//------------------------------//
// 9 - Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat Is So Small 
// Story: Secrets in The Stars 
// by CommissarVulpin 
//------------------------------//

“Again!? Damn it!”

Spring cracked her eyes open and looked across the interior of the Hodgepodge, to where Hex and Clip were still playing tic-tac-toe. So far, every match had either resulted in a draw, or a win in the robot’s favor. She’d been trying to tune them out and get a little more sleep, but it was a futile endeavor. The addition of a few lamps filling the container with light made sleep impossible.

“The only winning move is not to play,” Clip replied smugly.

“Yeah, yeah. Best out of 71?”

Clip simply shrugged and another blank grid popped up on his eye-screens.

Beside Spring, Zuri was groggily unzipping her own sleeping bag.

“Ugh. I slept like a rock. How long was I out?”

“About ten hours,” Clip answered, in the midst of a slew of profanity from his opponent.

“Hex, give it up,” Spring urged. “Tic-tac-toe is a solved game. We had computers beating ponies at it back in my time. You don’t stand a chance.”

Hex sighed. “I know. But it keeps me distracted. I don’t always do great in zero-gee.”

Spring nodded. “I remember on my first spaceflight, I saw a pegasus having a complete panic attack.”

“Some pegasi have it worse than others. I don’t have it that bad, thankfully, I just get anxious and sick to my stomach.”

“Hey, Hex?” Zuri asked after she extricated herself from her sleeping bag.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s, the, ah, little filly’s room?”

Hex blinked. “Oh! Right over here.” He pushed off and floated over to one corner of the container, where some equipment and boxes had been strapped down to form a makeshift partition. Zuri followed him behind it.

Even though the pair was hidden from view, their voices could still be heard clearly.

“That’s the Waste Disposal Unit. You have to take this yellow tube and, um…”

Zuri sighed. “Okay, I think I can figure it out. Thanks.”

“Just press this button here when you’re done.”

“And what does this box do?”

“That? That’s the Water Reclaimer. Helps with our drinking water supply.”

“Why are they connected!?”

Zuri’s horrified cry made Clip and Needle start laughing, and even got Azure to crack a small smile; until now, the hippogriff had been stoically floating in a corner with his arms crossed.

Spring, on the other hoof, was nearly as disgusted as Zuri was.

“It’s perfectly safe!” she could hear Hex sputter as Zuri shoved him out from behind the partition. “It’s chemically identical—”

“Don’t make me even think about it!”

When she had finished, she came out glaring daggers at Clip and Needle. “So are we going to come up with ways to entertain ourselves, or are we just going to engage in toilet humor for the next three days?”

“Well, Hex could keep playing games with Clip. Maybe he could try chess,” Spring suggested. “The games might even last more than a few seconds.”

“Har har,” Hex retorted, followed by sticking his tongue out at her.

“Seriously, we haven’t even been in here twenty-four hours,” Zuri continued. “If we don’t find a way to stop getting on each other’s nerves, we’ll be bouncing off the walls before we get home!”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Azure asked from his corner.

“Cutie mark stories!” Zuri blurted out after a short pause. Everyone looked around at each other, with Hex and Needle vigorously shaking their heads.

“Fine by me,” Azure said with a shrug.

Hex pointed an accusatory hoof at him. “Of course you’re fine with it, you don’t have a cutie mark!”

“Exactly.”

“C’mon, guys, isn’t this what ponies do? They share stories about how they got their cutie marks?” Zuri asked desperately.

“Yeah, when we were twelve,” Hex shot back.

“I’m kind of jealous, actually. You all get pretty pictures and I just get this...thing.”

Spring took a look at the symbol on Zuri’s flank that the zebra was gesturing at. It was pretty abstract, a simple pattern of lines and squiggles with small accent marks. It was nice to look at, though.

“Why don’t you start, then?” Needle suggested diplomatically. “Tell us how you got that...what do you even call it?”

“We call it a glyph,” Zuri explained. “Traditionally, we’re supposed to get it when we ‘find our place in the tribe’. But Zebras haven’t lived like that for centuries. Now, we get one when we figure out where we want to go in life, what we want to do. I got mine when I decided to become a reactor technician after winning my high school science fair.”

“Oh yeah, I remember you telling me about that,” Hex said. “Didn’t you build a fusion reactor in your dad’s garage?”

“She did what?” Needle blurted.

Zuri gave an exasperated sigh. “It was a fusor. Totally different; just a coil of wire inside a bell jar. No magnetic confinement, no electron cathode...it didn’t even make any neutrons, just a pretty purple glow.”

“Still, that’s pretty impressive for a high schooler.”

“If you say so. Now, what about you? How does a mechanic get a cutie mark comprised of a wrench and some bolts? I can only guess.”

“If you were a pony, your cutie mark would be for sass,” Hex retorted. “Anyway, you know those stores where you buy furniture in a flat box, and you have to put it together yourself? My parents were shopping there, and taking their time looking around, so I got bored. I decided to open one of the boxes, a bookshelf I think, and put it together. It didn’t take me very long, but the employee who caught me was impressed at how quickly I was able to assemble it all. It just made sense to me, you know? This piece goes here, that part fits there…” he gave a chuckle. “You should have seen the look on my dad’s face. I thought he was going to beat my ass right there in the store.”

Spring was taken aback by the casual way he said it. She couldn’t imagine a parent doing something like that to their child.

“Did your father...punish you a lot?” she asked carefully.

