//------------------------------// // 22 - Isolation // Story: The Black Between the Stars // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// The monster hadn’t come down the shaft. Why would it need to? There was nopony alive down here. Applejack lay on that elevator, curled up, eyes blankly staring at nothing. Water dribbled from her suit, pooling on the roof or trickling back down into the shaft. She’d cried herself out some time ago. The cold water in her uniform had whisked heat away from her body at first, but now it was an unpleasant sort of lukewarm. Her breath came in long, slow draws not unlike a death rattle as her chest moved up and down. Sometimes, she tried to think, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts in line for more than a few seconds at a time. She didn’t move much. Staying still was easier. When was this all going to end? She was so tired, getting battered down whenever she seemed to be making headway. It’d only been a few hours since she’d woken up in the trash compactor, but her mind felt like she’d been at it for days. She just wanted to roll up into a ball and rest. Right here seemed to be good. If she did her resting right here, she wouldn’t need to move. But if she stayed right here, she’d be found eventually. Changelings were still prowling the station. So was Lightning Dust. So was that… thing. How long before they broke into the cargo hold? Maybe hours. Maybe minutes. Maybe they’d done it already. Maybe she was the only pony left alive on board the station. Except Twilight. The thought jarred Applejack’s mind so hard it made her physically twitch. Twilight was probably still alive. If the changelings knew where she was, they’d’ve killed her already, right? So she had a good chance of staying safe. And she was the one who’d made the plan. She knew how to run it. She could get everything working again. What would happen if Applejack laid back and let the changelings take over the station, anyway? Would they just stop and sit around, twiddling their tentacles? For all Applejack knew, they might figure out how to fly shuttles and get down to Equus. Yeah. No way was she going to let that happen. Maybe it was a bit of a stretch, but she didn’t care. All those thoughts were a dozen little adrenaline shots to Applejack’s system, none of them much good on its own, but they all slowly built up. Breathing deeply, she got up. She’d headed up here to work and keep moving around, she was going to keep working and moving around until it was the death of her (har har). Water sloshed inside her uniform; she awkwardly got on her back and held her legs up to let it trickle out. Once she didn’t feel like she was walking around in her own personal skintight bathtub, she got back up. She couldn’t believe she’d felt so determined to do nothing before. Her hat was floating around the elevator, having been knocked off at some point. She fished it out, plonked it back on her head, and immediately swelled with determination. Spike had wanted to rescue Twilight. She was going to rescue Twilight. She looked up the shaft. It stretched into the darkness. Even with the ladder, the top was a long ways away. Better start climbing. Applejack didn’t know how long she climbed, but she did it slowly, to make as little sound as possible. Maybe the thing wouldn’t hear her. She really needed a better name for it than “the thing”. It seemed like some sort of super-changeling. A king? A queen? “Queen” sounded better. It was a queen, then. Maybe the queen wouldn’t hear her. But, as Applejack climbed, another problem reared its ugly head: she was still in an elevator shaft. There were only so many ways to get out, most of them very visible doors. Not to mention the changelings in the stairwell. And, of course, the queen had already shown herself to be quite intelligent. Anything Applejack could think of, the queen had probably thought of it, countered it, and countered any possible counters. Although… she could only be in so many places. She was last in Water Treatment. How many ways out from there were there? Unfortunately, Applejack didn’t know. She craned her head up. Just how far up did this shaft go? Very far, apparently; she couldn’t see the top. Good enough. If she climbed far enough, she might be able to get above Water Treatment, bypassing the changeling-infested stairwell entirely. And from there? Well, “figuring it out when she got to it” had worked well so far, and Applejack wasn’t about to fix what wasn’t broke. She’d see where she got out. Applejack climbed and climbed and climbed, hearing nothing, alert for everything. If she’d been anything other than an earth pony, it would’ve been incredibly tiring, but she barely noticed any aches or pains. She just kept climbing