“Still no luck?”
Barnaby glanced up from his console towards the mare in the piloting seat who’d posed the question and shook his head. “I’m getting an automated acknowledgement from the base’s system; so they’re definitely capable of sending and receiving signals,” the batpony stallion informed his superior, frowning at the terminal in front of him. “They’re just choosing not to answer for whatever reason.”
“The ‘reason’,” came the contemptuous observation from a ivory-coated unicorn stallion floating just inside the entrance to the small transport’s command cabin, “is that those reprobates are clearly engaged in a strike, just as I had predicted! Refusing to communicate is a common tactic,” he continued, matter-of-factly. “At least at first. They’re hoping to ‘sweat us out’ to bring us to the bargaining table by holding the whole world hostage!”
It was all that Barnaby could do to not observably roll his eyes at the hyperbolic rhetoric being spewed by the FlimFlamFabrications Limited’s 'strike-breaker' that they’d been contracted to fly up to the mining site. While it was true that the selenium ore that the lunar mining complex exported back to Equestria was an essential component to modern life on Equus―as it was an essential component in the arcanetic enhancements that just about every creature used―the mine they were heading to was not the only source of the mineral. It was a not insignificant source, yes, responsible for nearly three-quarters of the moon’s gross selenium exports; but even this mine missing a shipment or two wasn’t exactly going to bring society to its knees or anything. Worst case scenario: Triple-F's board of directors and major shareholders missed their targeted profit margins for the year and so didn't get the dividend payouts associated with their stock holdings.
Boo-hoo...
Though, now that the batpony thought about it, that probably did sound like a noma fide ‘apocalypse’ to those same executive types. Which explained the presence of the strike-breaker. Him and his small team of four security ponies, who were presently sitting in the rear compartment where they’d been asked to remain for the duration of the trip. As had the ‘company mare’ who was currently―and literally―hovering over their shoulders. Not that their ‘esteemed guest’ had ever given the pair of batponies the impression that he was nearly as inclined to follow instructions as he was to give them.
“They’ve been reading those old Glimmerist Manifestos, I’m sure,” the unicorn sneered under his breath.
“Hm,” the batpony mare strapped into the shuttle’s piloting station grunted non-commitally. The look she exchanged with her copilot suggested that she shared in her partner’s frustrations with their passenger’s presence in the cockpit. Unlike him though, Nova was a lot more familiar with ‘corporate speak’ and could phrase instructions in a way that got the unicorn to comply with her demands. On occasion anyway.
“We’re going to be initializing our landing approach soon, Mister Whitehead,” the mare informed him in a neutral tone. “Per ERAM regulations, all shuttle occupants are to be properly seated with their restraints securely fastened during all launch and landing procedures.” She turned to briefly glance at the floating stallion, her cyan eyes traversing him up and down. An unspoken, but readily understood, hint that the unicorn should quickly get himself in compliance with those cited regulations. In case the Triple-F representative was inclined to be resistive though, Nova added: “I would hate to have to report a violation of those regulations to ERAM.”
The stallion inhaled sharply and, for a moment, Barnaby thought he might choose to disregard the pilot’s warning. While the Equestrian Royal Astrological Ministry did possess nominal regulatory oversight on all orbital and translunar flights, there wasn’t really much more that they could or would do other than issue a fine. Violating the ‘seatbelt rules’ Nova was talking about didn’t even carry a particularly large one. It would hardly break the bank of a company like Triple-F. They likely already paid out a mint to cover the illegal dumping laws it was an open secret their factories violated on a daily basis.
On the other hoof, it was likely that Whitehead wouldn’t want to have to explain to his superiors why he was incurring additional―and entirely avoidable―fines when he was explicitly being paid to minimize the company's costs.
Perhaps recognizing this himself, the alabaster unicorn appeared to think better of arguing with the shuttle’s pilot and instead nodded. “Of course.” He left without another word, pushing off the frame of the hatch and drifting back to the passenger compartment of the small transport shuttle.
The moment he was clear of the hatch, Nova reached over with one of her leathery wings and toggled the control which would close the command cabin off from the rest of the shuttle―also technically a requirement for launches and landings.
Nova let out an exasperated sigh. “...Can’t believe I’m missing my daughter’s first Nightmare Night to deal with this bullshit,” she muttered. Then, after a moment’s thought, added, “And that I have to deal with an asshole like that on top of it!” She jabbed a wing back towards the door.
Her copilot flashed the mare a sympathetic smile and offered up a chuckle in response. “Management, am I right?” The stallion playfully poked his tongue out at the other batpony, who spent a couple seconds looking at him in mild confusion before it finally dawned on her that―where the pair of them were concerned―she was technically his ‘manager’ in their work relationship.
“Oh, shove it.”
“Careful now,” Barnaby cautioned, still maintaining his playful tone, “talk like that might radicalize me! I might form a union!”
“Uh huh.” For her part, the mare sounded entirely unconcerned about her copilot’s ‘threat’. And there was good reason for that. “Strike; I dare you. I’ll call up Hazel and let him know that his husband suddenly has all the time in the world to tackle that ‘honey-do’ list he’s been nagging you about.”
The stallion grimaced with―not quite feigned―dread. “I just don’t have the heart to tell him that wallpaper pattern he chose for the dining room is hideous. He loves it so much, but I really don’t want to have to look at it while we eat…” He gave a small shiver as he envisioned the pattern in question.
“Guess it’s in your best interests not to strike then,” Nova observed, flashing her copilot a playful smile of her own. “Hard to make demands as a ‘union’ if you’re not willing to strike.”
“Fair point. You win,” he conceded with a low bow of his head in her direction. "I will continued to toil beneath your cruel whip."
The mare rolled her eyes and chuckled before her expression lost some of its joviality as she finally turned her attention back to flying the shuttle. “If we’re getting automated responses from the base’s computers, then even if we can’t raise the local air traffic officer, we should at least be able to trigger the landing and docking protocols on our own,” she pointed out. “Establish a telemetry link.”
“Aye aye, cap’n!” her companion acknowledged with a mock salute of one of his leathery wings before bending himself to the task she’d directed. A few seconds later, her own console flashed a message prompting her to relinquish manual control of the transport’s flight systems and slave them to the guidance computers at the mining base. She did so and leaned back in her piloting couch as the terminal locked her out of the flight controls, prepared to simply sit back and enjoy the descent to the base.
Silence reigned in the small command cabin for a short period of time before the stallion spoke up once more, beginning with a soft clearing of his throat. “So…Nova…”
“Hm?”
“You know that I’m not usually one to put much stock in superstitions, right?” the stallion said with a slightly hesitant tone.
The mare’s face was already breaking out into a smile. “I already like where this is going. Please go on,” she prompted, her cyan eyes sparkling with anticipated glee at the prospect of having something new to rib her copilot over.
The stallion let out an exasperated sigh, recognizing that he was about to open himself up to no small amount of playful ridicule for at least the remainder of this mission. For a moment, he considered abandoning the topic altogether, but ultimately he elected to commit. “Look,” he threw his hooves up in a gesture meant to ward off the worst of his commander’s impending mockery, “all I’m saying is that my skepticism has its limits! And us landing on the moon, on Nightmare Night, on the centennial anniversary of Nightmare Moon’s return, at a base called: ‘Luna’s Landing’, in a ship named: ‘Somnambula’, is really pushing credulity here!
“It’s like stepping over a black cat under a ladder on our way to break a mirror…” the stallion muttered under his breath.
The mare snickered, the wingtip over her mouth doing a poor job of hiding her grin. At the dour look she received from her partner, the pilot did her best to school her features into something a little more befitting her position as a superior addressing a subordinate. For the sake of propriety, of course. “That’s certainly a…novel way of looking at the situation,” she commented, mostly succeeding in keeping her expression neutral. Somewhat.
“I just…wanted to get that out there,” the stallion defended. “I’m not saying I believe that the mission is ‘cursed’ or anything. There’s just…a lot of coincidences is all. Somepony had to remark on it,” he said primly, crossing his hooves over his chest and wrapping himself in his leathery wings. He pointedly turned and stared straight ahead at his display as it provided updates on their craft’s descent to the surface.
“Your observation of the―admittedly uncanny―number of coincidences surrounding our mission is noted, Barny,” the mare assured him in something approaching a motherly tone. The stallion merely grunted and mumbled something under his breath which Nova didn’t catch. The pair passed the remainder of their short descent to the landing pad in silence, broken only when they were finally close enough to clearly make out their employer’s preeminent mining complex.
It was at that point that the stallion made another observation as he peered out the window. “What the…?” Curious as to what her copilot was seeing, the mare craned her head to try and look out the starboard viewport with him, but she couldn’t catch a clear view of what he was seeing on the surface out his window from where she was strapped into her seat. Fortunately, her copilot was willing to fill her in on what had confounded him. “...There’s another craft on the pad.”
Nova cocked her head. “You mean the barge? Isn’t it usually parked there?”
