The queen’s voice was still echoing when Twilight threw up a shield to block off the doorway. “Get behind me,” she said. Not that she needed to, since just about everypony was behind her already. Guns up, yet the princess was the one in front. Funny how alicorns skewed things like that.
Bang bang bang. Applejack tensed herself for the moment the door would buckle, yet it held. It didn’t even shake. “We both know that there is only one way this can end!” the queen yelled. “Give up now and we’ll go easy on you!”
“Not a chance!” Twilight shot back. “If you want this station, you’re gonna have to work for it!”
A high-pitched, two-toned laugh. “Do you honestly think you can win this?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But we’re not going to just give it up.” Pause. “Maybe we can talk this over.”
Every single person around stared at Twilight. Even the sounds the queen was making went silent. “What are you doing?” hissed Spitfire.
“Trying something new,” Twilight whispered back. “I don’t think it’ll work. But we can try.”
“Do you at least have the nullwave thing ready?”
“I had to take the grenade apart for the catalyst.”
Spitfire cursed so much it seemed her name was about to become literal.
“Talk?” asked the queen. “Talk? What sort of… Oh, we don’t even have the words. What can you possibly hope to accomplish?”
“Finding common ground, perhaps finishing this with no more death, maybe starting an alliance?”
“Oh, that is rich. With this introduction?”
“I’ve done better with worse.”
The queen laughed. “Well, aren’t you precious. Very well. Open the door and-”
Spitfire was shaking her head, but Twilight’s horn pulsed. After a moment, she said, “First, tell the changelings around you to leave. You’re coming in. No one else.”
A pause. A very pregnant pause. Somehow, Applejack got the feeling that the queen had been shocked for the first time. “How do you… Never mind.” A high-pitched squeaking and clicking, and then some muffled rustling. It went on for nearly thirty seconds before dying down. How many changelings were there outside?
Twilight’s horn pulsed again. “That’s better,” she said. A lavender glow surrounded the bay door’s controls and the door slid open a mere two feet before stopping.
Immediately, sound picked up again outside and something black blurred through the gap, smashing into Twilight’s shield. Twilight fiddled with the controls again and the doors closed back up; Applejack could hear something squishing in the crack. Good riddance, yet she still shuddered at the thought.
The queen was inside the door, screaming as it battered at Twilight’s shield. It was, if anything, even bigger than before, downright towering over the ponies. Whatever Twilight had done to it back in habitation, it hadn’t slowed it down; Applejack couldn’t see a single out-of-place bump on its carapace. The guards immediately fanned out, all of them aiming their guns at it, but none of them fired. Not even Spitfire. Not yet.
Twilight grit her teeth. For a second, Applejack was worried that she wouldn’t be able to hold the shield, then she said, “I said we could talk. If you don’t talk, I’ll crush you against the doors.” To punctuate her words, she pushed the shield a bit closer to the steel.
The queen’s attacks slowed to a stop. She blinked at each pony in turn, making them quake, then turned a smile of sugary malice on Twilight. “Oh? Just like time, we suppose? Which didn’t stop us?”
“It delayed you,” said Twilight. “That’s all we need.”
“Hmm.” The queen frowned. “So you have a plan.” The squint she gave Twilight was predatory. “What is your plan, we wonder?”
“Talk to you,” said Twilight. She sat down, giving the queen a glare every bit as intense as the one she was receiving.
“You- You were serious?” barked the queen. “We knew you were naïve, but this?” (Spitfire and a few other guards gave Twilight a Look.)
“It’s worth a shot,” Twilight replied, shrugging. “If I-”
The queen laughed again, high-pitched, screeching, warbling, mocking. “You are something else, pony,” it cackled. “There is nothing you possess, nothing you can offer, that we cannot take for ourselves. We have devoured entire star clusters. We are legions of legions. You are nothing compared to us.”
“No.”
Applejack whirled. Thorax, of all people, was stepping forward, obviously scared, yet standing there all the same. “D-don’t do it,” Thorax said as it shook. “They’re… Every one of them’s a Swarm to themselves.”
“Oh. You,” spat the queen. It began pacing inside the shield, prowling, glaring at Thorax all the while. “There was a reason we cut you out, you know.”
“This is wrong!” protested Thorax. “Do- Do you know what you’re doing?”
