It was over in seconds. The station shook, then went still again. But, why? As Mezzo laid there on the floor, emergency spotlights clicked on. They were dim, but brighter than darkness, painting everything with stark shadows. A siren buzzer sounded somewhere up above, followed by a voice the loudspeaker. "Explosion in Cargo Bay Three," said a male voice Mezzo didn't recognize, "All emergency personnel report to staging area four-B, or to Medical. All others, please remain calm and stay in quarters."
First things first. He picked up the unconscious Annabelle and slung her over his back. "Hey!" Mezzo bellowed at the group gathering at the nearest store. "Is everyone alright?"
Members of the group exchanged glances, and at least one went back into the store to check those still inside. Before they could relay that everyone was ok, they heard a shout from a few store's down. "Hey! We need help over here!"
Mezzo started over, followed by two of the first shop's customers. "The rest of you stay inside," he told the others, "communications should be ok, so start contacting everyone you can. Individual pads and devices only, don't bog down station channels. Don't go anywhere unless absolutely necessary, and stay in groups. No one moves around alone. Tell everyone this."
Everyone nodded their understanding and headed in while Mezzo's group headed down to the other store. Looking around, Mezzo could see the shoppers and shopkeepers consolidating into groups. They gathered under the directions of those who recovered from the shock fastest. Not surprisingly, a few of them were ponies he recognized, fellow members of the Tankrit rebellion. There were plenty he didn't recognize as well, and the colt was glad the growing community was still able to band together when needed.
As they approached the other store, they saw the old stallion that called them over step out of the way. A pair of elderly gryphons covered in small cuts were being helped out of the store. The female was cradling her right front leg, and being carried by a Curaxxan. The male was hastily bandaged and leaning against a pony that Mezzo knew, but hadn't seen in a while. "Pip?"
"Mez," the pinto colt acknowledged. He wasn't free of cuts himself. He nodded to the gryphons. "A shelf full of glassware got dumped over, we got pinned underneath. No other injuries." He lifted a hoof, showing the blood dripping from multiple slices. Head and hoof injuries bleed like hell, don't they. "Glass. I've mentioned how much I hate the bloody stuff, right?"
"All the time, Pip." Mezzo looked back at the two ponies that followed him over. "You two go door to door. Tell everyone what I told the first group. Emergency personnel should be arriving soon, report as much information as you can, then do what they tell you after that."
The first, an earth pony, glanced around the darkened commisary. "Ok," he said with some hesitation.
The other, a pegasus mare, nodded a bit more forcefully. "Got it. We'll get going."
The earth pony nodded back the way they came. "We'll head that way, since you're headed to medical. We'll cover more ground this way. And it'll put us in the residential areas afterwards."
"Yeah," Mezzo agreed. He was worried about his family, and knew there had to be others who were. But, his mother was watching Minuette. She would be safe even if the rest of the galaxy went to hell. Aunt Tavi was his main worry. He didn't know where she was. "If you run into a mare with my colors, do whatever she tells you."
The earth pony's only response was to raise his right hoof, touch his left leg, and stomp it back down. Mezzo, Pipsqueak, and the male gryphon returned the gesture. The female gryphon let out a groan. "Sure, I'm the only one left out."
"That's really what you're going to complain about?" asked the Curaxxan carrying her. "What was that anyway?"
"Yeah," the pegasus mirrored the sentiment, "I've seen that a few times since I moved here."
"Its the Tankrit Salute, means we all know what we need to do," Pipsqueak answered.
The medical bay was a madhouse. The regular canvas dividers were torn down, laid on the floor as a underlayment for the triage mats. They were mostly empty, thankfully, but the ones along the back wall held some badly injured patients. Walking wounded did their best to stay out of the way or help those worse off. Mostly burns, Mezzo guessed. He could smell seared flesh the moment he stepped through the door, and the bony grey alien sitting closest to the operating room had a badly mangled arm. All this was accompanied by an overly sweet smell.
The operating room in the back was brightly lit, and the decontamination chamber wedged open with the pipes from the divider frames. He could hear voices, and the sound of machinery from inside. The bony alien glanced in every so often, an unmistakeable expression of worry on his oddly feature face.