“No, I mean in addition to the barge,” the stallion said. “Hold on…” The other batpony sat up straighter in his seat and leaned his head closer to the viewport. Reflected in the glass, Nova was able to make out the stallion’s golden irises start to glow faintly as her copilot engaged his ocular arcanetics, presumably to focus in tighter on what he was looking at. Only a scant few seconds later, his brows furrowed and he turned to regard the mare. “...it’s from Safety.”
Now it was Nova’s turn to look thoroughly confused. ‘Safety’ was the informal name used to refer to SAFT, the Space Authority of the Federated Tribes. It was a zebra government-run organization that was mostly analogous to the Equestrian Royal Astrological Ministry, though with much more active involvement in extra-terrestrial operations than its pony counterpart. ERAM was more of an oversight body than anything else, nominally regulating the activities of private endeavors like their present client, FlimFlamFabrications Limited, as well as commercial contract transports like themselves. Whereas SAFT maintained direct operational control over nearly all zebra-operated platforms and stations.
Strictly speaking, there wasn’t any reason that a zebra ship should have been docked at a pony-controlled mining colony. Unless their ship had suffered some sort of grave emergency that prevented them from reaching one of their own bases in the region. Nova tried to recall how far away the nearest such installation was from their current position, but she wasn’t nearly that well versed in lunar geography. She was pretty sure that there was a federation outpost not all that far from here though. If the craft had managed to safely touch down at Luna’s Landing, then they should have been able to make it to that facility from orbit in about the same timeframe with pretty much the same quantity of delta-v.
Hopefully they’d get some answers when they landed.
A short time later, the craft’s engines were winding down after making contact with the landing pad. “Main engine stand-down,” Nova announced as she reached up to an overhead console and began to run through the post-landing checklist of the ship’s systems. “Dust covers closing…” A soft whirring sound could be heard as the protective covers sealed the craft’s engine ports to keep the moon’s regolith from potentially fouling them up while they were landed. “Reactor to standby.”
Barnaby was meanwhile going through his own well-choreographed motions as he got them ready to debark. “Extending docking collar…contact…soft-lock…” A series of progressively louder metallic clicking sounds could be heard echoing through the cabin as the station’s airlock set about securing an airtight seal, culminating in a definitive ‘SHUNK!’ at the end. An indicator on the stallion’s screen went green. “Hardlock achieved.”
He reached down towards his console and keyed in the shuttle’s internal speaker system. “Greetings, passengers; this is your copilot speaking. We’ve just achieved hardlock at Luna’s Landing. You are now free to retrieve your luggage and move about the cabin! Be advised that some items may have shifted during flight, and while there is gravity on the moon―” The stallion paused as he heard a mare yelping out a warning just a heartbeat before there was the sound of several ponies hitting the deck. The pair of batponies exchanged a knowing look and Barnaby continued with his announcement. “―it is substantially less than Equus-normal. So watch your step until you’ve had time to adjust.” His ear twitched at the sound of a muffled string of curses coming from the other side of the door.
Nova rolled her eyes, but didn’t immediately undo her piloting couch’s restraints. Instead she reached up and lightly applied her left hoof to her temple. Her baby-blue eyes began to glow with magical energy as she engaged the short-range comms functions of her arcanetics. They already knew that trying to contact anypony in the colony was useless using the shuttle’s comms, but now that they were close enough to use the station’s internal personal network, they should be able to reach somepony through their implants. “Landing Ops, this is the Somnabula. We’ve just landed. We’ve got, uh...” The mare’s gaze shot back towards the passenger cabin and the strike-breaker they’d brought along from the outpost’s corporate overlords. “...some ‘concerned ponies’ here who want to talk about the comms outage and the missed shipment of selenium.”
Barnaby paused in his own efforts to extract himself from his seat as he watched his partner to see what kind of response she received. Neither of them had a diamond dog in this spat between Triple-F and the miners, but the sooner whatever issue there was got resolved, the sooner they could go home. So if this all turned out to just be some misunderstanding, and not an actual strike, all the better.
The mare exchanged glances with him, her brow furrowed in annoyance as she once more repeated her message to the site’s operation’s center, apparently not having received any response to the initial one. Also a little put off by the lack of a response from Landing Operations―which was supposed to be staffed at all times as a matter of policy―the stallion turned back to his console and started to query the station’s systems.
“Station sensors show…” The batpony balked and turned to flash a shocked look in Nova’s direction. “Nothing!”
The mare bedside him coked her head in mirrored confusion. “You mean the station’s empty? But the barge is right out there,” she waved her wing in the general direction of the nearby hauler. “Where else would they be?”
Barnaby shook his head. “No, I mean I’m not getting a return from the station’s internal sensors at all. They’re offline. In fact, I think that most of the facility’s―”
“Ha! So it is a strike! I knew it!” Both batponies jerked in surprise at the sound of their unicorn guest’s outburst. Nova whipped her head around to glare at the corporate representative, though she was privately just as annoyed at herself for not locking the hatch. She’d remember that for their return trip. The unicorn was entirely oblivious to the mare’s scowl though as he jabbed a hoof at Barnaby’s screen. “A classic tactic! They’re likely barricaded somewhere and don’t want us to have an easy time finding them! I saw this three years ago on Saddlestipol Station. Sealed themselves up in a cargo bay for five months! They gave in in the end though. So will these miscreants.”
Without another look at the batponies, the unicorn spun around on his hooves―bumped off the hatch’s edges thanks to the lower gravity―and ‘marched’ very awkwardly towards the rear of the shuttle. The pair watched him leave with equal parts irritation and concern before exchanging looks.
“Five months?” Barnaby repeated with no small amount of hesitancy. He’d told his husband he’d be gone for a week. Two at the most.
Nova shook her head. “My daughter’s birthday is next month. If ‘Shitehead’ there thinks I’m missing that, he’s gonna learn real quick,” she firmly assured her copilot. “We will leave his flank here and come back for him later if that’s what needs to happen.”
Barnaby was firmly onboard with that proposed course of action. Both batponies finished extracting themselves from their harnesses and exited the craft’s command cabin, heading aft to meet the rest of their passengers at the airlock. Barnaby took only the briefest of detours to collect a small toolbag from a locker, on the off chance that the reason for the station’s lack of contact was indeed due to a mechanical issue, and not a personnel one. The two of them didn’t quite have to muscle their way past Whitehead and the four security ponies dressed in their armored barding. If there was one silver lining to be had, in the batpony stallion’s opinion, it was that he didn’t see any guns present; just stun crops. Hopefully that meant that, even if violence did break out, there wouldn’t be a body count to go along with it.
Nova initiated the airlock’s cycling protocol, amending it so that both the inner and outer doors remained open. As they were hardlocked to the station, there was negligible concern regarding depressurization, and keeping a clear path open between shuttle and station would just be more convenient while they were here. It still took time for the computer to satisfy itself that the shuttle wasn’t in any danger, and so there was a delay between the opening of the inner and outer seals, for both the shuttle and the station. Eventually though, all four doors finally slid open and the shuttle’s occupants were permitted to debark.
Whitehead stormed ahead first. “Let’s go, ponies! Fan out and search the station! Report in once you’ve located where those bastards are hiding and we’ll flush them out!”
Barnaby raised a wing to get the unicorn’s attention as he began to speak up, “Um, actually, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You see, the station’s―”
“Your objection is noted,” Whitehead snapped loudly, sneering in the other stallion’s direction. “Now if you will excuse me, I’m giving my team their orders.” The unicorn held his glare for a few seconds longer until Barnaby sighed and held up his hoof in mock surrender, taking a step back closer to Nova. A small satisfied smile crept onto Whitehead’s face as he nodded and looked back to his security ponies. “Well, you have your orders; move out! And I want updates every five minutes!”
The quartet of security ponies and their illustrious leader cantered off down various corridors, quickly vanishing out of sight into the labyrinth of the mining complex.
“―the station’s internal network seems to be offline,” Barnaby finished his intended warning with a muttered sigh. “So anything other than line-of-sight comms won’t work.” He glanced over at Nova. “And neither do the internal sensors.”
“Which is why you couldn’t detect anypony earlier,” his pilot reasoned, earning a nod from him. “So the miners disabled everything?”
“Or it’s a genuine malfunction,” Barnaby offered with a shrug. “We’d have to get to Ops to know for sure.”
“Well, we need to go there anyway to investigate the possible comms issue,” the mare pointed out. “I know we were getting automated returns,” she conceded, “but that doesn’t mean there’s not something wrong with their ability to transmit their own signals.”
“One way issues like that are rare,” Barnaby felt the need to point out, though his commander was doubtlessly aware of how remote a possibility her suggestion was.
“So are internal network outages. In fairness to Whitehead,” the mare briefly looked like she was going to be sick as she spoke the words, and Barnaby could sympathize, “this probably is a strike. Still, part of our contract with Triple-F is to see if there’s any genuine comms issues. So we’re going to go see if there are.” She started walking down the corridor that would take them to the station’s operations hub, with the stallion following close behind. “In-and-out, two minutes, then we’ll go back to the shuttle and wait.”
