Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows


-63-

Sassy was awake once again and saw something very strange. A CAT drone pointing at Vera wasn’t very strange at all and considered a necessity on the Shining Jewel when it came to the onboard therapist’s problem with being invisible otherwise. That Sassy was in a medical bed wasn’t strange either, considering she needed to heal and had asked to be put in one personally at her own choice and insistence.

She was in a bit of pain the last time she woke up, Opal really must have upped her pain medication dosage by a bit and it was hopefully within a safety tolerance range that Sassy could handle. Well obviously it was or else she wouldn’t be awake right now contemplating it, this led to her wondering how long she has been out of it and how far along she was in her healing.

As to what Sassy was seeing in front of her that was so odd, it involved what Vera was currently doing and the strangeness of it wasn’t because of anything relating to Vera herself. She just stared at the ensuing challenge of wits before her, a real gladiatorial battle of two minds… in the middle of simple a card game. Looks like they were using a recently acquired Equestrian deck of cards, the game seemed to be poker and as to the opponent Vera was facing? It was a familiar looking squid. Sassy believed it to be Ember’s familiar and pet Mr. Spew, which was what was odd about this since it looked like Mr. Spew was currently winning.

Other than watching them play a few rounds, there really wasn’t much interesting going on, of which Sassy was entirely grateful for. She could only hope to drift off to sleep again soon; she hoped she could get back in walking order as her body felt a bit stiff. Wiggling around a bit made Sassy realize the straps weren’t currently on her and she shifted her legs about and stretched them out. This led her to cringing at how her limbs felt, she lifted a hoof and gently tapped the covering and that alerted Vera to the fact that she was awake.

“Oh, it’s good to see you’re doing alright, only about a day or two more before we can release you from what you might consider your own personal living nightmare. Excuse me Mr. Spew, but Sassy takes precedence to our game.” The squeal Vera received seemed to be one of complete understanding that Vera had a job to do and she had to check up on the patient, medical beds weren’t infallible and it was always a good idea to check for a second opinion of the subject’s health in question. Sassy has been infirmed for a while and the surgical procedures required to close her up didn’t seem to have caused any major issues. Sassy’s previous scars were quite faded underneath some freshly grown fur. “Try to relax, stretch your hooves a bit in there as much as you feasibly can. Once you are ready to come out, we can introduce you to some of our new crew members… provided that some of them come back from their current excursion in one piece that is.”

Vera made sure not to say that last part out loud or else she might have caused Sassy to start panicking with worry about Rarity or Coco’s safety, quite frankly the poor mare didn’t need a conniption when she was in the middle of healing so well.

From the way Opal tells it, the extended range thanks to the now functional communications array after accessing the main HUB network on Antilur Station had allowed her to keep in contact with Rarity no matter where she went on the station. That was up until Rarity and the rest of her group had entered the city once more, they were all alive and with very few injuries the last anyone had heard from them. The group was likely having a few minor issues in dealing with the infestation and she would have to be ready in case of a medical emergency, her EVA suit was nearby as were three medical kits that were strapped together waiting to be picked up at a moment’s notice.

-

Opal was still able to pick up whenever they used one of those grenades Greta and Gilda made thanks to the odd signature the explosions always gave off. So far they had used quite a few grenades but not nearly enough to be worrying yet. Everyone had practically used at least one grenade each thus far just by the number of explosions she detected. Also the distance between the last few explosions meant that they must have been separated somehow; at least it hadn’t gotten bad enough for Chrysalis to use her rocket launcher. Who knows what she would have detected when one of those rockets went off.

“Trapeze, Bernard, Rover and Coriander, is everything good where you are all at currently?” Opal was checking in with medical and it seemed Sassy was awake once more, the mare would be out in time for when they got to the asteroid field's pit stop.

“We can’t complain, though I hope things are going alright on the station. Guess I’ll have to put on a show some other time, this just gives us more time to prepare our act anyway.” Currently Trapeze was spinning a hula hoop around her barrel and it led to the silent question as to what trick that would have been a part of. Trapeze was trying to not think of all the people dying on the station at this time and wanted to think of more positively, even then she still asked about it. “Do you think Rarity or the others in there need our help?”

“I don’t know, but I hope they don’t.” Shaking her digital avatar’s head Opal turned to Coriander and saw him exercising a bit.