There were no official medical personnel apparent. Minor injuries from around the station were starting to trickle in, and the only ones around to deal with it were the ones dragging their neighbors in.
Pipsqueak helped his gryphon onto a nearby mat. "I'm going to go grab medical supplies. It doesn't seem like this is going to let up any time soon."
"I concur," the Curaxxan set the other gryphon on the neighboring mat as she grumbled, "I work in station logistics, we recently set up a medical stockpile in an unused space nearby. There is also a grav-sled. If I had help, I could bring back everything at once."
"I'll help," said a human near the door, his injuries seemed limited to an abrasion on his face. "It's better than hanging around here."
"Great," Pipsqueak nodded, "I'll get started with what we have in here."
"I'll help with that," Mezzo added as the other colt walked away, "we have some experience with emergency first aid."
The bipeds left, and the unicorn moved to deposit the nurse he carried on a third mat. As he slid her off his back, he heard the voices from the operating room. "That's it," said a triumphant male voice. Mezzo recognized it. Most from Tankra would, it belonged to James. Mezzo knew him as the stone surgeon, as most called him, the call sign given him because of his dust-grey fur and ashen feathers. "He's stable," the voice continued, "hurry, and move on now. I'll finish up."
A pink unicorn hurried out of the operating room, eyes locking on Mezzo almost immediately. No, on the unconscious filly he carried. "Annabelle!" She ran over, nearly shoving Mezzo out of the way to check for injuries. "What happened to her?" the nurse demanded.
"Nothing," Mezzo replied, "she collapsed a few seconds before anything happened."
Not finding anything obviously wrong, the nurse looked back up at the colt who brought her cousin in. "Are you sure? There wasn't anything unusual?
Mezzo shook his head. "Except for the fact that she was terrified of me, I can't really think of..." Mezzo glanced down at the blue filly. "Except, she was kind of acting like Ribbon."
"Lily?" Pipsqueak came back with about a dozen medical kits hanging around his neck. He ran over to the nurse and pulled one off for her with a hoof. "Here." He looked at Mezzo. "These were all I could find. The supply closet is almost empty."
"The medicine cabinets got rolled into the office," Lily pointed to the door across from the operating room. "We were just getting set up when the first group of wounded came in. The rolling cabinet with the locks on it has medications and IV equipment, grab that one first." The earth pony dropped most of the medical kits next to her, keeping one for himself. She touched the pinto colt's leg. "Pip, what happened?"
"I don't know." He gave her a helpless look. "I was on break, so I hit the commisary. Then the store came down on top of us."
Their eyes stayed locked for a second, until Lily looked back at Mezzo. "You said she was acting like Ribbon. What did you mean by that?"
Pipsqueak stood in the middle of the medical bay and addressed everyone still standing. "If you are able to help, please, come take a medkit. Help is on the way, but so are more injured. Treat minor wounds, and notify us more severe ones. No one leaves until they get scanned for internal injuries."
Mezzo sighed as he took a medkit for himself. "You know Ribbon, right? Have you ever seen her react to something that somepony else was feeling?"
"I have. That means..." Lily broke open a medkit, and dug out a scanner. Running it over her cousin, her face reacted to the results with confusion. "Her pain receptors are firing, but there's no cause. She must have passed out from that. If what you say is true, the best I can do is give her some painkillers, and hope she regains consciousness. She might be able to tell us why this is happening." She leaned down and gave Anna a brief nuzzle. "We could really use her help right now."
Mezzo nodded. "What do you want me to do?"
"Anything you can." Annabelle pointed to the back wall. "They came from the cargo bay, and most of them only suffered moderate burns. One or two broken bones. Nothing life-threatening. Clak, the grey one on the end, waved us off whenever we tried to look at his arm. So far, Softy was the only one critical." Lilybelle rubbed her eyes. "Dear Celestia, we almost lost him. A bunch of debris was lodged in his ribcage, and a piece of it broke off in his cardial sac. He started bleeding into his heart, and James had to cut into him with his claws to dig it out. Then we had to seal the arteries while he was bleeding out on us." She looked down at Annabelle. "We're still not sure he's going to make it. He lost a lot of blood. He's a dragon, and there were no type matches on the station database. We gave him as much plasma as we could, but there's no way for us to synthesize his particular blood type. We've sent out an emergency call to the surface, but he needs to hang on until we can get him a transfusion."
