On the main screen, the puffy white cloud was still just a blob of pixels, but was visibly growing.

"I suggest you come back to the Westtry immediately, captain. We have the Wutt's black box aboard," Raspberry urged, eyeing the anomaly from the command pit.

"Not yet," Gerlach replied over the speakers. "Chief Elytra thinks he can get the En-Keladim ship flying again. We'll need the help if that thing catches up."

"Understood, we'll take you under tow," Raspberry said.

"Too risky," Gerlach rejected. "We can’t afford to coddle acceleration."

She shifted uneasily. "You surely don't want us to leave you!"

"Worst comes to the worst, we'll catch up by shuttle," Gerlach contingensised.

Raspberry sighed at the breach of good Pony sense, but orders were orders. "Wilco. Don't get my husband killed."

"Nocreature's dying today," the captain replied. "Gerlach out."

With another shake of her head, Raspberry double checked the sensor readings. "Three-thirty by triple-naught, Mr. Meckler. Two-thirds ion to standard-by-four."

The helmsgriff acknowledged and Westtry accelerated toward the distant Ellor system.

Aboard the Ishtar, Tekel's strained expression darkened toward despair. "You are the tool of malice, captain."

Gerlach's feathers bristled. "We offer to repair your ship for free, and that's your idea of thanks?"

"Your good will does not mean that it cannot be so," Tekel replied grimly. "Long have we operated a mining station on Gyönyörű's third moon, yet evil has arrived only recently. You must destroy it here, or it will follow, and it shall glut itself upon millions."

"Westtry is a freighter. We're even worse armed than the Wutt was," Gerlach dismissed, shaking his greying head.

"Then you will share his fate," Tekel said, expression hardening. "And so shall I."

Thistle looked over at them. "Do you have backups for the command protocols?"

Raspberry watched as on the sensors, the cloud began to close once more. "Helm, full ion ahead. Indefinite burn."

"Razz, our fuel supply," the duty technician warned as the low vibration in the deck plating intensified. "We need to perform a buzzard scoop."

"We don’t have time, Miss Graukralle. And that's 'ma'am', right now," Raspberry chided.

"Sorry," said her friend. "...Batteries are down fifteen percent."

"What's the drain?" Raspberry asked.

"Err..." The hen squinted at her board. "Hard to tell, ma'am. I'm seeing lots of little dips and spikes. The computer needs more time to average it out."

Raspberry rechecked the sensor readout. The cloud was dropping away, albeit slower than she would have liked. Lumbering out of the pit, she returned to her usual post and opened shipwide comms. "All claws, we've got a reprieve. If you need to take five for a drink, now's the time. Maintain skeleton postings at all stations, this isn't a stand-down."

"Shall I get something for Otto, ma'am? He's alone down there," Graukralle asked.

Raspberry nodded. "He'll appreciate that. Don't dawdle though, I... Yes."

Needs of biology fulfilled, Raspberry soon returned to a tense bridge.

"The magic drain is getting worse," Graukralle said without preamble. "Batteries are down three percent since you left."

"With the reactor hooked in?" Raspberry asked as she entered the command pit.

The engineer nodded. "We've shut off everything we can spare, short of ambient magic."

"Cut by half," Raspberry ordered. Inspecting the sensors prompted more. "That proves it. The cloud's closing again; it must be emitting an anti-magic field of some kind. Mr. Meckler, what's our current speed?"

"Standard by two point five," he replied.

Raspberry glanced at the readouts again. "Boreas preserve, it must be pushing four times our acceleration. Launch distress beacons fore and aft of our planned route."

On the main screen, the cloud had resolved into a clear visual as seen through the drive rings. Even as she watched, it shifted to an undulating blackness somehow darker than the void itself, through which no star could shine.

Biting her lip, she considered her options. Going superphotonic would strain the batteries, but win distance which would allow them to recover. Alternatively, dumping the cargo modules would allow better sublight acceleration. At this speed, they would fly on a predictable escape velocity from the system for later recovery.

