//------------------------------//
// Ablazed Glory 
// Story: Salvation 
// by voroshilov 
//------------------------------//

Faustinius.

Faust had been the stuff of legend on Equestria. She had been equivalent to a god, though no organised religion based around her really became mainstream. Rather, she has just always been a part of life, always a part of the mythology of their homeland.

Penumbra hadn’t thought she’d be real.

With the discovery of Faustinius, Penumbra had been energised to travel. Specifically, she would travel to New Horizons. After seeing what had become of her old home, whose beating heart now hung lifeless in the vacuum of space - although admittedly the lifeless part was both new and her fault - she desired to see what had become of the new home of her race, a place she had never visited before.

She had left the moment she could, practically running straight back to the Retaliator, where she shouted out her intended destination from the airlock and expected the Luminary to deal with it. Thankfully, it did.

With the Luminary carrying out all of the tasks of piloting, Penumbra was free to concentrate on thinking. There was a specific brand of thinking, one taught to her by Emperor Nicholas in its base form but built upon by millennia of practice. 

Faustinius, it was either an incredible coincidence - which was possible but improbable - or, that orb she had seen was Faust. If it was just a coincidence, it would end there, nothing more to think about. But, if it was not - which she believed was the case - then what could that have meant? Could Faustinius have visited Equestria during its early days? Perhaps. An Assembly construct would be suitably advanced to appear as a deity, or at the very least beyond anything the primitive minds of ancient ponies could conjure up. If Faustinius could communicate, which any suitably intelligent Assembly construct could - at least according to what Penumbra knew - then pony scholars over the years would easily mistranslate and shorten their name, from Faustinius, to Faust.  

Perhaps, knowing how Assembly constructions went, Faustinius was indeed the creator of Equestria - or Sanctum. It would make sense for an impossible advanced creature, that claimed to be a creator, to be accepted and immediately develop into a mythology. Even a physical process like the movement of the sun and moon had become a mythological object, with Equestria’s Princess rulers being accepted widely as demi-goddesses for it. That was one thing that had always perplexed her about how Equestria worked; she had, after all, seen the Princesses manipulate the sun and moon on more than one occasion, though she knew there was a physical explanation for it. More than likely, it was something to do with the Dauxite Assembly - everything seemed to go back to them.

There were, however, far more pressing matters at hand. Such as her arrival in the Redeemance System, where New Horizons - the colony founded by those ponies evacuated from Equestria at the behest of the Irenton Empire - was present. The system appeared almost untouched, with even the millennia old Imperial Overwatch Station still hanging in orbit, silent and dark.

“Luminary, see if you can raise the ground.”

A few seconds later, the response came back, “I am detecting no suitable transmission receivers on the planet.”

Penumbra sighed, even though that result had been what she had expected. “The station?” She wasn’t confident.

Another few seconds, then another few, then more, until a whole minute had passed by. Finally, the Luminary returned with exactly what she had expected, “station communication systems are offline…”

Penumbra sighed again. Before she could give another instruction, however, the Luminary continued, “they appear to have been deactivated from within.”

That was unexpected.

She shifted uncomfortably on her seat - systems being deactivated from inside an abandoned station usually meant said station contained things she did not want to meet. “Can you dock us to the station?”

“Affirmative. Moving to suitable docking position now.”

As they approached, Penumbra saw the size of the Overwatch station. It was about as large as Canterlot had been, though it was arranged as a tall octahedron, painted gunmetal grey and bristling with cannons and launch systems. Fortunately, it appeared to be mostly without power, no doubt its reactor had finally run out of fuel, only its batteries tiding it over as system after system slowly died. The Luminary’s suitable docking position was in the form of an open hangar, definitely too small for the Retaliator to fit. 

