Discord Space

It seemed to take forever. Each flash of the station through the windows formed an endless, repeating image. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Yet she knew very well, that there had to be carnage on the other side. Before, she had intended to just escape on a cruiser and be done with it. Now, she couldn't leave until she ended Discord's sick game. The answer had to be in the government ring, just barely visible on the right. That shuttle was still available. The others could run, and she would still have a way off. They didn't need to know about her plan for now.

Something wasn't right, about what Discord said. If he really was just in her head, then it wasn't he who was causing the outbreak, at least not directly. Something down in the medical deck had to be the start of it, and at some point, she would go there. All part of his long and twisted game. "Obstruction detected on track. Shutting down tram system. Welcome to the Ship Repair Deck." Applejack let her head sink.

"Horseapples." Hopefully she was beyond the front lines anyway; fighting through all those necromorphs wouldn't end well. She needed help in any case. "Plasma, I can't get through to the docks on the tram. Is there a bench near the station in Ship Repair that I can use?" It was quite relieving to see that the station before her was relatively untouched. Maybe she had outrun the horde after all.

"Uh, there's one about 50 metres in our direction. After that, you'll need to cross the royal escort bay; it was empty at the time so there shouldn't be any hazards. Air Head went to Hydroponics to check on something, please hurry." Fifty metres, that didn't seem too bad. But either the horde was behind her, and swiftly approaching. Or she would be getting that much closer to them with each step.

Don't worry Applejack. You're going to get right into the thick of the action, and the thin of space... Very soon now. A ringing sound caused pain in her ear for a moment before fading. She had kept telling herself to ignore Discord, but it was hard. Especially with all of his typically ominous and deceitful warnings. The station led out into a rather large parts room, racks of all the typical components for a ship were locked to the walls.

"Better collect as much salvage as possible, might not get another chance like this." Her helmet remained securely on as she began cutting locks and removing supplies. Scrap metal was in abundance, a few tungsten plates retrieved from a fusion coil. Semiconductors turned up inside their own drawer, transducers she pulled from a heavy duty kinesis mount for drones.

Not the biggest haul, but anything would be of immense help at that point. "Alright, I'm heading over now. Just spent a bit of time salvaging materials. No sign of any morphs. Keep the hearth warm." An update from her locator led through back down the corridor and into a small side room. The darkness around her began to feel more imposing, pressing down around her like the void of space. Tools fell to the ground somewhere ahead of her with a very loud clang. Had she been too quick to say there were no necromorphs around?

There was nothing gained in waiting forever, the same applied to charging in recklessly. She drew a quick breath before spinning around with her weapon ready. Nothing living or undead lurked in the room she had been guided to. Paranoia, is a wonderful thing, don't you agree? His voice as always caused the chills to continue. "He's not really there. He's only a voice in your head AJ. Just ignore him." The bench unfolded before her as she approached. A quick scan brought up all the different upgrades she could make while a mechanical arm carefully removed her cutter.

"It must take a genius to get Rank 5 in tool mechanics, especially for somepony at Plasma's age. I hope she knows what she's doing in terms of guns." Weaponry was a more recent development of Equestria in response to Changeling aggression. Even then, only the guards had a strong knowledge of the area, most of the security ponies only knew how to fire and reload their stun rifles. Without the schematic Plasma had downloaded, Applejack would be utterly lost. While the bench began merging her military engine into the cutter, she made a few adjustments to the armour and health of her RIG.

Sounds began to echo through the vents. The horde was definitely catching up. So they had managed to breach the auxiliary deck's quarantine at last, she didn't have much time. "I hope I don't have to try this out right away." Her cutter now had a small machine gun merged into the top that seemed to feed right out of the cutter's ammo slot. A nice alternative in case one of those body transformers came back, they had no limbs to sever. "Time to get moving AJ." Discord's laugh sounded far off, yet it was crystal clear in her head.

She backed out of the room once her cutter was fixed back into place. Something broke out of the vents when she started down towards the repair bay. Better get moving Applejack. Things are starting to warm up. For once, he was right. A slasher, running very quickly towards her. "Thank Celestia it's not a twitcher." Only one at least, the perfect opportunity to try out the technique described in that video. A precise shot from her cutter severed the blade cleanly. Quickly grabbing it with kinesis gave her enough time to shoot it right back. The disfigured pony flew back to be impaled on the wall.