“Huh? No, only when I deserved it for being a little shit. He was hard, but fair. Not the kind of stallion to renege on a promise, or a threat. If my brother and I were horsing around in the car, and he told us to shut up or he’d pull over and whup our asses...we knew he meant it.”

Spring still thought that was a little harsh, but she could understand; she knew how rowdy colts could be, especially in groups.

“He was always big on personal integrity,” he continued. “One of the earliest lessons he ever taught me was that another pony’s trust was the only thing someone couldn’t take away from me. That only I could lose it. And that if I lost that trust, it was very hard, if not impossible, to earn it back. I’ve always tried to remember that.”

There were a few beats of silence, until Hex spoke up again. “Okay, that’s enough about me. Someone else needs to go.”

“I’ll go next,” Spring volunteered.

“What even is your cutie mark?” Zuri asked as she craned her neck to see.

“I’m surprised you haven’t noticed by now,” Hex jabbed.

“Despite what you might think, I don’t actually make a habit of staring at mares’ flanks.”

Spring rolled her eyes at their banter and twisted herself around to show them. It was a green hill, lush with grass, and topped with a multitude of wildflowers in varying colors.

“Oh, wow, that’s lovely!” Zuri gushed. “I am so jealous.”

“How’d you get it?” Needle asked.

“I was helping my mom in her flower garden. She had to go inside for some reason, and while she was gone I proceeded to plant the rest of them all by myself. I had planted them all in little groups, instead of one by one like she had been doing. She was surprised when she got back; I thought I was in trouble, but she was just curious that I had planted them that way. I told her that I didn’t want the flowers getting lonely, that I wanted them to be with their friends. She just smiled and told me that just like flowers, nopony should be alone. We should all have a friend to lean on.

“I was so proud that I was able to make both my mom and the flowers happy, and when I went inside and got cleaned up, I saw my cutie mark, right there.”

“Aww, that’s a beautiful story,” Zuri cooed. Hex mimed a gagging face behind her. “So are you a gardener, then? Or a farmer?”

Spring sighed. “No, I’m an accountant. Turns out gardening can’t exactly pay the bills. It runs in the family, I suppose. My grandfather owned a small flower shop, but he had to sell it and work in the coal mines to support his family.”

Needle nodded sadly. “Seems like you hear a lot about that these days. Ponies find their special talent, something that means a lot to them, but then they find out that it doesn’t pay well, or the market’s completely saturated. So many ponies are left unhappy and unfulfilled. Sometimes I think we really weren’t meant to live like this.”

“What about you, Needle? What’s your cutie mark story?”

His cutie mark wasn’t surprising, given his profession: a syringe, with a mysterious blue liquid inside.

“My parents were both doctors; I don’t know if it was natural aptitude or they pushed me into it, but I took to medicine from a young age. I was the kind of colt who’d read Grey’s Pony Anatomy instead of adventure novels. I got my cutie mark early, when I diagnosed one of my classmates with strep throat and convinced him to go to the doctor.”

“Wait...you read medical textbooks for entertainment?” Hex asked, bewilderment plain on his face.

“Yeah. I was what you’d call a ‘huge nerd’.”

“That’s just sad.”

“Anyway, I like to think it was a choice I made on my own, because to them it was about money and prestige. All their skills just went to their heads. Don’t get me wrong, they were incredibly skilled...but arrogant. I wanted to get into medicine to help ponies, to give them something that they couldn’t give themselves.

“Is that everyone?” he finished.

“Not quite. Hey, Clip!” Zuri called over to the robot, who had been silently watching them.

“Huh? But I’m not a...real pony. I didn’t earn a cutie mark at all. This is just paint.”

“I know that. But do you remember how you got it?”

Clip shook his head. “I don’t remember anything before you pulled me out of the trash pile. It’s like my memory’s been erased.”

“Oh, Zuri said, downcast. “I wish we could help you get them back somehow.”

He shrugged. “Maybe there’s a backup somewhere, but don’t get your hopes up. Thank you for wanting to help, though.”


***


Clip opens his eyes. He sees a room, a lab, filled with a myriad of equipment.  Tools and parts, both mechanical and electrical in nature, lay strewn about. Two stallions stand with their backs to him, watching an oscilloscope screen.

One of the stallions, pastel yellow with a powder blue mane, turns around and notices Clip sitting behind him.

“Oh! Unit P is online.”

“That was fast,” the other stallion, green with a white mane, says.

“Could you get the test procedures, please?” the first says as he walks up to Clip. He sits down right in front of him, looks into his eyes, and smiles.

“Hello, Unit P.”

Clip does not respond.

“At least we’re done with Unit O. That one got really confusing in the documentation,” the second stallion said from somewhere out of sight.

“That wouldn’t be a problem if we named them.”

“I don’t see why you keep getting attached to these things. Fifteen other units, just like that one, have all been failures.”

The stallion in front of Clip shook his head. “Not just like him. We change things over time. That’s part of the experimentation process. Besides, I have a good feeling about him.”

The stallion smiles again and

Clip’s hibernation period came crashing to a halt. A core dump in his memory banks sent some errant signals to his motion servos, causing a violent full-body twitch before higher-level systems could cancel the commands.

He opened his eye shutters and looked around. The interior of the Hodgepodge was dark, and most of its occupants were asleep. Azure Coast, however, was awake and looking at him. Clip was still learning how to read emotions, but the hippogriff looked tired.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Segmentation fault. It happens when I access a forbidden memory sector.”

