//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Wolves in sheep's clothing // Story: MLP 40K: For Celestia // by Moosetasm //------------------------------// Abyssinian System: Near Everfree translation point Tracks He wasn't sure when the last time was that he'd felt this miserable. After three weeks of practically no sleep, without Luna's divine influence everypony's sleep in the Everfree was always plagued by horrific nightmares, he was both physically and mentally drained. On top of that Free Fall had suffered from the worst case of Everfree sickness he had ever seen. She needed to remain sedated in the Accord's medical bay for the entire time they were Evereal. Even now, it was two days since the Accord had gone sidereal, she was in a med bed recovering. But that was only part of why Tracks wanted to prematurely terminate his own life force. He was drenched in sweat. He hadn't been trying to push himself especially hard, but he had somehow managed to get a thick lather going on his coat. He could see the steam rising off of himself in the relatively cool space. He was breathing hard enough that his sides hurt from the effort. He even had a froth starting up at the corners of his mouth. Every muscle in his body was on fire, every joint ached. He didn't like to consider himself out of shape. If anything, he considered himself above average. That didn't matter much in this situation. He glanced at his nemesis, the pony that had put him in this uncomfortable state. Devoid wasn't even breathing hard. Tracks had a few colorful metaphors to describe how he felt about that. The jet black unicorn stood almost a head taller than Tracks and was probably a whole stone lighter. He was all whipcord muscle and moved with a feline predatory grace. The yellow eyes completed the look, making him seem like a sleek predatory animal. Tracks had been practicing hoof-to-hoof combat with him for the last hour and he had been doing abysmally. "Boss." Devoid had dropped out of his combat stance to address Tracks. Tracks realized that Devoid wasn't asking a question. This meant he was about to get a combat lecture. "Yeah, Dev, what is it?" He tried to keep the exasperation from his voice but he knew that he had failed horribly. "Are you even trying today?" Devoid sounded serious, not his usual deadpan. Tracks tried to save a little face for his poor performance. "I am, but I just don't think my heart's in it today." "Not in it today?" Tracks had never heard Devoid sound incredulous before. Tracks had never performed quite this poorly in their little training sessions either. "Yeah, you know. I'm just-" Tracks paused for a second while he thought of a decent excuse. Thinking about the mission, worried about Free Fall, pulled a muscle, any decent excuse. "-not in the mood." Fail. Devoid's response morphed from one of incredulity to one of venomous anger. "Not in the mood?" Epic Fail. Good job, Interrogator. "Do you honestly think the enemies of Equestria will wait for you to be-" Here Devoid's voice took on a mocking quality. "-In. The. Mood?" Devoid threw his hooves into the air in a display of exasperation then he trotted over to the bench that held their gear. They had been practicing in the same private hangar that held their shuttle. They had converted the space into a impromptu barracks and training space. The "benches" were just pieces of modular shelving they had found in a maintenance closet and the mats they were training on were rolls of spare impact foam from the same closet. As Devoid started rummaging through his pile of gear, Tracks started towards his own gear, he was relieved that training would be done for the day. Suddenly, Devoid was rocketing towards him. Tracks' felt his eyes go wide and he backpedaled onto the training mat. Adrenaline flowed pumped aggressively into Track's system. It wasn't the speed with which Devoid had come at him that had provoked his, now in overdrive, fear response, nor had it been the look that was in his eyes. It was the knife he was wielding in his mouth. Tracks had no time for words and dove out of the way of a wild swing. He rolled, barely avoiding the blade and landing on his back. He saw movement behind him and he rolled to all fours in an attempt to escape the lunge. Tracks used the momentum from his roll to dodge the knife thrust and found himself floundering sideways in an attempt to get out of Devoid's swing radius. There was no respite however, he found himself desperately dodging swing after swing. He didn't know what was going on, had Devoid snapped? He couldn't continue to think on this, all of his mental effort kept being wrenched back towards avoiding that blade. He knew he couldn't keep dodging forever, if Devoid was really trying to skewer him then he needed to get the knife away from him. Tracks waited for the next swing and feigned a dodge to the right. Devoid swung in the intended direction and Tracks started to move to hoof the blade out of his mouth. Devoid had apparently seen through the feint and the swing was a misdirect of his own. Tracks found himself pivoting on his back hooves in a desperate attempt to wrench his entire body out of the way of the counter-attack. He landed facing away from devoid and he placed all his weight on his fore-hooves and bucked for all he was worth. He was rewarded with the dull thud of hoof connecting with meat and bone. Tracks heard the skittering sound of metal on metal and turned to see that Devoid had been