The queen hissed in impatience. “Spreading. Devouring. Destroying. Providing sustenance and security for the Swarm. You say we’re killing other Swarms? That’s the idea. What if that one-” It jabbed a foot at Twilight. “-is lying? It’s in her best interests.”
“She’s not!” yelled Thorax, but it didn’t sound very sure of itself.
“Of course she’s not,” the queen said sardonically.
“Do you really think that’s all life is?” Twilight asked. If she was straining to keep the shield up, it was impossible to tell. “Just a struggle to survive? Maybe if you-”
“We do not care,” said the queen. “Why should we? Do you know how little you mean to us? Perhaps you don’t.” Its eyes glinted as it leered at Applejack, who took a step back. “You know that friend of yours?” the queen continued. “Lightning Dust, we believe her name was?”
“She ain’t my friend,” said Applejack weakly. Those eyes were like lasers, piercing straight through to her heart, rooting her to the spot.
“Oh, how can we tell, your relationships are all so pointlessly complex.” The queen waved a leg dismissively. “After her encounter with you, she came to us, begging for help. She deserved it. She’d gotten us this far. We’d be nothing without her. And everything she said was true. It was only logical. But, heh, why bother with the pathetic pleas of food?” It licked its lips with a tentacle-like tongue. “Her mind was delicious.”
Applejack swallowed. She wanted to say that Lightning had gotten what she’d deserved, but the idea of her thoughts getting eaten was terrifying. And the queen was looking at all of them like they were a buffet spread.
Then Twilight spoke up again. “So, just to make things totally clear,” she said, “you’re not, in any way, ever going to consider making friends with us?”
The queen rolled its eyes. “By this point, we’re amazed you can even stand up straight, your kind misses the obvious so much.”
“Alright,” said Twilight casually. “Just making sure.”
She immediately crushed the queen between her shield and the bulkhead.
Applejack jumped at the squishing sound, but Twilight didn’t notice a thing. She just moved the shield out a little, then pushed it back in, gathering it up and constantly pushing it in and out until the queen had the consistency of paste. When that was done, she compacted the inky, oily mess into a ball, barely two feet across.
“Whoa…” said Spitfire, nearly awestruck. “That’s… something.”
“Good riddance,” came Blueblood’s voice.
Applejack turned. At some point during the talk, Blueblood and Trixie had come up behind them. Trixie was shocked and pale, while Blueblood had his jaw set and his eyes were hard.
“What’re you doing here?” demanded Spitfire before anypony else could say a thing.
“Uh,” said Trixie, flattening her ears. Her eyes darted around. “We were…”
“Seeing you off,” Blueblood said smoothly. “Trixie here is the proud sort and, as such, has, ah… difficulties expressing sympathy for other ponies.” Trixie shot him a glare and he continued, “Make no mistake, it’s there, it’s simply something she’s not used to doing.”
“Yes!” Trixie said quickly. “Trixie, ah, Trixie is… grateful that you’re… doing this and she… wants to wish you good luck.”
“As do I,” said Blueblood.
“Oh,” said Spitfire. She and Applejack exchanged looks. “Uh… thanks.”
Blueblood nodded, then looked at Twilight, still holding the queen in her magic. “Are you okay?”
“Okay enough,” said Twilight. Her breathing was a bit heavier than normal, but at least she wasn’t sweating. “Keeping that thing contained is tricky, but I can hold it. If I let it go, I’m sure it’ll just slide off somewhere and reform. But I can do this.” She put another shield up in front of the doorway. “Get ready. The changelings aren’t right up next to the door, but I bet they’ll charge it once we open it.”
“Form up!” yelled Spitfire. The guards immediately fell into a line; Applejack found herself delicately shoved to the middle. Trixie and Blueblood stepped back to give them room, and with a little twist of magic, Twilight opened the bay doors enough for them to move through. Darkness yawned beyond and Applejack swallowed. Yay.
Still keeping the queen imprisoned, Twilight sent a ball of light out through the crack. When it revealed nothing, the line started moving forward, step by step and bit by bit. Nothing. A little more. Nothing. Still more. Nothing.
And before Applejack knew it, they were all outside. The dark seemed oppressive, but they were okay for the moment. “Close it!” Twilight howled back. A few moments later, the doors slid shut with a portentous thud.
And they were alone.
One by one, the ponies clicked their suit lights on. “Think the changelings destroyed the lightbulbs?” Spitfire asked.