“Right.”

“Although...I shouldn’t be accessing memory during hibernation at all. I think...I think I just had a dream.”

Azure cocked his head to one side. “A dream? What was it about?”

“I’m not sure. I saw a lab, and a couple of stallions, and one of them was talking to me.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“No, but strangely, when he looked at me, I felt...sad, somehow.”

A few moments passed, the two of them floating at opposite ends of the container. Clip went over the “dream” again, careful not to access the register that had thrown the segfault, and noticed something.

“He called me ‘Unit P’.” He twisted around to look at his flank, where the letters CLI - P stared back at him. “Could that be...my name?”

“Maybe it wasn’t a dream, but a memory,” Azure suggested.

Clip thought about that. The “dream” had come from his deep storage memory banks, after all. He sent programs to probe into the registers, checking status and access permissions. What he found surprised him: almost his entire store of long-term memory, from the moment he was switched on, was locked behind encryption. A host of background processes were busy decrypting them, and his “dream” was the first significant portion that had been completed. He allocated more processing power to the decryption programs, and returned his focus to Azure, who was regarding him with an amused expression.

“What?”

“You know you cross your eyes and stick out your tongue when you’re thinking, right?”

“I do?”

“Yeah, you do.”


***


“‘Veggie Omelet?’ Eh, that doesn’t sound too bad.” Hex picked out one of the ration packets and pushed the box to Azure, who caught it and passed it along with an uncharacteristic half-smile on his face.

“What are you smiling about?” Hex asked suspiciously.

“Am I not allowed to smile?”

“For you, it’s weird. And worrying.”

“It’s nothing. Enjoy your breakfast.”

As Spring was searching the ration packets for something appetizing, she felt a hoof tap on her shoulder. It was Needle, with a slightly worried expression on his face.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked.

“Uh, sure. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Azure. He’s been sulking by himself in the corner ever since we left. I don’t think he’s slept. I haven’t seen him eat. He barely talks to anyone. I want to help him, try to figure out what’s wrong; but I’m no therapist, so I have no idea how.”

“He seems okay to me, just a little grumpy.”

“I’m not so sure. Just because he puts on a smile every now and then, it doesn’t convince me he’s happy.”

“And you think I can help?”

Needle gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe you can get through to him? I’ve tried talking to him but he just looks like he’d bite my head off.”

Spring sighed. “I’ll try.”

She floated over to the hippogriff. She had no idea what to say to him, but it was at least worth a try. Now that Needle had pointed it out, it was obvious he was weary.

“Hey.”

Azure’s smug smile fell off his face, replaced with his normal scowl as his golden eyes bored into her own.

“Uh...are you okay?” she asked him. “I know we’ve been through a lot, but…”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“No, I’m not okay.”

Well, there was some progress. Wasn’t the first step to recovery admitting you had a problem? Or something like that.

“Well...do you want to talk about it?”

He looked away. “No.”

It was apparent that the gentle method wasn’t going to work. Azure was a stoic person, and she reasoned that she needed to be just as steadfast to get him to open up.

“Look, I’m no therapist. But I do know that talking about your problems helps.”

“Still Waters.”

Spring blinked in confusion. “What?”

“He’s my therapist. Not you. I’ll talk all about my...issues when we get home. But until then, can’t you all just leave me be?”

Spring took a deep breath. “Fine. But you know what? You can’t stop me from talking about my problems. So since we’re all stuck in here together, you get to listen to me instead.”

Azure’s mask of indifference slipped a little. “What are you talking about?”

“It was only a week or so ago that I took my first space flight. I was nervous about it, since my husband died in space on one of his missions. They named that city after him, did you know that? His name was Starshine.”

“Now hang on, you don’t need to--” Azure tried to break in.

Spring kept going, right over the top of him. “Even though it had been sixteen years, it was personal, you know? I still felt nervous about going. But I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a cruise to the moon and stay in a brand-new lunar hotel. And I’ll admit, it was an amazing adventure. It seemed like with every passing day, I’d see some new sight that would take my breath away.”

Azure had seemingly given up on trying to interrupt, and was just patiently listening. Spring had to admit, though, that taking her own advice seemed to be working. It felt good to get it all out in the open.

“But with everything that’s happened...I’ve been blasted into vacuum, been under attack by mercenaries, been in a spaceship crash, and now I’m being flung into deep space inside a tiny metal box. It’s no exaggeration when I say that I hate space now. When we get back to Equus, I’m never setting hoof off-planet again.

“I can’t help but remember all the wonderful things I saw on my first trip to the moon. And even when we were flying to Starshine City, the stars overhead and the moon’s surface stretching out ahead of us were beautiful. But every time I think about it, every time I try to remember what space looks like and the emotions I had when I saw it for the first time...I can’t help but think of how terrified I’ve been over the past couple of days. I don’t think that fear will ever go away, and it’s always going to taint my memories of outer space.”

“It’ll never go away,” Azure said quietly once she was done. “And you never know what will remind you of it. Some noise or trick of the light, and you’re back, living it all over again.”

The entire container had fallen silent, and everyone was listening to Azure’s quiet monotone. He seemed to be speaking to himself, his eyes distant and unfocused.

But as soon as it had come on, the moment was over. Azure shook his head and his usual scowl returned. “I think that’s enough therapy for one day.”


