Arc Weld stuck his tongue out as he activated the plasma cutter mounted on his foreleg’s omni-tool bracer. Under his steady guidance, the glowing blade hissed as it sliced through the warped steel of the access hatch, which had probably been damaged by impact with debris. Once he had cut it into a separate piece, he turned off the blade, detached the cutter and pried at the gap with a crowbar.
The square plate detached, slid down the sloped hull of the dropship and fell a good twenty paces before it hit the floor with a loud clang that pierced through the din of a fully-staffed hangar.
Somepony yelped, and Arc lifted his welding visor as he glanced down to find a pegasus giving him the feather from below.
“Watch it, fuzzball!” Silver Foil cried.
Arc winced. He’d forgotten that Ferrite Dust had called in sick that day, so he couldn’t count on his usual partner to catch falling debris with her magic.
He grinned sheepishly and said, “Whoops, sorry!”
Foil rolled his eyes, then went back to cranking something on the dropship’s landing gear.
Thus freed from his co-worker’s ire, Arc returned his attention to the result of his efforts. Smoke wafted up from the red-hot edges, almost glowing white in under the repair bay's fluorescent lights. He blew to clear the smoke, then hummed when he saw the exposed conduits.
“Done. This baby’s all yours, Spigs!” he called out.
“Well, don’t just hang there. Come get me!”
Arc unclipped the tether connecting his harness to the hull and flapped down to wrap his forelegs around Spigot’s barrel. He then pumped his webbed wings to carry her up to the access hatch.
“You can hold me tighter, you know,” Spigot said with a sly grin. “C’mon, squeeze me like I’m Ferrite on a cold winter’s night.”
Arc snorted and unceremoniously dumped her onto the hull.
Spigot didn’t even miss a beat and swiftly tethered herself to the hull with deftness that was unusual for an earth pony. After covering the hot edges with heat-resistant fabric, she stuck her front half into the opening to tinker with the conduits. Arc attached himself on the opposite side of the hatch and frowned at her; he had absolutely no doubt that she was wiggling her butt and swishing her tail on purpose.
He shook his head. “Are you trying to get Ferrite to murder you?”
“Maybe. ’Cause if she isn’t going to bite, then I’m next in line to call dibs, you know?” her voice echoed back.
“Take off your jumpsuit and it might work,” he drawled. “I’ll get you get a nice casket.”
“Make sure to launch it at the foremare’s house from orbit.”
In spite of himself, Arc couldn’t help chuckling. The foremare was usually fair with the shifts she assigned, but that didn’t stop everypony from fantasising about taking her down a peg or two every now and then.
He assisted Spigot by passing tools and parts as needed, and after fifteen minutes of work, they were rewarded with the muted hiss of the airlock cycling through the pressure test, followed by dull thumps and clanks as the hydraulics reconfigured the locking mechanism. A few seconds later, the outer door of the dropship’s airlock opened with a rasp.
That got a few cheers from their co-workers on the floor; they could finally start working on the dropship’s interior.
And right on cue, a loud buzz filled the hangar, followed by a crackling voice from the PA system announcing the change in shift. Everypony cleared their workspaces, stowed their tools and filed towards the exit like a hive of changelings.
“I’ll be heading to Haystack’s after cleaning up,” said Spigot as they trotted out of the hangar and into the corridor leading to the station’s living quarters. “What about you?”
Arc paused to think as he glanced out the corridor’s planetside windows. The sun was just dipping below Equestria’s horizon, bathing everything in orange light. A few inbound freighters stood out as dark specks in contrast to the orange corona and the bluish glow of the planet’s atmosphere.
Somewhere down there was a plot of land with his name on it; he just needed a few more years in space to complete his contract. And once that was done, he could finally pop the Big Question to Ferrite Dust.
Speaking of whom…
“I think I’m gonna check on Ferrite first,” he said as he tapped on the screen of his omni-tool with a wing finger.
He’d gotten a couple of urgent messages from her, but they didn’t make sense.
