//------------------------------// // 9: Gravity // Story: Salvage a Better Life // by law abiding pony //------------------------------// It took two hours and an extra dose of Accelatotian to keep them moving long enough to return to the cave. Another hour as needed to move all the supplies into the Akira.   When the last few bags of rations were finally dragged up the ramp, the receiving room and some of the linking passageways were lined with supplies. Sprocket rolled onto her back with her breath ragged and heavily labored. Live Wire’s clerical career didn’t do him any favors, and he was flat on his stomach, unable to summon the strength to move anymore.   “I don’t think the second dose was as strong,” Wiggly muttered, as she felt herself getting pressed into the floor.  Idly spotting the needles they had used, Wire had kept them in the off chance the syringes proved useful. He magically grabbed one of them, and checked the label. “It’s the same stuff.”  Passing interest caused him to rotate it to read the side effects. He never got there as the expiration date caught his eye. “Ohh no.”  He magically pulled the other used syringe over, which grabbed Wiggly’s attention. “No wonder. The damn things went bad six months ago.  I should have known that was why the first aid boxes were on sale.” Willing herself to take a deep breath, Wiggly tried to flick him with the edge of her wings, but Wire was too far away. “If we die because of your blip pinching, Imma smack you all the way to Terra.”  There was no real malice in her words, as she did not yet fear death.  “By then I’ll be too dead to notice.” Morales strode in from the CIC for a late dinner only to hesitate upon seeing his new shipmates collapsed on the floor. Wiggly was closest and he knelt down next to her. “Engineer Sprocket, are you well?!”  He shook her gently to get a response.  Both siblings grumbled, yet Wiggly was the stronger of the two. “I’m alive. Just a bit too smushed.  Our meds expired if you can believe it,” she laughed with grim humor.  “Then I found you not a moment too soon. Where is the power pack you spoke of?”  The urgency in his voice gave some of that energy to the ailing mare. She empowered a wing so she could point at a collection of eight batteries. “The blue and green things over there.”   Getting up, Morales grabbed one of the devices that had a plethora of wires and velco straps. “This?” “Yeah.”  Wiggly struggled to take in enough of a breath to keep speaking. “Let me see the settings panel.”  It took about a minute for Wiggly to describe how to operate the power pack and automate it for him. “Good. Just stick it in and turn it on.” “I will be quick then.”  Morales raced off, leaving the siblings to lay there.  Too exhausted to hold a decent conversation, the pair went silent until they passed out. After a while, deep groaning echoed from all over the Akira, and breathing sluggishly became easier for them. The ground slackened its hold on the spacers. Everything from their legs to her wings felt lighter. Fatigue still grasped onto them tightly, but over a few minutes, the lifting of such a heavy weight caused the two ponies to awaken with a start.  Sprocket felt like she could stand again. She lifted a leg that felt lighter by the second. “By Celestia’s golden flank, I think he did it!” She glanced over at Live Wire who was pulling his legs in close to stand up. Wiggly rolled over to do the same. Both were wobbly on their hooves, but they finally felt the gravity was comfortable at long last. Filled with hopeful energy, the siblings laughed and cheered before hugging each other. “We’re going to be alright!” Live Wire felt like he had been released from a vice and tried to jump. Yet between the long day and the damage gravity had inflicted, he couldn’t get all four hooves off the ground. “Ha!  Oh damn it feels good to move freely again. I’m cooking a feast tonight.” Familiar sounding grunts of effort echoed from outside the ramp. Recognizing it as Winter, Live Wire hastily ran down the ramp, or tried to.  Upon his legs clearing the hull of the Akira, the moon’s gravity reminded him of its strength, and he tumbled down, yelling in surprise along the way. Sprocket watched from the top of the ramp, her hooves covering her mouth out of shock.  Winter had returned, lugging a fuel canister when she saw her coltfriend careen down the ramp. “Wire!” Struggling to pick himself back up, Wire had only hit the ground at a little over one gravity. Yet it was more than enough to badly bruise him from nose to chest. The first thing he saw was Winter pulling him up with a frightfully worried look. “Hey, would you look at that?  I keep falling head over hooves for you.” “You are-!” Winter wasn’t sure if she should be worried about an injury or if he did that on purpose just to be corny. She grumbled trying to puzzle that out, all while staring into his cheeky grin. With a defeatist huff, Winter gave up when he left a kiss imprint on his helmet.  “An idiot.”  She hugged him tightly before letting go. “Is anything broken?” He tried assess himself as Winter looked him over with bubbling concern. “I should be alright. Morales weakened the gravity onboard, and I guess I got carried away,” he ended with a sheepish grin at her. Breathing a sigh of relief, Winter turned to retrieve the fuel canister off the ground. “Then get your tail back up there. Don’t make me confine you to the ship, buster black and blue.” After he gave a helpless salute, she hefted the canister up onto her back. It was a heavy thing only she could hope to move, let alone carry in the moon’s gravity. It was a mostly orange cylinder with one rounded end for fuel movement with the other end being flat. A worn yet functional interface pad and screen rested on one side. “You guys never told me you were using that cheap impact gel. That stuff was absolutely revolting, I swear I could smell it through the helmet.” Live Wire casually inspected the canister as he helped her roll it up the ramp. “It doesn’t even look dented. I’d say it was still money well spent.” Sprocket had spent the time moving supplies out of the way so the others had a place to keep the canister. “Right. Awesome.”  She moved in on the canister’s built-in data pad.  It flickered on a cracked screen that had been worn by age more than its decent.  After tapping a few commands, a grin grew over Wiggly’s muzzle. “Perfect, you nabbed a full one.” “It certainly felt like I did.”  Winter flexed and stretched to try and sooth her organic muscles. Even her bionic ones had been tested. Live Wire was beside himself with joy, and draped himself over top of Wiggly, much to the pegacorn’s annoyance. “So now we just need to see if the doc can show us to the back up reactor. Although honestly, I’d rather see if we can get these suits off first.”  Live Wire’s horn was glowing as he scratched at itches underneath. “We can’t stay in these things forever.” “I’m not sure we could fight off whatever bugs are here,” Winter Gale began with a thoughtful look. She had just come down from the anxiety of losing Wire to gravity, piling on an infection was too much too fast. Immunotherapy over the centuries had allowed ponies across the entire Initiative capable of handling any environment they found themselves in, but this was a bit too new for the cautious pilot. “With a whole new alien environment, we should play it safe. Please.” Wire watched his sister shrug and move on to the CIC. “If you insist, Winny Boo.” A furious scowl of couch banishment marred Winter’s face. She flashed a glance at Wiggly, and the pegacorn’s bemused look revealed it had been the first time she had heard that particular private pet name. “I will end you long before any infection could if you call me that again.” A mischievous smirk crossed Wire’s lips and he tiptoed towards the CIC while keeping his gaze fixed on Winter’s own.  Winter pointed a dangerous hoof at him. “Don’t.”  His grin widened. She quivered her hoof for emphasis. “I’m warning you.”  He waggled his eyebrow as his smirk widened, only to make her scowl deepen.  “Love and kisses, Winny Boo.”  He suddenly bolted away, racing to the safety of the CIC. “You are so dead!”  Yet Winter didn’t chase him like Wiggly might. Instead she bided her time, intent on saving her revenge for later.   Upon reaching the CIC, Wiggly skidded to a stop close to the door. Morales was in the tube now filled with oxygenated water. His tail seemed to have unfolded a large set of passive pink gills. A few organic looking cables connected other parts of his tail to the bottom of the tube. His horn was glowing a serene emerald with the glow being funneled up into the top of the tube. He had been facing the door, hoping to receive some good news.  Wiggly was both enthralled by the sight of it, and survival taking more of a backseat, she was enamored by the alien tech before her. “Will wonders never cease. You’re aquatic?” When the grinning doctor spoke, it came from Mote’s pad close by resting on the captain’s chair. “Sort of necessary given how the gravimetric initiator system is made. I’m glad to see you in such high spirits so quickly.” “All thanks to you.”  Wiggly’s eyes went down to his strange tail.  “Do you mind?” A polite laugh bubbled from him, only for Morales to clamp his mouth shut. “Not at all.” Wiggly crouched low to study the tail while Morales moved his legs out of the way. She had expected it to be cybernetic, but upon close inspection she could see the pulse of capillaries and how it was more like his tail had flowered open more than anything else. It opened a world of possibilities in her mind, with each of them begging to see the light of day.  