“You’re the boss, boss!”
Nova let out an amused snort as she continued leading them to the control room. “These flankholes already cost me Nightmare Night with my daughter,” she muttered as they went. The stallion wasn’t entirely certain if by ‘flankoles’, the pilot was referring to Whitehead and his crew, the striking miners, or all of the above. He ultimately decided that she was likely being inclusive. “But if this goes quick, maybe I can still make it back before she eats all her candy…” The mare paused for a brief moment, considering. Her eyes darted to her companion, and the other batpony thought, for a brief moment, that he’d seen a hint of a smile touch her lips; but any sign of it was gone a heartbeat later and she was striding down the corridor once more.
They made it short way further down the hall before that came to an open door. Nova abruptly stopped, her head whipping to peer inside, as though she’d caught sight of something. Barnaby’s ears flicked forward as the stallion came to a halt as well, wondering what it was that his partner could have seen that attracted her attention like this. A moment later her wing was frantically waving for the stallion to step closer, though Nova’s eyes never left the dark interior beyond the open door. “Psst; Barny! Come here quick!”
The stallion balked at first, but eventually stepped cautiously up to the side of the other batpony. “What is it? What do you see?” He asked, narrowing his own eyes as he peered into the room. Being a batpony, the lack of illumination on the other side of the doorway was hardly any impediment at all. The stallion to quickly identified that the room in question was a supply closet for the station’s janitorial supplies. Currently a pair of custodial drones were sequestered in their charging docks, awaiting deployment on their next scheduled cleaning cycle. There was nothing about the drones that seemed out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that should have caught the mare’s attention like that.
When Barnaby couldn’t spot anything else that might have warranted a closer look, the stallion frowned and turned back to the pilot to ask her what she’d seen…only to find himself staring into the sunken dark sockets of a bleach-white skull.
“AAAAAAUUUGH!” Barnaby unleashed a terrified scream as he tried to backpedal away from the undead abomination standing before him However, thanks in part to the lower gravity than he was used to back on Equus, he only succeeded in losing his footing and flipping himself over into the closet and landing on his back. Now he was firmly trapped by the undead abomination assaulting him! Instinctively, he wrapped himself up protectively in his wings, cowering away from the looming skeleton...
…And then it began to sing to him…in Nova’s voice. “Nightmare Night~what a fright~give me something good to bite!” Then the batpony mare descended into a fit of giggles as she removed the skull mask from her face.
The stallion peaked out from behind his wings, staring at the mare in wide-eyed shock. Then he noted that the illusionary chronometer which hovered in the corner of his field of vision ticked over to indicate that it was now one minute past midnight, Canterlot Mean Time. Nightmare Night had, officially, begun back on Equus.
Barnaby let out a sigh that was equal parts relief and exasperation as he finally allowed himself to relax, splaying out on the deck. “...I fucking hate you.”
“Aww, somepony’s not feeling very festive, are they?” Nova chided her copilot before extending him a hoof to help him back up. Once righted, the mare stretched one of her wings out to him as well, unfurling the tip and revealing a tiny colorfully wrapped package. “Here, maybe this will help get you in the holiday spirit!”
Barnaby held out a hoof just in time to catch the small piece of candy that had been offered to him. He blinked down at the ‘Oat Joy’ bar resting on his frog, staring at it in silence for a few seconds before he couldn’t hold back the treacherous smile tugging at his lips any longer. His inability to feign continued indignation towards his pilot only prompted further giggling from the mare.
“Alright, fun’s over. Let’s get back to work,” Nova said, turning to begin walking along their original path towards the base’s operations center. The stallion followed after her while his wings shucked the wrapper from the peace offering, considering how he might get back at her later for the fright that she’d given him.
She knew how much he hated dead things.
The pair soon came to the stairwell which led up to Ops. Nova proceeded up, but her stallion companion paused at the base, his eyes having caught sight of something on the railing. The pilot didn’t notice her partner’s hesitation as she ascended. She stared at the panel beside the door, her eyes beginning to glow with ethereal light as she engaged her arcanetics to gain access. Unsurprisingly, as the primary control center for the base, not just anypony could wander it. Typically, it required somepony to have at least manager-level clearance, which Nova provisionally possessed on behalf of their client, as it would help them get their work done while they were here.
“Nova?” the stallion asked, still not taking his eyes off the railing, “does this look like blood to you?”
“Hm?” The mare didn’t look away from the door panel.
“This red stuff on the railing,” Barnaby clarified, finally glancing up the stairs at the pilot. “I think it’s blood. And there’s a lot of it.” He looked around at the deck. The crimson smear that he’d noticed on the railing had appeared to be quite significant. Enough so that he would have thought a trail would have been left on the deck plating nearby. He frowned, his eyes darting back towards the way that they’d come, and the closet with the custodial drones. Had they cleaned it up maybe?
The panel Nova had been working on issued a friendly little trill and the mare finally looked back down the stairs towards the stallion, wearing a bored expression. “Really, Barny? You think I’m going to fall for some lame shit like that not two minutes after scaring you?” The batpony scoffed as the door slid open. “‘Ooh~ Nova, look at this blood I fou―uuuUUUCK ME!”
Nova recoiled from the open doorway, catching herself on the railing behind her. The mare’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates, her features visibly paled. She swallowed heavily, suppressing a shiver that ran through her body. “Body,” she stated flatly, her eyes not shifting from where they were locked on the interior of the operations room. “There’s a body.”
Barnaby hesitated, his own gaze darting from the stain he’d seen on the railing to the rigid mare and back again. “...Are you fucking with me?” The stallion found himself desperately hoping that the pilot was trying to scare him again. Please let her be trying to scare him again.
Nova was shaking her head, still not breaking eye contact with whatever she was seeing. A trembling hoof rose up and touched her temple, her eyes aglow once more. “Whitehead; Nova. We have a body in Ops.” A second later, the mare cursed under her breath. “Fuck; no network!”
If this was a prank, the stallion thought to himself, then his partner was doing a really good job of acting like she was actually panicking at the sight of a dead body. But when she finally looked away from the open door and met the gaze of the other batpony, Barnaby could clearly see the horror etched onto the mare’s face.
This wasn’t a prank.
Nor had Nova simply seen a dead body, the stallion realized. She’d seen something utterly horrific. Given the size of the blood smear that he’d caught sight of on the railing, he had at least some idea of the violence involved.
He started up the stairs.
He’d been wrong. Barnaby had been very wrong about what he’d thought he would find. He’d expected to find a body that had been shot, or maybe stabbed, and laying on the deck or slumped in a chair. While there was indeed a―mercifully single―body in the room, their death had clearly been anything but ‘clean’. It looked very much like whoever had killed them had taken their time. The whole Operation's Center testified to the brutality of the killing. There was blood and smashed in panels all over the place.
“Fuck me,” Barnaby said in a voice barely above a whisper, entirely unaware that he had echoed the earlier sentiment of his partner as he cautiously stepped into the room. He very quickly decided that it was going to be effectively impossible to completely avoid stepping in any of the blood on the floor, so the stallion chose to try and block all thought of it from his mind. He also made it a point to look anywhere but directly at the corpse in the middle of the room.
He elected to focus on the reason that he was here in the first place: evaluate the communications and network situation. Once that was done with, he and Nova could get out of the place and back to their shuttle. And he could wash off the blood. To that end, he locked his eyes on the room’s primary control station…and felt his heart immediately sink.
The console he needed access to was essentially bloodbath central. Its nominally silvered surface looked like it had been subjected to a good-faith effort to paint it wholly crimson with the victim's blood. Fortunately, it looked to be merely ‘vandalized’ with blood, and wasn’t one of the control surfaces that had actually been smashed in by whoever killed that pony. Every control surface around it looked like it had been used to aid in bludgeoning the poor victim to death though, judging by the dented panels and shattered screens that lay to either side. He closed his eyes and steeled himself with a deep breath before approaching the grotesque workstation. Behind him, he heard Nova muttering a slew of curses under her breath as she stepped in behind him.
“I’ll check the network,” she informed him. Barnaby nodded numbly in silent response.
Fortunately―though curiously―it didn’t take the stallion very long to identify that, yes, there was indeed a perfectly reasonable―and easily addressable―explanation as to why the mining station had not been responding to messages. Other than the strike and the horrifically brutal murder which had taken place here, that is: The console was already transmitting.
In fact, according to the blood-smeared display that he was looking at right now, the station had been transmitting almost continuously for one hundred and forty-seven hours! He could even see what message was being transmitted, though it gave the batpony technician no small amount of pause when he did. The message appeared to be a short video recording that was no more than a few seconds long, being played on a continuous loop. Much to Barnaby’s surprise, the subject of the video was not a member of the station’s staff. At least, that was what he assumed given that the subject was a zebra mare, and that she was wearing what was clearly a SAFT uniform.