“That’s weird…” he murmured. “She’s asking me to stay put in the hangar. Why?”
“Well, looks like you’re about to find out,” said Spigot.
Arc glanced up from his omni-tool and saw a lone unicorn mare stumbling towards them as she weaved through the tide of workers going in the opposite direction. If the unusually curved horn with branching nubs wasn’t a dead giveaway, her being dressed in a casual tank top and trousers marked her out from the rest of the crowd. Though, even without those, he would’ve recognised her white coat, powder-blue mane and mesmerizingly golden eyes any day.
Those eyes were locked onto him with an unsettling intensity, though. She looked a little green, too.
“Hey Ferry, are you all right?” he asked, wrapping a wing around her shoulder as she panted to catch her breath. “Was it last night’s chow? I thought the pie looked a little suspicious and—”
Ferrite bopped him on the muzzle to shut him up. “Archie, we’re deep in the fryer.”
She glanced at Spigot, and judging by the way her gaze seemed to phase right through her, she might not even have registered that their mutual friend was there before she turned back to Arc and shook her head. He could see her coat was almost matted with sweat in certain spots.
Ferrite then averted her eyes and worked her mouth in silence for a few seconds, stumbling over a few false starts, before she finally cleared her throat and muttered, “There’s no nice and clean way to say this, so I’ll just blow the gasket.”
She sucked in a breath and locked eyes with him. “Archie, I’m pregnant.”
“Holy ship…” Spigot muttered.
Arc blinked. “What?”
“I’m with foal, you doofus! It’s why I’ve had morning sickness all day!” she hissed. “What are we going to do?”
“Whoa, hang on a minute, that’s not possible.” He shook his head and counted off on his wing fingers. “We timed it, we took meds, we—”
“Totally miscalculated!” she cut in with a growl. “I got tested at the infirmary. Thrice. It’s real. This is happening. We’ve already got a kid on the assembly line and I don’t know what to do!”
“I—umm…”
He glanced at Spigot, who simply shrugged and said, “Hey, don’t look at me. I can babysit a hydraulic pump all day, but I don’t know the first thing about foals.”
“Oh crud, I forgot—you need to get out of here and hide,” said Ferrite as she wriggled out of his wing and began pushing him back towards the hangar. “We’ll need time to figure out what we’re going to do before my mother gets here.”
Spigot’s eyes widened. “You mean Commander Blaze? You didn’t actually tell her, did you?”
“Of course not, but the doctor—”
“Wait, aren’t doctors supposed to keep quiet about this? What about patient-doctor confidentiality?” he asked, tilting his head.
Ferrite bit her lip. “Doctor Shingles was in house today. And he knows Mum. There’s absolutely no way he’s keeping this a secret from her. We’ve got maybe an hour left, tops.”
And since just about every single one of their co-workers knew about their occasional sessions of ‘fixing a hydraulic leak’ together in the sublevels, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who the father was…
Arc pricked his ears.
All conversation in the corridor had ceased, and though the flow of traffic in the corridor had reversed with the next shift of workers, it had slowed to a standstill, leaving just the distinct clip-clop of military grade boots approaching from the living quarters.
A single figure stood out amongst the river of jumpsuits, dressed in the dark blue uniform of the Equestrian Royal Coalition Navy. Her curved, branching horn was smoking, and her ears already had tongues of flame dancing on their tips.
Spigot paled. “Uh oh.”
Ferrite gasped and shoved Arc away. “Go. Get out of here!”
Commander Blaze’s eyes flashed with white light, and ponies around her scattered with panicked cries as she charged towards him, her mane ablaze with blue and red flames.
Arc yelped and broke into a gallop towards the hangar, and then leapt into the air just as a bolt of energy zapped the floor where he’d been.
“Get back here, you useless bug-muncher!” Commander Blaze roared.
“Mum, wait—calm down!”
Thankfully, Kirin didn’t have the greatest range or accuracy with their telekinesis when they’d gone full Nirik, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten very far at all.