Mezzo nodded, and silently headed towards the back as Lilybelle focused on her cousin. He heard the name Softy called over the intercom a few minutes before the explosion. He heard the name Clak as well, a friend of his? He walked up to the grey alien and spoke in a quiet voice. "Hey, your friend is stable, and he's got a blood transfusion on the way. Can we look at your arm now?"
The alien answered with a clicking language that Mezzo didn't understand, and a wave of his other arms that he did.
"Suit yourself," Mezzo shrugged. He turned to the rest of the line. Human, pony, pony, curaxxan, pony, human, human, human, short blue biped, pony, then another human. "Whose the next?" Everyone pointed at the guy next to Clak, including Clack. He was a human, leaning against the wall with his legs straight out in front of him. Every other biped was patiently sitting cross-legged, and he was the only one whose pants were cut open. "Let me guess."
"A crate landed on me," he said in a wavering voice. "Both legs are broken. The doc gave me something to keep me from going into shock, but they had to go work on Softy." The human moved a little, shaking in pain. "How is he?" he asked through clenched teeth. "You said he was stable. How bad was it?"
"I just got here," Mezzo explained, "all I know is that he's stable but still needs a blood transfusion. Let's focus on you." The colt peeked under the flaps that remained of the guy's pants, and quickly realized this was beyond him. "Hold on, we'll get you an IV, and some painkillers until the doctor's ready for you."
"We wouldn't have made it out of there if it wasn't for him," the shaking pony beside the injured human added. She brushed her mane away from the burns on her face every time she moved her head. "He completely contained the first explosion with some sort of magic, then threw us out of the way just before the second one."
"Mezzo?"
The colt's ear twitched. "Aunt Tavi?" He looked over at her. She had just come from from the operating room, bow-tie missing, and her hooves still damp from a recent scrubbing. Blood still streaked her coat in places. "What are you doing here?"
"I came in for a checkup." The grey mare shook her head. "I was done and about to leave when the station shook."
Mezzo made his way over to her, throwing a hoof around his aunt. "Have you heard from mom?"
She returned the embrace, then stepped back. "They're fine. I was able to call them before patients started arriving. Minuette fell off the table, but Vinyl assures me its just a little scratch." With a sigh, the mare added, "Minuette asked me for a pair of sunglasses like Vinyl has... to hide the scar."
"I'm sure she was just joking," Mezzo reassured her. "Do you know where the rest of the medical equipment is? Most of these injuries are worse than a medkit is meant for."
Octavia nodded, taking the colt's medkit. "It all went in the office so I could get to the triage beds in the back of the storage closets. Leave this to me. James just got word that Growl is on her way back with more wounded, she's going to need help bringing them in." She wasted no time moving to the injured workers. "I'm going to get you some anaesthetic,ok? James will be out in a moment to set your legs. And you, how does your throat feel? Open your mouth." Octavia dug a light out of her medkit and checked the back of her throat. "Good, no burns. You're lucky." She dug out a foil packet of salve and handed it to the pony. "Apply this to your face, but try to keep it out of your eyes. We'll use nutrient gel on it later, and you shouldn't even have any scars."
Mezzo walked away as Pip joined her, pushing along a short, rolling medicine cabinet. The lock was busted off, and the other colt was opening drawers, seeing what they had to work with. Lilybelle was already working on civilian injuries. The gryphon female had her leg in a fast-set foam cast, and her mat was moved closer to the male gryphon's. His cuts were being bandaged by an already bandaged patient while the nurse was carefully extracting a kitchen knife from some poor pony's leg a few mats down.
The colt headed to the door. Outside, he could see more patients headed towards the hospital, moving in a group. He grabbed some medkits, and the nearest canvas, one with nopony on it and dragged it outside with him, mats and all. He set up across the front of the medical bay, to the side of the door, using magic to space the mats evenly so that you could walk between them.
The approaching group saw him at work and headed straight to him. He saw their approach and stood in front the tarp he laid out. "More medkits are on the way," he called out when they got close, holding the four he grabbed up in offering. "If you feel you can treat yourself with one, please wait out here. Otherwise head on in."