knocked back a body length, he wasn't knocked down though, and that the knife was sliding along the metal deck plating of the hangar. Tracks was tensed up, ready to go at it again if Devoid was going to come at him again. "Finally!" Devoid was smiling as he spoke. Tracks noticed that There was a little more red in the smile than there should have been, Devoid's mouth was bleeding. "What-" Tracks had to pause for a breath. "-What is WRONG with you?" "Nothing wrong with me, Boss." Came the sardonic reply. "You're the one that's been going half speed all day. If I knew I had to pull a knife on you to get your one hundred percent, I'd have done it during our very first practice session!" "You mean-" Tracks' mind was still riding adrenaline and not letting him think clearly. "You could have cut me! You nut job!" "Could have nothing, check your cheek there Boss." Lifting his right hoof to his face, Tracks was surprised to see it come away red. His right eye started to twitch and he felt anger replace the panic that he had been feeling before. "You. You. You!" Tracks was stuttering the word. "C'mon Boss, I know you think it's all about me, me, me. But this session is about-" "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!" Tracks charged and tackled the sarcastic [insert colorful profanity laced pronoun here.] As he grabbed Devoid's neck and started slamming his back repeatedly into the mat, the white maned unicorn just started laughing hysterically. As his anger waned, Tracks knew that Devoid could have tossed him off at any time. This was verified through Devoid's impact stuttered speech. "Best! Oof! Practice! Oof! Everrrr! Oof!" - - - - - - - - - - Tress From the raised dais her captain's chair sat upon, she could see the entirety of the Accord's command bridge. The dais itself was a sight to behold, chromed steel with silver and gold engravings which depicted various historical victories for the Equestrian navy. Her chair sported several monitors attached by long metal arms. The data they displayed mimicked the data displayed on the consoles of her bridge officers. Tress kept the arms out of her direct line of sight however, she trusted her officers with the jobs that she had assigned to them. She looked down to see her various officers at work at their stations. Sens was walking around, his authoritative presence keeping everyone on task. His permanent scowl and violet gaze caused many a naval rating to quickly jump out of his path as he rounded the bridge. Everything was routine, just the way Tress liked it. The white pegasus mare at the communications station suddenly swiveled around in her seat, this caused her blue mane to fall into her face. She blew the strands out of her equally blue eyes before addressing the captain. "Miss Tress?" Tress Should have known better than to tempt fate like that. Her cutie mark was itching too, that meant the news couldn't be good. "What do you have, Air Wave?" Air Wave's expression was one of concern. "I have a distress call on the vox. The message origin is about 500 million kilometers fore. The message decodes as coming from the Equestrian freighter Ovis Aries. She says that she strayed off course through the system's asteroid belt and took a severe impact. She's crippled and only has minimal power. They're worried that they'll run out of air before the system defense boats can get to them and evacuate the ship." Tress felt her stomach sink. Crippled in space. The worst possible way to go. She felt her heart reach out to the poor ponies on that beleaguered vessel. "Vector, how much time will we lose if we detour to help the Ovis Aries?" If it was negligible she could just do it, but if it added time, the VIPs who had commandeered one of her launch bay hangars would likely demand an explanation. "It'll take us almost a day out of our way, Captain." Replied the navy blue mare with the forest green mane. "Ponyfeathers." She said before she had realized it. "Sens-" She said, looking at her XO. "-I need you to bring the leader of our guests up here. They'll be pretty angry if I don't explain this one in person, I'll wager." Sens had gone white. He obviously didn't relish the idea of confronting what he considered to be a bunch of mentally unstable lunatics. Still he seemed to resign himself as he responded. "Immediately, Captain." Tress did not like the idea of the Interrogator arguing over the course change. She motioned for Sens to come closer. "No." She whispered to him. "Wait a few hours Sens, we need to make sure they won't interfere. " - - - - - - - - - - Sens "Hold still! You're going to have a scar if you don't let me suture this thing properly!" The black unicorn was assaulting the blood streaked face of the Interrogator with a medical servo skull as Sens entered the hangar. Both unicorns were not wearing anything except for metal gauntlets on their left forelegs. What popped out the most to him was the cutie marks. Interrogator Tracks had a mark that looked like a short rod with a circular piece of glass attached to one end, inside the glass, a pony's iris was visible. It looked similar to what the tech-ponies used to make things they were looking at appear larger. The other unicorn's, the jet black one with the white mane, cutie mark was something that Sens had seen plenty of times, though never on a pony's flank before. It was a solar eclipse during full occlusion by some other celestial body, usually a planet. But he noticed something mildly disturbing