He zipped into the hangar, dodging a few more magic bolts along the way, then dipped back down to put more obstacles and bodies between himself and his pursuer. He ducked and wove between supply crates, forklifts, scrap heaps and groups of co-workers—he made sure to snag a crowbar on the way—before scrambling into the emergency generator room adjacent to the hangar.
His heart raced as he used the crowbar to pry up a loose floor grate at the far corner of the room, listening to the thunder of approaching hooves. Grunting with the effort to lift the grate, he shifted it just enough to give himself room to squeeze into the opening, and then dumped it onto the floor with a clang.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he heard Commander Blaze mutter when she barged into the room, probably just in time to see his tail disappear into the floor.
A short crawl brought him to the ventilation shaft, and from there, he had access to just about every section of the old wing of Harmony Station.
Not for the first time, Arc was thankful for his habit of exploring every nook and cranny on the space station. It had gotten him into trouble a few times early on in his career, so it was only fair for it to pay off now that he knew all the vents and older service tunnels like the underside of his hoof. He just hoped that the others would not be too mad about him drawing attention to everypony’s secret stash of contraband underneath the floor.
The shouts died down as he crawled and shimmied through the shafts, clicking his tongue at intervals so that he could use echolocation to navigate through the complete darkness, gradually working his way towards the old terminal which was scheduled for decommissioning. Nopony went there these days, so he might have half an hour of solitude before Commander Blaze could get the administrators to override the privacy mode on his omni-tool tracker. Ditching it was not an option, as that was liable to get him fired.
Artificial gravity was kept low in the old terminal, and the only illumination came from the windows and the exit lights.
Arc Weld squeezed out of the ceiling vent and gently drifted to the floor, where he took a moment to dust off his jumpsuit and gather his thoughts.
That might’ve been a mistake. With the immediate danger past, the floodgates opened.
Ferrite was going to have a foal.
He was going to be a father!
And in the process, he’d royally cheesed off Commander Blaze, one of the most decorated leaders of the ERCN. She technically couldn’t court martial him, but he wouldn’t put it past her to find a way—or maybe she would just skip all the paperwork and toss him out an airlock.
His ears flattened.
He was doomed, he was—
Hyperventilating.
Arc held his breath for several seconds and let it whoosh out, then lay down on the floor and closed his eyes.
Calm, he was calm.
He needed to stop thinking for a while. Lose himself in the darkness.
After a few minutes of slow, steady breathing and reciting random procedures from instruction manuals, he got back onto all fours and swept his gaze around.
The old terminal had a series of launch bays on either side, separated from the interior by individual airlocks. Unlike the newer terminals with external docking ports, this section required ships to fully enter the enclosed bays, which limited their size to small freighters and shuttles.
Taking advantage of the low gravity, Arc propelled himself along the terminal with long bounds and lazy flaps of his wings, stirring up puffs of dust wherever he landed. He imagined that it was similar to exploring old tombs like those in novels, except with the green glow of exit markers and status lights on control panels rather than torches and braziers. Thankfully, there were no traps or monsters to worry about.
Then, Arc frowned when he saw a status light rapidly flickering back and forth between red and green on Bay-32. When he checked the control panel, the diagnostics reported that there was a ship occupying the bay, though the specs only came up as ‘Error’.
He peered through the small windows on both doors of the airlock, but no matter how much he squinted and shifted angles, there simply wasn’t enough light on the other side to confirm the silhouette of a vehicle. In fact, he could’ve sworn that he could actually see the outer door of the bay, which should have been obscured if a ship was in there.
“No way…” he muttered.
Ships were not permitted to dock at the old terminal, so it had to be a glitch.
One that was best left alone to be somepony else’s problem.
Then again, he could make it his problem so he could put off his other problems for a little while longer…
Arc tapped his front and rear hooves together to activate his magnetic horseshoes, then made himself comfortable fiddling with the control panel. He no longer had authorisation in this area, but with a bit of creative rewiring, he managed to imitate the signal of a fire in the airlock and access some emergency controls, without setting off the alarms in the entire terminal.