"Helm, engage Starlight drive, point-five-c. Course oh-twenty by three-fifty."

Graukralle clenched her jaw as the computer counted down. At 'zero', the entire bridge crew were jolted as the ion drive cut out. Stars, planets and even the cloud dopplered down-spectrum.

Raspberry watched the sensor feed intently, her practised eye correcting for the distortions caused by the Starlight drive's operation. She didn't need eight years running freight to work out what was going on several AU behind them however, as the cloud gradually regained its unnatural hue, then turned blue. "Increase to one-point-one-c, Mr. Meckler."

Everything on the main monitor dopplered out of sight as the Westtry outran light itself.

Ice ran along Raspberry's back as the cloud failed to fall away on the tachyonic sensors. "It's still on us. How the–" Raspberry shook her head. She was in command, she had to stay cool-headed... Easier said than done. "Take us to full cruise!"

Meckler craned back to look at her disbelievingly. "We're still inside the termination shock, ma'am!"

Raspberry blurted the first thing which came to mind. "Reinforce the deflector with the force wall if you have to, but do it!"

"Ma'am, the magic drain..." Graukralle warned from Raspberry's left.

The Earther took a deep breath. "The closer that thing gets, the worse the drain. If we kick loose now, we have a chance to hide among the asteroids and let the batteries recharge."

"The batteries might shatter under the load! Even if we do get away, we'll be marooned six lightyears from home!" the engineer fretted hysterically.

"We might spook it if we turn to engage," Meckler suggested.

Between the risk-averse engineer and the walking stereotype of a hot-blooded Northerner, this was getting out of control. Where was Gerlach when you needed him? Deciding there was no use wishing, Raspberry tried to think of how he would act. "Last I checked, we weren't Aquileians, and this wasn't a committee! Follow my orders, Mr. Meckler."

"Yes, ma'am."

Graukralle looked sheepish. "Sorry."

"Later, if we live," Raspberry said firmly. "Divert non-essential electricals into the converters."

There was no sensation to the increasing rate of teleportation as the drive ramped up, each small jump already occurring too fast to be perceptible, but Raspberry could feel the drop in the ambient magic. She began to feel light-headed and lethargic, probably not helped by her condition, but the engines and force wall needed every thaum they could get.

At first slowly, but faster and faster, Westtry began to pull away from the cloud. By nature less sensitive to magic deprivation, Graukralle's talons flew frantically across her board, juggling power demands across the freighter.

An alarm bleeped twice and the computer's tinny voice came over the intercom. "Achtung! Anomalous gravitational field, course deviation!"

"There's nothing ahead of us, ma'am," Meckler stated, confused.

Shaking herself, Raspberry peered at the swaying monitor, then remembered it was still set to tachyon returns. She switched to gravimetry. "It's to aft. The..." She blinked, realisation dawning. "Sycaecia preserve, it's… not using a Starlight drive. Helm, evade!"

Sluggish reactions had cost them. Meckler managed to brace himself as the freighter groaned and shook around him, but Graukralle fell off her couch. Sapped of her magically enhanced fortitude, Raspberry smacked her head against the command pit's monitor. She was vaguely aware of falling, and then darkness closed in.

"How about zis?"

The monitor winked out and Thistle shielded his face as a shower of sparks rained down on him. "You killed it completely!"

Elytra muttered something unintelligible from halfway inside a nearby floor panel. "Don't reboot until I give ze word. I'm going to try throttling FTL drive power through ze sublight circuits."

Thistle sceptically watched the Changeling's hind legs. It sounded like a recipe for burn-outs and/or explosions. Beyond, Tekel had set himself up at the waterworks console, eyes not drifting from the monitor, whose fault diagram had been replaced with what looked like an installation wizard.

"Try now!" Elytra called.