about the mark. There was no intervening body and the rays surrounding the blank circle seemed to be traveling towards the circle instead of away from it. Weird... He swiftly reminded himself why he was there. "Interrogator?" He called out. The reaction was... unfortunate. The purple unicorn whipped his head to the side to look directly at Sens. The motion ripped the stitches right out of his face and between the excessive vulgar profanity and the renewed bleeding Sens was pretty sure he had accidentally stepped over the pony-non-grata line. He watched with mounting trepidation as the dark unicorn started the stitching process again. After about fifteen minutes of wincing to the high whining staccato of the micro-suturing skull at work, Tracks approached Sens with what could pass as a grimace on his face. Tracks' companion appeared to be completely impassive, but was watching with interest as the completely bedraggled Interrogator made his way to the nervous XO. "Mister Chal, to what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?" The Interrogator was not slurring his speech, which could only mean that he had foregone the local anesthetic. "The captain wanted to talk with you about something regarding our scheduled arrival time." Sens had tried to remain as vague as possible. No need to upset the Interrogator yet. Interrogator Tracks responded in a rather weary voice. "She need me right away? Or can I wash the blood off?" Sens was baffled that he had been given the choice. He had expected either the demand to go now or the demand to wait. These were turning out to be the strangest bunch of VIPs he had ever dealt with. He decided that bringing a bloody, reeking pony onto the bridge would be bad form, so he voiced his choice to allow the Interrogator a chance to wash up. Thirty minutes later, and the Interrogator was cleaned up and back in the dark grey cloak he had arrived in. This time, he put the hood up, it was covering his horn and casting his face is shadow. The look was obviously designed to be sinister, and with the two crimson eyes staring out of the blackness. It was quite successful. The illusion was shattered when the Interrogator spoke... Well, made an undulating moan at any rate... Sens turned to see that Tracks was also waving his hooves around in a pseudo spooky manner. Sens felt his eyes and ears drop to half mast. This was becoming a habit. At least he felt like he was being let in on the joke this time. He led the now spookyfied Interrogator through the ship. The cloak was definitely doing it's job, everywhere they went the crew looked on with a mixture of fear and wonder. Sens began to realize that his fear of this particular Inquisitorial agent was quite unfounded. The pony he found himself escorting seemed neither cruel nor quick to perform random executions... But that didn't stop him from pretending that he was exactly like that was exactly what he was. Sens realized the ingenuity of it. Tracks just had to don a cloak and practically everypony was terrified of him. It just went to show what one could do with a reputation and a little effort towards exploiting it. It only took ten minutes to get to the bridge, all of the bulkheads in the Accord were opened to allow for ease of crew access. Sens also noticed that a lot of the spare crew were running around, no doubt they were preparing for the rescue effort that was now under way. Sens found himself wondering how the Interrogator would take the news of the detour. He no longer found himself dreading the response. He was starting to have a strong suspicion that even if the Interrogator was against the mission, that he would do no more than voice their opinion to that effect. Sens led the Interrogator onto the bridge and right to the base of the dais which held the Captain's chair. Sens announced the Interrogator's presence with a well rehearsed blurb that he used to introduce all VIPs to the Captain with. "So,-" came the now gruff voice of the Interrogator from the depths of the cloak. "-to what do I owe the unexpected-" He paused. "pleasure of your company, dear Captain?" Tress responded in an even tone. "We have had to divert course several hours ago to respond to a distress call. Unfortunately this has added about one day to our travel time." The Interrogator paused for a moment before responding. "I have no issue pressing enough to warrant ignoring another vessel in need.-" Now Sens detected an actual harshness to the Interrogator's words. "-I would warn you though, you should have come to me first, just in case there was." Tress opened her mouth to respond but the Interrogator cut her off. "What is the name of the unfortunate vessel, if I may be so bold as to ask?" - - - - - - - - - - Tracks "The Ovis Aries." Replied the captain. She was wearing an impassive face but Tracks' was able to pick up subtle cues and nervous ticks. The captain was worried. She should be! She decides on a major course correction and didn't even tell us until I was too late to do anything! Tracks quieted his inner voice. There was something about that name, something familiar. He decided to stick around. "Do you mind if I stay here and observe the rescue operation?" He inflected the question in such a way that screamed that he would be staying regardless of her answer. Her face scrunched up in agitation for a moment. Good, let her squirm! He fought the voice down again. He really needed to work on that, such thoughts weren't just