through the dark. She had a job to do, and by gum, she was going to- -skrskrskr- She froze, ears up. -skrskrskr- It was a chittering sound, not very loud, but just barely loud enough to be close. Muffled; it was coming through something, not in the shaft. Clinging to the ladder, Applejack slowly pivoted around, scanning the walls of the shaft. She was a few feet above the level of a door. She wiggled her ears to get a better sounding. It did certainly seem like the changelings were right on the other side of the door. While Applejack hadn’t been planning on going through the door, it did make her think: changelings were probably swarming up and down the outside of the shaft in the station proper. They could be waiting for her to come out. It might’ve only been luck that she heard them now at all. So: it would probably be best if she found a way out of the shaft that didn’t involve doors. Somehow. She nearly groaned, but that would’ve been made louder by the shaft. She settled for swinging back to a normal ladder-climbing position, resting her head against a rung, and sighing. At least, that was the plan, but she only got a third of the way through; she was mid-swing when she saw what was right in front of her. She leaned to one side to get a better look. A vent cover. She could feel a slight wind coming out now that she was paying attention. It didn’t look particularly heavy-duty, either; maybe she could bash it in with something. It was big too, tall and wide enough to walk in if she kept her head low… What the hay. It was a doorless way out. Granted, she didn’t have the slightest idea of where she’d be going, but there it was. Actually, how could the queen predict her plan if she didn’t have a plan to predict? Genius! (Ha ha, yeah, right.) Applejack brought her hoof back, then swung it forward with all the might she could manage without falling off the ladder. The cover dented. A few more solid thwacks caved it in completely. She pushed it aside and clambered into the ventilation system. Almost immediately, she began coughing. Dust had gathered in the vents and not been blown back out. Not until a certain pony had decided to go traipsing around inside. But the ducts held her weight and she wasn’t too loud. It was cramped, but she could still walk. Barely. Thank Celestia for the huge amounts of air needed by space stations. It was dark, but her flashlight solved that problem quickly. She crouch-walked in a little ways and turned the first corner she found. After a brief pause to listen for anyone else (nothing but her own echoes), she kept walking. Where was she going? Didn’t really matter at the moment, but she probably needed to figure it out soon. So… some ways in, then up several levels. She didn’t know where Life Support was in relation to Neurothaumatics, but “down” seemed good. She shuffled along, wincing at the sounds of the vent flexing beneath her. Soon, she came to another junction. This one actually had a vertical component, a narrow shaft reaching both up and down out of sight. There were actually rungs in the walls. Meant for maintenance crews, perhaps? She wasn’t about to worry too much about that. Up she went. One set of horizontal cross shafts. Two. Three. Applejack got off the ladder at four, took a moment to re-orient herself relative to the elevator shaft, and set off away from it. She didn’t have the slightest idea of where she was, but she’d find out soon enough. Hopefully. She almost felt reassured as she turned a corner and ran smack dab into a changeling drone. Both quadrupeds were walking when they hit each other. They instinctively raised their heads, only to bang hard into the vent top immediately. Their legs collapsed beneath them and they fell to the ground. Stars swam in Applejack’s vision and the world tilted as she tried to focus on the changeling. She couldn’t marshal her thoughts well enough to react to anything. The drone blinked twice, shook its head, and narrowed its eyes at Applejack. As it got to its feet, it bared its teeth and hissed. Applejack reflexively shoved her hoof forward in an awkward punch. Thanks to the cramped space, it was a light hit, barely doing any damage. Then she realized it was the leg her gun was attached to. At point-blank range, the buckshot round nearly annihilated the changeling’s body, reducing it to not much more than sludge in an instant. The contained blast was so loud Applejack heard it for only a fraction of an instant before temporary deafness kicked in. The slight wind in the vents blew the smoke back in her face and, eyes watering, she sneezed at the smell of burning powder. Then she retched at the stench of mulched changeling. Well, that was certainly a way to get her brain focused again. Ugh, she needed to get out and