Coco might not have wanted to go back in after the first time having tested the limits of what would attract the danger, but she still found something to do at least. Mr. Spew needed company and she thought the squid was adorable, for a filth eating creature that nauseated Rarity on the principle of the matter.
“Do you think they’re okay in there?” The darkness had disappeared from the second hangar that was popped open to save Rarity and Vera. Coco knew that was not to long after Rarity’s group went in, which was worrying her on a number of levels.
“They better be! The boss lady is decent at surviving the odds.” The pony jumped and turned around cuddling the squid to her chest to see Gilda was already getting started on a second project with Greta. Gilda was being quite gruff about it. “She better not make us go in after her, because that would certainly suck.”
“See, you do care about the boss lady!” Greta chirped happily, only for Gilda to send her a glare that didn’t diminish her upturned beak one bit.
“I only care because I don’t want Kitten to suicide The Shining Jewel, especially not with us still along for the ride, into the space station out of despair.” Always the pragmatic one Gilda was, now what would the design of this project entail? What work of art would she sculpt with her talons this time? She could always make a number of upgrades to the Bombing Peregrine on the side.
“Hey, give me some credit at least!” Taking offense to this Opal just had to chime in. “I’d let you fly away in the Caravel Boutique and give you forewarning before I’d do that. Maybe give you at least ten minutes to get food and maybe a few other supplies while I’m at it.”
“Duly noted Kitten, I expect you to keep your word on the warning.” Snorting at that Gilda went back to drawing plans with Greta, but not before turning to Coco to get one last word. “See, it’s a completely legitimate concern.”
-
“Is anyone going to bring up the fact that that thing had been physical until I stabbed it?” Nobody really wanted to, but Lightning couldn’t get that one out of her mind given that it had put her on her back.
“What’s more disturbing is that even while gnashing its teeth at you, it didn’t make a single sound. Speaking of, are you already dear?” Rarity turned her head to Lightning with a worried look as the mare kept a tight hold on the dagger in her hoof and her eyes were darting about suspiciously. “You were barely capable of being cleared for space travel.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll work on it when we get back to the ship. Though my heart rate certainly went up like I wanted and my blood is pumping far more so than I expected.” Now that she had considered Lightning was wondering how she was going to use the guns she brought with her wings stuck in the EVA suit. Being a winged pony she could use her wings to wield to guns and remain mobile, but she’d be stuck on the ground while she had her guns out. Not that she would ever bring it up, but her death grip on her knife seemed warranted right now.
“Well this is getting interesting, I mean getting attacked by that one not pony that didn’t have any emotions or life behind it. So I guess my senses are not as valuable as I might have misled you to believe, so as a suggestion I think we should all stay alert.” The thing went down in one hit, that wasn’t very threatening to Chrysalis at all. They’d need to come at the group in staggered waves if they wanted her to start getting nervous. There was no sense in wasting ammunition shooting at shadows, but she was getting the feeling that they’d be doing just that soon. “Also don’t get injured in the butts, those are some of your best features girls and I don’t want any of you to end up like me. Lightning could work getting her weight and health back up to snuff, but she’s not too bad off.”
“Seriously Chrysalis you’re not that bad, you have a very nice figure darling…. well except for um…” Rarity trailed off when Chrysalis shot her a look with big pathetic eyes and sad quivering lips, even knowing she was being emotionally manipulative. It was kind of hard to be mean to her about her looks. “Yes well, I won’t bring it up because it’s kind of a touchy subject for you.”
“You don’t have to worry about my feelings; I know why other mares won’t touch my backside.” Yes, because it was most certainly not Chrysalis’s personality that scared away everyone who might have had an interest in her.
They were avoiding the empty or partly destroyed vehicles or any buildings with destroyed windows leading into darkness beyond them. Chrysalis was leading them down the street they were on with her senses on high alert for the one sign of life in this station that she could sense quite clearly. They were also warily looking in all directions for another one of those things. Whatever those last two things had been, it was clearly related to the infestation and they hadn’t bothered to stop and talk about how.
The city was like any other city built into a space station, only this was colony space station. This meant that it produced products for sale to people going through this particular route, plus it usually had more than a hundred thousand residents at any giving time. As such Antilur City had been a hub of activity that had not only hotels and many shops, but various hangars and a small ship yard for making small jump capable ships. Buying outright ownership of a home on the station was quite expensive, but doable if you were part of the upkeep of the station itself. The entire city should have been lit up with hundreds of comers and goers from all around, but they had only seen what seemed like two ghosts in the last hour and no sign of the type of darkness that Chrysalis could feel.