unprofessional, they were inherently hatercy. Hate without reason, escalation of hatred without reason. He repeated the mantra of tolerance and understanding to himself. When he finished he caught he tail end of the captain's response. "-ored by your presence." She finished "Thank you, I am honored to be allowed to observe." He responded, sincerely hoping that she had actually said that he could. The captain didn't give any indication that he had just blatantly ignored her, so he gave a silent blessing to the six and started observing the controlled chaos of the bridge. Something was bugging him though. That name, he'd heard I before, he knew he had. He tapped the comm bead in his left ear with his hoof and whispered. "Dev, need you to look something up for me." "Sure thing, Boss." Came the static laden reply. "I need you to look up anything the Inquisition database has on a ship called the Ovis Aries. Contact me when you get anything, k?" "Sure thing boss, give me a few minutes." Devoid was usually pretty fast perusing the database, but a few minutes would likely become 30 or more, depending on the vagueness of the article in question. "Captain.-" An orange pegasus mare sitting at the tactical station was speaking. "-I have solid contact on the debris field now, estimated time to intercept is fifteen minutes." "Very good, Double Arc. Now find me a way in there so we can rescue that ship." Tracks took note of how well the captain commander her crew, even after being flustered by a confrontation with an Inquisition agent. He was truly impressed, and now he felt guilty about stressing her out in the middle of this already stressful situation. He watched the giant tactical sphere which dominated the center of the bridge with no small amount of interest. A good portion of it was filled with contact icons for various pieces of the debris field. It was a mess. He realized just what a daunting task this was going to be. Double Arc spun her head to look at the captain, the motion causing her yellow mane to fall in front of her scarlet eyes. "Captain, I've plotted a path, but it'll be tight." "Very good, Double, send it over to Vector. Vector, plot us a course in there." Captain Tress sounded like she was beginning to get excited. Tracks couldn't blame her. The prospect of saving the lives of the thousands of ponies on a stricken vessel was indeed exciting. Why then the itch in the back of his mind that wouldn't go away? He tried but couldn't put his hoof on it. He felt his level of tension rising as the minutes passed by. "Entering debris field now." A navy blue pegasus mare reported from the navigation console. "Steady as she goes, Vector." Came the steady reply. "Air Wave, do you have a fix on the distress signal?" "Yes captain-" Stated a white pegasus mare. "-I'm feeding it to Double right now." Double Arc piped up again. "The distress call is coming from a relatively open patch in the debris field. I estimate five minutes till we reach it." "Excellent. Good job everypony." Tress hit another comm switch on her chair and spoke into it. "Rescue teams stand by." Tracks didn't know why, but his mind was burning. What was he forgetting? "Hey Boss?" He hadn't realized how anxious he had been to hear from Devoid. "Thank Celestia. What do you have for me, Dev?" "Well, I'm kinda curious here myself. What's got you interested in hulked freighters anyways?" Tracks felt his blood turn to ice. "What do you mean hulked?" Devoid started to explain. "I mean hulked, they found her drifting and stripped 6 months ago. So what's the-" Tracks hoofed the earbud off hard enough to leave his head ringing. "I have solid contact on the opening, captain. I'm getting solid contact on a vessel in the open space." Double Arc said with excitement and anticipation evident in her voice. "CAPTAIN!" Tracks yelled. He had utterly failed at maintaining his calm, cool exterior. She looked toward him with an expression of bewilderment mixed with anger on it. "Wha-" "You need to go to battle stations! Now!" The confusion on her face was replaced by anger. Huzzah! The anger has been doubled! She spoke through gritted teeth. "You had better have a good reason for-" "Captain?-" Double Arc's voice held notes of confusion and worry. "-the other ship has locked onto us with their auspex." "Captain, the Ovis Aries was hulked over six months ago!" He wasn't sure if he was getting through to the captain, as confusion had crept back into her face. Tress' expression slowly transitioned from one of angered confusion to one of complete, abject horror Double Arc's voice had switched over to full fear mode as well. "Captain! Auspex is detecting multiple heat blooms on that vessel!" Tress mashed her hoof onto the ship-wide comm system. "All Hooves! Brace for impact! I repeat. All-" There wasn't so much a sound as a concussive wave of force. The deck beneath Tracks' hooves seemed to jump. He was airborne. If anypony could see inside the darkened hood they would have seen his eyes go wide. He came down hard, his right fore-hoof twisting wrong and going out from under him. His head ricocheted off of the captain's dais. His vision was blurry and his head felt like it held a large collection of sharp knives and razor blades. He saw a bluish purple leg in front of him that seemed twisted in an odd way. He rested his head on it and realized how comfortable it felt. He heard noises that were all around him and yet somehow seemed distant as he closed his eyes and went to sleep.