Both doors of the airlock slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and he stepped into the launch bay proper.
There was no ship there. The entire four-storey space was empty.
And yet, his ears refused to stop twitching. The discomfort reminded him of a warp engine on idle, but distorted somehow.
He clicked his tongue, and then did a double take when his echolocation failed to register the massive outer doors on the far side of the launch bay. The chirp should’ve easily bounced back from that distance, but it had just disappeared like he’d clicked his tongue at open sky. He’d only received the return signal for parts of the ceiling, floor and side walls of the bay. As far as his echolocation was concerned, there was a void right in front of him.
Arc scowled and reached into his pocket, and then he chucked a screw at the empty space.
The screw bounced off the air with a metallic clink.
“Oh, horse apples.”
There was an unregistered stealth ship in the launch bay.
He raised his foreleg and tapped out an emergency distress call on his omni-tool. Forget about his little problem. Anything involving stealth tech was either upper echelon hush-hush and so well guarded that it would be impossible for a nopony like him to stumble across, or it was super illegal and something on Harmony Station was about to be stolen or blown up.
Arc whirled around and dashed for the airlock, but the doors slammed shut before he’d taken a couple of steps. An indignant buzz indicated that his distress call had failed—something had jammed the communications module on his omni-tool.
“Oh, frag me,” he muttered, ears flat.
“That’s not going to happen,” a feminine voice rang out from invisible speakers. “I won’t hurt you, so I would appreciate it if you refrained from doing anything drastic.”
Arc slowly turned around. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as a mass of air shimmered in place, gradually gaining sharpness and contrast until it revealed a sleek, bulbous ship with a pitch-black hull that reminded him of a cicada. It was roughly the size of a typical dropship—having enough space in its cargo hold for a small APC—but it had no discernible windows, cockpit or atmospheric engines. In fact, the whole thing was silently floating a few paces above the floor.
He’d never seen a Hive ship up close before, but he had a feeling he now knew why they were amongst the rarest and most sought-after ships in the galaxy.
The side of the ship’s hull opened with an audible squelch, reminiscent of a heart valve rather than a conventional door or hatch, and a dark silhouette stood tall in the circular opening, in stark contrast to the warm, yellow light pouring out from within.
The figure hopped onto the floor, and Arc felt his blood chill when he saw that it had both wings and a horn, and its bluish-purple mane and tail billowed in a non-existent wind, glowing and sparkling gently in the darkness.
A pinkish-purple aura bloomed on the figure’s horn, gradually revealing more and more of her features, until Arc’s jaw dropped when he realised that he had a purple doppelganger of Archon Tungsten Glow standing right in front of him.
And, aside from the omni-tool bracer on her foreleg, she was buck naked.
“Holy ship,” he whispered.
“No, not really.” The alicorn giggled and patted the hull. “But she’s one sweet ride, isn’t she?”
Arc’s eye twitched, and his legs promptly crumpled, leaving him to smack his muzzle onto the floor.
“Would you like some tea?” asked Twilight Sparkle.
Arc sniffed the air and tilted his head. “Is that really tea? It smells nothing like what we have in the mess hall.”
“There are many kinds of tea, and Harmony Station unfortunately does not stock Old Galleon’s,” said Twilight as she poured more of the steaming beverage into his mug. “It’s only planted on Gryphus Prime and its moons.”
He took a sip and sloshed it around in his mouth, savouring the rich mixture of tart sweetness and bitterness as he examined the ship’s interior. It had good artificial gravity for its size, and Twilight had furnished the cargo hold in its belly to resemble the inside of a cosy winter cabin. The couch, light fixtures, tables and chairs were stylised to mimic wood, fabric and brass at the appropriate parts, despite being manufactured from spaceworthy synthetic materials.