The group started exchanging words and glances, slowly separating into two groups. Two patients, both of whom were being carried, went straight inside. One human girl looked down at her hand, then walked over to an outside mat to sit down. Mezzo stopped her when he saw the bloody pencil point sticking out the back. "How about you just head on in?"
"Mezzo!"
The colt looked over, saw a familiar green mare wave at him from the front of a procession of security personnel and cargo workers. Makeshift stretchers, cargo sleds, and even furniture dollies were being used to help transport the injured.
He gave his medkits, three of them now, someone took one, to the nearest pony before heading over. "Growl!" As he got closer, he saw that she was bleeding, a small cut above her right eye. That didn't stop her from towing a passed out dragon at least four times her size on a skid. "What do you need me to do?"
Growl gestured to the back of the procession without stopping or slowing. "Get that pony in the back up and running again, and get her back to the cargo bay. There's a damaged power conduit messing with sensors, and we need to be sure we found everypony."
Mezzo was heading back before she even finished. There was only one pony she could have been referring to, and that was, "Ribbon!"
She was being pulled on a gravsled, curled up in a fetal position, clutching her head and rocking back and forth. He took the rope guiding the sled from the tall dark-haired human pulling it. The human tried to say something but it ended up a quiet cough. His hand rubbed his throat, drawing attention to a large bruise.
"Sorry," Mezzo said, wincing at how painful that looked. He knew from experience that eating and drinking were going to be torture for him for the next few days. "I've got her, she shouldn't go any closer to medical." As the human nodded his understanding and walked away, Mezzo turned to the moaning filly. "Ribbon?"
"It hurts," she mumbled, fitfully shaking her head back and forth, "it hurts so much!"
"Ribbon? Ribbon, focus on me." He grabbed her legs as she writhed on the platform, threatening to throw herself off by accident. "You can do that, right? Use me to focus?"
"No! No more!" She broke his grip, and buried her head under her hooves. "There's already too much! Make it go away!"
"I'm trying to, tell me how." He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Ribbon!"
She looked up, eyes focusing on the colt for the first time. "Mezzo? Why..." Her eyes went unfocused as a scream echoed in the distance.
She slumped over, falling heavy into the colt's grip, and he pulled her to him. "Ribbon! Focus on me, please. Use me to drown out the rest. I know you've done it before. I'm here, now. Please!" Mezzo gave the barely conscious filly a shake. "Ribbon?"
She groaned loudly, rolling her head and trying to focus her eyes on anything as her body hung limp in his hooves. There were too many voices, too much pain. She needed to separate herself from them, but she couldn't tell where their senses stopped, and hers began. Which thoughts were hers?
She wanted to scream, or was she already screaming? Her body felt sluggish. No, she was being restrained. No she was injured. No! Those were others. What was she feeling? She couldn't even separate that from her surroundings.
She started to cry. That much she knew was hers alone. Everyone else was facing their pain bravely, or screaming in agony, or passed out already. She alone was crying.
Somepony was shouting at her in the crowd. For a moment, she thought she saw somepony she recognized, but she was ripped away, pulled in a hundred directions at once. Was he shouting? Was he even shouting at her? He could be shouting at somepony else, and she might still hear it. She wanted it to be her. If he was there, he might be able to, "help me."
She didn't realize she spoke, but the response was immediate. Her entire body felt warm, like she was wrapped in a blanket straight out of the ionic cleaner. Everything washed away besides that warmth, leaving her drifting alone in a sea of bright electric blue. The screaming faded, the pain disappeared, and the voices grew silent. All replaced by a sky of pure white light.
Ribbon sighed deeply as her body relaxed. Something was holding her up, or she would have fallen.
"Ribbon," a concerned voice echoed through the light surrounding her, the only thought in existence, "please wake up."
Slowly, she opened her eyes. His were there to greet her. The magic surrounding his horn faded as he pulled it away from hers. The warmth faded, and the voices returned, only this time they were quieter, a manageable backround hum around the central focal point. "Mezzo," she managed a weak smile, "how did you do that?"