Thistle tapped the well-worn startup button and as it had a dozen times now, the monitor hummed to life with a cheery 'bing-a-ling'. After a cursory glance at the error log full of what he already knew, he surfed through a few menus to check if any of Elytra's tweaks had taken.

"How come the captain could tell our new friend over there's a male?" He asked to distract from the nagging worry that he was about to be smothered by an angry cloud. "He's so... Well, weird."

"Zey're like Minotaurs zat vay," Elytra explained.

"What if they're fat?" Thistle asked.

Elytra's leg waved a bit. "Zay don't get fat, like Changelings. Ze mane is another good way. Females like to wear it longer, as usual with you mammals." His head popped up as he examined a charred circuit board in the better light. "Didn't you read ze cultural induction briefing?"

"I'm saving it for just before we arrive, so it's fresh," Thistle explained, leaning over. "...I think that board's a write-off."

"Nein, ve only need zis part," the Changeling said, holding his slate over a relatively unharmed corner. "Auxiliaries within auxiliaries, good chunky design. None of zis nano-junk. Ze problem is ze mounting bracket." He ducked back into the hole, dangling in the way only a Changeling could. "Anyway, I wouldn't wait if I were you."

"I didn't expect to be working on one of their ships mid-voyage," Thistle protested.

"Not zat. You're going to have your hooves full with ze foal," Elytra clarified.

Thistle shook his head, not that Elytra could see it. "The due date isn't until the end of Eyrmon, we'll be well on our way home by then. Hopefully," he added as a pang of worry bit him.

"Trust Captain Gerlach. He charted ze Gumshoe Nebula on ze Curiosity, made first contact with ze Firmans, and survived scrapes you wouldn't believe in ze Golem Crisis," Elytra soothed.

"That's the problem, I'm not sure I do," Thistle replied.

"I can't speak for his exploring days, but I was zere for Ollia," Awe touched the Changeling's tone. "His tales aren't all zat tall."

"A few are. Keeps up the mystique. I hope you've had better luck than I."

Thistle jumped. Gerlach had made himself scarce checking the ship for any more survivors, and he hadn't heard him return.

"I said two hours, captain. It has been half zat," Elytra stated from his metallic den.

"And I know about buffer time, chief," Gerlach snapped. "We need engines."

"I'm no glory hound," he grumbled. "I said two hours and I mean two hours."

"At the clip that cloud was moving, it'll be on us any time now," Gerlach countered.

"It lacks elegance, but I have refurbished the command protocols from a backup and installed them here. Some rudimentary passive sensors survived the attack," Tekel interjected. The En-Kelad seemed much more present, now he that was working.

Gerlach plodded over. "Better than nothing. Let's see how far behind we are."

Tekel poked a few buttons and a wheel spun on the screen for a moment before an outside view appeared.

"You weren't joking abou–" Gerlach began, then froze with rising hackles. "What by Maar is going on?"

Gerlach blocked most of Thistle's view, but odd flashes darted across what he could see. He knew he should focus on the engines, but worry overcame that. He trotted the short distance and craned over the Griffon.

The Westtry swung across the view, cargo modules nowhere to be seen. The tractor unit was circling the cloud, lance battery pinpricking away into the haze.

Raspberry awoke, and was immediately dazzled. Squinting, Westtry's medbay swam into focus. Some might have called its roominess excessive for a nominal crew of fifty, but being trapped in a glorified tin can with a mad doctor is never healthy.

Firm claws pressed on her shoulder before she could try and right herself. "Keep still, you had a nasty bump."

"We were hit by a gravitational anomaly," she recounted, getting her bearings. "What did I miss, Guv?"

The Westtry's resident cook, bartender and part-time medic shrugged. "How long is a piece of string?"

Despite the pounding headache and ice pack, Raspberry felt better than she had on the bridge. The medbay had its own life support circuit. Channeling a little magic, she freed herself from Guv's grasp, rolled off the examination bed and stuck the landing.

"Where do you think you're going?" The astonished Griffon asked.