Beyond the stairs leading up to the main deck of the ship, the warmth gave way to something that looked more like a cross between the harsh, stencilled steel of a military craft and the smooth, visceral gloss of a cadaver’s chest cavity. Changeling designs were creepy, and he could definitely see why Twilight had opted to redecorate some of it.
Had she not, he probably would’ve flown into a panic if he’d found himself trapped inside a grotesque alien spacecraft after fainting.
It was hard enough to process the fact that a peer of Archon Tungsten Glow herself had carried him aboard and made him feel right at home, as if she was one of those affectionate suburb mums and aunts in those pre-space sitcoms. Twilight giggled and served tea; Archons didn’t do that—they gave grand speeches and led wars, crushed pirate fleets and tamed ion storms!
Alicorns supposedly held different titles in Twilight’s day; she was a former princess, though it was hard to picture her in those ancient, puffy dresses as opposed to the Royal Coalition uniform or ceremonial armour that the Archon wore. He also couldn’t imagine the princesses of the past telling him to skip all the titles and bowing and scraping, like Twilight had insisted when he’d regained consciousness.
“Bitty for your thoughts?”
He blinked. “Eh?”
“Is that slang out of fashion again? I keep mixing them up,” said Twilight as he scooted aside to make room for her on the couch. She then set her own teacup on the table and continued, “What’s on your mind? You look deep in thought.”
Arc shook his head to stop the room from spinning and then shrugged. “You tell me. I’m having tea with a… is legendary figure even the right word? We get rumours and clips of alicorns secretly living amongst us and doing crazy stuff across the Solaris System. Guardians, vigilantes, hermits, radicals, heralds of doom… But there are so many hoaxes being posted on the Solarnet that nopony knows what to believe…”
He gazed at her ethereal mane and shivered involuntarily.
Up close, Twilight radiated power.
He couldn’t tell if that was just her ambient magic or something else beyond his understanding, but sitting right next to her gave him the impression that she could accomplish anything she set her mind to. It seeped into him like warmth from a fire, filling him with a weird kind of confidence and assurance that everything would work out so long as he did the right thing—whatever that was.
He shivered again and averted his eyes.
“You’ve been around for so long that I more clearly remember your name being mentioned in a nursery rhyme than in a history book,” he said. “What are you actually doing here? Are you on a secret mission? Are there more like you around here? Aside from the Archon, I mean.”
Twilight just sat there and regarded him for a moment, until a little smile curled her lips and she said, “Well, let’s start with the last one. Aside from Tungsten Glow, I’m definitely not the only alicorn in existence, though I am probably the only one within a million miles of Equestria right now. After the invention of interstellar travel, it’s tough keeping track of everypony’s exact locations.
“And as for your other questions, no, I’m not on a secret mission. At least, not in any official capacity. I’m just picking up supplies for a long journey, and…” She glanced at the starboard wall, where she had a few pictures bolted on, but Arc Weld had a feeling that she was looking at something far beyond them. “—I just wanted to get a good view of Equestria before departing.”
Arc knew that look. He’d seen it on ponies being shipped off to the asteroid mines.
“You’re leaving us? Why?”
One of her eyebrows rose, though her smile didn’t go away. “Is that concern I see? You’ve known me for less than an hour.”
“Well, I…” He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “You seem like the kind of pony who wouldn’t stand by and do nothing when bad things happen. I figure that some of the stories about alicorns secretly helping ponies must be true. I guess I’d feel safer knowing you were around here instead of lightyears away. The Archon protects us, but even she can’t be everywhere at once.”
“That’s very flattering, Arc.”
She lifted her teacup with magic and contemplated it for a moment, then sighed and downed its contents with surprising grace. When she turned back to face him, he wasn’t sure if dark spots had appeared under her eyes, or if it was just a trick of the light. One blink from him, and she looked just as radiant as before.
“You could say that I’m looking for a change of pace. It’s something from my mentor that I’ve finally understood, though I’ve been putting it off for quite a while. I watched Tungsten grow from a rambunctious foal into a disciplined mare—”
“Dang…” he muttered under his breath, then blinked and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. Go ahead.”
