about doing everything herself. Speaking of the shuttle, what would happen to Golden Oaks’ personnel once the station was secure again? They’d probably get sent back down to Equus for questioning. And once that was done? If she could, Applejack was going straight back to the farm. No way was she leaving that again, no matter how many mechanized harvesters she had to buy.

“I’ll let you all know when it’s here,” Twilight continued. “In the meantime… You know what, I don’t care. Call this a day off. Take a nap if you want. But if your heart’s pumping and you need something to do, I’ll be in the lobby with Spitfire. This wreck needs organizing. Out.”

Yeah, no. Applejack had been doing things for far too long. A nap it was.

She loped through the wreckage of the habitation decks almost idly, whistling like the place hadn’t been ripped to shreds. Some of the worst debris had been cleaned by ponies, but it was still a mess. Applejack didn’t care. It was just familiar enough to feel more like home than anything else had in the past few hours.

As she walked through the hallways, she sniffed. Not much of a smell. It seemed there hadn’t been many changelings in here when the nullwave went off. Of course, there didn’t need to be; everypony had been killed or driven out in the first attack, so no changeling would hang around. Good. She wouldn’t be able to sleep if the place smelled worse than vomit.

When she reached the crew’s bunks, she strode all the way to the back. Her pod wasn’t much. But it was comfy and it was private and it was exactly what Applejack needed right now. Without bothering to take off her uniform, she crawled in and put her hat over her face. Finally, some peace and-

Her clock flipped over to 8:00 and a chime binged through the pod. “Good morning, Applejack. Today is Monday, March 15th, 1008.”

Applejack damn near put a hoof through her alarm.