You follow the power line towards the antimatter reactor until you find its connection point at…well, it looks like a breaker box. There's a bigger line going in, a bunch of smaller lines going out, and buttons. You nod definitively, as if that will make it more of a breaker box. Then you start pushing buttons.
Eventually, you find one that turns off power to the cable in question. You're pretty sure the flashing red lights when you hit some of the buttons weren't a big deal, because the lights stopped flashing when you hit those buttons again. You poke one more button, and everything's back to how it was when you started…you think.
The cable connection itself takes some finagling, thoroughly convincing you that the ring-builders had either magic or more precise manipulators than hooves, but you get it disconnected eventually.
Traveling the other way takes a lot more time. You're looping the cable over your neck, through a carabiner attached to your suit, down one side, between your forelegs, and over your chest. Every two meters, you have to stop and pry loose the bracket holding the cable to the ceiling.
And none of this is helped by your pausing every few minutes. Sometimes, when you pass an intersection in this endless maze, you keep thinking you hear something. Echoes of movement. There's nothing when you shine your light, but you make yourself stay still for a while afterward. You find yourself thinking about how this cable would act like a tether, if you needed to move fast.
Nothing happens, though. No monsters dragging you into the dark. You're just starting to really notice the weight of the cable when you see it snaking downward. You check your PDA, and see that you've already got more than enough cable for the Frond's needs, but you stop, and look at the cable's connector.
It's complex. You don't see any of the cable material itself, but what looks like some sort of crystalline interface, which superficially looks similar to the crystals used all over the Frond. You decide that cutting the cable might make it harder to work with, so you'll keep following it to see if you can find the other end.
You look around, and realize the passages have gotten narrower. Given the length of cable you've accumulated, you've probably passed well into the far wing of the station without realizing. You follow the cable, hopping down a level. Looking back and forth, you glance at your PDA and wish it were a tactical model, with an auto-mapping system. As it is, it would probably be more straightforward to try to head back through the station’s main corridor.
The cable follows a few more turns, then drops to what you recognize as the main corridor plating. A few more meters, and it drops right down through a hole they didn't even try to close up. You yank off the last bracket, loop up the cable, and peek down into the space below.
Bodies. Three of them, all in space suits that are fairly similar to yours, if a bit bulkier. Aliens from the ship, though these are quite a bit more naturally decayed than the one in the reactor room...mostly skeleton, now. You gulp, and look around, trying to see as much of the room as you can from here. It looks like one of the standard mid-sized rooms you saw dozens of in the other wing of the station. The door is closed. Your cable is running down to a large device in the center of the room, which seems to go on below the floor.
You drop down into the room. First order of business, you disconnect your cable from the now unpowered device, and loop it around yourself, tying it up a bit tighter with zip ties. Then you head over to the aliens.
It immediately becomes clear why at least one of them died. Its left leg is gone, and from the way the suit ends there, you can tell it was melted off. More of that danged acid. Looking closer, you can see signs of it on the other two. Scarring and pitting on the bodies of their suits, and one of them looks to be missing a part of its jaw. You shudder in sympathy.
The one that seems the least burned is holding a tablet in one hand, and what's probably a weapon in the other. You gently take the tablet, adding it to your collection. It had also laid its intact helmet next to itself. You take this as well, and with a little careful work, manage to cut a large piece of the faceplate out. One last glance up at the alien's skull, and you notice something. A small hole. You glance at the weapon in its hand, and the hole, and shake your head, turning away.
Looking at the door, you ask, "So…what made you guys lock yourselves in here to die, huh?"
With a swallow, you check around the door, and find a set of controls. You flatten yourself against that wall, and take a drink and a few deep breaths. Then you randomly push buttons until the door glides open—almost silently, as if it had just been serviced. As the air outside starts to mix into what you're breathing, the smell of spiders gets even more prominent. You make your breathing as quiet as possible, and edge out to get a view.
Eggs.
More of the same ones. Dozens, visible just at this bad angle. The ones you can see are just bare remnants, most of the top part of the shell broken away long ago, but you can recognize the base, where it's been attached to the floor by the same crusty stuff you saw back on the ship. Beyond, in the distance, you can see the silhouettes of a few that look whole. You glance over your shoulder, at the hole in the ceiling, but think of darkness, and the sounds of monsters in a maze, and you decide to look at least a little bit further through the door.
Out in the main corridor, it's like a nightmare. The already dark, disturbing architecture has been made downright awful by the addition of copious amounts of monster snot all over the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Eggs are everywhere—most of them spent husks, but a few still whole, unopened, and glisteningly moist in the humid air.
Keeping a tight control over your breathing, you activate your hoof grips and slowly crawl your way up the wall. You're halfway up, carefully stepping over an obstacle, when you freeze, and realize that you're actually standing over a bone. Following it, you see it's a leg bone, belonging to one of the aliens from the ship.
It met quite a different fate from the ones that were locked in the room below. It wasn't wearing a spacesuit, and it appears to have been liberally coated with the same goop that's all over the walls, tacking it in place. In the upper part of its body, what you'd analogously call its chest, is a large hole. The bones are warped outwards, like something tore its way out from inside.
You think about the empty eggs, the spider thing trying to get at your face, and look around a little. There, in a small pocket in the goop. You poke at it with a hoof, turning over the dessicated remains of one of the spiders. And with so many eggs…
Almost certain of what you'll see, but still dreading it, you crane your neck, looking more closely at the shadowed walls of the corridor. They're everywhere. You can see dozens of them, now that you're looking, pinned at nearly regular intervals all along this stretch of wall. The majority of them are quite a bit larger and heavier-looking than the aliens from the ship, and you have a sneaking suspicion those might be the ring’s builders. You glance back down at the floor, at the live eggs, then resume your silent climb. Soon enough you're on the ceiling again.
You turn towards center-station, then pause and look over your shoulder, wondering if it gets even worse the further you go. Your imagination conjures up even more horrible monsters, giant egg-laying monstrosities, and you shake your head to clear it. The shaking almost makes you miss the shadow moving across the farthest wall, and your breath catches. You turn tail and start swiftly but carefully crawling up the corridor.
As you move, the number of eggs decreases, as does the number of broken skeletons, until there are no more. The amount of alien snot stays pretty consistent, though, making you feel like you're moving through a giant, disgusting nostril. Before long, you approach a bulkhead, one of the single-layer ones. The door of this one is melted, like your entry into the central chamber, though the hole is far larger. You peer carefully into the darkness around you, but can't see anything threatening, so you drop down, and peek past the door.
It's clear. No more snot, no sign of monsters. You duck through, and move along. The way isn't entirely clear, with some pieces of dropped equipment and some sporadic battle scars. You recognize some of the equipment as coming from the ship. You break into a canter down the corridor. The heavy bulkheads leading to the central chamber are likewise clear, and you barely slow as you pass through.
That's the only reason it doesn't catch you.