The Warp Core Conspiracy

by Unwhole Hole


Chapter 28: Disinterment

Somewhere on a planet that to her had no consequential name, a hologram suddenly looked upward.

Flim shivered. “What is it?”

The hologram of Twilight Sparkle smiled. “Nothing you need to be concerned with. Nothing I need to be concerned with either, I suppose. I just find it amusing.”

Flim frowned, but seemed to disregard what the hologram had said. Because of course he would. Being a filthy organic, he had no semblance of sense or knowledge of basic logical progression. Or of the consequences of his own actions.




Leonard McCoy had seen many things in his life. Some were terrible, horrific things. There were injuries that left good men and women dead, either immediately or despite his treatments. There were diseases of every type, some natural, others abominations from ancient laboratories—or laboratories that were not quite as ancient as he would have wished to believe. What he saw floating in that tube, though, was something he had never seen before—and immediately something he wished he had never seen in the first place.

Scottie and the unicorn Moondancer—the very unicorn that had once attempted to strangle him—looked on with expressions of grave concern.

“How is she, doctor?”

McCoy reviewed the data from his medical tricorder. His knowledge of unicorn physiology was far from complete, but it was enough to understand just how dire the situation had become.

“Any other life form would have been dead but now, but she’s not. She’s hanging on, but only barely. And her vitals are dropping every second. We need to do something, and fast.”

“I have the entire engineering crew on standby, but we don’t even know where to start.”

McCoy sighed. He did not know either, but that was not an option. He was the chief medical officer. There was no way to push the issue any higher. It was up to him.

Moondancer looked up at him, her eyes reddened from suppressing her tears. He remembered her face when she had tried to kill him, how she had enough telekinetic armor to rip a man limb-from-limb—and here she was, trying to stifle her tears and pretend to be stronger than she really was.

“Can you help her?”

“I can try.” He looked back at the medical tricorder, walking around the tube and changing positions. Nurse Chapel was already attaching sensor arrays and aligning the data transmission to get a better sense of telemetry. McCoy tried to keep them from seeing that he was only barely looking at the data from the nearly useless machine, and instead inspecting the implants that had been installed in the pony suspended within the tube.

“Most of her internal organs have shut down,” he said. “If they haven't been removed entirely. The machines are keeping her alive, but they’re also siphoning energy.”

“I think that’s what this device was made for,” added Scottie. “To use her as some kind of...living battery.”

McCoy thought as quickly as he could. He could see the mutilated unicorn’s heartrate on his tricorder, and he saw that it was slowing. He had no idea how far a unicorn’s body could go, but hers was almost fully depleted. She might have had an hour, but probably less. Perhaps only a few minutes. If it stopped, he was not sure he could ever get it started again.

“What happens if we disconnect her?” asked Moondancer. Or, rather, demanded.

“All at once? Her body shuts down. She’s not strong enough. But I don’t know which parts do what and I don’t think I have time to figure it out.”

Moondancer started to visibly panic. “Well we have to do something--”

“Damn it, you pony fool, I’m trying! This isn’t exactly a standard Starfleet medical emergency!”

“Well then,” snapped Mr. Scott, “if you can’t figure it out, perhaps I should go get the hologram.”

McCoy glared at him, then looked down at Moondancer. An idea occurred to him.

Moondancer recognized it. “You have a plan.”

“I have a hypothesis,” snapped McCoy in return. “And it’s a long shot, but I think that’s all we have time for right now. Scottie, is there any way you can connect the rest of the machines back to her?”

Scottie’s eyes widened. “Connect her back to the machines? Dr. McCoy, you canna be serious--”

“She’s not stable enough for the surgery, but if my analysis of Moondancer’s physiology is correct, it might be possible to force her to regenerate. Their biology relies on a...I don’t even know the word for it, a substance, some sort of energy-bearing molecule. The thing that blew out the primary transporter when we beamed her on board.”

A look of realization came over Scottie’s face—and Moondancers.

“Her magic,” she said. “You want to reverse it. If you force magic back into her...”

“Then her body might start to regenerate just enough for the procedure. I still have a stock of the synthetic blood I made for you—thank goodness for that, I wouldn’t have time to prepare it otherwise—but we’ll barely have a razor’s edge for a margin of error.”

“That, and we don’t exactly know how to do it,” added Scottie. “They’re essentially using that poor lass as a warp drive, the energy signature is completely different from the Enterprise’s. It would take days to reconfigure the power couplings...I could probably do it in an hour or two if need be, but...”

“No, we don’t have the time.” Moondancer stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”

“Lass, you can’t--”

“My ship worked by manipulating the convergence of our fields. Hers to drive it, and mine to control it. Enough of the cockpit survived. I have parts of the control tether. I can still operate it.”

“But lass, it’s meant to be an asymmetric distribution, you canna simply reverse the flow--”

“I can. And I will.”

“And you know what that means,” said McCoy, darkly.

Scottie paused. He had no idea—but it became clear that Moondancer did.

