Bridlewood Spectra Power Station, Control Room for Reactor IV

Sky Chaser quickly looked about the room as he saw the others at work. So far, they had succesfully gotten the diesel generators online to try and get the turbine spinning again, and other electrical systems appeared to be working. "Lucky Light, any word on the pumps?"

"Displays suggest that the pumps are now operational again, but there's no response from the reactor sensors, and Apple Specter still isn't picking up on her radio."

"Forget about Apple Specter, we have more important things to deal with right now." Sky Chaser looked over the room to Scarlet Shadow. "Anything yet?"

"Well, the CCTV's back up in most of the plant. The two you dispatched are about to arrive on scene, and I just got a call from Crimson Moon. He's on his way and will see you when he arrives."

"Good." Sky Chaser saw the door open and both Scarlet Song and Straight Arrow stepped through. Both of them were red in the face, and Sky Chaser was pretty certain it wasn't from exhaustion. "Status report. What is the state of the pumps and reactor?"

"Pumps are good to go," Straight Arrow said. "But the reactor is less good."

"What sort of damage has been sustained?"

"Critical." Scarlet Song took over, her trademark bluntness cutting through the air like a knife. "Simply put, the reactor blew up."

Sky Chaser froze for a moment. Had he heard them right? "Sorry, could you repeat that?"

"I said the reactor blew up. It exploded. There's a gigantic hole in the ceiling, the room is full of smoke, and the reactor lid is lying on its side with the control rods exposed."

Sky Chaser couldn't believe what he was hearing, and he almost immediately went into denial. "That's impossible," he said, less trying to deny reality than desperately trying to reconcile what he had been taught was impossible and what was being described to him. "CGMR reactor cores can't explode."

"I would try to explain further, but we were only there for a few seconds and-" Scarlet Song would have continued, but she suddenly collapsed to the floor vomiting, sounding as though she was in extremely poor shape.

"Straight Arrow, take her to the infirmary. We need a second opinion on the state of the reactor, but obviously we can't go back that way. Astral Thunder, I want you to go to the roof and assess the situation. Take this video camera with you and record what you can. The camera never lies, after all."

Astral Thunder looked shocked. "No," he said. "I won't."

Sky Chaser shook his head. "You will. Thunder Tail, Dew Drop, escort him. If he gives you any trouble, use the tasers."

Astral Thunder hung his head in defeat as he exited the room, two other technicians in tow. It was known that it would take about five minutes to get to the roof and five to get back.

It would prove to be the longest 10 minutes of their lives. By the time that Astral Thunder had returned, Crimson Moon had arrived in the control room and was going over the evidence of the disaster with Sky Chaser.

"3.6 Starswirl, you say? Well it's not great, but at the same time it's not horrifying."

"Things could easily be worse, sir," Sky Chaser replied.

Astral Thunder had now returned with the other two. His face was red, much like Scarlet Song and Straight Arrow, and he seemed to be having difficulty speaking.

"Well?" Sky Chaser asked. "What did you see?"

"The reactor core is gone, and the roof has been mostly destroyed," Astral Thunder replied. "The floor was mostly gone, there was a lot of smoke, and there was also a white substance. It looked rather like mayonnaise. There were also blocks of graphite scattered around the grounds."

"You didn't see graphite," Crimson Moon said.

"I did," Astral Thunder replied. "I also filmed what I saw, which is he-"

"YOU DIDN'T!" Crimson Moon roared, causing everybody in the room to jump. "You didn't see graphite because it's NOT THERE. And how do I know you didn't fake or edit the footage you filmed to discredit unicorns, you idiotic pegasus?"

"I'll view the footage," Sky Chaser said quickly, and took the camera. He looked in concern, especially at the white blips that kept appearing across the screen, and when the camera panned across the ground he knew the game was up.

He looked over to Scarlet Shadow. "Call the fire brigade."