“If you must know, I am doing alright.” Coriander continued to exercise and looked healthy for a small stallion with a bit of roundness in the gut. “I just worry for my daughter’s safety, I know that she is doing good work and that’s why I can’t fret. She’s just like her mother and I can’t be any prouder of how she’s turned into a beautiful young mare. I just wish she could find a partner, it doesn’t matter who it is as long as they can love her for who she is.”

-

“This is definitely not what I signed up for, but it’s why I’m here!” Saffron rammed the knife into the creature’s eye in the center of its mass and then got a good grip on her knife with her magic as she bucked the twisted body Screamer off her short blade and over the side of the ramp hoping the fall would take care of it. They were almost to the top layer of Antilur City. She and Rarity were entirely focused on protecting Coco and the dazed Chrysalis. The Dusks weren’t nearly as threatening as that weird scorpion Screamer made from a mass of twisted and contorted flesh and bone that was launching the one scythed wonders at them constantly. “Do you think Lightning and Ember are okay if we’re being hounded this badly?”

A massive explosion echoed throughout the city, but it wasn’t on the layer they happened to be on as it seemed to have come from far below. At least they know Ember was still moving from that one explosion and the echoed carried throughout the mostly silent city pretty well.

“Well they must be alive, because I doubt any of the Dusks made that noise.” Rarity was in front of them leading them up the ramp and was in the midst of reloading one pistol while she harshly whacked away several skinless ghostly visages in her face. The noiseless things were a threat, but one good blow and they were taken care of making the Screamers the real problem as they were horribly animated flesh and blood monstrosities that were quite aggressive in comparison to the slow tide of Dusks threatening to overwhelm them.“I doubt Ember will go down easily, she even seems to be an expert at this kind of thing.”

“Brains, brains, I won’t lie, near the city center we’ll find where it lies~.” Chrysalis was still out of it; her voice was getting better even if her head was rolling lazily over Coco’s back. “If you happen to think that I’m deranged, then it is your minds that I’ll just have to change~!”

“That didn’t sound like a romance song and it was rather specific… didn’t she say that the infestation doesn’t have a heart, but a brain?” Coco having to deal with Chrysalis’s larger form wasn’t having any problem carrying the weight, but she was having a problem getting Chrysalis into a good position so that she could use her as a flail. The Changeling Queen wasn’t in her right mind yet, but she sounded to be somewhat conscious of her surroundings.

“So should we head towards the center of the city to find the brain once we reach the top layer?” Saffron asked as she slashed apart an entire row of pony Dusks lurching up the spiral ramp between city layers behind them.

“Cause it’s alright, let’s get it done, because I want us to get back to where we started from~!” Chrysalis sang out and the three mares fighting for their lives understood that one at least. Apparently she was not entirely out of her mind and was trying to get it back in order. “Love is sweet, love can heal me strong, but we need to work together to get back to where we started from~!”

“Okay, so Chrysalis is not entirely out of her head. I guess we should listen to her when she sings something that sounds useful.” Coco hefted Chrysalis and swung her rear legs out smashing away one of those scythe things, being afraid of them now wasn’t going to help in their survival and while they were dangerous they have yet to get a good solid hit on anyone because they were always swiftly dealt with when they showed up.

As the top of the ramp came into view, something strange was afoot about it as the small trickle of Screamers stopped coming from in front of them once they reached the mostly silent city’s top layer. Behind them was a different story as they heard the scorpion Screamer from below let off another bone chilling scream, it didn’t sound like it was about to let them off the hook that easily.

The top city layer had a lot of administrative buildings and they didn’t see anything unusual in the lights from the tall buildings around them, just a lot of empty buildings of glass and mortar as they set out heading towards the center of the city after making a right turn from the ramp. They set off down the street still being attacked by Dusks which were becoming more of a constant nuisance than a real danger like the Screamers presented.

“I think it best we keep moving things along quickly darlings, because I do not want to be caught between that Screamer and the cause of this mess if I can help it. Also I’m running quite dangerously low on ammunition.” Rarity had taken the lead since they started up the ramp to the top layer of the city, she silently fretted about the kind of danger Ember was running into with Lightning. Speaking of Lightning, she sounded horrible the last she heard from her. “As such we don’t necessarily have the time for Chrysalis to get some rest; hopefully she’ll be capable of operating her rocket launcher by the time we find what we’re looking for. Though I have no clue what it will look like.”