***


The enemy soldiers drag Azure’s barely-conscious body along the dirt. He had tried to fight back, but their crowbars and rifle butts convinced him otherwise. He has no idea where he’s being taken, but they prove again and again that resistance is punished. So he does not resist.

He opens his eyes to see a row of metal cages. They roughly toss him in, jeering and laughing.

He opens his eyes again. His whole body hurts. One eye is swollen shut. He does not know how long he’s been lying here, or where ‘here’ even is, but the damp cinderblock walls, lit only by the occasional dirty bulb, lead him to believe he’s underground. Over time, more captured soldiers are brought down and locked into the other cages.

Time loses meaning. He sleeps when he’s tired, and eats whenever they throw some food into his cage. They take each prisoner in turn, pulling them out. When they return, they’re bloodied and soaked. The other prisoners fight and struggle. Azure is quiet. But eventually, they come for him next.

They drag him to another room and shine a bright light in his face. They ask him questions. Questions about troop movements, strength, weaponry. What intel Equestria possesses about them. Azure answers their questions, tells them what they want to hear, but only after a couple of punches. He makes them think they’ve earned the lies he tells them. When they’re satisfied, they throw him back into his cage and grab another howling soldier.

They don’t bother him much; they think he’s already been broken. But they come when he’s sleeping, just to break his spirit a little more. They speak in hushed tones, but he always keeps one ear open.

“Is he still asleep?”

“He must be having a nightmare.”

“Azure? Wake up!”

They reach between the bars. They poke and prod with sticks, trying to wake him up. He’s been patient, and now is the time to make his move. He lunges forward, thrusts his claws through the bars, and wrapped them around their throat, intent on squeezing the life out of them.

“Azure!”

“What are you doing!? Let go of her!”

“Stop!”

A hard blow to the side of Azure’s head sent him spinning into the far wall. He quickly straightened himself out and turned to face his attacker, but what he saw now was so out of sync with what he had been seeing before that it gave him pause. He screwed his eyes shut and shook his head, and was mortified by what he saw when he opened them again.

Zuri was in the far corner of the container, taking deep breaths and massaging her throat, while Needle and Hex were watching over her. She looked up at him, and hated what he saw in her eyes.

Fear. The same fear that he had seen in his wife’s eyes.

“No…” he whispered to himself. “Not again…”

He felt his eyes welling up with tears. This shouldn’t be happening. He was better now, right? He had to be.

“Are you okay?” he heard Needle talking to Zuri gently, followed by an affirmative noise from her. “Here, drink some water.”

Spring began to approach him, wearing another expression he hated to see. Pity.

“Azure…” she said gently.

“No!” He pushed himself away from her. Away from all of them, so he couldn’t hurt them. “Stay back!”

“Azure, please. You’re my friend, and--”

He choked out a laugh. “Friend? Friends don’t strangle each other!”

“Please, let us help! I want to understand. What’s going on?”

He brushed away the tears and they flew away as tiny sparkling droplets. “You want to understand? Fine.

“I told you earlier that I escaped from the mercenaries the same way I escaped from Appleloosa. You want to know how I did it? By doing nothing. 

“I was a pilot in the civil war thirty years ago. I was shot down and captured. They kept me in a cage for three weeks, torturing me for information. What’s a creature supposed to do in that situation? Nothing. You keep quiet, do as you’re told. When they come for you, don’t resist, don’t fight back, because they’ll just hurt you more. But you always keep your eyes open, always looking for an opportunity. And when that opportunity comes, you fight like Tartarus, because you might not get that chance again.

“In my dream, I was...I was back. I was back in that cage. They were poking me, prodding me to keep me awake. That was one of the things they did to us. To keep us exhausted, to break our spirits. I thought…” he couldn’t finish.

“You thought Zuri was one of your captors,” Spring finished for him. Azure could only nod. He couldn’t meet their eyes.

“I’ve been fighting the memories for years. But these past few days have been too much. I did the same thing to escape from those mercenaries: I waited for their guard to slip, just for a moment, and I took my chance. I tried to do it to Clip, too.” A humorless laugh escaped his beak. “I guess I was lucky he doesn’t have a windpipe I could crush.”


***


A series of loud banging noises coming from the outside of the container woke them all up suddenly.

“What’s going on?” Hex asked.

“I’m not sure,” Clip responded. “But it might be--” he was interrupted by the container suddenly shuddering with an intense vibration, followed by a force pushing them all towards one end. They all scrambled to brace themselves against anything they could to avoid piling up on top of each other. Finally the acceleration stopped, and they were left floating in microgravity once again.

“What was that?” Zuri asked, her voice laced with a hint of fear. Hex was really starting to feel bad for her; he hated to see his longest friend so scared. The suit tear and Azure’s attack hadn’t helped in the slightest.

“Trans-lunar capture drones,” Clip explained. “They catch inbound containers and slow them into orbit.”

“So we’re almost home?” Spring asked, hopeful.

“I don’t know for sure. The only reason I know about this process is from the mass driver terminal that we used to leave. It didn’t explain what would happen once we were caught.”

As if hearing his words, the container echoed with more bangs and clunks, then a mechanical ratcheting noise. With a final teeth-grinding squeal, the noises stopped, and the container’s occupants were suddenly dropped to the floor under the instantaneous onset of gravity.

Painful groans filled the container as everyone struggled to untangle themselves and get to their hooves. Hex’s legs were wobbly and unsure after so many days without gravity.

Clip perked up, his ears swiveling around like radar dishes. “I can hear voices outside!” 