The realization caused the stallion to jerk in mild shock as the sight of the mare in the recording prompted him to turn his attention back in the direction of the body. He’d been―understandably, he’d felt―too distracted by all of the blood to notice earlier, but now he was keenly aware of the fact that the body in the operations room wasn’t wearing one of the expected red and white stiped Triple-F mining jumpsuits. They were wearing a gold and brown SAFT uniform.
Barnaby’s jaw went slack with bewilderment. This was supposed to be a very secure room, due to the sensitive nature of the proprietary corporate information it contained. Who on the station would have let the zebra in here at all, let alone murdered her in here?
Or had she broken in? Maybe, the stallion thought, though that notion didn’t sit too well with him either. This room was exceptionally secure, and had been locked when he and Nova had gotten here, clearly. Surely the pilot would have remarked if she’d seen any signs of tampering while she’d been unlocking it. Somehow the zebra had gotten in here legitimately? For the purpose of sending a message? Barnaby turned his focus back towards the console.
The zebra mare in the video looked quite the bit worse for wear―compared to how she presumably usually looked, anyway. She obviously looked far worse now. In the video, her features were drawn, and the bags under her eyes suggested that she hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in quite a while. Her uniform was smeared with reddish-brown streaks of filth that the stallion recognized as blood. Had she recorded this halfway through whatever ordeal had ultimately killed her?
No, Barnaby decided with a firm shake of his head. That wasn’t it. The blood on her uniform in the recording was clearly quite dry, and the dark brown color meant that it was many days old. Which suggested the poor zebra had been exposed to a previous scene of brutality prior to her own death…
…Unless she was the common denominator? Could there have been more than one zebra on their shuttle before it made it to Luna’s Landing, Barnaby wondered? Maybe he and Nova should check the body more closely to see if it was indeed the mare in the video.
Whoever she was, she appeared scared―almost manic―as she screamed her message into the camera. Her silent message, for it seemed that―perhaps in her haste to transmit it―the broadcast had been muted on this end.
For the better part of a week, this station had been transmitting a silent plea.
While Barnaby’s mind swirled with many questions that begged to be answered, such as: Who was this zebra? Why had she come to this station? Who had allowed her into the Ops Room? Who had killed her? A least one curiosity could be sated: the contents of message that she’d been so desperate to send.
Barnaby unmuted the video.
“―Mare―kssh!―ex tantibus!―kssh!―Discedite! Libera―te―mare―kssh!―ex tantibus!―kssh!―Discedite! Libera―te―mare―kssh!―ex tantibus―!”
The stallion muted the video once more. He wasn’t sure what message he’d expected to hear exactly, but he’d at least expected it to be comprehensible. Had something corrupted the audio somehow? He’d have to run a diagnostic to find out.
“Core memory unlocked,” he heard Nova mutter from the far side of the room. The stallion turned and cocked his head in her direction, prompting the mare to elaborate. “Took Zebrian as an elective in school,” she said. “Four years. Got pretty good at it too.”
“So you understood that?” The other batpony asked, jerking a wing back in the direction of the muted video playing on the console.
“I recognized it as Zebrian,” Nova clarified, stepping gingerly around the body on her way over to her partner. “Play it again―at a reasonable volume, please? Let’s see how generous Professor Zanzibar was being with my grades.”
Barnaby nodded and set about resuming the sound on the video at a more tolerable level.
“―Tantibus!―kssh!―Discedite! Libera―te―mare―kssh!―ex Tantibus!―kssh!―Discedite! Libera―te―mare―!”
Nova held up a wing and the stallion muted the playback once more. “So, ‘Discedite’ is the easy part: Basically ‘leave/stay away’, depending on the context. I’m assuming the latter, since her tone sounds like she’s trying to warn us about something.
“The other part…” The mare’s lips creased into a frown. “‘Liberate mare’ means ‘save me’. ‘Ex’ is 'from'.” Her frown deepened. “‘Tantibus’ though...I don't think I recognize that one.”
“So…she was asking to be saved from something?” Barnaby asked, once more casting a brief look in the direction of the body. Clearly, what a 'tantibus' was, it had posed a genuine threat to the zebra. Unfortunately, it appeared that the help she'd been begging for hadn't arrived in time to do her any good.
Nova shrugged her wings. “I guess, yeah." She looked in the direction of the body as well.
With a sad shake of his head the stallion turned back to the recording and proceeded to clear it from the active process list so he could open the frequency back up and they could reach out to Triple-F and ERAM to give a report on the murder. However, as he was about to archive the message for later review, he noticed another oddity about it: the file was larger than it should have been.
The message that he and Nova had just watched was less than five seconds long, playing on a loop. However, judging by what was buffered in the system’s active memory, they should have been watching something that was at least a full minute in length. So what was all of that extra space being used for?
A few keystrokes later, Barnaby had his answer: The recording had become damaged―probably in the course of whoever it was beating the mare to death across all of the terminals in the room―and so only the last few seconds were able to be played. Then the system looped the message back around, skipped over the bad data until it got back to the readable parts, and played that last little bit again.
Depending on a few factors, it was possible that the data could be reconstructed though. In fact, the console he was standing at could hypothetically do so right now. However, Barnaby wasn’t sure how much he wanted to rely on these systems, given all the visible damage around him. Instead, the stallion elected to download the file into his own arcanetic matrix and let his personal systems tackle the job. It would probably take a little longer, but at least he wouldn’t have to wait around in this blood-soaked room with a body while the message was restored. He began to extra the file into a blank shard for transfer to his personal suite.
When the task was done, he slotted the shard into the receptacle grafted into the side of his neck and initiated a recompilation algorithm with his arcanetics. His personal network assured him that it was possible to reconstitute the message in its entirety, but that the procedure would take the better part of an hour to complete. A more sophisticated computer could have done the need much faster, but he could wait an hour. It wasn’t like there was a lot else for them to do in the meantime.
From behind him, he heard one of the other panels issue out a compliant chirp, followed by Nova’s cry of victory. A moment later she pressed her hoof to the side of her head. “Whitehead? I’ve got the network back up and running, we should all have comms now.”
While the pilot awaited an acknowledgement from the strike-breaker, Barnaby found that a new thought had occurred to him. He turned to look at the other batpony. “Hey, Nov?”
“Yeah?”
“...This room was locked down, right?”
His pilot looked at him like he’d just asked a question with an incredibly obvious answer which, in fairness, Barnaby was aware that he had. He was just trying to figure out if he’d missed something by talking out loud, because if he hadn’t missed anything, that suggested some quite disturbing implications that the two of them needed to consider. “...Yeah?”
“And it was a lockdown initiated from inside?”
Again the perplexed look from the mare who was wondering where he was going with these questions. “Yeah?”
“And there wasn’t any sign that somepony had tampered with it?” Nova shook her head. “Nopony left the room?” Another shake of the mare’s head. “So…presumably they were the ones who initiated the lockdown?” Barnaby gestured to the dead zebra mare lying in the pool of her own dried blood.
“That’s my guess,” the batpony mare confirmed, though she didn’t sound thoroughly convinced herself. “Don’t ask me where she got the credentials to manage something like that though.”
“So...if she locked the room down, and nopony's left since she locked it down...” the stallion began, really hoping that Nova would have a firm answer for the question that he was about to ask. “...Who killed her?”
Nova opened her mouth to provide an answer…but then stopped herself short. Given the confusion etched upon the mare’s face, it was clear that this was the first time that she was thinking critically on the situation too. The two of them had both been a little distracted by the fact that they’d found a dead body in this room at all to bother asking such trifling questions as to how it had come to be there in the first place. Solving murders wasn’t in either of their job descriptions, after all. Besides, they’d had higher priority tasks to focus on up until now.
However, now that the two of them had been given some time to mull over the situation, Barnaby wasn’t liking the implications that they were left with where the evidence at hoof was concerned. From where he was sitting, either there was a murderer somewhere who was such a wunderfoal with computer and security systems that they could mask their passage in and out of otherwise locked down rooms that were supposed to be the most secure on the station, or…
This zebra hadn’t been ‘murdered’ at all.
The latter possibility raised a whole host of other questions that Barnaby didn’t particularly care for the answers of either.
His thoughts were briefly interrupted by a sudden burst of noise that briefly deafened him to the outside world. At almost exactly the same moment, his vision blurred as well. An illusionary alert in the corner of his field of view announced that his arcanetic implants were experiencing some sort of brief malfunction. It cleared up after only a second or two though, and then everything seemed to be fine. Judging from how Nova was glancing around in confusion as well, Barnaby got the feeling he hadn’t been the only one to experience the brief outage.
“Did your―?” He began to ask, but the mare was clearly thinking along the same lines that he had been.
“Yeah. And it happened just after I tried to pull some diagnostic files from the station’s network to look into the lockdown thing,” Nova revealed. “I wanted to see if there was evidence of the logs being tampered with.”
“Did you at least find out if there were any―”
Once more Barnaby found himself interrupted, but not by his partner this time. Instead it was by a frantic scream over the clairaudient link that their time was supposed to have been able to talk over this whole time, had the network not been down.
“Help me! Somepony help me!” A mare screamed hysterically. In the background, Barnaby and Nova both heard the frantic sound of a stallion crying out in pain and agony. “They’re everywhere! Get them away from me!”