away from- Hold up. What were the odds that she’d run into a changeling in the vents? There had to be miles of ductwork in the station, and one found her right here? Okay, maybe she was making a lot of noise and it had heard her from the outside. (Hay, her making a lot of noise was probably the reason she hadn’t heard it in the first place.) But if it had heard her from the outside, it had to have come in somewhere. And if it’d come in, maybe that entry point was near. So maybe… Grimacing, Applejack stepped through the remains of the changeling’s body. Just because she was wearing a suit didn’t make it any less squicky. She managed to shake the thought off when she spotted a junction ahead. Three options: forward, left, right. Better than one, she supposed. Once she reached the junction, she took a look down each possible way. Right: nothing. Forward: nothing. Left: a little patch of light shining down from above. Left it was. When Applejack reached the patch, it revealed itself to be a narrow opening into a bathroom, the cover ripped away by the changeling. Applejack squinted through the opening, but she couldn’t see any changelings in the immediate area. After taking a psych-up breath, she squeezed on through and wiggled onto the damp tiling. As bad as it smelled, it was still better than a vent full of gunshotted changeling. She took a few deep breaths of relatively clean- There were two identical rolls of toilet paper in front of her. Applejack whipped up her gun and- Click. No ammo. She hastily patted her suit down, looking for- Wrench. She swung it at the less likely roll. It crumpled like any toilet paper roll would. The other roll chittered and suddenly bounced away. Applejack pounced, trapping it beneath her, and pounded it into the floor, over and over. At some point, it stopped being a screaming, skooshy roll and started being a silent, skooshy corpse. Right. Don’t get cocky. The little shapeshifting buggers were still around. She needed to find that neuromod and Twilight, fast. She trotted to the door, poked her head into the hall, and- No. No way. She recognized this hallway. It had the right bloodstain. She was already in Neurothaumatics proper. Well, probably. She looked to her left and- Yes, there was the checkpoint to the hardware labs. Huh. She wouldn’t have expected ascending from Life Support to get her this close. But that route was chosen for a reason, so- No, bad time for musing. She reloaded her shotgun (she only had a single spare shell left when she was done) and set out for the neuromod removal chamber. Which was less than a changeling-free minute away. Soon, she was standing in front of the doors, right where Thunderlane had died. His body still lay there, but it didn’t cause Applejack’s bile to rise like it had before. For better or worse. The door was still unlocked from when Trixie had hacked into it. Small favors. She entered. For a moment, Applejack was terrified that she wasn’t going to find what she was looking for, that the neuromod had been spirited away since the last time she was in the chamber. But, no, there it was, sitting on the table, right where she’d left it. She picked it up, turned it over. It didn’t look particularly special. It glinted at her in the light, just like any other neuromod would. But somewhere in this one, somehow, was one half of the key to the ponies’ salvation. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could still get out of this alive. She just needed the other half. “I’m comin’ for ya, Twilight,” she said, staring at the neuromod. On a whim, she bit it. When the metal didn’t squeal in pain, she assumed it wasn’t a disguised changeling and pocketed it. Okay. One down. One to go. She could’ve gone back to the storage bays and dropped the neuromod off, but the quickest way was back the way she’d come, which… wasn’t looking too hot. At that point, detouring to Habitation was barely anything. The habitation decks were accessible through the arboretum. Probably other ways, too, but that was the way Applejack knew. It gave the crew something nice to look at before they left for their jobs. The main elevator up to the arboretum from the lobby was wrecked, but there were emergency stairs. Applejack reached the lobby quickly. Not much change from when she’d been here before. It was strange, how peaceful it all looked. So grand and majestic and utterly at odds with everything that had happened. It was… uncanny, a façade over something terrible. Something she could fix, though. Maybe. The emergency stairs were in a back corner of the lobby. So many stairs. Applejack went up and up and up until her head was spinning and she was barely even halfway there. Thankfully, the only two changeling drones she encountered on the way up went