"I'm the only one left aboard with command experience," Raspberry replied, straightening the ice pack. "I'll see you later."

Guv raised an admonishing claw, then sighed and waved her out.

The moment the door closed behind her, the ship rocked with a rumble like thunder and the lights flickered. Hardly stopping to steady herself, Raspberry pushed through returning lethargy and headed for the bridge, strategising as she went.

"Westtry, Gerlach to Westtry. Come in, Raspberry!" The captain fiddled with his suit's comms, to no avail.

Thistle bashed the console in frustration as the system crashed once again. "Chief, I can't translate the UI if you keep pulling the plug every other minute!"

"Why don't you install ze translation software?" Elytra suggested.

"If I had the time to code a Portal 52 emulator, I'd have time to write the localisation by hoof!" Thistle fumed.

Elytra pulled himself out of the panel, his boiler suit thoroughly stained with oil. "Take a breath. Is zis really ze most important thing you could be doing right now?"

Thistle stomped a hoof and snorted. "Yes. I've finished hooking in your jury-rig."

"Chief, give me those engines!" Gerlach demanded. Behind him on the monitor, the Westtry had spun lopsidedly out of its loop. The cloud loomed behind it, as if to open like a maw.

"You have zem," the Changeling called, then added under his breath, "Just don't blame me if zey blow up..."

"That'll do. Full burn, Mr. Thistle!" Gerlach commanded, sweeping back to the improvised command console.

Elytra shrugged at Thistle and began to put his EVA suit back on.

“What a show of confidence," Thistle said with gallows humour, closing dozens of tabs.

Elytra paused, then looked down at the suit. "Oh nein, if ze reactor blows, we're all space dust. Zere's a coolant leak in ze core, I'm going in to repair it."

"Engines, compucolt!" The captain called.

"Working on it. Bucking popups..." Thistle replied.

As soon as he adjusted the power flow, a horrible groaning, whirring, screeching sound flooded the chamber. Gravity shifted and Thistle would have been thrown out the door, had he not been wearing his EVA suit and its magnetic boots. Tekel dangled from one of Gerlach's talons, and Elytra had to buzz his seldom-used wings to save himself.

The alien raised his translator with difficulty. "Inertial dampeners!" Reaching further, he pointed at a cluster of switches nearby.

Gerlach clanked up the floor, grunted at the alien lettering and slapped a switch at random.

Tekel slammed, Elytra skidded, but both hit the floor painfully. Thistle heard a bleeping and turned his attention back to the console. Three thrusters were firing, but one had failed to respond and was reporting a plasma fire. He shut off its power and rerouted the spare into the ship's batteries before sympathetic damage occurred. With that, the racket died away to a smooth thrumming.

"Come on, look at us, sweet and juicy..." Gerlach muttered. "If only I had some lances."

"Counter missiles!" Elytra exclaimed.

"We can use them like depth charges," Gerlach elaborated with a nod. "Quickly, we're closing."

Elytra interposed himself at the engine console. "I'll manage the power, you get to the bays and reprogram those missiles."

Tekel ran for the door, waving to Thistle. "Come, I will help."

The force wall flickered on the main screen, painting the bridge cherry red as Raspberry thundered onto it.

Graukralle looked up aghast from her station. "Razz– Ma'am, you shouldn't be up!"

"I'm fine," Raspberry snapped. Her glare carried the weight of her lineage and Graukralle folded beneath those grey eyes. "What by the Archon's smelly armpits are you two doing?! Why's the bridge understaffed? Who– never mind," With the command pit's screen smashed, she stomped to her usual station. "Engineer, is the Starlight drive online?"

"Err... Yes. But the b-bat–" Graukralle stammered.

Raspberry didn't let her finish, she already knew. "Helm, any perpendicular course from the cloud, one-point-five-c!"

"Running didn't work before," Meckler warned.

"One-point-five-c now, Mr. Meckler," Raspberry repeated.

"Aye..." Came the sardonic reply.