“Maybe,” said Twilight. “I don’t know how well-”
“We can see in the dark,” said Thorax quietly. “Actually, we don’t even need to see. We can… your language doesn’t have a word for it.”
“Uh-huh,” said Applejack. Her light danced across various surfaces, all of them with no traces of changelings. “And how many little buggers’re around us right now?”
“None.” Pause. “That I can tell.”
“Ominous,” Spitfire said casually. “Keep moving.”
They crept up the stairs, flashlight beams dancing across every surface. Applejack was struck by how clean it all was. She’d been seeing black-smeared surfaces for so long, it was almost unnerving to see a place where no changelings had… left anything. She wanted to say it was because no changeling had been able to come down here, but given how quickly the queen had found them, more likely, no changeling had bothered to come down here.
They reached a small maintenance room that connected to the GUTS, stuffed with tables and tools that had been pushed aside on previous visits. Spitfire called a halt and immediately turned to Twilight. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Twilight said, nodding. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Spitfire squinted at her. “I mean, you look okay.” (A sentiment Applejack agreed with; Twilight barely looked like she was straining.) “But less than an hour ago, you were inches from death, and now…” She gestured at the ball holding the queen’s body.
Thorax suddenly cleared its throat. “Um. Guys?” it asked quietly.
Twilight shrugged. “Alicorn. Plus, I’ve got something to focus on now.”
“Guys?” Thorax’s voice was only slightly louder.
Spitfire’s nod was skeptical, but she still nodded. “Well, let me know if you think you’re gonna-”
“Guys!” squeaked Thorax. It was high-pitched enough to make everyone jump. “We need to leave. Now.”
“Why?” asked Twilight. “What’s wrong?”
“I, I don’t know,” Thorax said, looking around. “But I’ve got this bad feeling, it’s like a pressure on my head, that if we stay here-”
A wrench suddenly flew from one of the tables at Twilight, melting into one of the tetrapodal changelings with a shriek. Twilight yelped and batted it away, but before it had hit the floor, another one had leapt from a shelf, wrapping itself around her horn.
Disrupting her magic.
Breaking the shield.
And before Applejack knew what was happening, the changeling queen was devouring Thorax.
The second the shield had fallen, the… mass of slime that the queen was had grown tentacles and blindly swung out for the nearest body. That body had proven to be Thorax, and the queen immediately flowed over it, around it. Thorax opened its mouth to scream, but the queen was crushing its trunk so hard it couldn’t draw breath. The black mass rolled over Thorax’s mouth, then both of them tumbled down the stairs, out of sight, into the darkness.
It had only taken seconds. Twilight hadn’t fully wrestled the changeling off her horn. Nopony had managed to get a shot off or even raise their guns. They gawked down the stairs, at the black from which wet sounds were coming. Twilight blinked, her mouth slightly open, then snatched her wings shut. “We need to move!” she said with more authority than Applejack had heard from her before. “If the queen gets its biomass back-”
Just like that, everypony was moving again, like a wave that nearly swept Applejack off her feet and into the GUTS. The group grabbed onto one of the container clamps and shot off, so quickly Applejack needed a moment to reorient herself.
In one direction, she heard a loud scream. A familiar one. One of triumph and hatred mixed together. Whatever the queen had been doing to Thorax, it was done, now.
So that direction was toward the bay. Good to know.
“There it is!” said Spitfire, pointing. A tunnel branched off from the main shaft some distance away, clearly labelled Magnetosphere. “Not much farther-”
Then a black mass came pouring in from the far end of the GUTS. For a second,
The shaft was, almost literally, clogged with changeling drones. They came pouring in from the end, from side tunnels, from vents, nearly everywhere they could. It must’ve been every changeling on the station, there were so many. The air buzzed with the sounds of their wings and their cold blue eyes glinted from every corner, always advancing, always coming for the ponies, always moving to cut them off.
It was too many. They could never fight that horde off.
But before Applejack’s blood could freeze, Spitfire yelled out, her voice somehow still steady. “We’re not letting them stop us!” she roared. “Let ’em have it!”
With that, every pony pointed their guns at the oncoming horde and fired.
The sounds of the barrage filled the shaft, bounding and rebounding, folding back on themselves. Gunsmoke threaded through the air before them. It was like the atmosphere was shaking. Twilight added her own blasts of magic, complex spells Applejack knew she couldn’t comprehend. And with that many changelings coming, ponies barely needed to aim. So they kept firing and firing and firing.