“I wouldn’t be a pilot. I’d be a source. Pouring all my power backward into a system with no stabilizers. I’ll have to take the feedback myself.”

“It very well could kill you.”

“It would vaporize me marrow-first. A full-body reave, and then field subtraction. I know.” She looked him in the eye. “But that pony in there is Twilight Sparkle. She’s my best friend. She always was even if I was too stupid to remember it. I’ll survive. For her. Because...because she can’t be alone. Not like I was. Not after what I did to her.”




The work was performed with a speed that only Mr. Scott could have hoped to accomplish in the timeframe given. The cockpit was still present in the shuttle bay, having been moved out of the way for the project of disassembling the ship’s core. It was promptly moved back into place, with Moondancer overseeing the connection of it to what remained of the control systems remaining in the disassembled core. All told, it took less than fifteen minutes—working in mad rush while McCoy stood by, sweating harder and harder every second as he watched the pulse slowly start to skip and the already barely detectable oxygen levels continue to fall.

“It’s ready, lass. Are you--”

Moondancer levitated herself past him, getting into what was left of the cockpit and activating several of the systems that were still working. The crystals had been partially ruptured, so it was now running on power drawn directly from the Enterprise.

“You’re going to ask me if I’m sure. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. If you opened your warp core and saw the only being you’d ever loved dying inside, what would you do?”

Scottie smiled. “I’d be making sure I’m there to greet her when she wakes up, that’s what.”

Moondancer smiled. “Then make sure your ship feeds me the power I need to do my job.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, lass. She’ll give you all the power you need. And then some.”

He slapped the side of her broken ship and went about his work—and Moondancer about hers. She initialized the remainder of the systems, as if preparing for a launch. Much of the circuitry was dead or broken or otherwise removed, so she had to mentally modify the checks to accommodate, to focus on just the systems she needed. There was a way to do this, and it would have taken the best scientists and mages in Equestria months to plan—but that was mostly because all the best mages, and specifically the best living mage of all, had emigrated to the moon. Save for one, probably Moondancer’s only rival. She had been placed in a glass tube and used as a FTL core.

The system charged, but as it prepared, a thought occurred to Moondancer. She produced the crystal recording unit from her pocket and slotted it in its receptacle. While her magic manipulated the switches and field alignments in the rest of the ship, she clicked it on with her mouth.

“Twilight,” she said. “I’m about to do what I have to do. I don’t have time to explain but the crystal is about to record it and I’m sure you can figure it out. Assuming the brain damage isn’t to bad, but don’t feel bad if it is, you were always too smart for your own darn good anyway.” She sighed, once again on the verge of tears. “If I don’t make it out, I’m sorry. I was a bad friend. I never even tried to find you. I thought you left me behind, but I didn’t even look. I was too self-absorbed to see what I should have. So I’m sorry. But I’m going to do what’s right. Hopefully you don’t have to hear this recording. But if you do...I’m sorry I left you behind.”

She leaned out from the cockpit, looking back at Scottie and the horde of engineers, and McCoy at the tank.

“Are you all ready?”

“As ready as we can be!” called McCoy, back.

“Aye, lass! You’ve the trigger!”

Moonancer nodded and turned back to the controls. She looked down at them, feeling her field around her. She took a breath, knowing that this was about to hurt. A lot. Then she activated the link.




The scream was horrific. Inhuman and shrill, a cry of pure agony. McCoy shuddered, in part from the gut-wrenching and blood-curdling nature of it as in echoed through the shuttle bay, but also because he knew what it meant. The physiological damage of what she was doing. Of having her marrow literally boiling and her tissues being fractured as space itself ruptured inside her.

He did not have time to consider it. He had his own job, and time was short.

“GO!”

The engineers at their stations reached down and pulled back the release handles, manually turning them with great difficulty. The liquid inside was already starting to glow, and the pony within weakly convulsing as energy was forced into her dying body.

When the handles thudded into place, the tube retracted upward, releasing a torrent of viscous fluid. McCoy charged forward into it, even as it threatened to drive him back. The glass, already damaged from Moondancer’s misguided attempts to open it, did not retract properly and shattered, showering him with fragments. He ignored them, as did Chapel as the pair of them grabbed the pony as she dropped from the support system meant to hold her up through direct skeletal connections.

A different set of engineers, already scrubbed and prepped, immediately charged the supports with their tools, severing them and allowing the pony to drop. Chapel cleared the glass and McCoy set her down.

“Nurse, get the IV in, I’m placing sensors.”

Chapel nodded and dexterously inserted it, squeezing the bag of viscous pale-blue synthetic blood. McCoy had no idea how the pony would tolerate it without functional kidneys, but prayed that the remaining one would restart soon. That was a separate concern anyway.

He tried to place a sensor and cried out as it exploded in his hand. The pony was hot to the touch, but not exactly with heat. With a different energy. Something with an almost physical force to it. She was still being fed through the tubes in her back, still being kept alive by the sudden force of the machinery. The window was short.