The main screen turned away from the looming abyss and the computer gave its painfully slow countdown as the cloud's maw closed. The drive activated and for the brief instant the Westtry blinked through the fringes, it felt as though a pencil were being dragged down Raspberry's neck. She shuddered, but then it was over. The freighter burst into open space and the screen filled with blueshifted stars.

"On my mark, oh-eighty by two-ten, two-c," she demanded, turning her gaze back to the sensor readouts. Once again, she could feel her focus starting to slip as the lack of magic caught up with her again. "Engineer, adjust environment to ten percent thaumic background."

It helped, a little, and soon the gravitational fluctuation appeared on her monitor.

"Now!"

The crew were pressed toward their consoles by centripetal force as the Westtry dropped to sublight, blasted its thrusters and zoomed away again on its new heading. On the sensors, the cloud's signature vanished.

"One-eighty by oh-oh-five, one-point-two-c. On my mark again," Raspberry instructed.

"The batteries won't stand this much longer, ma'am," Graukralle retched. "Twenty-five percent."

"They won't have to. If we hide inside Orias IV's atmosphere, we should be hidden by the storms," Raspberry said with false confidence. "Give me a damage report."

The engineer coughed, thumped her barrel and rattled it off. "Fracture in battery six, external comms offline, starboard hydro pumps shut down, outer hull breach in sector Three-F, sectors Three-D through G have lost power. Damage control are working on the comms."

Raspberry nodded. "Good. Now, since we have a minute, would one of you mind explaining to me why we were wasting batteries in a firefight with something which trashed a Roamer?"

Meckler rose and turned to face her, tail lashing angrily. "When you can't run, you've got to swipe back. That thing's already killed two ships, and now it's trying to kill us!"

"We can't fight it," Raspberry said, keeping her tone even. Meckler was young and tough–of course he'd taken command. Using force would only escalate things.

"Then what are we going to do? Let it go!?" Meckler stormed.

"Yes. We're going to hide until it loses interest, recharge our batteries, pick up the captain and sneak away," she replied.

"Craven grass-muncher," he spat, stabbing a claw at the main screen. "That thing's a predator. A predator which can go faster than light! This isn't going to stop with the Roamer, or us. Next it'll be the Vilein, or the Griffton. What if it's the Asselt?"

"Don't bring my parents into this," Raspberry countered, holding a firm, straight posture as he bore down on her.

"Why not?" Meckler laughed feyly in her face. "It's already killed my cousin! She was a yeogriff on the Wutt."

Now Raspberry glared at the unruly helmsgriff. "And that justifies risking fifty-three lives, including four cubs?"

"I thought you spacers understood family, but apparently not!" Meckler squawked.

"Blood for blood, eye for an eye? Revenge before sense? If you think that's what justice is about back in Brantbeak, you should be ashamed. This isn't the fifth bucking century!" Raspberry snarled back.

The Griffon raised his talon, claws outstretched. Though blunted, it was not a sight ancient impulses enjoyed.

Raspberry fought down the animal. "Are you going to hit a pregnant mare?"

"You... Argh!" Meckler spat, but he lowered the talon. "Hiding behind your foal."

"Yes, if it means saving lives," she flatly stated. "Duty and dedication in all things. That's the spacer way. The cloud came from the direction of Orias V, where an En-Keladim mining outpost was marked on our charts. They're radio silent. Fill in the dots, Mr. Meckler. This is bigger than a few freighters and you're right, it has to be stopped. But not by us. Westtry isn't a cruiser. We've launched our beacons, but the odds are much better that we'll get a warning through if we deliver it to the Ellor system authorities ourselves."

"And what if while we're doing that, that monster sniffs back along our thaumic trail to home?" Meckler demanded.

Raspberry shook her head. "Firstly, Ellor is far closer than any of our colonies, and thus more at risk. Secondly, Adelina and Eagleclaw should still be on patrol near Newydd Rumare. Thirdly, if the worst does happen, that's a colony of what? Twenty thousand? Ellor Eshúrizel is a thousand times more heavily populated. It would be unethical to run home and stupid to throw our lives away."