"I, um." The colt straightened up a little, but was limited in how much he could move by the pony still leaning limp in his embrace. "Well, my mom mentioned that your telepathy was somehow related to magic, so I thought, maybe..." He couldn't bring himself to finish his explanation, and looked down, blushing.
Ribbon shared the blush as she heard what he left out. "Mezzo, that's..."
"I know." He winced. "I'm sorry, but it seemed like you were in a lot of pain."
"Still, I..." Ribbon looked up at him. "No, I'm not mad. Mezzo, thank you. It's just, kind of embarassing." Then again, she noticed that she was laying in his arms, weak and unable to move. That was just as embarassing, if not more so, than sharing magic like an intimate couple. Plus, it had been for a perfectly valid emergency reason. It wasn't like she and Mezzo were complete strangers. And, it felt really, really good. Though, she should probably keep that to herself.
Ribbon's eyes snapped wide open in surprise at where her thoughts were wandering. She pushed away from Mezzo, trying to right herself, but settled for the colt helping her back onto the Grav-sled.
"Growl wants us to head back to the cargo bay," Mezzo said, changing the subject. "Do you feel up to that?"
"Yeah," she nodded, "I should be on my hooves in a minute."
The colt grabbed the rope tied to the sled's handle. "Don't worry, you can rest on the way."
A few minutes later.
"Over here!" Ribbon shouted.
Mezzo ran over. Ribbon had recovered enough to move on her own about halfway to the cargo bay, and they had given the gravsled to someone carrying a friend with a busted leg. Now, both of them were on hoof and still coming across others in need of help.
Ribbon stood before the doorway to a supply closet. It was shut, and seemingly undamaged, but there was no light on its control panel. No power? She knocked on it. "Hello? Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" Answered a muted voice. "I'm ok though. I'm not hurt, and I have a portable light source. Don't do anything drastic to save me. I'm the one who has to replace the door if you cut through it. I'm working on connecting an external battery to the controls now, I'll be out on my own in about two minutes."
The two would-be rescuers exchanged glances, then shrugged. "Ok," Mezzo replied, "we'll check on you when we come back through, but that may not be for a while."
"I'll be long gone by then, but thanks."
"No problem." Mezzo and Ribbon resumed their trek to the cargo bay, but stopped a short distance away. They were pretty far, but the broken door was still in sight. "What is it?" Mezzo whispered to the worried nurse next to him. "You look worried. You sensed something, didn't you?"
Ribbon nodded. "I'm not sure, but, he may have locked himself in there."
"How can you not be sure?" Mezzo moved to the wall, so he could duck out of sight if the door opened, and Ribbon moved quietly behind him. "Am I interfering somehow?"
Ribbon looked up at him. "It doesn't work like your thinking. I'll try to explain later, but you're helping me focus right now, don't second guess that." She looked back down the hallway. "No, there's something wrong with him. It's hard to pin it, but the closest thing I can describe is a patient who's been given a medication that affects neurotransmitters. He isn't... thinking properly? Thinking enough? Ugh, I don't know. It feels like he's farther away than he is."
"Ribbon," Mezzo let out a sigh, "you know what I'm about to ask."
"How in the Sam Hill am I supposed to know?" The nurse shook her head. "Look, all I know is that something is off in his brain, most likely at a chemical level, and he did not want that door opened." She noticed the odd look he was giving her, and the accompanying confusion. "It's something I learned when I was young. Creative swears and euphemisms make everypony slow down and think. Dad calls it a defense mechanism."
"Ok..." Mezzo looked back towards the door. "Question is, what do we do now? Short of asking him, is there any way we can find out if he was involved?"
Ribbon brought a hoof to her head. She was focusing, but she couldn't get a clear image. Even if she wanted to dig deeper, there was little there that she recognized. "Mezzo, I don't even think he's trying to get out. And he definitely lied about having a light. I think he's just sitting in the dark. Waiting."
"For what?" Mezzo shook his head. "We have to do something. I hope it's nothing, but you have to admit this is suspicious as hell. We can't just leave him."
He looked over at Ribbon, and she voiced his concern for him. "What if he's armed?"
Mezzo nodded. "Can we contact Growl without alerting him?"