Both batponies were instantly on the move. Barnaby stumbled briefly as he forgot to compensate for the reduced gravity, but was quickly able to recover with a few deft flicks of his wings. The two of them scrambled out of the operations center and glided down the stairs. They could hear Whitehead yelling over the link now too.
“Who is this? Luster, is that you? Where are you, Celestia damn it! What’s attacking you? Is it the miners?!”
“I’m at Processing!” Came the frantic response, saturated with heavy breathing, though perceptibly less panicked now. The screaming in the background had ceased too. “Blue Danube and I were looking to see if the miners damaged anything. Then a bunch of terrorachnids burst up out of the ground and attacked us! They got Blue!”
Both Nova and Barnaby drew up sort almost simultaneously, each of them looking to the other in stark bewilderment, both wordlessly asking the other if they had heard the mare’s claim correctly. They weren’t the only ones who were astonished by Luster’s claim, judging by Whitehead’s incredulous follow-up over the link. “Do you think all of this is a joke, officer?! ‘Terrorachnids’? Really?”
In this case, Barnaby found himself sharing in the obstinate unicorn’s consternation. He didn’t know what the mare was trying to accomplish by invoking a monster from the latest horror movie that had been released throughout Equestrian theaters less than a month ago to usher in the upcoming spook-themed holiday. ‘Eight-Legged Terrors’ had become an instant hit among pulp-horror movie enthusiasts. Barnaby himself had seen it three times. Once with his husband, and then twice more on his own after the movie had apparently given his partner a newfound aversion to all things spider related.
“No, sir!” The nearly manic-sounding mare insisted. “It’s not a joke, I swear! I saw them; they killed Blue!”
Again the batpony pair exchanged looks. If this mare was perpetrating some sort of Nightmare Night-themed prank, she was working really hard to sell it. Honestly, Barnaby would probably have fully believed her by her tone if she hadn’t picked out such an obviously fictitious monster. Even though they were on the moon, if she’d insisted a timberwolf had attacked them, he’d have believed her with the amount of sincerity that was present in her voice. As it was though…
But to say that another of their party had been killed…?
“Officer Danube, report!” Whitehead barked. Nova and Barnaby both waited in complete silence and stillness for the sound of the named stallion’s reply; and the confirmation that this was a prank which had misjudged its audience. After a few seconds, the stallion reminded himself that it was okay for him to breathe while they waited.
“Officer Danube!” The unicorn called out again.
“I told you; he’s dead!” Luster blurted through a trembled voice. “The terrorachnids got him!”
The pair of batponies resumed their run towards the mineral processing quarter, if only to satisfy their sense of morbid curiosity over what exactly it was that Luster thought a real-life ‘terrorachnid’ would look like. Whitehead sounded to be of a similar mind. “Stay put officer; we’re on our way.” By no means did the executive stallion sound convinced, but there wasn’t exactly any use further berating the mare over the link. And Blue Danube was insistent on playing along…
…He wasn’t playing.
For the second time since coming to this mining complex, Barnaby found himself looking at another bloody mess of a pony lying on the deck. Only this time the blood that the body was covered in wasn’t dried up and rust-colored. It was quite fresh; and a brilliant, glistening, crimson besides. It reminded him of some of the more evocative shades of lipstick or hoof polish that some mares would wear, in a morbid kind of way.
He was probably thinking that because of how much of that same scarlet ‘polish’ was slathered all over Luster’s forehooves at the moment. The mare was doing a phenomenal job of acting like she was seeing the blood that she was covered in for the first time, Barnaby had to give her that. If he hadn't known any better, he’d have even believed the story she was feeding Whitehead. She was just telling it with such conviction…
“I swear, Mister Whitehead,” the disarmed and surrounded mare was pleading with him, “I didn’t kill him! I didn’t even touch him; it was the terrorachnids! There must have been dozens of them! They were everywhere. They came out of the ground all around us! They were crawling all over Blue; I tried to smack them off, but then they were coming at me…” The mare visibly shuddered with mixed fear and disgust, shaking her head vigorously. “I could feel them all over me. They were going to cocoon me and take me back to their lair!”
Whitehead, understandably, was not the slightest bit moved by the mare’s patently absurd claim of how events had unfolded. He let out a long-suffering sigh and massaged his brow as he, again, presented the question to the mare for which she had yet to provide a reasonable explanation.
“Your hooves are covered in blood, Officer Luster,” the unicorn stallion pointed out to her. “Pony blood, not spider…whatever it is they have―ooze.” Luster peered at her gore-covered hooves as though seeing them for the first time. Instantly she paled, and started to gag, holding the offending appendages as far from herself as her legs would allow. It looked like she’d have preferred they not be a part of her body any longer if she could find a way to arrange it. Whitehead was unsympathetic and continued on. “We see no ‘terrorachnids’,” he said, flexing his hooves around the name of the fictitious monster to further accentuate his skepticism. “And we certainly see no sign that anything ‘came out’ of anywhere.”
The unicorn gestured around them, indicating the thick steel-plated decking of the mining station’s ore processing facility. This was where raw moonrock that was dug out from beneath the complex was brought so that the valuable selenium could be extracted and separated for shipment back to Equus. Again, as Whitehead correctly noted, there was absolutely no sign whatsoever that anything, let alone fictional arachnids from a horror movie, had burst out from the ground and attacked anypony. The only things that had been in the room when everypony else had arrived had been the mare, bloodied and panting, standing over the brutalized corpse of her fellow officer.
Unlike the mystery surrounding the death of the zebra in Ops, Barnaby believed that the events which had transpired here leading up to Blue Danube’s death were fairly self-evident. While the batpony stallion might not know enough about the pair’s past to judge any kind of motive for the killing, there could be little doubt of who’d killed the stallion in this case. Whitehead obviously agreed.
The unicorn looked past the distraught mare to one of the other security ponies, a yellow pegasus stallion. “Officer Windshear? Secure former Officer Luster on the shuttle.” He looked to the last security pony, a gray unicorn mare. “Officer Slate and I will resume our search for the miners. Surely they’re holed up in the cafeteria.” He must have caught sight of Barnaby’s puzzled expression, because he looked at the batponies and explained his reasoning. “I noticed it had been locked down and sealed.
“Your lifting of the lockdown should mean we can get in now. Come, Slate.” He and the other unicorn trotted off towards the cafeteria.
Beside him, Nova cocked her head. “I didn’t…wait,” the batpony stallion next to her saw the pilot’s eyes flickering with magical light as she accessed her arcanetic network, presumably to review some of her earlier activity logs. “Oh shit,” she exclaimed under her breath. “The lockdown hadn’t been exclusive to the Ops Center. I didn’t even think to check for that,” she admitted.
Now it was Barnaby’s turn to be confused. “So, what, that zebra locked down the control room and the cafeteria…and nothing else?” He felt that he didn’t explicitly need to point out how nonsensical that sounded.
Nova appeared to agree with his assessment, because she sounded just as bewildered as the stallion did. “Doesn’t make any kind of sense to me either.” Her eyes darted to the nearby body of the bloodied and beaten stallion. “Not that a lot of things have been making sense to me today…”
“Hm.” Barnaby shook his head and massaged his temple in mental exhaustion. “I kind of want to go back to the shuttle and wait this shit out.”
“You really want to be around Bloody Mare-y for the rest of our stay?” Nova snorted, nodding her head at the dead stallion once more.
The stallion cringed, both at the joke that his partner had made which was likely in very poor taste given the freshness of recent events, as well as the idea of sharing the shuttle with a psychotic killer for any longer than was absolutely necessary. “Good point.”
“Come on,” Nova urged as she stepped past him, “let’s go to the cafeteria too. Maybe the miners have some fresh coffee or something?”
“Maybe,” Barnaby agreed, falling into step at the pilot’s side. “You know, It’s weird that we haven’t heard anything from them now that the network’s back up. You’d think they’d have demands or something they want to discuss,” he absently pointed out…only for them both to draw up short once more, and share tentative looks.
Nova put her hoof to her temple and keyed in her link to the clairaudient matrix used by the station’s personnel. “This is Nova Flare, pilot of the Somnambula under contract to FlimFlamFabrications. Can anypony read me?”
Once more Barnaby was forced to remind himself that breathing was permitted while they waited for a response. Once more, the two of them found themselves getting more and more concerned when a response didn’t come. The mare validated that she was indeed connected to the station’s internal network, and that she was tuned into the appropriate clairaudient spell matrix and repeated her message.
Still there was no response.
Barnaby initiated his own query of the station’s systems. Though he was fairly confident of what he’d find, he still wanted that confirmation. Though when he received the response, he still wasn’t able to fully accept it, shaking his head in disbelief. “...There aren’t any other active arcanetics logged into the network,” he informed the mare next to him, earning an incredulous stare from the pilot. All he could do was shrug helplessly, at a loss to explain why. “Aside from sev―er, six,” he nodded back to the fabrication area and the dead body there, “of us, the network isn’t registering any other users.”