Twilight giggled. “Yes, I’m that old. Anyway, as I was saying, I watched Tungsten grow into the fiercely loyal and principled mare she is today, as well as all of the council members she calls her friends and allies. They’ve had their rough edges—and some still do—but I’ve seen that they embody enough Harmony to help overcome each other’s flaws. Equestria is in good hooves for now.”
Arc nodded slowly. “You’re the expert, I guess.”
Then, he frowned as something else occurred to him. “Why the secrecy, though? With your history, wouldn’t the higher-ups be tripping over themselves to roll the red carpet out for you? You wouldn’t have to skulk around in this dusty terminal doing everything yourself.”
Twilight’s smile thinned until it turned into a frown. “How much do you know about the Ares Prime incident?”
“Uh, what’s that?”
“Okay, how about Brimstone the Butcher?”
He shook his head.
“The Buckhelm Standoff?” she slowly asked, tilting her head as she peered at him.
“Oh yeah, I know that one!”
“What do they teach you kids in History these days?” she muttered with a good-natured roll of her eyes. “Anyway, the point is that, on multiple occasions in the last hundred years or so, Tungsten’s council dragged their hooves more than I’d liked when managing a crisis. So, I had to… throw my weight around by taking a side.”
“Which side?”
“The side that ticked off the ERCN.”
Arc took a moment to digest that, then felt his jaw drop when it dawned on him. “Wait, you sided with the Buckhelm insurgents?”
“I sided with starving and overworked families,” Twilight growled.
He leaned back at her sudden outburst, then curled up a bit to make himself smaller as she continued.
“And I did it because time was running out for them. Tungsten’s council believed that they could’ve worked out a cleaner resolution to the crisis if I hadn’t interfered, but… like I said – rough edges. Admiral Gurney was upset that I’d forced them to act early and wreck the ERCN’s working relationship with the Explorer’s Guild, and though none of its current leaders are old enough to have been personally slighted by my actions, the ERCN has a long memory and detailed files. Given their shared custodianship of Harmony Station, it’s best that I don’t make things awkward for Tungsten. It’s why I had to stop you from leaving when you found my ship.”
Arc nodded. “I think I get it. You can’t always choose the ponies you have to work with.”
“Yup. Tungsten’s a good mare, but even she can’t govern and protect Equestria alone…”
Her words hung heavy in the air, and they lapsed into companionable silence after that.
Unfortunately, the silence only allowed pressing matters to creep up on him once more, spurred on by her earlier remark about ‘kids’ like him.
Kids.
Ferrite was carrying his kid.
Their kid.
They’d have to choose a name.
If he survived meeting the in-laws, first.
Amongst a whole freight-load of other things.
Arc could already feel beads of sweat erupting from his pores and soaking into his coat, and he had to discreetly tug on the collar of his jumpsuit and fan himself with his wings.
When he checked his omni-tool, it still indicated complete signal loss; Twilight’s stealth ship was working, all right. Otherwise, he would’ve been in the clutches of a security team by now.
“Say...” he began, tapping his fore hooves together as he glanced up at her. “Given your experience, you’d know a thing or two about, umm… problems, right?”
Twilight grinned. “I know about lots of problems, but I can’t say for sure if they include the one gnawing on you right now.”
“Okay, so I have a friend—”
“Oh, a friendship problem!” Her grin widened as she gleefully clapped her hooves. Then, she chuckled sheepishly and leaned away to give back some of his personal space. “Sorry, this really takes me back. Please continue.”
He blinked. “Right. So, I met Ferrite Dust when I started working here…”
After her initial excitement, Twilight remained mostly silent and attentive throughout the rest of his summary. She nodded a few times when he talked about their ‘extracurricular’ activities and all the precautions they’d taken to avoid accidents. When he got to the part where their fun times had resulted in a little ‘surprise’ and him getting chased by Commander Blaze, Twilight sniggered and needed a moment to school her expression back into a neutral one.