"I..." Meckler seemed to deflate. "Fine. Yes. So long as that thing dies, Katrin will have justice. And the crews."

"Oh I intend to make that come true, Mr. Meckler. Back to your station," Raspberry ordered.

"Aye, ma'am," he replied, giving his breast a stiff thump with a balled talon.

At the engineering console, Graukralle sighed with relief.

With the bridge back in order, Raspberry looked back at the sensors, just in time to see the incoming gravitic fluctuation. "Evade!"

Thankfully, Meckler had already laid in the course before his blow-out, and Westtry spun again. It was close nonetheless, and Raspberry again felt the creeping cold as the cloud blasted past them. The force of the turn was no gentler than before, but brief before they were superphotonic.

"Approaching the planet, but we need to get this thing off our tail. Ideas?" Raspberry asked.

"I could use the force wall to leave a static shield behind us for a few seconds," Graukralle said cautiously. "It'd probably eat the rest of our battery reserves though."

"If we vent plasma from the reactor, it should blot out a short sublight ion burn," Meckler suggested. "After that, run silent into the atmosphere."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Raspberry noted. "What's your time frame, engineer?"

Graukralle shrugged. "I'd need to access the enchantment matrices to make the modification... The batteries will be dead before I'm done, at this draw rate. Sorry. It was stupid to suggest-"

"Another time, another place. It wasn't stupid," Raspberry reassured. "Get ready to execute the Meckler Manoeuvre."

Graukralle still looked upset, but Meckler at least seemed somewhat buoyed.

Seconds ticked by and the gas giant swelled on the main screen. Raspberry waited for nearest approach, spending the time alerting the crew.

She had barely finished when the planet began to slip off to the left. "Now!"

Westtry dropped to sublight and the planet turned yellow-brown. A sharp ninety degree turn later, Graukralle's console chirped and the bridge crew were pressed into their couches by an enormous burst from the thrusters.

"Shut down." Raspberry instructed after two beats.

The burn ceased and Graukralle opened a cover on her console. With a final glance at Raspberry, she flicked the switch beneath.

Immediately, the doors locked open and the bridge was plunged into silent darkness.

Fumbling under the dim chemical lights, Meckler rose, moved to the front of the bridge and pumped a leaver. Behind the clear monitor, a blast door cranked open.

They sat in silence, watching the starry void and close as one could get to nature on a freighter. Seconds turned to minutes and the atmosphere of the gas giant began to draw close. They would have to switch on soon or plunge to crush depth.

Stars began winking out. First one, then three, then six, then twenty and suddenly the shifting blackness was apparent.

Meckler blurted some things which didn’t bear repeating.

"Steady." Raspberry whispered, as if that mattered.

The cloud closed leisurely, and the bridge began to feel like a crypt.

Graukralle shuddered. "Ma'am... It should have worked. It m-must be following our magic. I'm sorry."

Raspberry fancied she could hear humming, sickly sweet paired with the needling cold digging into her skin. She waited no longer. "Power on! Raise the force wall, navigational deflector to maximum, full burn beneath the clouds!"

The lights came up first, followed by the air conditioning. Monitors began to flicker to life, displaying painfully slow loading bars.

Meckler didn't wait for his. Springing from his couch, he grasped the ship's wheel, which would not have looked out of place on an aeroplane, and took manual control over the thrusters, allowing RCS to give them some, any delta-v until the ion engines came back online.

They never got a chance. The ship shuddered and the lights flickered as impossibly black lightning crackled across the hull.

Then the window turned yellow as the Westtry began her tumble into the welcoming embrace of Orias IV.

Author's Note

Eyrmon in the Imperial calendar is roughly equivalent to February to mid-March in a Gregorian context. The events of the story takes place in early Blaumon, or early January.