Nova’s eyes flashed as she queried the station herself and confirmed her partner’s findings. He took no offense. Barnaby wouldn’t have believed himself either in her place. After all, it was patently ridiculous that there wasn’t anypony else on the mining station. Where could they have gone? The mining barge was still parked on the landing pad, and there wasn’t any other way off the station!
Unless the whole crew had elected to simply walk to the next station, for some reason; which would have been insane. Probably suicidal besides. It was a hundred miles or more to the next nearest lunar station from here. No vacuum suit would last long enough to complete the trek. The miners had to be on the station!
Barnaby’s thoughts were diverted once again by another transmission that was sent over the clairaudient link they were sharing with the security ponies. This time it was a stallion’s panicked voice that could be heard. “Hello? Can Anypony hear me? There’s a problem with the shuttle!”
This instantly got both of the batponies’ attention. Nova’s hoof was at her temple in a heartbeat. “This is Nova, the pilot; what’s the issue?” Was what she said aloud, but her tone was more evocative of: ‘what the buck did you do to my ship?!’ After all, the batpony mare had left all of the shuttle’s systems in ‘standby’. The only way that there could be a ‘problem’ is if somepony had come along and touched something; and nopony had been near the shuttle since they debarked earlier.
Much to Nova’s frustration, it didn’t sound like the security stallion had heard her question. “Hello?! I need help in here! Something’s wrong with the bulkheads; they’re closing in around me! I’m going to be crushed!” With each sentence uttered, the pegasus sounded like he was becoming progressively more frantic. Meanwhile, all that the shuttle’s operators could do was share a bewildered look between them.
“The bulkheads are closing in?” Barnaby repeated in a tone that bordered on amusement at the sheer absurdity of the purported claim being made by the security pony. There was no way, on Celestia’s green Equus―or, Luna’s gray Moon, rather?―that the shuttle’s bulkheads could be closing in around the security pony. They were bulkheads. They just sort of...stayed put.
“I need to get out…” Came a further mumbled message. Once more the batponies exchanged looks. One would think that the pegasus wouldn’t sound as concerned as he was. After all, they’d left the airlocks open. If he was really feeling suddenly claustrophobic for whatever reason, he was fully able to just…walk off the shuttle. No issues. “I need to get out!”
“Then get off my damn ship!” Nova barked, having apparently lost what remained of her patience for the stallion’s nonsense. Not that it sounded like he could hear them still. Both she and Barnaby checked to ensure their arcanetics were functioning properly, but neither could find any obvious issues. Whatever problem there was, existed on the security pony’s end.
A familiar mare’s voice jumped onto the link now. “Um, this is Luster; I think there’s something wrong with Windshear?” Barnaby’s brow puzzled over the murderous mare still having access to the clairaudient link, but found those musing’s diverted by her next statement. “He just grabbed a fire suppressor and went into the cockpit―”
Nova’s eyes went wide with fright as she and her partner both heard the sound of something being struck by a large object in the background of Luster’s transmission. A moment later, their assumptions were confirmed by a very concerned-sounding security mare. “―Oh, Celestia! He’s banging on the glass! Windshear, stop! What are you doing?!”
Overlapping with the mare’s desperate pleas for her fellow officer to stop, the batponies could hear the pegasus stallion's repeatedly muttering a mantra he’d appeared to have adopted over his own still open link. “Have to get out; walls closing in. Have to get out…”
“Then use the damned door!” Nova was screaming at the top of her lungs, already breaking out into a fluttering gallop as she dashed down the corridors towards the airlock. Barnaby was right on her cannons. “Whitehead, where did you find these psychos?!”
If the unicorn company mare heard the batpony mare’s question, he didn’t respond to it that Barnaby noticed. In fairness, he wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what was being transmitted over the link right now. His thoughts were primarily focused on considering all of the irreparable damage that an insane pony with a large metal cylinder could inflict on their ship if not stopped, and quickly. Luster had presumably been restrained in some fashion, given that it didn’t sound like she was forcibly trying to stop her errant coworker, and was merely pleading with the pegasus to stop with words that were becoming progressively more hysterical. It was more terrified sobbing than articulable phrases by the time he and Nova reached the causeway overlooking the landing pads.
Nova drew up short as she caught sight of their shuttle through the large reinforced window built into the side of the corridor. She all but threw herself against the thick pane of glass as she screamed, as though her words might somehow carry through the vacuum if she yelled out loud enough. “Stop, you fucking nutcase!”
Barmany posted himself up beside her, and almost immediately felt his heart leap into his throat. He easily spotted the shuttle parked out on one of the mining complex’s pads. He could also see the movement in the little ship’s cockpit. However, it was hard to make out many details through the spiderweb of cracks that were already visible on the forward viewport. Cracks that were getting more numerous with each strike that the stallion hammered against it.
Both ponies could be heard over the link now, each of them desiring to escape from the craft. The stallion was still maintaining his fervent but detached mantra. Luster, on the other hoof…
“Help me! Somepony, please hel-l-l-p me!” The mare was audibly sobbing. “I d-don’t want to d-die! Please, I’m sorry! Let me off! Let me―!”
The viewport finally lost the last vestiges of its integrity and gave way, blown outward by the shuttle's atmosphere in a blast of crystalline shards. Barnaby’s mane whipped in the sudden gust of artificially created wind as air rushed through the station towards the stricken craft. Alarms blared an instant later. An echoing thud of metal and the accompanied cessation of the rushing air heralded the enactment of the station’s automated decompression response procedures. Likely the airlock leading to the shuttle being sealed up tight.
Those were thoughts that just existed in the back of the batpony stallion’s mind though. His conscious focus was still locked on the view of the shuttle through the window. The destruction of the little transport’s forward viewport had not been total, some of the tempered glass at the edges held onto the frame that it was bolted into. Even if it hadn’t, the opening wouldn’t have been large enough for the pegasus stallion to be pulled completely through anyway. Windows were a structural weak point on space vessels, and so were not made to be any larger than was absolutely necessary for flight operations.
Windshear would not have been able to ‘escape’ the shuttle by smashing his way through the viewport anyway. Had he been anywhere near rational, the security stallion would have recognized the futility of his actions, as well as their inherent lethality. As it was, the stallion’s bloodied head and one of his hooves were draped down the nose of the shuttle, sliced open as they’d been racked across the jagged edges of his work. His bulging eyes frozen wide in surprise, but otherwise empty. Luster's pleas were no long transmitting.
Barnaby didn’t need to query the station’s network to know that the two security ponies were dead.
Beside him, Nova slumped to her haunches, her earlier ire replaced now by awed shock. “The ship…” Her partner shared in the mare’s resignation. They possessed no means by which to repair that kind of damage to their ship. The shuttle was a lost cause.
Though that didn’t mean that they were trapped on the station, Barnaby noted as he turned his head towards the mining barge parked on a nearby pad. He nudged the mare beside him and directed her attention towards it. “Let’s look into getting that thing cleared for launch. Fuck the strike; we need to get off this Celestia-banished death-trap!”
Nova nodded in firm agreement and rose back up onto her hooves. “You start on the preflight checks,” she said, “I’ll use my credentials to get system authorization in Ops.”
Barnaby hesitated. “...Are we going to tell Whitehead?”
The mare’s expression soured noticeably and she let out an aggravated groan. “If he’ll ever fucking answer me!” She all but yelled into the still-open link. Both batponies paused to listen in silence for several seconds. Unsurprisingly by this point, they heard no response from the unicorn, prompting another annoyed snarl from Nova. She let out a resigned huff and shook her head. “I don’t want to leave them behind,” she admitted, “swing by the cafeteria on your way to the other pad and see what the problem is.”
The stallion nodded and was about to head off when he felt a leathery wing lay over his shoulder. Glancing back, he saw Nova looking at him with a worried expression. “Watch yourself, alright? I’m not saying that ‘crazy’ is contagious, but…” Her eyes wandered in the direction of the pad and the grounded shuttle.
Barnaby affected the best reassuring smile he could manage under the circumstances for the mare’s benefit as much as his own. “I’ll be careful, Nov. We’ll get through this.” He jerked his head in the broad direction of Ops. “You’re the one who’s got to go back into the spooky room with the dead body; I’ll be fine!” It wasn’t his best attempt to add some levity to an otherwise distressing situation, he was forced to admit; but the stallion didn’t have a lot of material to work with at the moment.
Nova visibly shuddered, and not for exaggerated effect. “The way things are going, I half expect it to rise up and attack me,” she muttered. Her eyes darted once again to the vacuum-exposed pegasus stallion hanging out of their shuttle. “Would probably be the least weird thing to happen today…”
Her copilot found himself hard-pressed to disagree with her assessment of the situation. With that sobering note in mind, the pair parted ways, Nova to go and clear the cargo hauler, and himself to get its flight systems powered up and ready. And also round up their two remaining passengers, he reminded himself. Assuming they hadn’t managed to kill each other somehow like their fellows had.