Ribbon watched Mezzo quietly. Beneath his question, his mind was racing. And she could tell that, if she weren't here now, he would have confronted the hidden pony. "No," she told him in a stern voice, "if I weren't here, you never would have known." The colt's eye's flashed angry for a second, but he couldn't deny what she said. "I can't help it. You were the one who thought it." She looked away from his eyes. She couldn't stand it. He was frustrated that he couldn't do anything, and so was she. Honestly, if she were alone, she would have confronted the hidden pony as well. But, they were being forced to think about each other's safety as well. "We can't do anything right now. Our best bet is to contact Growl, or find some security personnel."
Mezzo pointed down the hallway. "We're only a hundred meters away from-"
Ribbon gave the colt a smack in the side. "We are not splitting up," she hissed.
"Why not?" He pointed down the hallway again. "You can stay connected to me over that distance, right?"
"And what do I do if you need help? I don't know how teleport, so you'd be-" She blinked, taken off-guard by how quickly Mezzo reacted with surprise. "What? No, not all unicorns can do that. Well, can you?" She felt the sharp stab of shame, and quickly apologized. "Sorry, forget it." Years of untreated damage to his horn limited his magical control to a child's level, and even that was an optimistic way of looking at it. "I didn't know."
Mezzo growled in frustration and tried to push it out of his mind. They had more important things to worry about than his shortcomings. He started off down the hall at a creeping pace, keeping his hooffalls quiet and controlled. "Let's just hurry."
Ribbon followed him, glancing back towards the still closed doorway. They would speed up as they moved out of earshot. Nothing had changed, and she still couldn't get a clear read on the mystery pony. She wasn't even sure it was a pony. The best case scenario right now was that it was just somepony, or other being, high on some sort of exotic drug, and riding it out in the closet so nopony would find him. Which might be more plausible if he wasn't coherent and making up complicated excuses.
She snapped her attention to the pony ahead of her. They were galloping, now that they were a bit farther from the closet. "We are not letting him get away," she scolded, "we don't even know if he's involved."
Mezzo let out a snort as he ducked into an alcove. A small security terminal, with a screen and keyboard was tucked into the wall. Instead of touching the keyboard, he hit the large red button below the screen. The terminal was similar to countless others scattered around the station, and served a variety of purposes. They could provide maps of the station, directions to places, even let station workers clock on or off shift, but their most basic function was to let anypony easily contact station security.
"I am not going to argue with you," Ribbon said as she stood beside him, waiting for the screen to activate, "especially not if you aren't actually going to say anything. What are we supposed to do? I know! It's bugging me just as much as it bothers you, but look, despite my past, I'm an unarmed, seventeen year old nurse in training, you are an unarmed... something, and, um, also seventeen. Huh, I didn't know that. Anyway, I don't even know what you do, but we aren't in any position to take on a potential terrorist right now!"
"What the hell was that about a terrorist?" Growl demanded from the screen.
Both ponies snapped to attention. "We've encountered a suspicious pony," Mezzo reported, "He's locked himself in the supply closet near junction 4-a on this level."
"I can't get a read on him," Ribbon added, "he isn't blocking my telepathy, but there is something strange about his thoughts. His neurotransmitter levels may be chemically modified right now."
The older mare frowned down at whatever device was connecting her to the screen. "Mercenaries sometimes use anxiety-reducing drugs during high stress missions." She scratched her chin. "Shit," she whispered to herself, "we can't be sure, and we can't track him because of the damage in that section." With a snort, she started issuing orders. "Get out of there, and get out of there now. I'm sending everyone I can back that way. Get to the cargo bay and alert security there, then focus on searching for survivors." She moved her hoof to break the connection, but hesitated a moment. "I hope I don't have to tell you, but do not, under any circumstances, confront this pony. You made the right choice getting out of there."
"Did we?" Mezzo asked.
"You two are still kids, let us grownups do our jobs for once." Growl turned to face another pony off screen. "I know you just got here, but care to help out? Gather five guards wearing armor, and have them take you to the armory. I'll be right behind you."
As the screen blacked out. Mezzo looked back at Ribbon.
"Mezzo, I know how you feel, but Growl is right." Shaking her head, she started back down the hall, away from the closet and towards the cargo bay. "We have our mission."