He didn’t think it was that funny.
Eventually, he finished with the one inescapable conclusion:
He was going to be a father.
A father who didn’t yet own a house planetside. Harmony Station was decent enough, but ponies knew that it was not the best place to raise a foal. Ferrite wouldn’t be allowed to work once she started showing, and maybe not even for years after that; not if she wanted to raise the foal herself. Had he wrecked her career? Her mother’s plans for her? How was he going to pay for everything? Applying for foal support would keep him tied up in space for a few extra years. And that was if Commander Blaze wasn’t mad enough to get him booted off Harmony Station and shipped away to one of the outer colonies!
“I’m doomed…” he wheezed.
Twilight chuckled and patted him on the back. “Deep breaths, my little pony. It’ll help you think straight.”
Arc wiped away his sweat with a fetlock and forced himself to take deep, calming breaths. When Twilight poured him another spot of lukewarm tea, he gratefully took the mug and gulped it down to settle his nerves.
“Thanks…”
“You’re welcome.” Twilight gently took away his empty mug and set it down on the table. She then smiled and said, “Now, I think you might be overreacting a little. Winter Blaze is a fair and reasonable mare, and you and Ferrite were consenting adults. She’ll come around—once she’s had time to cool off and take it out on some pirates.”
Arc grimaced. “Oh, those poor slaggers.”
“If it makes you feel better, the fact that you’ve thought about all these pitfalls suggests that you care. You just need a little time to sit down with Ferrite and think about what this change means for both of you, and plan accordingly.”
Arc frowned as a thought occurred to him.
There was one other option on the table, though that would mean breaking up with Ferrite in order to convince the committee that they were unfit to be parents, which would also be a strike against their credit rating if they ever decided to settle down for real with different partners. But it would preserve the trajectory of their careers.
“We could put the foal up for adoption...” he murmured, but as soon as the words had left his lips, his ears flattened and his cheeks flushed with guilt.
Something crossed Twilight’s face.
He couldn’t tell if it had been anger or annoyance, but for just a second, he’d fully expected that twitch and creased brow to turn into a snarl. But after the chill had gone down his spine, her spark of irritation vanished. Twilight’s ears tilted back, and her wings slumped as shifted her weight off the couch and onto all fours.
Then, she slowly walked to the starboard wall and beckoned him over with a wing.
Arc hopped off the couch and trotted over to her, where she raised a hoof and gently caressed the faux-wooden frame of one of the pictures on the wall.
The high-res photo showed a shorter, probably much younger Twilight Sparkle, wearing a large, silvery breastplate and a small crown-thingy on her head. She had a huge, toothy grin as she stood in front of a massive, crouching dragon with an even toothier grin. They both had a forelimb raised to show off their omni-tool bracers to the camera, though he didn’t recognise those clunky models—they looked like they belonged in a museum.
“This is my little brother, Spike.”
Arc squinted, searching the image in case he’d missed some other figure that might’ve been hiding behind Twilight or the dragon, but it quickly became obvious that it was just the two of them.
“Wow, that’s got to be the biggest little brother I’ve ever seen,” he said, smiling in spite of Twilight’s mood.
Spike’s grin was infectious.
Then, his smile wilted a bit as he considered the implications. “So, he’s adopted. Did that… ever get to him? Was he unhappy?”
“It was something that hurt him quite a bit in his early life, but he’s made peace with that fact.” She then turned her gaze back to the picture, smiled and added, “Don’t get me wrong; our family and I love Spike and would never give him up for anything, but I think that no one should experience having that hole in their heart in the first place.”
Arc narrowed his eyes and huffed through his nostrils. He knew what Twilight was driving at. But he held his tongue and focused instead on the other pictures on the wall.
Only one other photo had Spike in it, and judging by his size, it was much earlier than the one Twilight had shown him. He was no expert on dragons, but based on Spike’s size relative to the dated tech he wore in the picture, he should still be within his natural lifespan at the present day.