Barnaby felt that he was only half-joking with that thought.
The stallion was drawn up short once more when the illusionary visual display of his arcanetics experienced yet another brief disruption. This time it was a little more pronounced though. The stallion let out a frustrated groan. A problem with his implants right now was the last thing he needed to deal with! He had the system run a quick diagnostic, and was relieved when no errors were kicked back. Maybe it was some sort of issue on the station network’s end? The first disruption had happened when Nova had brought it online.
The batpony mulled over the possibility, chewing pensively on his lip. This was probably a bad call to make on his part, if he was being honest. However, with so much at stake, could they really risk adding further issues as a result of some sort of bug connected with the station’s network? Barnaby decided that they needed to mitigate all the risk that they could, and so he disconnected himself from the station’s network.
This would mean that he and Nova wouldn’t be able to send clairaudient messages to each other, but there honestly wasn’t all that much that the two of them needed to say to each other anymore. Besides, it wasn’t like he couldn’t just reconnect to it later to get an update on the batpony mare’s progress. He just really didn’t want to catch some sort of hex or something from the station’s systems. Something was clearly going on here!
Barnaby trotted the rest of the way towards the station’s cafeteria. It was a little bit of a detour from the path leading to the cargo hauler’s landing pad, as the primary gathering spot was centrally located. This was because the cafeteria was also designed to serve as a reinforced shelter in the event of some sort of catastrophic failure. The room possessed all manner of structural enchantments and life support redundancies. Which would also have made it a good location for those miners to hole up in for their strike.
He rounded a corner and spotted one of the wide doors leading into the cafeteria. However, his pace slowed as he picked up sounds coming from within. At first, he had thought that it was Whitehead berating the miners for their work stoppage or something. However, the closer he got, the less sure Barnaby was that that was what he was hearing. If only because none of the sounds were coming across as true words. They were…more primal. More guttural than that. Like a pony trying to poorly mimic language who’d never heard it before.
The stallion stopped at the edge of the opening, and then slowly craned his head to peer inside.
What he saw chased away his own ability to speak.
At some point in the week since Luna’s Landing had ceased contact with Equus, it appeared that this room had been transformed from a cafeteria…into an abattoir. To say that the miners had simply been ‘killed’ would have grossly undersold what must have taken place here. Ponies were not merely dead; it looked to the batpony stallion as though the bodies had been rent into pieces explicitly so that the carnage could be spread around the room as broadly and uniformly as possible. Limbs, sections of ribcage, skull halves, and organs of every color and consistency had been slathered across the floor, like the ponies that they had once belonged to had all been Miss Apple-Head dolls owned by a particularly messy toddler.
And there, standing in the center of the gruesome tableau of death, were the presumed culprits: two desiccated unicorns. Unlike their brethren, these equines were whole in body, but Barnaby could not in good conscience describe them as being ‘alive’. For how could they be? Their forms were so emaciated that the batpony could identify each and every one of their arcanetic enhancement, visible through their sloughing flesh. Flickering gemstones dotted their bodies, grafted to bones that were all too visible through what remained of their bare coats and thin hides.
The taller of the two corpses turned its head in Barnaby’s direction. The movements were jerky and unnatural. The batpony found himself taking a terrified step back as he found himself the undeniable focus of two vacant sockets which were clearly devoid of eyes with which to see. The creature’s jaw opened, dropping down so wide as to become unhinged. An inequine shriek escaped from its gaping maw, causing Barnaby’s blood to freeze as he felt himself grasped by utter terror.
“Zombponies!” He cried out, fear overriding his senses. The two figures each canted their heads at him now. Then the unicorn took a shambling step towards him. Again, the batpony screamed as he turned and fled. “Zombponies!”
In some distant part of Barnaby’s mind, he was aware of the absurdity of what was happening. After all, ‘everypony knew’ that zombponies weren’t a real thing. Even in a place like Equestria, where magic existed which could perform all manner of feats, raising the dead was right out. Yet, that diminutive little voice of reason was shouted down by the rest of him. The part that had seen, quite clearly and plainly, the two undead corpses standing amidst a sea of dismembered bodies.
At least now he knew why Nova hadn’t been able to reach Whitehead through her link: the zombponies had gotten him and his remaining security pony!
They needed to escape! He needed to get Nova and the two of them needed to leave this cursed place. Now!
Another brief flicker of static crossed the stallion’s vision, but he shook his head and ignored it. He had no time to be distracted by glitches; he had to save Nova from the zombponies before it was too late!
His hooves skittered across the alloyed deck of the corridor as he found himself at the base of the stairs leading up to the main control room once again. “Nova! Nova, we have to get out of here!” He raced up the stairs and rounded through the door. “There’s―!”
Barnaby found himself muzzle to muzzle with a skeleton that was standing in the doorway. The bleach-white skull grinning balefully at him, framed by the many articulated joints of its fleshless wings. The skeleton’s mandible opened up in a soundless scream.
The stallion didn’t hesitate. He wheeled around and sent as powerful of a double-buck as he could manage right into the creature’s ribs. The monster was sent flying back across the control room, slamming into a terminal in a shower of sparks and smoke. An alert sounded almost immediately as the room registered the possible presence of a fire. The door slammed shut a moment later.
“Nova!” The stallion cried out in a panic as he turned back around and pounded on the door. He hadn’t had time enough to see if she was still alive! The skeleton might not have gotten her yet! “Nova!” He frantically tapped at the controls with his hoof, but he wasn’t able to entice the door into opening. He didn’t have the override codes that his partner did.
He hesitated again, debating on how long he should linger…and hope. Barnaby put his ear to the door, but he couldn’t hear anything over the roaring of the fire alarm. He took a deep breath and steeled himself against the risk of reconnecting to the station’s network. Nothing seemed to go awry when he did so. He queried the network for signs of life coming from within the control room.
He found nothing.
Not just in the Operations Center either. His arcanetics insisted that there were no other living ponies on the entire station.
He was alone.
A blood-chilling scream that didn’t sound like it had come from any living pony echoed down the corridors. Barnaby amended his earlier thought: he was alone, except for the zombponies coming to eat his brains! He looked over his shoulder down the way that he’d come, and spotted the pair of corpses he’d seen in the cafeteria. Both of them were unleashing their horrific banshee-like screams that all but deafened the stallion with their intensity. He pinned his ears back, covering them with his hooves in an effort to muffle the screeching which sounded like it was drilling directly into his skull. It was to no avail.
And the zombponies were only getting nearer. He had to flee!
With a cry of his own intended to steel himself against his terror, Barnaby vaulted down the stairs towards the shambling creatures. His leathery wings outstretched as he sprung from floor, to wall, to ceiling, and back around again in an effort to bypass the walking husks who were trudging towards him. All the while the monsters called out for his flesh. Barnaby didn’t stop; he didn’t even look back. He focused on getting to the barge. Hopefully Nova had managed to clear it before she was killed.
A flicker of movement through a window overlooking the lunar surface caught the stallion’s eye as he sprinted by. He turned his head, having sworn that he’d seen a pony―a black-coated mare―on the other side of the glass. Impossible of course, as the mare he’d thought he’d seen hadn’t been wearing a space suit. There was certainly nothing there that he could see when he looked into the window directly.
He could hear the zombponies coming after him, their hoofbeats echoing along the deck plating in his wake. This was no time to be distracted, the batpony chastised himself, resuming his loping gallop. They wouldn’t catch him. He wouldn’t let them. He would not allow himself to die here like the others!
When the airlock leading to the cargo hauler was finally in sight, the batpony stallion finally felt the weight of dread lift from his withers. If only a little. He could still hear the distant screeching of the monsters coming for him. They would be too late, of course, the stallion thought with a triumphant grin plastered across his face. “You’ll never catch me, you filthy zombponies!” He crowed as he banked with his wings into the airlock. His hoof slammed on the controls to begin cycling it.
The airlock was still firmly hardlocked to the hauler, so this wasn’t at all necessary to do in order to board it. However, thanks to certain safety features which every airlock came equipped with, the system would not allow for the inner door to be opened until the system conducted a complete seal test to ensure proper integrity of the airlock. The process took a minimum of two minutes. And nothing could override it; not even the sort of codes that Nova had had, as it was a matter of safety. Which meant that the zombponies pounding and screaming on the other side of the airlock door to get at him wouldn’t be able to do anything for those two minutes. Assuming zombponies were even smart enough to work airlocks in the first place.
Even though he’d bought himself a little breathing room, Barnaby dared not dawdle. He still had a flight check to rush through before he could take off. The batpony clambered the rest of the way through the gantry and onto the barge, where he shuttered that lock, and then ran it through a maintenance cycle for good measure. That would take the better part of an hour to complete; though such a process could hypothetically be overridden. Presumably not by zombponies though.
Barnaby made his way through the passenger-unfriendly tight confines of the cargo hauler until he reached the cockpit. He let out a relieved sigh when he saw that Nova must have indeed been successful in her task before being killed by that skeleton: the station’s systems had unlocked the hauler’s controls and would permit it to depart. The batpony stallion slipped into the piloting couch and began to bring its flight systems online.