Spring put her ear to the door. “I can hear them too!” she said with a grin.

“What are they saying?” Needle asked.

“I can’t really tell, it’s all kind of muffled--” she was cut off with a yelp as Azure grabbed her tail and yanked her back. The reason was obvious - a yellow beam of light sliced into the top of the container, just behind the door, and slowly slid downwards like a wire cutting through a block of cheese.

When it reached the bottom, the beam disappeared, leaving glowing semi-molten metal at the edges of the cut. The door, along with the entire front of the container, slowly leaned outwards, gaining speed until it landed with a crash.

A pony wearing tinted goggles and wielding a beam saw in his hooves stepped into view. He took a long, silent look at the six pairs of eyes staring back at him.

“What the fuck?” he said at last.

“Hello!” Clip announced. “We’re stowaways!”

The pony’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “Damn, you’re one o’ them security robots, right? I heard about them. Didn’t know they could talk.”

Ahead of Hex, Spring stepped out of the container, carefully avoiding the still-hot globs of metal.

He slowly shook his head. “I been cuttin’ salvage for eight years, can’t say I’ve seen a pony inside a container before, let alone five! What are y’all doin’ in there? You come all the way from the moon?”

“Yes, we did,” Spring explained. “Starshine City was attacked. They sealed off the whole place, and we were the only ones to escape. We need your help.”

The worker in front of them pushed the goggles up onto his forehead. “Holy shit. Attacked? By who?”

Behind Spring, the rest of the Hodgepodge’s occupants left the ersatz spaceship as well. Hex took note of where they were: a large hangar of some sort, dirty, cluttered, and poorly-lit. It was very industrial, reminding him of the Maulwurf’s undercroft.

“We don’t know,” Spring was telling the worker. “Mercenaries of some kind. They...they killed lots of ponies. I don’t know what they’re even doing there, or why they came at all. We need to tell the Princesses, or something.”

The worker removed his goggles completely and sat down, brushing a hoof through his mane. His cheeks puffed out with a heavy breath. “Wow, okay. I think I can help. I’ll ask around, see if I can get an emergency shuttle up here to take y’all planetside.”

“Emergency shuttle? This is one of the cargo ports, right? Aren’t ships coming and going all the time?” Azure asked.

The worker shook his head. “Nope, you’re in one o’ the salvage yards. Old ships make their way here to be cut up for scrap. Abandoned cargo, too, which is how I reckon your crate landed here. There was some kinda weird transponder tag on it, though.”

“Transponder? Can I see?” Clip asked, stepping forward. The worker took a step back in surprise.

“Damn, you’re one o’ them security robots, right? I heard about them. Didn’t know they could talk.”

He reached into a pocket of his vest and pulled out a tablet, which he tapped at and passed to Clip. Hex edged up to him to take a look as well. The crate evidently bore some kind of beacon, broadcasting information about it to anyone who would listen.

OBJ_ID: DCO1437
OBJ_OWN: NONE
BCST_MSG0: UNOWNED DEBRIS; SALVAGE OR DESTROY
BCST_MSG1: WALNUT GROVE

“‘Salvage or destroy?’” Hex asked.

“Oh, that’s pretty normal,” the worker replied. “Anything that ain’t a ship or satellite or somethin’ is listed as debris, which is supposed to be collected and either recycled or destroyed. Keeps the orbits clear. But with a container like yours, it’d be a might wasteful to destroy it. More money to be made crackin’ it open and seein’ what’s inside.”

“What does ‘Walnut Grove’ mean?” Clip asked.

“That’s the part I don’t get. Normally transponder tags like that signify what’s inside, or what it’s made of. But this? I got no clue.”

“So if this is just a salvage yard, how often do ships come to haul away the scrap?” Needle asked.

“‘Bout every week or so. And I’m sorry to say, but the last scrap hauler for the week took off this morning.”

“Can’t you get a message out? Make a call somewhere?”

Again, the worker shook his head. “No off-station chatter’s allowed.”

“So we’re going to have to wait here for a whole week?” Zuri asked, deflating a little.

“That’s why I need to get ahold of my boss. He’s authorized to use the comms terminal, so he can get a message out, get a personnel shuttle sent up here to take y’all to Canterlot. He’s at one of the other yards right now for a meetin’, should be back in about an hour. Until then, I’d be glad to show y’all around!”

“I’d appreciate that, thank you,” Spring said. “I’m just glad to be under real gravity again.”

“Shit, I bet, after what, three days in zero-gee? That ain’t good for anypony.”

“What’s your name?” Clip asked.

“Clean Cut. Most ‘round here just call me Cutter, though,” he said as he led them out of the hangar into a narrow corridor. As they passed a window, Hex saw Spring glance out, then freeze with a gasp.

“What is it?”

Outside the window was Equus, so much larger than he had seen it in months. It was so tantalizingly close, as if he could reach out and touch it. Spring evidently shared his sentiment, as she pressed a hoof to the window.

“So close, and yet so far,” she whispered, then let her hoof fall and tore her eyes away from the window.

After walking for a short while, another worker, a mare, rounded a corner ahead of them. “Hey, Patina!” Cutter called.

“Hey, Cutter. Who are these? We’re not supposed to have visitors here.”

“I found ‘em in a crate, that one with the weird tag I was cuttin’ open. All five of ‘em, and their robot, were huddled inside, escapin’ from the moon!”