“Speaking of not being able to rest, I hope Ember and Lightning are having a better time than we are.” Saffron lashed out with two knives telekinetically dispatching the Dusks that finished forming behind them and several others that had followed them up the ramp and down the streets littered with crashed vehicles, dancing shadows and hidden threats. “I don’t think this infestation is going to let up on us now until we outright kill the damn thing.”

-

“You know it’s quite hard to fight when I have to carry you at the same time right?” Ember lashed out with her tail rendering several Dusks into clouds of immaterial matter, she brought her claws around raking them through more in her way.

“Shouldn’t we be trying to…. catch up with the others?” Lightning’s ribs were on fire from all the movement, but it was necessary as Ember was fighting for both their lives as she ran.

“No, what we should be trying to do is get you out of here. You obviously need medical help and that’s why I’m rerouting us to the nearest airlock for an extraction pickup.” Ember was already in one of the corridors heading towards the outer edges of the station itself for this very reason; the idea wasn’t without its share of problems. Ember was stuck fighting with one hand free and upon exiting the city she quickly alerted Opal to their position as she started kicking her way through a wave of Dusks of all shapes, sizes and even species. “I hope you’ll be where I need to you to be Opal, Lightning needs a medical help and then I’m right back in the thick of it to go help Rarity and the others.”

“Vera is preparing and will be on standby to load Lightning into a medical bed.” Opal was immediately on top of the situation and moving Shining Jewel into position to pick up Ember and Lightning. “We’ll be there when you get there. How are things looking in there by the way?”

“Like something crawled out of hell and up another thing from hells ass, said hellish beast with another one up its ass came to this station and really started some amazingly bad crap that most people wouldn’t believe is happening here. To think this is all because of a single entity!” Ember stopped to rip the arm off a twisted body Screamer and she lashed out with it slicing into the screamer with its own limb. The Screamer in her way died when Ember stomped down on it as she ran over its injured fallen body. Ember reached up to Lightning’s belt and liberated a grenade from it which she swiftly tossed over her shoulder after flicking the pin out with her thumb. The following explosion almost caught up with her as it was more dangerous when in a confined space such as these corridors; she was now running full tilt and trying to watch out for any ambushes as she moved. “Rarity and the rest of her group should be closing in on the brains behind this mess, though the last I heard from them Chrysalis has some kind of concussion that’s making her act weird and they need all the help they can get. Get ready to pick me up because I’m almost at the airlock.”

“We’re already moving into position and Vera is waiting with a medical bed. Do you need any other people on the crew to go back in there with you Ember?” While Opal was asking this, Ember carefully laid Lightning down inside the Airlock that was being readied to be cycled open to space and she pulled her rifle off her back. She fire on the several Screamers and Dusks trying to get into the airlock with them before the door slammed closed and the air started to safely drain out of it.

“No, I’m sure it’ll be quicker to meet up with them if I go in there by myself. I’m going to take three minutes to reload, breathe and get ready to go after the infestation if Rarity’s team can’t deal with it before I get there. From what we’ve gathered it’s swallowed the whole city and its brain is in the top layer of it, lost communication with them when I chose to leave the city for Lightning’s sake.” Ember stepped out of the airlock and kicked off towards the waiting ship which had its lights on her; she activated her impulse saddle and flew towards the ship with a gasping Lightning Dust over her shoulder. “Lightning I’m going to take your remaining grenades if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t… mind… take… what you need… if you think it’ll help.” Lightning sounded horrible, her voice was beyond a level of rasping that Ember felt comfortable with and why she decided to evacuate the mare. There was a bit of a distorted like noise to her voice that sounded like there was phlegm in her throat and when she started coughing, it sounded like she literally started coughing up one of her lungs which was bad.

“Yeah that sounds really bad, turning on atmospheric barrier now, opening left hand section three door of the hangar. Bring her in Ember, we need her to get medical help like yesterday.” Opal watched Ember get to the point outside the atmospheric barrier where she magnetized herself to the floor the door made and she stepped through into the hangar to see Vera, Greta and Gilda already waiting to take Lightning off of her claws. They quickly got Lightning’s helmet off of her and they saw the insides of the helmet slightly covered in small flecks of blood after it retracted away from her face; they immediately got her out of the EVA suit so that they could strap her in to the medical bed. “We’ve can take her from here Ember, where do you need me to move the ship? I can get you to any airlock you need.”