Knowing what they did, the silence was deafening and quite scary. If they can’t even hear if they were under attack before it was too late, then it was a good idea that they were all looking around and behind themselves in abject paranoia. After having witnessed the darkness and what looked like temporarily physical ghosts, they had reason to be wary.
“You know I have to ask, why isn’t that dark cloudy stuff sucking the power out of our suits like it did the drones that previously came in here?” As far as concerns went this was high on Lightning’s scale of things she needed to direly know, things that could be easily explained in a few sentences. “I wouldn’t have come in here if I knew the short range communications and lights on my suit wouldn’t work for crap.”
“It is something of interest, besides you’re the only one that would know the reason why the infestation didn’t drain your suit while you were trapped back in the hangar bay with it.” Saffron slowly pulled out a knife in her own hoof and held it as tightly as Lightning did hers. “Well one would assume the infestation would be able to drain the power right out of the EVA suits we’re currently wearing, I saw the files you brought up for the crew about how any drone that came in here would be disabled and drained of its energy.”
“Drones don’t have airtight seals and don’t need to breath. We on the other hoof do. Then there’s the fact that there were drones that were never fully drained when found always turned off before they could be.” It was time for Rarity to extrapolate on everything she thought she was sure of; even then she wasn’t entirely sure if it was perfectly accurate. This infestation was something she’d rather have avoided if it weren’t for a friends life possibly being in jeopardy. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but she would always go above and beyond for friends. “I may not be an ex military, a leader or a vigilante, but I have an eye for detail and I picked up on several things. I needed Vera to confirm it for me, the infestation can only go after active sources of energy and it can possibly only feel what it can reach. As such it can’t just reach into our sealed suits or rechargeable batteries in the impulse saddles while they are attached to our backs and drain the power despite the fact that we’ve been using them for communications and lights the entire time. Most military drones have energy weapons and civilian grade drones usually have plasma cutters, our suits don’t have any energy emitting devices aside from the lights and radios while not in space and it can’t eat either of those forms of energy.”
“Speaking of leader, I do have to question why couldn’t have just bought your own ship to travel around in Chrysalis?” Saffron had wondered why someone who had a political pull and money couldn’t have just bought her own ship. “I mean it seems a little awkward that you’d just up and join Rarity, at least I and Lightning have our reasons for being on the ship.”
“Mostly it’s about who owned the manufacturers of said ships. Ponies, Griffons and Zebra manufacturers corner that particular market, all of which could be paid off to sabotage whatever ship I could afford whether it be cheap or not. I have a lot of enemies and I don’t mind them trying to kill me.” The one live being she was tracking was moving slowly and had a more emotional mindset, proving to Chrysalis that they were on the trail of someone who was a likely survivor or Rarity’s friend. She swept her lights to the left into the nearby alleyway and saw shifting shadows, seemed act as if it had been scalded and it retreated. The three fingered shadow claw went back from whence it came. Chrysalis continued on without questioning the shadows stretching out for them, she was leading them towards the center of the city on the layer they happened to be on. “I’ve been stabbed between the third and fourth vertebrae more than a few times to want to be on a ship that hasn’t been triple checked for safety and Changelings are not exactly in the engineering business. Though we have slowly been getting used to higher forms of technology, it would be a horrible idea for me to endanger the lives of any other Changelings. I can handle assassination attempts on myself, what I can’t handle is assassination attempts that involve killing my people due to being in my proximity. I haven’t missed getting anyone back for a sleight against a single Changeling yet, the Changeling Queen is expected to get revenge for her people when necessary and it hardly ever is necessary. When it is, there is absolutely no running from me.”
“Yikes, remind me to never piss you off. At least you’re amiable to work with, especially when it seems to suits your needs entirely.” It wouldn’t surprise Lightning if Chrysalis ended up betraying them at one point, mostly either for a good cause or because someone made her a nice offer.
“True, I do happen to like things that suit my purposes far more than most beings. Hold up… this is the place, whoever or whatever I’m feeling is in there.” Chrysalis lifted a hoof and pointed it to a squat looking building; the sign on the building declare the place as ‘Almighty Arms’ which was clearly a weapon shop. The door was busted open as if it had been bucked and there were claw marks on it. “Hey you’re friend wouldn’t happen to be a dragon would she?”