down quickly with a combination of shotgun shells and a wrench to the face. They were barely even hiding; they came stampeding down the stairs so loudly Applejack could’ve heard them from a mile away. The arboretum hadn’t changed much by the time she reached its floor. She could still see the remains of her fight with the telepath there. It made her think: maybe the changelings were avoiding her. She’d taken down one of the biggest, baddest among them; were they scared of her? She liked the feeling, but she couldn’t rely on it. The entrance to the habitation decks was right at the top of the arboretum, not far from the greenhouse. Applejack hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but now she flinched at the debris — natural and artificial alike — around the door. Equipment, clothes, books, even a lamp or two, all trampled. There’d been a stampede to get out when the changelings invaded. Swallowing, Applejack stepped up to the door and tapped the button to open it. The smell hit her first. Applejack cringed and put a hoof to her nose, but the uniquely metallic stench of blood still drifted through the air. It wasn’t as overpowering as she had feared and still more so than she had hoped. Most of the crew had probably been asleep and only the lucky ones had gotten away. When the lights flickered on every few seconds, Applejack got a glimpse of the sort of devastation she hadn’t seen in a while. Windows had been broken. Doors, forced open. Panels had been ripped from the floor and ceiling, letting wiring, vents, and lamps dangle freely. If it hadn’t been nailed down, it’d been thrown about, and even if it had been nailed down, it might’ve been ripped up and thrown about anyway. Right near Applejack’s suit was a broken flower pot, the dirt and ceramic crunching beneath her hooves. And, of course, the blood and bodies. Blood smears coated the walls and floor. Applejack could only imagine what had made some of them: swirls, straight scrapes, pools… And right within range, she could already spot three bodies. Unlike some of the others, which had been oddly woundless, these had been… torn. Applejack shuddered and turned her eyes upward. But Twilight was somewhere in here. She had to move. So move she did. The top of the two habitation decks was for high-to-midlevel employees and was divided into a series of rooms. There were three or four real beds to a room, along with a small recreation area in case privacy, peace, and quiet were urgently needed when playing foosball. Each room connected to its adjacent rooms with doors, and a slim hallway, barely wide enough for three ponies to walk side-by-side, ran down the middle between two sets of rooms. Windows let the inhabitants see into the hallway (assuming they weren’t blackened for privacy). It was down this hallway that Applejack set off. Somehow, she got the feeling that Twilight was at the very end, in the sleeping pods of the typical employees like herself. It was where you’d end up if you kept running. Not the most logical of reasons, but then, tonight hadn’t been very logical. Applejack walked, doing her best to ignore the destroyed paneling, the bodies, the skittering in the ceiling above, the power outages, the- Applejack froze and snapped her ears upward, her breath frozen. Nothing. Definitely not the skittering she’d heard before. Or had she been imagining it? No. Even if she had, she couldn’t take that chance. She waited. And waited. And waited. And waiSkrt. It was literally right above her. Applejack quickly took a step back as she whipped her gun up and fired. A shrieking changeling, leaking ichor, plummeted down when the ceiling panel it’d been hiding above shattered. It hit the floor hard, writhing- Stomp. It stopped writhing. Applejack swallowed and popped the last shell into the gun. She hadn’t expected this to be easy, had she? She continued on. She’d walked down this hallway practically daily, but in this new environment of flickering lamps and dead ponies, it seemed to stretch on for ages. Still, finally, Applejack came to a small, short stairwell. She shone her light down. Nothing. She inched down like she was walking on eggshells. The lower habitation deck was technically for low-level employees, but was arguably more high-class. The spaces were bigger, the diversions more varied, and the bathrooms were down here, anyway. Even the hallways were wider, to accommodate more ponies. The lighting was dim, but that didn’t matter; it was a place Applejack knew practically based on muscle memory. Except, at some point, an entire pool table had been thrown through the wall of the recreation room, semi-blocking the hallway off. Applejack easily climbed over it, but she might need to detour through the rec center on the way back. No