McCoy began disconnecting the machinery. As quickly as he could without injuring his patient, at least, and considering that some of them were filled with megawatts of energy that she needed to live. He assessed their purpose as well as he could and tried to get them out.

“Christine, disintubate her.”

Chapel nodded, pulling the tubes from the pony’s lungs and stomach. They were in deep, and held in by a seal. They had not intended to be removed. It took a degree of force and care, but Chapel managed to get them free and cleared the airway as best as she could.

The screaming stopped. Something somewhere slowed, a deep hum ceasing with a spark and splash of electrical arcs. Somewhere, McCoy smelled something cooking.

“We’ve lost the connection!” cried Scottie.

Something slumped to the floor out of the ship. McCoy saw Moondancer had fallen out of her cockpit, her body still smoking, and she lay on the floor for a moment, not moving. He was about to order Chapel to at least check when the pony stood, shaking, and limped toward them. Her injuries were severe, and probably worse than she thought, but she was alive—which was more than could be said about McCoy’s patient.

“Doctor! We’ve lost the pulse!”

“Damn it,” swore McCoy, abandoning his attempts to pull the tubes out of her back. There was no longer time for it. “Get the bag on her!”

“The defibrillator--”

“Will kill her if you do it now! Lay her back, I’ll do it manually!”

Chapel spread the tiny pony’s limbs and laid her face-up. Her mouth was agape, her pale tongue hanging out, and her eyes were covered by the black plate that had been screwed over them. McCoy supposed that made it easier, if only a little.

He sat on top of her, pressing his hands together over her alien equivalent of a sternum. Then he took several breaths and began pressing as hard as he could over where her heart was supposed to be.

“Twilight,” croaked Moondancer, collapsing a yard away. “Twilight, no! I made it, I survived, you can’t—you can’t leave me!”

“Stay—back--I’m not done—yet!” McCoy could not push her back, and Chapel had already put a device over the pony’s face, pushing oxygen into her lungs. Scottie instead grabbed Moondancer, attempting to pull her back, but with a sudden surge of adrenaline she was able to knock him back with her telekinesis and run forward.

“Twilight! Twilight I’m sorry!” tears were streaming down her face. “It wasn’t enough, I didn’t give her enough--”

“Would somebody get this pony AWAY! And get a medical tricorder, I need vitals!”

“Doctor, we’re losing...no! Wait! Brain activity is spiking!”

McCoy continued to press until suddenly the pony attempted to sit up. McCoy immediately got off her, and Chapel removed the bag, turning the pony’s head to let her cough out a significant amount of fluid from her lungs.

Moondancer gasped. “T—Twilight?”

The pony seemed to hear and understand, but she could not stop coughing her lungs empty of her life-support coolant—followed by a significant amount of mercury-like silver. Then she was finally able to croak, if only slightly.

“M...Moonancer?”

Moondancer did not wait for McCoy’s permission, and he stepped back, not wanting to be lobbed across the shuttle bay. Moondancer wrapped her hooves around Twilight, who did her best to lift her own.

“I’m here! I’m here, Twilight, it’s me!”

“Moondancer, I can’t—I can’t see, why can’t I see?”

“I’m on it,” said Scottie, kneeling down with a powered screwdriver. “Little lass, I don’t know what’s holding this on, it might hurt.”

“Is that a Dundaxian—GAH WHY?!”

Moondancer held her down as Scottie pulled out the screws holding her mask in place. He was quick, but Moondancer could tell that it was confusing and terrifying for Twilight—until the mask came loose.

Moondancer immediately tossed it away, and Twilight winced from the light, her enormous but now clouded violet eyes looking around, confused, until locking on Moondancer’s—and then she wrapped Moondancer in the weakest hug that she had ever known.

“It’s you, it’s really you,” she wept. “It hurt, it hurt so much...but I heard you. I heard you talking to me. It was—it was the only thing that kept me going...”

“I’m going to start on the rest of the connections,” said McCoy, kneeling down. “It might hurt, and it will definitely feel very, very strange.”

Twilight looked at him and recoiled in horror. Moondancer held her tighter.

“Don’t worry, they’re friends. They helped me free you. He’s a doctor. Don’t worry, you’re free now. I’m...” She had started to cry herself. “I’m so sorry, Twilight, I didn’t know!”

Twilight held her, even as a system over a foot long was pulled from her. “You were there. You just...didn’t know it. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“Can you feel all your limbs?” asked McCoy.

“I can feel all my legs,” said Twilight, moving them slightly, even smiling a little at the joy of it. Then she frowned. “But I can’t feel my horn. Which is weird...” She reached up for it, and, finding it removed, her eyes grew wide and filled with new tears. “Oh...”

McCoy put his hand on her shoulder. “I can stabilize you, but you need a native doctor. Soon. Our ship’s transporters can’t safely move you.”

“But I can,” said Moondancer. “I can teleport us.” She looked down at Twilight. “But I need to know...who did this to you?”

Twilight stared up at her, her eyes filled with tears, and she sniffled—because not even she knew. Not who, how, or even when—and most importantly, why.