“Escaping?” she said skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

“The moon was attacked,” Hex explained this time. “Mercenaries came and took over Starshine City and the mining station we were on.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not, and we need to get back to Equus as soon as possible.”

“I’m just showin’ ‘em around a little until Jib gets back. I’m hopin’ he can call for a shuttle to get ‘em home.”

“Hang on,” Patina said. “You said a mining station was attacked? Was it the Maulwurf?”

“Yes, it was,” Hex answered.

Patina sucked in a breath. “My sister works there. Verdigris. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, I do! She works with me on EVA maintenance. I haven’t seen her since before the attack, though. I don’t know where she is.”

Patina just stared at him.

“If it helps, most of the workers were just herded into Hab Section. She’s probably fine.”

Patina just nodded sadly. “Thanks,” she said, then pushed past them.

Cutter sighed. “Damn, I  hope everyone’s all right up there. Never thought I’d see the day.” He turned and continued down the corridor. “Come on, there’s something I wanna show y’all.”

Cutter led them through the station until they reached a small room with a pony sitting at a console. Through a cockpit-like series of windows in front of him, they could see out into a docking bay where a ship, a large cargo hauler, lay tethered. Below that, the blue cloud-strewn orb of the planet gave a gentle underglow.

The pony in the seat swiveled around. “Oh hey, Cutter. Who’re these?”

“Hey, Stoke. Would you believe it, I found these six inside a crate! I’m just showin’ them around a little until I can get ‘em a shuttle home.”

“In a crate!? Why in the Tartarus are you showing some stowaways around like guests?”

“They’ve had a hard time of it, Stoke. Y’know the Maulwurf? That big ol’ lunar mining station? ‘Parently some mercenaries or somethin’ captured the place and locked it down. These ones were the only ones to escape, and I’m tryin’ to get em’ planetside so they can get help.”

Stoke’s eyes widened. “No shit? Well, I don’t know how long it’ll take until Jib gets back, so –” he was interrupted by a radio crackling next to him.

“Starboard hull, ready for pull on TRM-1.”

“Ope, give me a sec, I gotta take care of this.” Stoke swiveled his chair around and put his hooves on a pair of joysticks in front of him, concentrating on the ship in the bay ahead of him. Floating next to the spacecraft was a pony in a yellow space suit, dwarfed by the vessel.

As Hex watched, a large section of the cargo hauler’s outer hull began to glow with a neutral grey magical aura, then slowly drifted away from the rest of the ship. He realized that it was being manipulated by Stoke, whose precise joystick motions tugged the hull section outwards. He deftly kept it from colliding with the ship, the worker floating next to it, or the sides of the docking bay as he pushed it downwards to rest in the open hold of a barge waiting underneath.

“Woah,” Spring breathed. “Did you do that?”

“Yup!” Stoke replied as he swiveled around again. He motioned to the controls around him. “Each bay has some of these Telekinetic Remote Manipulators in ‘em, so when the breakers down in the bay cut the ship into pieces, the TRM operators like me grab the bits and push ‘em down into the scrap barge.”

“That’s incredible.”

“It’s a pretty great job, but dangerous for the boys down in the bay. These ships aren’t always fully decommissioned when we get ‘em, so they gotta keep an eye out for pressurized sections, charged capacitors, things like that. They also gotta trust in the TRM drivers to keep ‘em from getting smeared by a thousand-ton chunk of titanium.”

“All right, well, I think I’m gonna take ‘em to the break room to wait for Jib to get back,” Cutter said. “He’ll be able to send a message out and get a shuttle sent up.”

Stoke nodded and went back to work, while Hex and the rest of the group were led back through the station. Cutter took them to a room with refrigerators and stoves, as well as tables for eating.

“I gotta get back to work, but y’all just sit tight here. I’ll do my best to get you back home.”

“Thanks, Cutter. We appreciate it,” Needle said.

Once he’d left, they all settled in around one of the tables.

“One step closer, I guess,” Zuri said with a sigh as she looked around.

“I think we’re on the home stretch here,” Hex said optimistically. “Blue-collar folks like these are usually pretty eager to help out.”

“It certainly smells blue-collar in here,” Zuri said, wrinkling her nose.

“Hey, you know I’m blue-collar too, right?”

“Yeah, and I remember when you came to Haven’s without showering first. Whew!”

That brought a chuckle from everyone gathered at the table. It was definitely a marked improvement to their situation than being stuck inside a cargo container.


***


After waiting around for the better part of an hour, they heard hoofsteps approaching the break room. From around the corner came Cutter again, followed by another stallion wearing business-casual attire.

“Here they are, sir.”

The other stallion stepped into the room and stared at each one of them, his gaze lingering on Clip.

“They…came from the moon, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“And this transponder tag…what was it, exactly?”

“Here it is,” Cutter said as he tapped at his tablet again and showed his boss. “Walnut Grove.”

Jib’s eyebrows raised as he looked at the tablet, then back at the gathered creatures.

“Well, thank you for bringing this to my attention, Cutter,” he said. “I’ll take care of them from here.”

Cutter nodded and jogged out of the room, with a friendly smile and wave as he did.

“Well, I can’t say I was expecting this today,” Jib said once he had left.

“Cutter said you’ll be able to send a message and get a shuttle to take us home,” Spring said hopefully.

Jib smiled. “Yes, of course. Just follow me. I’ll get you all squared away.”

