//------------------------------// // Wake-Up Call // Story: Extra-Vehicular Activity // by alamais //------------------------------// The shudder rips two of your hooves' grips right off the floor, and you give your wings a flick to return to all fours. A deep vibration is rolling through the deck plating, and as you look up, the white bar on the screen grows a little bit more, and a red dot appears below it. "I take it back!" you shout to nobody in particular. You reach out and kick the connector off the battery terminal, but nothing seems to change. The bar is more actively growing now. Some of the wires haphazardly slung overhead are sparking in places where the desiccated insulation has fallen away. It doesn't seem to matter, as the bar keeps growing and the vibration too, shifting to a higher pitch, but adding in harmonics. Then, a new noise. Click click click. In the corner of your display, a radiation warning pops up. You feel bits of yourself trying to panic, but clamp down on it, and look at the actual level. It's not bad. You're fine, for now. You look to the door, but then snort, and move back to the battery. A couple of kicks remove the other connector, and a bit of fiddling gets your suit hooked up, the charge climbing swiftly. 75…76…77. The radiation level is steady, and the vibrations seem to be smoothing out. Then, you blink and your eyes water, as the overhead lights come on. A glance shows the suit charging has slowed, and you pull away. 93%, not bad at all. To avoid the wires on the floor, you gently hop upwards, and your wings stabilize you a couple of hoofs off the floor. A flick sends you back to the door, and out. The radiation level drops a bit, and after a moment's consideration, you shove the door closed, and re-lock it. You can still, weakly, feel the vibration of the awakened fusion reactor through every surface you touch. You look around the elevator shaft, then recall the symbols two floors above, and move up to Deck 3. 'Cryogenic vault' and 'airlock' say the two symbols. You gently rest your head against the door. The Frond still needs power cables, and everything on this ship is useless, or in-use and immovable. The other airlock, the one facing to the portside of the ship, that would be the one docked to the ring. It's your only hope, now. You look at the door again, and see that it's pressurized beyond. A glance at the 45 minutes of air you have left, and you dive down, shutting and sealing the door to the breached Deck 5. Then, you unseal Deck 3, toss in a few flares, and enter. Your estimate of the war-making potential of this ship rises even higher. There are hundreds of cryo-stasis pods on this deck, rows and rows of them…though oddly, it looks like there's space and hookups for hundreds more, but they're just empty hatches in the floor. The pods are divided into rows by lines of small lockers, though there are some larger lockers too—probably the privilege of rank. Near the middle of the room, a bunch of them have fallen over, blocking your view of the midship pressure door. Every pod you can see is empty. You're just pondering checking some of the lockers, when a familiar static sounds in your ear. "Rainbow? Rainbow Dash, are you there?!" Twilight's voice has that tone to it. "Yeah, I'm here Twi." You move starboard to try to strengthen the signal. "I'm guessing you're seeing some activity from over there." "That's putting it mildly! Are you okay? What happened?" "Eh, I took a little radiation when the reactor turned on, but it wasn't that intense." You shrug. "As to what happened, I have no idea. There was a console, and a battery. I hooked them up. Everything started waking up." "That's crazy!" She pauses, then adds, "And why did you just hook a random battery up to a mysterious console?!" "Uhhh…" you tap your forehooves together "…they were there?" She makes no noise, but you can feel her mentally facehoof. Finally, she sighs. "Someone must have set the ship up to automatically restart, given that little bit of power. It's actually pretty impressive that it works, after so long." "Yeah, uh, I probably ran into that 'someone'." You gulp. "There was a body in the reactor control room. Looked like he put quite a bit of work in before he kicked it. I think he popped the seals on his suit when he was done, let the vacuum take him." "How strange…" "Hey, uh, Twi?" "Yes?" You look around nervously. "I'm not in danger of ship-go-kablooey here, am I?" "Oh! Uhh." She pauses long enough that you start to get nervous, but then she finally replies. "Nnnoooo. I think you're okay. From the radiological emissions, it's a form of muon-catalyzed fusion. So there's certainly the potential for a catastrophic overload, but it would take both jamming it into a high-output mode, and disabling the cooling system and all the safety systems. Right now, it looks like the reaction is stabilizing to a good level." You think about what she said. "That's…slightly reassuring?" "It's really confusing that someone would set it up to do this, then just…turn everything off and die." "Yet another mystery." You blink as some of the overhead lights come on. It lights some areas of the vault better, but in other ones there's still darkness, or just flickering. There's…something strange in the shadows being cast behind a nearby locker. Oblivious to this, Twilight asks, "So, what now? I expect having some power should make your search of the ship easier." "Ennh." You shake your head. "It would have, but I've already found where they would have stored most of what we could use." You sigh. "The cables here are useless, Twi." "What?" You explain the state of the cabling in the engineering storage section. "Ugh." She humms softly as she thinks. "That means anything in use on the ship is probably bad, not to mention now it has live current running through it." "Pretty much. Sooo, I'm heading to the port airlock now. Should be able to cross over to the ring…hopefully there's something usable there." She sighs. "I wish you didn't have to. I…that thing…ugh, it creeps me out." "You too?" "Yeah. I can't even give a specific reason for it, it just looks unsettling." "I get it." You ponder what you saw on your approach. "This ship is military, and looks a little dangerous, sure, but I think I could have a chat with these guys. The ring just looks actually alien." "Mmm," Twilight responds. "You know, I've always thought we've been pretty lucky out here." "Lucky? What do you mean?" "Well, so far every other people or cooperative we've met has been…maybe not friendly, but understandable to some degree. We can negotiate, find common ground, usually figure out diplomacy, safe passage, and trade. At the very least, agree to leave each other alone. There's no rule or law of nature that says a sapient species has to be that way…that they have to be relatable at all." A shiver crawls up your spine as you ask, "And if somebody weren't relatable?" She sighs. "At the worst, it comes back to pure pre-sapient nature. Survival of the fittest." "Heh." You look down at the black bands near your forehooves. "Suddenly I feel underqualified and underequipped." "Oh, uhhh…" She chuckles weakly. "I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about!" "Riiight." You try to put as much deadpan into your voice as possible. She coughs. "Sorry. Guess I got a little gloomy there. But, as we agreed, it's very unlikely that anybody's over there." "Eh, it's fine." You blink, as a couple of the overhead lights start to shake back and forth. Then you notice the air pressure has started to rise. "Huh…looks like life support just kicked in. Got air coming in through the ducts." "Really?" She hummed. "Too bad we'd need a full translation to mess with their computers; otherwise, we could probably modify their air mix and survive over there better than on the Frond." "Ugh." You crinkle your nose. "Even with it messed up, I'd rather be on the Frond. Only one body so far, but this place still feels like a tomb." "Yeah, I suppose." You take a bracing breath, then nod. "Alright. I'm going to head on over." "I doubt we'll be able to get any sort of contact while you're over there—that thing's hull is pretty impermeable. Be careful, Rainbow." "Careful is my middle name!" "Wha? I thought it was–" you cut the connection, smirking. You stretch, and hop from hoof to hoof for a moment, getting your blood flowing. A big, creepy alien space station. What's the big deal? As you start moving, you remember the weird shadow. You look again, and decide that it seems oddly curved for this room full of sharp angles, so you creep around the corner, trying to see what's casting a curved shadow. It's…an egg?