“I thought I showed everyone the information Ember left behind on her ship.” Rarity moved forward into the building while Lightning and Saffron turned around to watch their backs. The weapons store didn’t deal primarily in ranged weapons surprisingly; it had a variety of all kinds of weapons. From crossbows, ancient pistols and old weapons like that to more futuristic weapons like a spear that advertise the ability to light on fire and fire small bursts of energy, technologically complex handles that created photonic blades and plasma rifles. “This seems like a place she would come to, she said she designed weapons on the side as a hobby to her career as a bounty hunter.”
“Is it me or are we just talking because it’s less scary to hear someone’s voice in this place. If what Chrysalis is feeling is right, then she’s probably upstairs.” Saffron started up the stairs of this three story building, Lightning, Rarity and Chrysalis followed after her. They weren’t going to separate and explore on their own at any given time.
They trooped up the stairs heavily and noticed something; there were some divots or small holes in the wall. Chrysalis got a close look at them as they went up the stairs. They took a right turn at the top of the stairs and saw a row of doors on the right side of the hallways, three rooms to look into and Chrysalis felt they were very close now.
“Someone’s been shooting something here, recently in fact and it’s apparent that they were shooting at something similar to what we met. So if this isn’t your friend it’s going to be hard to explain why we’re invading the shelter of whoever this is… oh and they just became alert to our presence.” A door smashed open and a large rectangular rifle popped out, Chrysalis felt sorry for Saffron who was suddenly backed against a wall and cowering at suddenly having a gun in her face. Rarity sauntered on past Chrysalis not looking the least be frightened, Chrysalis could even feel the emotional sense of familiarity coming off of both of the figures.
“Okay who sent more people in here and… wait, you’re wearing a well designed EVA suit so that would mean… Rarity what in the hell are you doing in here?” It didn’t take long for Ember to turn her head and recognize Rarity in her personal EVA suit, Ember herself was wearing her full bodied suit and her helmet looked odd thanks to her horns. “Don’t you know that being on Antilur Station is really dangerous right now!”
“Yes, I’m quite well aware of that fact now, but we came in here to help you get back out. How long have you been in here?” To Rarity it seemed like Ember was a bit wild eyed and being alone for any amount of time would really mess someone up. So she approached the dragon with a bit of worry and gave her a hug around the waist while putting her face against Embers chest.
“Did you happen to see anything strange on the way to me though?” Ember received a look from Rarity that was questioning as Rarity came up and hugged her, the gesture was quite calming and it was the first sensation of solid contact with someone she’s had in the last few days that wasn’t out to get her. “Please tell me you didn’t do something stupid like dock your ship to the station!”
“Of course we didn’t dock any ships to the station. Though since you asked, yes, we saw this darkness for the lack of a better term for it… we in fact attracted said stuffs attention to one of the hangars and it took a bit of doing but we got out of that situation without any casualties.” Rarity could only hope that Ember wasn’t as spooked as she looked. “We also saw two garish looking ponies that didn’t have cutie marks and one of them didn’t have any skin. It was the second one without skin that attacked one of my crew members.”
Ember sighed with relief while raising her left claws to her head, when she lowered them she looked at the four mares before her. She didn’t know the other two ponies with Rarity, but she definitely knew Queen Chrysalis and didn’t say anything as to what the Changeling Queen was doing with Rarity. It didn’t matter really if she knew the reason for Chrysalis’s presence, apparently Rarity got this far and she finally lowered her gun and motioned them into the room to take a seat.
“So you have seen both the Miasma and the Dusks, at least you seemed to have avoided seeing any Screamers. Those things are tough to take down and it’s not something you want to be near when it gets back up.” Ember’s suit looked perfectly fine, but Ember herself looked a bit haggard and tired as she sat down on the bed and had small circle of living breathing people to talk to. “I’ve been in here for the last three days, and I’ve been searching the station from bottom to top. Going to the bathroom on this station is a nightmare and so is eating when you can’t breathe the air in here without attracting Miasma to your location. I’ve been refilling my oxygen tank to avoid getting caught and getting those refills hasn’t been the most pleasant of experiences when I ran into my first Screamer. It’s so nice to finally see a friendly face, is Mr. Spew alright? Did you even find him?”
“Mr. Spew is perfectly fine the last I saw darling. Can you give us a little more information on the Miasma, Dusk and whatever a Screamer is? You’ve apparently been here long enough to know what we’re dealing with.”