He led them through various hallways again, into an area that Hex seemed more akin to maintenance than communications. He couldn’t say why, but this stallion was setting off alarm bells in his head. He kept following him, but kept his guard up. A glance to Azure confirmed that the hippogriff was feeling the same way.

“In here, please,” Jib said, as he opened a door and stood aside for them to walk past. The door led to a small maintenance hangar. Several yellow space suits hung on racks around them.

“Now hang on a minute,” Hex said as he walked in, then turned around to confront the stallion. “Where are you –” he was cut off as the door to the hangar slammed shut behind them, with Jib on the other side.

“H-hey! What’s going on!?” Spring called, glancing about wildly.

“I don’t know who you are, but the Church of the Holy Moon sends their regards,” Jib said through the window, his hoof manipulating the airlock controls.

“No!” Hex called, diving for the controls on their side, but it was too late.

“In Umbra Luna Est,” Jib intoned, then pushed a button.

Without depressurizing first, the opposite door opened. All sound was sucked out along with the air, and the gravity. The rush of escaping atmosphere yanked them from their hooves and out of the doorway, into open space.

Hex felt the air being pushed out of his lungs as his eardrums popped. He couldn’t take a breath, he was drowning. He flailed around, but there was nothing he could touch. The creatures around him were faring no better; their muzzles twisted with silent screams of anger, panic, fear. Clip was panicked as well, desperately trying to grab onto them, but even the robot could do nothing here.

His vision darkened at the edges as a grey glow enveloped him. Was this it? Was this the moment he died? He wished he could have gone back home at least. Seen his family.

Something was pushing him. He felt himself moving, toward a mouth, a great open void. This must be what the afterlife was like. He closed his eyes.

Hex’s eyes flew open again and he took an instinctive gasp. Sweet, life-giving oxygen filled his lungs, but the pain caused him to start hacking and coughing. Similar sounds of coughing could be heard around him, and he looked around.

He was floating in another small airlock, quite crowded now with all of its occupants. He felt almost overwhelming relief at the sight of his friends; Zuri, Spring, Needle, and Azure were all here, conscious and very much not dead. There was a sixth, a pony wearing a yellow space suit, in the airlock with them. Their face wasn’t visible behind their reflective visor, but they pulled it off to reveal a mare’s face, pale green fur matted with sweat.

“Are you all okay?” she asked, her eyes wide open with concern.

“Yeah…I think so,” Hex wheezed. “Wait…Patina?”

She nodded.

“What happened back there?”

“One of the TRM operators saw you get flushed into the bay. He grabbed you all and tossed you into this open airlock. Thank goodness we hadn’t depressurized the ship yet.”

“Where’s…where’s Clip?”

Her brow furrowed in confusion for a moment. “Oh, your robot? He’s still outside. He closed the door and cycled the airlock once you were all inside.”

She pointed out the window and Hex swiveled around to see Clip floating outside, gleefully waving at them.

“That stallion…Jib. Jib did it.”

“What? Jib? But why? Why would he – hang on.” She pressed a hoof to her ear as quiet radio chatter could be heard from her suit.

“Yeah, they said he’s the one who did it,” she responded. “See if you can – he is? Okay, well, he’d better give us some answers.”

Patina sighed. “Seems like Cutter’s going to try to ask Jib some questions. He figured out that he’s the last one who saw you, and went after him as soon as we called in your situation.”

“What now?” Needle asked.

“We need to get you guys planetside as soon as possible. Luckily, we won’t have to figure out how to get you back to the station. This ship we’re in used to be a passenger vessel, and it’s still got working escape pods.”

Hex nodded, and helped get the others out of the airlock and into the ship proper. Spring and Zuri, he noticed, weren’t handling it well. Spring especially was quivering badly, with tears running down her face.

After the airlock cycled again, Clip came floating out. “Ohmygosh I’m so glad you’re all okay! I was so worried and scared when we all came flying out and I was just fine but you weren’t and I couldn’t do anything to save you all I could do was sit there and watch you all suffocate and –”

“Clip!” Needle interrupted.

“Oh…right. Sorry.”

Patina led them through the corridors of the passenger ship, even tighter and more constricting than the Maulwurf or salvage yard had been. The fittings of the interior were in various states of disassembly, with seats, consoles, or even sections of wall paneling missing. Lighting was spotty at best.

Eventually they all ended up at a row of escape pods, and Patina started tapping at the console in front of one. “You’re lucky these didn’t get ripped out yet.”

The door to the tiny pod slid open.

“Thank you, all of you,” Hex said to Patina.

She nodded. “Just…make sure the Princesses get those bastards back for what they did. And if they laid a hoof on my sister, I’ll go up there and kick their asses myself.”

Hex waited patiently as Azure took a few deep breaths and slipped inside, then entered last. Spring and Zuri were curled up tightly against each other, and Needle was taking a look at the pod’s controls. Once everyone was all inside, Patina closed and sealed the door behind them.

“Everyone ready?” Needle asked.

There was a chorus of silent nods, and he pressed the big red button labeled “LAUNCH”.

With a lurch, the escape pod rocketed away from the ship, leaving the salvage yard behind them.

For several moments nopony said anything. The only sounds in the pod were the mares’ quiet sobbing. Needle turned around and approached them; luckily, the pod was equipped with artificial gravity.

“I’m going to need to check everyone out after…what just happened. Spring first,” he said gently.

Spring nodded and separated herself from Zuri to allow Needle to examine her. After pressing his ear to her chest, looking into her bloodshot eyes, and taking her pulse, he sighed.