Celebrating the success of her new tactic could wait. The walls around her sounded very much alive, almost a rhythm of thuds from the crawling morphs. Too many to try and take out with only a small cutter and plasma machine pistol. She broke out into a full sprint down towards the repair bay. Whatever followed behind the walls picked up pace too. And more still were breaking out of the vents behind her.

"Hey Plasma, I'm gonna be coming in hot! I hope y'all have a decent defence ready!" Rounding a corner brought her to the overhanging walkway that spanned the large maintenance bay. Barbs began whizzing past her, mere centimetres from impaling into the back of her head. The turn to hurry onto the metal grate forced her to look back. Practically every surface of the corridor was covered in some form of fleshy monster. For a moment, she had forgotten they were once ponies, just like her. Victims of whatever Discord was up to.

Tearing in the metal reached her ears as she pounded across the expanse below her. "What the hay? This is supposed to be brand new!" Something wasn't right at all; the walkway was starting to bend under her weight alone. Her stomach lurched as the necromorphs began to pile on. The whole stretch gave way underneath her hooves. There was no time for her to fire emergency thrusters before crashing to the floor below.

Let the festivities begin! Applejack went into a coughing fit from being winded. That lying, cheating... Somepony had to have sabotaged the bridge; there was no way that it could've given out only months after being built. Somewhere from behind, that gurgling cry from the station made a return. And it wasn't alone. Her chest was still sore from coughing; she didn't have much breath to speak with. "Oh my sweet Celestia..." Seventy necromorphs at least. Most of them slashers, some of the exploders, and more of the babies crawling down the walls. All ready to tear her to bits.

She didn't have anywhere near the firepower to fight what was very likely just the start of the horde. "Discord, this is not fair." Of course, it was Discord; fair didn't exist in his twisted dictionary of chaos. She would have to be incredibly precise with her shots to have any chance of surviving more than thirty seconds alone. "Hayseeds, this is going to be one twisted rodeo!" The exploders seemed to be the best target to begin with. Each resulting explosion took out four or five slashers each, only to be replaced by even more. Stasis only served to slow the rain of barbs that caused scars in her suit, slowly sealing up. Firing the blades back was powerful, but it was no match for the sheer numbers before her.

They had forced her halfway across the bay floor when a deep bellow echoed around the room. Several necromorphs were flung around when hit by an enormous beast. Two meaty appendages covered in bloody bone plating allowed it to move. A mess of smaller tentacles thrashed around the crates and machinery left behind. Several canisters of highly explosive fuel rolled out from the debris. She couldn't fight it with her weapons, at least not in the conventional sense. "I hope they have damn good insurance for Station Luna."

By pure luck, the beast's charge caused it to take the brunt of the explosion for her. Both were flung well out into space through the field as the chain reaction of canisters turned everything inside the bay to charcoal. Applejack was caught in a deadly roll under the weightlessness until the stabilizing jets of her suit activated. Her idea had worked. The beast was now floating away into Equestria's orbit where it would burn up, and there had been no secondary explosions in the bay.

"Plasma, get the inner doors open. I'm gonna be comin' in hot you hear?" She readjusted her heading towards the docks and fired up the boosters in her rear legs. Her heart was starting to beat faster than it had when facing all those necromorphs. There was always the last resort of bucking back there. But out in space, there was nothing at all. That scared her most.

Thirty seconds Applejack, and the doors aren't even open yet. She still had a lot of distance to cover. Even with the auto-cleaner, her helmet was starting to fog up under her stressed breathing. No sound but her own breathing, and the faint rumble of her jets. The sort of silence that she couldn't handle for long at all. So this is what really makes you scared Applejack. How interesting.

"Fifteen seconds of oxygen remaining." Panic was setting in. Lights were flashing around the hatch, indicating that it would open. Slowing down would result in suffocation, but if they didn't open in time, she'd slam right into the metal and fall to bits. This was a scenario she didn't want to repeat again. "If I make it through this, I promise I won't eat apple fritters ever again!"

"Ten, nine, eight..." The gap was just barely large enough for a pony to crawl through. "Six, Five..." Three metres away, the gap was now only a metre wide. Applejack's eyes closed as she shot right through, and back into artificial gravity. "One. Oxygen supply depleted..."