“The Dead Husks are what happen when this Visitant actually manages to kill someone and those things are impossible to kill, hence the name Dusks. I think they only exist to give the Visitant more food or at least food it can’t see normally. It takes a while for them to reform fully after destabilizing their forms, but there are dozens of them running around and I’ve had to plow through quite a few of them on the lower levels of the station. They are only capable of attacking when they become disturbingly skinless; they do so without warning and without making noise unless they’ve incidentally moved something when they become dangerous. I wish I hadn’t seen a Minotaur among the ones I’ve dusted a few times before, they are beginning to multiply and get worse the more colonists that die to this monstrosity and a good number of them have been children.” Ember was somewhat happy that everyone flinched at the mention of a skinless Minotaur, she was thankful she wasn’t the only one to find the idea horrifying as much as having seen it personally. “The Miasma is a small part of the Visitant causing all this, but it’s only function is to absorb energy out of a given area where it builds up at. The Screamers are the real threat and they are not easy to find, but running into one isn’t a good thing. I can’t even describe what one might look like and I’ve seen three and they were all different in appearance with very little similarities between them, at least they can bleed and die unlike the other two. As you can probably guess I haven’t even found the source of these things yet and that’s what I’m looking for, either that or the taken colonists themselves. I’ve had no luck so far, also sleeping, using the bathroom and eating has been very problematic. Given that’s how I have ran into Screamers multiple times doing any one of those things and I’m only certain I’ve managed to outright kill two them. I… I want to get off the station for a while to think, maybe feel safe for a while. Wait, why are you even in here in the first place if you knew it was dangerous!”
“I came to find you Ember; I just wanted to help a friend. I also have some information that I thought you might want to hear that’s not pertinent to the current circumstances going on here. This is Lightning Dust, Saffron Masala and I’m sure you’ve heard of Queen Chrysalis.” Rarity pointed each one of them out in turn and they nodded. “In any case, were you possibly expecting another Screamer?”
“Yes, I was. You guys woke me up coming up the stairs and I’ve barely gotten a good eight hours of sleep while in here. The Dusks and Screamers are a bit relentless, so I’ve been sleeping lightly these last few days and it’s wearing me down.” Not once had Ember been entirely idle as they talked, she had been watching the door way and checking her weapons. She had a material pistol holstered at her and her large material rifle was being held protectively in both arms. “Can you please take me back to your ship? I could use a good shower and a meal; maybe stretch my wings a little.”
“I hear that, my wings are comfortable in these compression pouches, but it’s not the same without the ability to flex the muscles. We found your friend; now let’s get out of here!” To be fair Lightning wasn’t the only one that was jumpy, Saffron was also quite alert for anything to come through the door and she kept shooting Ember a look every now and then.
“Just how dangerous are these Screamer things and how will we know what one looks like?” They slowly made their way back down the stairs of ‘Almighty Arms shop and out the door where their lights swept the dark streets Ember’s joined them as she put her rifle on her back.
“They’ll be nothing like the Dusks and that’s an understatement. They’re real, they make lots of noise, they can bleed and they can ultimately die. As for what they look like, the ones I killed looked like the most hellish octopus ever devised with bladed tentacles that had the ability to spray webs and the other looked like a couple of bleeding ponies sewn together with their eyes torn out and replaced with large acid spewing worms. The only thing they had in common was the noise they all made was exactly the same.” It was a little hard for Ember to believe she was getting some help here, but she welcomed it if it gave her a good meal and a full eight hours of rest. Her EVA suit needs to be cleaned out as well; it was to her luck that it hadn’t been punctured yet. She was walking alright only there was a slight stumble in her step and she fell to her knees. “Oh my head, I’m going to have nightmares about this one and I thought the all consuming black blob from a previous mission was scary.”
“Are you okay Ember?” They hadn’t made it very far from the shop and Rarity had reasons to worry, Ember had been trapped on this station for several days with hardly any rest.
“Yeah, like I said, I’m really tired. I think I only got about three hours of sleep before you found me.” Ember heaved herself back up onto her feet. “Let’s keep moving. If we stop, we might run into a lot of Dusks. How did you find me anyway?”
“That would be thanks to Changeling biology, they used me as radar to find you. I can sense emotional things, though I can’t sense whether or not something has life in it. So if you were thinking of having me look out for Dusks… well I can’t sense them and we’ve only seen two, one had skin and one without that went after Lightning.” Having just seen that claw again Chrysalis had to ask, because as soon as the light from her helmet hit it, it disappeared. “Quick question did you ever see anything that looked like a shadowy claw with three talons that was scared of light?”