“Well, no worse than you were the last time. I would have liked you to get more rest, but it can’t be helped.”

He moved over to check on Zuri, when Clip’s voice came from the control panel, carrying an edge of concern.

“Uh…we might have a problem.”

“What now?” Hex groaned as he looked over to see Clip staring out the main window.

The pod appeared to be hurtling directly for a portion of the salvage station’s superstructure, with no indication of slowing down or diverting.

“Shit!” Hex cried as he leapt at the controls. He took the joysticks in his hooves and yanked. The message “Warning: Automatic mode disengaged” popped up on the heads-up display, just before the pod responded. It lurched and spun around like a top, with a blur of blacks, blues, and oranges flashing in the window as it careened uncontrollably. The pod’s occupants were flung around as the gravity plating struggled to keep up with the sudden acceleration.

“What are you doing!?”

“I’m gonna be sick!”

“Move.” Azure almost shoved Hex out of the way and took the controls in his claws. He scanned the panel and pushed a button, and the pod immediately stopped spinning with a happy chirp. They were still oriented towards the station, however, but were now upside-down with respect to the planet. Someone gave a nauseous groan.

With a much gentler touch, Azure smoothly rolled the pod over so that the planet was beneath them once more, and steered it away from a collision course. He let go of the joysticks and rounded on Hex.

“It’s not a damn pipe wrench, you can’t just yank on the controls like that!”

“Well, excuse me! I’ve never flown one like this before!”

“Hey!” Needle interrupted. “There’s no point arguing. And why was the pod headed for the station anyway?”

Hex shrugged. “My guess is that it’s designed to travel away from the host ship in a straight line before calculating a return trajectory. The station just happened to be in the way of that.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay, so now what?”

“Now, I set it back to automatic mode and let it do its thing,” Azure replied. He pushed the same button as before, and the message “Automatic mode engaged” appeared. He retreated to the benches set against the wall and closed his eyes, leaning his head back.

Needle continued to perform checkups on all the passengers, even Azure, who eventually capitulated despite his protests. The doctor concluded that they weren’t in any immediate danger, but that they should really find medical attention as soon as possible.

From there, everyone relaxed as much as they could. Hex remained staring out the window, watching Equus slowly grow larger.

Suddenly, his ears perked up at an alert tone and flashing red text from the computer.

“What the…”

“Critical error in processing unit,” it read. “Cannot calculate safe re-entry trajectory.”

“Oh, come on.”

“‘Cannot calculate safe re-entry trajectory’?” Zuri asked shakily from where she was curled up on the floor. “What does that mean?”

Azure opened his eyes and sat up. “Means we can’t land,” he growled.

“Wh-what?”

He stood up and made his way to the computer and started poking through it, with Hex’s help.

“Clip, can you calculate one?” Azure asked. Clip shook his head.

“No, I wasn’t programmed with those formulas. If you explain it to me I can –”

“Nevermind, it’d take too long to explain anyway.” Azure began going through the various storage bins inside the pod, yanking out supplies until he found a pad of paper and a pen. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. And fast, before it’s too late to make the course corrections.” He jabbed the pen at Zuri. “How much do you weigh?”

She looked mildly offended. “What kind of question is that?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re smart, right? You know that if we don’t hit the atmosphere just right, we’ll turn into a pretty cloud of plasma, yeah?”

She gulped. “Y-yeah…”

He jabbed the paper with the pen. “That calculation depends on our mass. I need the mass of the pod and everyone in it.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “70 kilograms, last time I checked.”

He jotted it down, then asked everyone else for their weights. The last was Clip, weighing in at over 110 kilograms. “Now I just need to know how much the ship weighs. Any ideas?”

Clip trotted over to the computer and plugged his tail into a data jack, then thought for a few minutes as he scrolled through the ship’s systems. “Got it. 11,200 kg.”

“How do you know how to do this?” Hex asked, as Azure began making calculations on the pad.

“It was part of my pilot training,” he answered without looking up. “We needed to know basic spacecraft piloting skills, and this was one of them.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“In the field? Never.” After a few minutes, he finished his calculations, then pushed the pad towards Clip. “Can you check my math?”

“It all looks correct to me,” Clip said after a few seconds of staring at the numbers. “Do you want me to input it into the guidance system?”

“Please.”

Clip’s eye-screens became a blur of scrolling text, and he stuck out his tongue. “There. You want me to pick a landing site?”

“Can you?”

“Eh, we don’t have enough time to make major corrections to our orbit, so our options are limited. I can get us on the right continent, at least.”

“Ugh…just get us as close to Canterlot as you can.”

The pod reacted to the new data and swung itself around to a slight heading. Hex took a look at the computer, and saw their trajectory line changing as the pod also fired its thrusters to place it on the correct path to avoid burning up in the atmosphere.

It took less than an hour for the pod to begin re-entry. Hex and Azure urged everyone to strap themselves into the pod’s seats. They began to see sparkles of orange light fly past, then a dull glow as the pod compressed the air in front of it, superheating it into a plasma. Soon the glow became flames, shooting all around and obscuring their view. Hex had experienced re-entry before, but always in a huge passenger ship; he had never seen the fireball with his own eyes, never been shaken around like this as the pod rocked violently. The gee-forces mounted, and he looked over to see Spring and Zuri holding each others’ hooves. There was nothing any of them could do besides pray that they would finally make it home safely.