telling what state Twilight was in. She shuddered and did her best to ignore that little fact. Right at the end, it opened up into the main “sleeping quarters”. Over half a dozen rows of personal sleeping pods, not much more or less than tightly-packed bunk beds, lay before her. They were more comfortable than they looked, but they were obviously focused on saving space. The lights were just as bad as before, but, again, Applejack knew it well enough that that didn’t matter. She just had one more thing to do. Twilight was probably in here, somewhere. Where would that somewhere be? In one of the pods, most likely. Which pod? …Huh. Hmm. There were a lot of pods. Her heart sinking, Applejack stared at the aisles. What was she thinking? There was no way she could search all- Yes there was. Slowly, deliberately, painstakingly, one at a time. It’d take a while, but what was she expecting? That just left the question of which pod to start with. …Her own. Why not? Pods were labelled alphabetically and Applejack, as an “A”, had the bad luck to be near the back of the room. At least it wasn’t far. She trotted down the aisles, her ears twitching back and forth for any possible sounds of changelings. Nothing. Why was that so ominous? Applejack reached her pod quickly. She crouched down to get a better look at it — it was one level above the floor — and inhaled sharply. Something reeked of blood and there were smears on the lower ledge. She swallowed and slowly reached for the handle, not sure she’d like what she’d find. Her hoof was shaking when she finally touched the handle. Gritting her teeth, Applejack yanked the door open like she was pulling off a bandage. Twilight was lying inside, staring up at the ceiling. Her uniform was torn and she was covered in blood, but she was there. And she was breathing. “Twi?” Applejack asked, giving her a light jiggle. Twilight’s eyes fluttered and she turned her head over. Her eyes were glazed, but she managed to focus them enough. “Applejack?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, but steady. Applejack grinned. Twilight was going to be okay. “Can you walk?” “I don’t… think so…” Twilight rolled over and weakly tugged herself out of the pod. A large gash lined with dried blood wound its way across one side of her trunk, narrowly missing her wing. She only managed to stand up for a moment before her legs collapsed. “Well, I’ll get you outta here anyway. C’mon.” Applejack carefully maneuvered Twilight to drape across her back. When Twilight didn’t scream in pain, Applejack assumed it was good enough. She set off back for the hallway, ready to leave these dark chambers and get back to the cargo bay. Bang. Applejack froze. It wasn’t a gunshot, more like a hard impact in- A vent cover smashed out of the ceiling in the hallway, hitting the floor so hard it twisted. Something seemed to drip from the vent. Something that looked like a head. Biting back a curse, Applejack shuffled sideways into an aisle, flipped her flashlight off, and dropped onto her stomach. How many shots did her gun have left? Just four. And she didn’t even know what she was up against. She peeped around the corner to get a better look. It was indeed a head; she could see the eyes as it slowly looked around. Its pupils were glowing red in the dark, like a cat’s, and its irises were glowing green, not like a cat’s. Then that head turned a full 180 degrees to be oriented right-side-up and the rest of the body followed it out. The queen didn’t crawl out of the vent so much as flow, boneless liquid held in a vaguely equine shape. Its legs stretched a little as they came down the floor, like rubber. Its skin — if you could call it that, it looked more like oily chitin than skin — shone a dark, dark green when what little light there was reflected off it. As the rest of the body followed, Applejack saw membranous wings, a carapace of rubbery black bone. Its tail hit the floor and a million tiny somethings clicked, like dozens of pins and needles being dragged across metal. The tail was still equine, but whenever the light touched it, it sparkled with the danger of a field of glass shards. Then the monster spoke. “I know you’re in here, little pony,” it lilted, spitting out the last word like a slur. It took a too-fluid step forward; the sound of its footfall was oddly flat. “Come out, or I will find you.” Applejack twitched back into her aisle and hugged Twilight’s body close. She was shaking all over, terror running throughout her body. It was all she could do to not cry in fear. She was alone in the dark. Her only weapons were a wrench and a shotgun with a dwindling ammo supply. A monster was stalking her. And she needed to drag Princess Twilight out before they were both found and killed. Fuck.