“At this point I don’t even know what that could possibly be. If it isn’t making noise it’s not a Screamer and it’s not one of the Dusks either if it doesn't resemble something that was once alive, but looks like a zombie and makes no noise at all." The four took up positions around Ember as they headed for the same spiraling ramp that they came up to this layer from."Dusks always take the form of one the people who died from the main source of this problem.”
-
There was nothing, but the eerie silence as they walked down the ramp and back towards the bridge out of the city. They were all very quiet and very much alert for anything, why the time it took them to walk to the spiral ramp felt a lot longer than it had taken going away from it and that was just most of the group being paranoid.
“It kind of scares me more that nothing is happening, from the way you tell it there are supposed to be Dusks crawling all over the place.” Saffron looked behind her and saw something shift in the shadows or at least she thought she saw movement beyond her helmets light.
“Oh it is, you can trust me on that. It’s just that the city is so big and the number of colonists that have died thus far is hopefully not beyond a few thousand yet. Not enough coverage, for any of the layers or the outer edges of the station. At least not yet anyway.” Ember could feel her eyelids getting droopy, she had been almost constantly alert and the Screamers had been the most horrific things she had to deal with. “I’ve gunned down well over a few hundred dusks, some of them I’ve dealt with twice in what should have been a lethal manner. It was kind of hard for me to even pull the trigger on the children sized Dusks. Can you even imagine having to shoot children for survival?”
“We’re almost out of here Ember and you can get some rest then.”They followed the road to the left to see the entrance they came in through was still open, as they did Rarity was worried about Ember’s sanity and she was taking Rarity’s group pretty well. They walked through the entrance quietly and looked behind them at the silent city. “The way out is straight down this hallway through several doors.”
“Hope so, a good twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep would feel pretty good right about now.” Ember straightened up and continued straight forward with the ponies herding around her, Chrysalis stuck to herself as the odd one out.
“I had my concerns when I had Vera breathe in the air around here. She is so easy for everything to ignore, but this infestation managed to detect her when she did. That proved that there was a lot of danger to look out for. Speaking of… I need to do something right quick, excuse me everyone.” Curiosity killed the cat, but Rarity wasn’t a cat now was she? No that was more Opal’s territory and she would be pretty hard to kill in a physical sense.
Rarity turned around and started walking back past the big open door and stopped at the railing across the road. Ember and Lightning were focused on Rarity, while Saffron and Chrysalis watched the length of the corridor behind them. Rarity looked down into the void and at the lower levels of the city and pulled out a phosphorous grenade that was made for this trip, she pulled the pin and quickly tossed it to the lower level where she had previously seen moving shadows coming in.
The grenade gave off a blinding flash of light as it exploded spraying the entire area with raw liquid that spewed light as powerful as the sun and it made Rarity pale when she saw a very strange creature. One that looked like a big scorpion with what had to be an elephant’s trunk and horrible spines covering its back that were the limbs of various beings sticking out of it and its size was slightly bigger than the Caravel Boutique and longer than it too, its legs looked like they were made entirely out of skulls and various other bones and they all ended in sharp points sticking out of the fleshier bits. The tip of its tail was the bloated body of a griffon whose beak represented the stingers tip, its face was that of nightmares made out of Ahuizotl and Minotaur parts and its shell that wasn’t body parts sticking out of it was comprised entirely of some strange bronze colored chitin.
The creature, whatever the hell it was, reared up stretching its flesh made of hundreds of dead beings to inhale with its mouth. The scream that it let loose ripped straight into the fear cortex in everyone’s brain and had Rarity running back towards the others immediately without looking back.
(Insert classic Lavos Screech)
“Right, it’s time to go! Let us not dally while that thing is around!” Rarity said having already ran past the group to start work on opening the doors they had opened and shut on the way in. “Opal, if you can hear me, we’re coming back immediately and we’ll be doing so as quickly as we can! Open the hangar doors, for the love of all that is beautiful in the world, that thing had no beauty in it at all!”
“Yeah, that’s the exact sound every Screamer makes!” Suddenly looking less tired than she had previously been, Ember was running for the doors just like everyone else. “That’s the loudest one I’ve heard to date, it must be huge!”
“Rarity, you found Ember and you’re okay!” Opal couldn’t have been happier, though it sounded like something had scared the crap out of Rarity and that she was retreating with the speed of fear. “Opening hangar door now, it should be open by the time you get back here."
They had made it back to Shining Jewels hangar after all five of them exploded out of the airlock at the same time passing the drones Opal sent out to open it up for them once they were inside it. They were still panicking even when they were completely safe and sound inside Shining Jewels hangar.