While he was no proper pilot himself, Nova had allowed him to ‘warm up’ the shuttle more times that he could count, and there existed a fair amount of standardization across most flight systems, thanks largely to Bowing Aerospace’s monopoly on spacecraft production and marketing within Equestria. For the first―and perhaps only―time in his life, Barnaby found himself extremely grateful that Equestria possessed no antitrust laws.
It took him just over a minute to pass through the startup process and get the hauler flight-ready―and that was with skipping every step he thought he could get away with omitting without the computer chastising him. The stallion’s ears twitched as he became suddenly aware of a pounding sound coming from the airlock. Though he had a fair idea of what the source was, the stallion still elected to reach out and bring up a camera feed from outside the hauler’s airlock through his arcanetics.
The zombponies were at the door, and they wanted inside. They weren’t alone either, Barnaby noticed. The skeleton from the control room was stiffly shambling towards the airlock as well, pushing the zombponies aside to reach it. It didn’t start pounding at the door though. Inexplicably possessed of more ‘brains’ than its slightly-more-fleshy cohorts, the skeletal pony’s attention was quite clearly directed at the access panel by the door.
Much to Barnaby’s terrified wonder, he watched as it began to type something into the panel with clear and deliberate intent. Did that monster actually know an override code?! Gripped by panic once more, Barnaby quickly initiated the ship’s launch sequence. Unlike with the maintenance cycle, the safety systems associated with an initiated launch would prohibit the airlock from being opened.
He continued to watch through the feed on his arcanetics as the skeletal pony took notice of the alert flashed across the control panel it had been working at. Again it displayed an uncanny level of comprehension as it appeared to recognize what was happening. It turned and started to head back towards the station. The zombponies followed in its wake.
“Oh no you don’t!” Barnaby all but snarled at the monsters. He lashed out at the controls in front of him and directed the station to retract the gantry.
The stallion watched with smug satisfaction as the station-side airlock slammed closed in the skeleton's face, drawing it up short. It immediately turned its attention to the panel by the door, but Barnaby knew that there was nothing it would be able to do to get the door open. The gantry was about to break its seal and detach from the barge. If the station allowed the airlock to open, it would risk decompressing the whole complex. That door would remain sealed no matter what.
The skeleton appeared to realize this too in short order. Barnaby watched it through the feed as its face turned back to the barge’s airlock. The creature’s mouth opened and unleashed a baleful screech. The batpony’s ears twitched briefly.
“Barny, don―!”
The stallion cocked his head, trying to listen to what he was almost positive had been the voice of…
But she was dead. He’d seen the query with his own eyes. His arcanetics had not registered any other life signs on the station. The sound of Nova's voice just then was clearly only his mind playing tricks on him.
The gantry broke its seal. The two zombponies and the skeleton flailed about as they were blown briefly around by the small quantity of air that had remained in the gantry. When it was gone, their limbs continued to flail in panic for a time. Then they went still and the undead collapsed to the floor. Barnaby spared a moment to wonder if the undead trio had genuinely been…well, rekilled, he supposed, by exposure to vacuum…?
The cargo hauler's ventral thrusters launching it up from the surface a moment later interrupted those thoughts. The batpony stallion was forced to hastily belt himself to the piloting couch, lest he risk being thrown about the cabin.
As the lumbering craft rose from the lunar surface, Barnaby finally allowed himself to feel a sense of relief. It was bittersweet, to be sure. Nova and the others had died, and he knew that he was dearly going to miss her. However, he could rest easy knowing that there had not been anything he could do to avert it, and had indeed tried his best to save her and the others.
He reached forward and ensured that the craft’s flight systems were loaded with the appropriate return guidance settings. Pilot though the stallion may not be, he didn’t really need to be one for this trip. Cargo haulers like this were fairly well automated. Mostly because the corporate big-manes trusted an automated machine over a pony. Per ERAM regulations, a flesh and blood pilot needed to be present in case there was any sort of emergency, but the reality was that ship’s like this largely flew themselves. Barnaby could be assured of a stress-free return trip.
Some time later, once the cargo hauler had completed its lunar-escape burn and was safely on its way to Equus orbit, the engines finally cut off and the batpony stallion felt himself begin to float weightlessly in his seat. He was alive. He had escaped. He was safe. He let out a deep sigh, finally allowing himself to relax.
He released the seat’s restraints and extracted himself from the piloting couch. The ship was basically just coasting through space at this point; there was no real need for a pilot, bona fide or otherwise. He fluttered his wings and propelled himself out of the cockpit and towards the cargo hauler’s meager crew section. There wasn’t much there other than the bare necessities to sustain a crew. Some bunks, food dispenser, a little washroom―no proper shower though.
It was enough. Barnaby headed for the little basin, grateful for a chance to not only wash away the blood his hooves had picked up from the station's control room, but to also scrub his face of all of the sweat he'd worked up while fleeing from those undead monsters. He spritzed a glob of water onto his hooves, wiping them clean before massaging another ball of water along his face, letting out a contented sigh as he did so.
The stallion paused, narrowing his eyes at the mirror. He whipped his head around to look behind him. He could have sworn…?
But there was nothing there, obviously. He queried the ship’s internal systems and confirmed that he was the only pony aboard. Clearly he was still feeling a little jumpy.
An illusionary notification popped up before his eyes. His arcanetics had managed to successfully reconstitute the zebra mare’s message.
Barnaby let out a mirthless chortle. A fat lot of good her warning was going to do him now, the batpony thought to himself. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a listen though. Maybe it would help him explain things to Triple-F when he finally got back to Equus. They were sure to want a report as to how their whole team―to say nothing of the miners―had all ended up dead. He instructed the message to play.
Words filled his ears. “Salve. Lucidia Astra mihi nomen est. Ego scribo hoc―” Barnaby let out an exasperated huff and paused the message. He toggled the translated audio and restarted it.
“Hello,” the mare began once again in slightly distorted Ponish as his arcanetics processed the words, “my name is Bright Star. I am recording this message as a warning: do not approach this station! Please, no creature must ever come here!” She pleaded. Another chortle from the batpony. Too little information too late. “The Nightmare…” There was a period of hesitation, as if she was searching for the right words, “...it wasn’t destroyed like the stories told us. It was just sent away―sent back to its home. To this place. To the moon.”
Barnaby paused the recording, his head cocking to the side. Like any other pony, a very specific story involving a ‘Nightmare’ and the moon sprung to mind instantly. But he was left to wonder if the tale he was thinking of was really what the zebra had been talking about here. I mean, she couldn’t actually be talking about―
He whipped his head around again. “Hello?” He could have sworn that he’d heard another voice just then. Another mare…laughing? But again, he could see nothing, and another hasty query of the ship’s systems again promised that he was alone. He swallowed back his nervousness and resumed the message.
“It…it was sleeping,” the zebra’s voice started to tremble, “but now it’s woken up…
“It wants to escape,” she insisted. “It wants to get back to Equus. We can’t let it.” Barnaby stiffened, his eyes wide. He didn’t care what the ship’s network insisted, he knew that he’d felt something trace its way up his back just then. A feathered wing, gently running pinions along his spine. And out of the corner of his eye…
“It makes you see things. Things that aren’t real―things that aren’t there. It knows your fears…and it will make them real!” He caught sight of the mirror once more, and yelped in fear. What he had seen in it was not his face. At least, not really. It had been his face, yes, but…the flesh had been bare and pale. The eyes rotted away, leaving behind festering holes in his skull. Maggots had been crawling out of his nostrils…
“What it’s shown me…” The zebra’s voice faltered slightly, her words catching on what sounded like a sob.
Barnaby closed his eyes tightly, took a breath, and opened them again, slowly. He peered furtively at the mirror…and let out a shaky breath as he saw his face―a very alive face―looking back at him once again.
“It needs the ore―the selenium―as a conduit to move around,” the mare in his ear continued. “I lured it into the cargo hauler and trapped it before taking the station’s network offline. Equus is safe, so long as that ship stays here.”
Again there was the chilling feeling of ethereal feathers tracing along his back. There was a presence, he was sure of it. The sensation of somepony leaning in close behind him, their breath hot and moist against the nape of his neck. Barnaby swallowed, his eyes―wide and full of terror―locked onto the mirror in front of him.
He wasn’t alone in its reflection.
Brilliant blue orbs peered back at him, framed by a coat of fur as black as the void of space itself. Lips peeled back, exposing a maw filled with glistening white fangs. The silence around him began to give way to a ghostly chorus of disembodied laughter, bubbling with malice; and it was steadily growing in volume. The stallion feared that soon the mirthless cackling would be all that he could hear.
“So, please: Stay away!” The zebra pleaded desperately in his ear. “Save yourselves...from the Nightmare!”
The audio glitched and the last line repeated, but this time Barnaby's arcanetics did not translate the zebras words. "Libera te tutemare...ex Tantibus!"
The message ended.
The laughting…did not.
Author's Note
Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated
I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!