Bridlewood Fire Station

The radio operator was ready for duty when the call came in. "Bridlewood Fire Department, how can I help?"

"Hello, is this the Fire Department?" asked a female voice, which was quite shaky and worried.

"Yes, you have reached the Fire Department. How can we help, over?"

"We have a fire inside the power station, over!"

"What sort of fire, and where, over?"

"Currently burning between Blocks 3 and 4."

"Are there any people in the viscinity in need of rescue, over?"

"Yes, people are trapped and need rescue!"

"Message received and understood, we are mobilising as many units as possible. Any specific gear we require?"

"Not that's I'm aware of, over. Please hurry!"

"Thank you. Help is coming, it's on its way." The call suddenly ended, and the operator then struck a button on the wall which triggered an alarm.

Rapid Shadow, one of the firefighters on duty that night, immediately went for his equipment. "Come on guys! We need to get moving! Dispatch will brief us when we're on the move!"

Ponies, mostly unicorns, grabbed their firefighting gear and helmet, as well as equipment such as gas masks, and bundled into the fire engines. The doors were closed, the front doors of the fire station opened, and the night air sounded to a cacophany of sirens as the engines of Bridlewood Fire Station made their way through the streets, blue lights flashing off the walls and windows of neighbouring buildings.

"So, what have we got?" asked Brisk Thunder, one of the firefighters.

"Dispatch dialled us in to a small scale fire at the power plant," Rapid Shadow replied. "Apparently some material on site caught fire and produced a small fire. It shouldn't be too much to handle. They've deployed some extra appliances to help with evacuation of the facility, but this should be a fairly basic firefighting operation."

The mass formation of fire engines, 15 vehicles in total, blazed down the street towards the power plant, their sirens wailing and blue lights flashing as they continued on their way. Traffic dispatchers were holding all other traffic to let them through, and inquisitive unicorns had turned out to see why on earth so many appliances were on the move at once.

As they approached the plant, the first thing that became apparent was the amount of smoke. "Sir, if this is a small fire, why is it producing so much smoke?" one asked.

"Probably a material like plastic or something," Rapid Shadow said, before swerving. "Shit! Who left these blocks in the road?"

As they pushed onwards and drove under an access bridge, the smoke levels only continued to rise. The smoke didn't seem to conform to what they had been briefed on, instead being equivalent with a large fire at a fuel depot. There was still the odd explosion echoing over the facility, and the air was choked with strange, acrid smells, like burning tar.

As they approached the plant itself, the enormity of what they were facing became clear. There was something very wrong with this fire.

Meridian Valley Power Station, Office of Solar Blossom

Solar Blossom, a unicorn employed at MVPS, had just re-entered the building after performing an external radiation check. The plant had suffered a problem with one of its reactors and had been forced to shut down for hours, but now the fault was fixed and the plant was ready to resume power production.

She had been completing external readings of radiation levels to check ambient levels were fine. To her surprise, the alarms went off in the decontamination chamber and had picked up incredibly strong radiation readings on her HAZMAT suit. After getting it chemically washed down and scanned, the readings that appeared stunned her.

"This makes absolutely no sense," she said to a visiting politican. "These readings contain the prescence of Somnambulum-238 and Lunarium-131. Neither of those isotopes are found in the open air, so for them to be on my suit makes no sense!"

"Perhaps the equipment was faulty?" the politician suggested. "And I do apologise if this is a silly question, but where are those normally found?"

"They're normally found inside the core of a HARMONY reactor," Solar Blossom explained. "So they shouldn't be out here. For them to be out in the open air would mean an exposed reactor core somewhere within the radius of 100 miles. And that's not possible, as both plants have CGMR equipment."

"And our reactors cannot explode," the politician said.

Solar Blossom stopped herself before she spoke the words, but she was beginning to suspect something was very wrong.

Author's Note

Glossary of terms

HAZMAT-Shorthand for Hazardous Materials.
Isotope-members of a family of an element that all have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.