And, miraculously, the rush slowed. As bullets ripped through the drones’ bodies, they twitched, their flight paths altered just a bit, and they bumped into the drones next to them. The jam cascaded from changeling to changeling, clogging up the GUTS and slowing them down. Just enough.
Behind the ponies, the queen roared. Louder. Stronger.
“GO!” yelled Spitfire. She shoved a pony towards the magnetosphere. Applejack kicked off the rails and glided through the air, going straight for the tunnel but briefly helpless-
She flew in and bounded diagonally off the wall. It wasn’t much of a tunnel, just a brief entryway for gravity reorientation before the actual door. Applejack managed to twist so she was rightside up when gravity reasserted itself and landed like a pro. She swung around and pulled the nearest pony into the gravity field, then stepped aside as more ponies came in. A few guards. Then Twilight. More guards. She hit the button and the door to the magnetosphere hissed open.
Spitfire wasn’t moving. She’d fire two shots at the oncoming changelings, then spin around, graceful in zero-G, and fire a few shots down toward where the queen had to be coming. Each shot slowed the changelings a bit more; maybe it was doing the same for the queen. “Spitfire!” Twilight yelled. “Come on!” The other guards were already inside the magnetosphere.
“Just go!” Spitfire shot at the confused mass of changelings again, taking a drone in the head. She swung around for the queen. “I’ll hold them off for-”
Click.
It was a very quiet click. But Applejack had been expecting a bang, and that made that click the loudest sound in the world. Everypony froze.
And as Spitfire started fumbling with reloading, the queen came charging.
Compared to what it had been, it was emaciated and thin, yet Applejack had never imagined it could be so angry. It flew through the air, fangs bared, eyes burning, roaring with fury. Spitfire faltered and looked up at it, agape. Applejack wanted to do something to help, but her legs had locked up in fear.
The distance between the two was closed in mere seconds. The queen lunged at Spitfire and-
A lavender haze yanked Spitfire away and the queen hit the wall. Spitfire tumbled across the floor, into the magnetosphere control room, and came to a stop right next to Twilight. As Twilight stomped on the button to close and lock the outer door, she scowled down at Spitfire. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself, you know,” she said disapprovingly. “If you can save us all and still live, why wouldn’t you?”
Spitfire’s ears twitched, like she hadn’t thought about that. “…Dunno,” she said. “Caught up in the heat of the moment, I guess.” She rubbed her face. “I’m tired.”
“Well, c’mon.” Applejack stepped forward and offered Spitfire a hoof. “We’re almost done.”
Something smashed against the outer door. It didn’t shake.
“Almost only counts in balefire bombs,” Spitfire muttered. But she got up, and when Applejack smiled at her, she smiled back.
Something buzzed electrically, and it wasn’t from outside. Applejack turned around and got a good look at the magnetosphere.
It was a large control room, with banks upon banks of computer stations. Off in one corner, a staircase led up to a maintenance catwalk. And taking up the bulk of the room was the magnetosphere generator itself: a colossal glass cylinder surrounding a glowing column of machinery and crystals. A rune-inscribed ring, lightning dancing across its spokes, was running up and down the column, humming all the while. Every now and then, the lightning would crackle a bit more than usual. It kept cosmic radiation away from Golden Oaks, and that was all Applejack knew about it. Even with her engineering neuromods, some of the specifics of the process escaped her, it was so complex. Yet in spite of that complexity, Twilight’s switch could be done in seconds. Supposedly.
The guards swept the room for several moments. No (obviously visible) changelings. Twilight stepped forward. “Alright,” she said, “we just need to-”
Wham. The queen screamed outside and the doors began groaning. Immediately, Twilight spun around and put up a shield around the door to hold it shut. “They’re trying to break through,” she grunted. “I can hold them off, but I don’t know for how long.” She fished around in her spacesuit and passed a small mess of wires and arcane components to Applejack. The thing that would create the nullwaves once it was properly installed. “You’ll need to make the changes to the shield generator, Applejack.”
Applejack gingerly took the device as everypony looked at her. All their hopes were riding on this little doohickey. She’d read and memorized the instructions, the ones that had seemed so simple down in the cargo bay but now felt weighty. And why wouldn’t they? Even if she wasn’t working against time before the changelings broke in, all of Golden Oaks was depending on her.
But no pressure.