“You said you wanted a change of pace, but that’s not the only reason you’re leaving,” he said as he locked eyes with her. “Spike’s not on Equestria anymore, is he?”
Twilight blinked, then gave him a thin smile. “Clever pony.”
She raised a foreleg and quickly tapped out something on her omni-tool with magic, and its holo-projector flashed to create the cropped image of what looked like somepony’s HarmonySpace account. The profile pic showed a scroll bathed in green flames, and Arc felt his eyes bugging out when he read the flavour text and account info next to it:
Just your friendly neighbourhood space dragon!
Spikedadrgn@friends4ever.sol.net
Member since Apr 18th, 1173
OFFLINE – last seen Jul 5th, 1878
“Holy ship, is that a legacy Friends4ever account? I didn’t think there was anything left to migrate from that dead site…” he gasped. “And he hasn’t come online in the last twenty years?”
Twilight sighed. “Spike and I had a… disagreement, and then he took a ship to New Everfree in the Dawn System to help set up the colony. By the time we were both ready to make amends, there were already lightyears between us, and I still had unfinished business on Equestria. But I’m ready now, and he’s probably almost done with this torpor cycle—it’s like hibernation for dragons—so I want to be there when he wakes up.”
She tapped her omni-tool again, and the hologram vanished.
“Sometimes, change comes whether you like it or not—and often in the most unexpected way, as you’ve recently discovered,” Twilight said with a wry smile. “It’s up to you to make the most of it, and who knows? You might be pleasantly surprised!”
Arc frowned as he lowered his gaze to the floor. “So… you’re saying that I should marry Ferrite?”
Then, he felt Twilight’s feathers lifting his chin up so that their eyes met.
“I’m saying that you both need to sit down together and think very carefully about how you’re going to deal with this change in your lives, and what sacrifices you’re willing to make for each other and your foal. That’s all,” said Twilight. “Think you can do that much, Arc Weld?”
Arc clicked his tongue a couple of times, then gulped and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”
The airlock door thumped shut, and the distant whirr of a vacuum pump confirmed the launch bay’s depressurisation cycle.
Whilst waiting for the procedure to complete, he checked the status of his omni-tool and saw that it had re-established radio contact with the station. A few warning lights flashed, along with a series of high-priority messages from Ferrite and the Administrator. A security and recovery team was already on the way, and he was advised not to move from his location unless absolutely necessary—otherwise he’d face further disciplinary action.
Thankfully, Twilight had given him a secret code for her contact on Harmony Station, which would hopefully suffice to get him out of trouble for temporarily vanishing without a trace. He just hoped that they’d let him pass it to Administrator Star Dusk.
The whirring of the vacuum pump had ceased, and he watched through the airlock’s small windows as the bay’s outer doors rumbled open. He couldn’t actually see Twilight’s ship with the stealth systems online, but a little bit of discharge from the ship’s engine just happened to distort his view of the moon in the distance, like heat shimmer on a hot road.
That soon disappeared as well, and the bay’s outer door closed in turn.
Arc disengaged his mag shoes and flapped up to one of the ceiling windows, which projected just enough from the terminal’s exterior to give him a view of Twilight’s expected trajectory. He hovered in place as the seconds ticked by, unsure if he was still watching the right spot in the vast blackness of space.
Then, the moment Twilight engaged the warp drive, he saw it.
A purple sparkle on the horizon, speeding away before it vanished into the starry void.
His gaze lingered, but he eventually tore his eyes away from the stars, and he sighed as he tapped out a call on his omni-tool.
“Archie? Is that you?” Ferrite’s voice crackled from its speaker. “What happened? Everypony went nuts after you just went poof from the system!”
“I’m done hiding, Ferry," he said with a firm but gentle tone. "Let’s find a place to sit down and work this out. Together.”
“I… yeah, okay. See you soon.” A pause, and then she added, “I love you, Archie. Stay safe.”
“I love you, too, Ferry.”