“Hold on a second, give me a moment to rest.” Ember pulled out her boxy rifle and checked it over, filled it up with rocks and checked the fuel for her blaze bayonet feature which allowed her to slice apart almost anything with a concentrated beam of raw fire and heat. She was now carrying Lightning’s grenades and she also attached a knife taken from Lightning to her hip and dropped the hundred pound metal bat on the hangars floor where it made a small dent. She was going to need to move quickly and that particular melee weapon would just slow her down even if it was quite powerful. She looked over her schematics of the station on her HUD and found an airlock that would suit her needs. “I need to go to the airlock I’m highlighting.”

“Right, we’re moving right now and I’ll have you there in no time.” The Shining Jewel was already turning and would be in position in the next minute or so as the ship move forward and up, Opal was also monitoring Lightning’s situation at this time when she got a diagnostics of the mares condition. Lightning had three broken ribs and the rest were cracked and all of them had been bent inward, according to Opal’s calculations if Lightning hadn’t been wearing an EVA suit the blow would have outright killed her instead of just bending her ribs inward. Breach Gel kind of padded the blow, but not nearly enough that Lightning could have continued fighting for very long afterwards. “Lightning will live, Vera will monitor her health. Get back in there and make sure that they all come out of this alive… especially mommy.”

“I’m not going to let someone as wonderful and breathtaking as Rarity or any of the others in there down. You guys are my friends and I’ll protect my friends with tooth, nail and tail on top of my fiery breath for no charge at all!” Ember made sure she had her stuff in order. With a few more grenades, a knife and a little less weight on her back, she ran out of the atmospheric barrier and kicked off heading back towards the station and angling for the airlock she had in mind. She just hoped she could get back to them in time to make sure nothing went seriously wrong. “We all know I can’t use my breath since breathing is dangerous as it is tantamount to suicide in there, but I can promise you that I’m not coming back alone. If I have to come back alone, then I’m not coming back at all!”

“Breathtaking and wonderful she says… now calculating the odds of Rarity flopping with every stallion and Ember’s compatibility with Rarity. Account for the fact that Rarity will need to be at least bisexual to ever have it occur to her… yeah that would take a while, but it’s feasible.” With a little bit of thought on it Opal wouldn’t mind if Ember courted Rarity. Rarity liked her; she was of noble birth, strong and quite compassionate despite her rather violent job choice with the only problem being that she wasn’t male.

Four out of five wasn’t bad, all Rarity needed was to be slowly weaned off of the idea of having a stallion. There were other ways to have children and ponies did kind of have fun block genetics that allowed for some really odd interspecies relationships. So a pregnancy wasn’t impossible as technology has come far enough that even pregnancy between two males wasn’t uncommon. Still some species were incompatible no matter how you splice them, but dragons weren’t among those that were incompatible with ponies and she digitally created what a child of Rarity and Ember would look like. It would definitely make for some adorable little sisters, Kirin’s existed but they certainly weren’t very common outside of Neighpon. Maybe Opal could discretely contact Chrysalis’s clan that lived in that area to learn more about such a union, they were called the Jerk clan right?

Speaking of Changeling clans, Opal wondered if Chrysalis had any relation to the Chineighs Changeling clans of Hung and Wang. She didn’t want to assume and would later ask Chrysalis about it if in detail if it wasn’t a touchy subject and provided she survived the current crisis. Chrysalis was currently calculated as being able to survive this current situation with a ninety nine point nine percent certainty that she wouldn’t be permanently injured, an odd calculation to be sure. Not that it was entirely inaccurate given that Celestia, Luna and many others have had a lot of problems with outright killing Chrysalis.

-

“I’m still not seeing this thing Rarity, is it supposed to be really big or really small? What color is it even supposed to be?!” They were still heading towards the center of the top layer of Antilur City and Coco was freaking out because the giant fleshy scorpion with hundreds of limbs poking out of its back was now trying to chase them down and bite them with its cow mouth claws. None of the buildings were going to get in the way of the creature and it was thoroughly locked on all four of them.

Chrysalis lifted her head shakily and smacked her lips a bit as she tried to stand up, behind them Rarity and Saffron were throwing grenades at the scorpion monster. All the grenades were doing was the following: pissing it off, lighting it on fire and making it angry as heck because the fire didn’t seem to be doing much to the wildly waving limbs on its back as it screeched that particular deafening scream.