Penumbra observed the happenings with curiosity, though she was ready to leap to the controls and direct the ship away if she thought it would go wrong. The Luminary directed the Retaliator so the rear starboard side of its tapered shape was partially through the hangar’s shield. Then, with a sudden and shocking pair of thuds, two cables launched from it, grappling onto the hangar’s rear walls and burying themselves into the metal. With a metallic groan, the ship was dragged slightly starboard as the cables cut some of the slack.

“Docking procedures complete,” the Luminary said, though it seemed to Penumbra like all it had done was punch some holes into a station.

“Aft airlock two is now open for use.”

Aft airlock two, as she discovered, was in the part of the ship within the shield. All she had to do was glide steadily down from it a few metres to reach the hangar’s rear walkway. She inwardly praised the surprising ingenuity of the AI, before discovering the hangar’s exit door was locked tight.

Thankfully, a moment later, it was not locked tight, and Penumbra was free to begin her exploration of the station, extinguishing and sheathing her plasma sword as she did so. 

The station was completely lifeless, dead in all respects. It was as though the crew had simply packed up everything and left - which they more than likely had done. Empty hallways connected to empty rooms, the odd few containing a terminal that more than likely went silent centuries earlier. When Penumbra found the command centre, it was by accident, she stumbled upon it as she wandered the halls. She only knew it was the command centre because it was a rotunda, which was one of the unifying themes of Imperial military architectural design. 

The command centre contained two consoles, both of which worked as expected - that is, not at all - and the plinth for a holographic table. The actual projector of the table appeared to have been cut out and taken away, with dusty wires and bits of warped metal all that remained to show for it. 

Whilst the table was no more, its adjacent console was not. Similar to those employed by the Dominion, a small tower was connected to all holographic tables, with a small pad to key in information and a few ports to add or acquire information the console would use. It was not only intact, it had a faint glow to it. 

Curious, Penumbra tapped one of the keys, which ejected a small hard disk from the tower. She made a mental note to check it in the ship later as she stowed it into the bags on her armoured back. That little discovery gave her a new vigour in searching, perhaps some more of the station remained intact. 

The next room along was the communications room. She knew it was the communications room because a large pile of communications equipment lay within it. Granted, she was no expert, but she still knew that the pile would have fetched a pretty penny for smugglers back in the early days of the Dominion. If they’d come into the station, they’d have taken the pile. 

The equipment was taken from all over, not just the station itself. She found everything from a handheld transmitter marked ‘IESS Vengeance of the Lost’, dated to before the start of the War in Heaven, to what was apparently the communications console - the entire thing, wires and all - of the Overwatch station. 

What was most interesting to her, however, was the tiny Rift Generator that had very clearly been pulled from the wall. Given the vast size of the Irenton Empire - as was the same with the Dominion - messages and signals were funneled through the Rift, reaching their destination almost instantly rather than taking hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of years. Someone had hurriedly removed it, as evidenced by the sharp-edged hole in the wall and damage to the generator itself, in an attempt to stop the transmission or receival of any messages outside the system. 

The actual transmitters, however, were all still in place. They also appeared to be getting some power, if the faint glow of their tiny screens was anything to go by. Penumbra had no experience with such transmitters, but it didn’t take an expert to know that the large level next to it, flicked to the off position, would need to be flicked to the on position for it to work. So, embracing her sense of adventure - what little of it she still had left - and her curiosity, she flicked the lever up, which gave an electrical clunk, the little blue screens flaring to life.

There were a total of eight hundred and forty two thousand, three hundred and nine transmissions missed. All of them from the planet’s surface.

Someone had been calling for help, for what was likely decades, and it never arrived. 

Penumbra flicked the lever back to the off position and quickly fled the station.

She had come to New Horizons for one reason, which she relayed to the Luminary, “land us on the planet, as close as you can get to the biggest settlement. I want to find Ablazed Glory.”

“Affirmative,” the Luminary said, neither knowing nor caring who Ablazed Glory was. With mechanical thuds and clunks that went on just long enough for Penumbra to focus her mind onto them and not the swirling storm of other thoughts, the Retaliator detached from the station, before gracefully gliding down to the planet below.