“I myself have a notion, hope you understand~. Set the world in motion, the eyes are where the brain sits in its land~. Maybe you’ll discover what you should have known all along, one way or another we all should stand together strong~.” Yep Chrysalis was still singing, but she seemed to focusing and looking in a specific direction and actually sounded pretty good this time. Coco didn’t seem to catch what she was looking and then it seemed to click when she sang her next few lines. They probably would want to hear the unedited version of this later and Chrysalis decided to keep it in mind when she wanted the ponies to do a silly song and dance they tended to do. Her head wasn’t exactly in the game, but it wasn’t entirely out of it either. “If we listen to my each other for a start, we’ll soon find that we’re not so far from its heart~. And maybe love is the reason why, for the first time ever we should see this eye to eye~!”

Chrysalis looked into Coco’s eyes and then jerked her head in a given direction and started looking that way with a bit of urgency without looking back at Coco. Chrysalis wanted her to follow the direction she was looking in and Coco, having now picked up on that, immediately set out that way.

Rarity and Saffron were busy trying to disengage with big, mean, scary, disgusting, and ugly. If they could smell it, rotting and stinky likely would be some other things to define the creature that seemed to be immune to the roiling flames that covered its body that weren’t dealing with it nearly fast enough for it to stop being a really bad problem anytime soon. It far more dangerous and lethal than it previously had been to be near and the heat from the burning mass of horror was beginning to overcome the EVA suits ability to handle by proximity alone.

At least the one good thing about the creature was that it was slow enough, relatively, that three ponies could halfway outrun the damn zombie thing that just wouldn’t stop until it killed them on their adrenaline alone. Being bigger than the Caravel Boutique, cars and other obstacles weren’t slowing it down and Rarity’s group had to make turns because once it got some momentum it got a whole lot faster. Thankfully the monster was very slow when it came to turning as they darted down a different street and then into an alleyway for a different street when it followed them.

Extra grenades didn’t seem to have any effect on the large monster cobbled together out of corpses and energy stolen from the entire colony, but it did seem to become incapable of creating those one armed Screamers since it was now entirely focused on chasing them down. It was trying to snap them up in its claws, crush them with its flaming trunk or just stab them with the roasting turkey styled griffon stinger. Its only support seemed to be the Dusks that were making an attempt to block the path off in the very direction Chrysalis was looking in.

The scorpion Screamer ripped through a building behind them and continued to give chase roaring as it waved its flaming toothy hamburgers for claws at them. They had to be getting closer to the brain, why else would this thing be as relentless as it is?

-

Ember was meeting less resistance on the way in, which meant that Rarity’s group had to be in the most danger at the moment. Either that or they killed the brain. She wasn’t about to stop running, because she had to be sure that thing was dead. Her friends were in danger and she would be the prescribed medicine to kill the infection if it hurt any them!

“Get the hell out of my way!” Ember caught and lifted the one sole scythe wielding Screamer that had lunged at her and ripped it in half with her claws. She threw both halves’ of it down on the floor and continued what was one constant motion; she was on a war path and moving way too fast for any Screamer or Dusk to keep up with. Anger was a very good driving force, righteous fury for all the dead space colonists was even better than that.

Turning to left at the next junction, she saw the door to the top layer in the city and pulled her rifle off her back while running at it full tilt with madness in her eyes. No time to stop and try to open it the nice way, she’d pay to have it repaired later. Her rifle held in both hands, it lit up with a blade made of white hot flames and she managed to swing it twice before she hit the door and went clean through it like it was made of butter, this heavily damaged her EVA suit in the process and would probably make Rarity complain later when she had to fix it. Only this didn’t matter to Ember.

The flaming blade of the gun disappeared as Ember ran towards the closest bridge. She could see the smoke rising in the distance that seemed to be moving and quite fast at that. Ember had to protect those that were important enough to be a part of her hoard now that she was acknowledging them as such.

There were two kinds of hoarding instincts in dragons, the most common being a slow build up of greed and wealth or simply things of vast luxury. Luxury obviously wasn’t Ember’s thing, since her hoarding instincts were based on something a little bit different and it was one of the things her mother taught her well, as she certainly understood her mother’s reasoning now.

So it was certainly understandable that it inflamed Ember’s rage to an incredible degree that anything would dare to threaten her precious hoard. You don’t mess with a dragon’s hoard, especially not one built entirely out of love and compassion which made things seem all the more meaningful then the useless baubles and trinkets dragons usually focused on.