She was so absorbed by the small details that she didn’t hear her brother move into the room with Winter stalking after him. She only looked away when Morales spoke again. “Ah, and my soon to be culinary savior is alive and well too. How wondrous.” Wiggly stood back up and waved the others closer. “Guys, you have got to see this. His tail is one big fish gill! It’s all flesh and blood too.” Winter took polite interest, studying it at a distance, whereas Live Wire was more weary of it. “That is - different.  Anyway, thank you for slackening the gravity around here.” Sprocket blushed furiously, and bowed to the encased alien. “I completely forgot, thank you very much!” “We are harmonious shipmates are we not?  We all have our duties, and I will surely be returning the accolades once we are starborne again.” “Speaking of being harmonious,” Winter began after resolving to seek vengeance later.  “We wanted to be able to remove our suits. Yet we are unsure how risky mutual contamination could be.” “Truly?” Morales asked with carefully curtailed disappointment. “If you are concerned on my behalf, I can assure you this much. After inhabiting dozens of worlds and beyond, the cathrex immune system is as adaptable as life itself. I could step onto a wholly novel world and the worst I could receive is mild irritation. I suppose a purpose built biological weapon would work, but I doubt noble beings such as ourselves would make such things.” So long as we’re all friends here. “Well I’m glad to hear it.”  Wiggly tapped a few buttons at the base of her helmet, causing it to depressurize and slide off. “Because I was getting real tired of having to ignore this.”  She put the helmet down and furiously scratched her nose, cheek, mane, and everywhere in between. Winter was reluctant to simply take Morales at his word, and favored hard data. Yet with Wiggly already disrobing, the thestral sighed in defeat. “Did you even think to have the suit check the atmospheric composition before doing that?”  Winter sighed when a look of terror fell over Wiggly. “It’s fine by the by. The oxygen is higher, but not enough to be a problem.”  She clicked her helmet off. She shook her mane now that it was loose from its confines. “We ponies took a similar path with our immunization.”  She took a moment to focus on Morales’ tail and on up to his ponish head. “But I presume that cathrex have taken to gene editing like a fish to water.” A coy, borderline bemused expression colored Morales’ voice. “About as much as you ponies do to singing. The archives spoke of your species’ proclivity for song. If I had not watched so much of your media, I don’t think I could tell the difference between your speech and music.  As much as I would like to speak of this further, I won’t be able to maintain the counter gravity without at least the secondary reactor whiling away, and it has been a long day already.  Take Mote’s pad with you, I’ll be able to talk and guide you to it.” In a matter of dubious luck, the secondary reactor was right next door to the engineering section, the same section that had been blasted to pieces by a mine. As Wiggly and her brother brought Mote into the room, they saw that the wall adjacent to the damage was badly deformed.  Winter had split off to find some cabins and prepare a simplistic dinner, leaving Live Wire to carefully roll the fuel canister through the hallways. Fortunately, the reactor itself seemed undamaged.  Buried under shielding and cables, the reactor core was structurally V shaped, and that worried Wiggly Sprocket.  With Wire levitating Mote’s pad, that gave Wiggly room to more deeply inspect the device.  A disappointed scowl fell over her.  “Let me guess.  You guys still operate with naked antimatter don’t you?” Both Mote and Morales’ avatars hovered over the pad, with Morales giving an unknowing shrug.  “I did not know you could clothe AM.” Live Wire found a safe enough alcove and propped the fuel canister to sit upright.  Within the same breath, Wiggly walked over and rubbed a hoof on it.  “You can with fullerene shells.  Mix it into a partially stable foam with hydrogen isotopes, and you have AM you can practically drop from orbit and not have it not go off.”  She smirked at Morales.  “Make it right, and our fuel is as stable as plastic explosives.” Mote gasped in surprise, although neither pony could tell if it was genuine emotion or just a facsimile of it.  “Admission.  We used to have a similar method before being diminished.  Unfortunately, the fabrication practice was heavily copyrighted to Firestar Power Inc, and it was lost with the company.  As of late, we have had to rely on old technologies.” That certainly turned the ponies’ ears.  It was one thing for a single ship to wind up in a desperate situation, but to hear of such a fundamental loss as this to an interstellar civilization was troubling.  Wire shared a look with Sprocket, letting both know the other came to the same conclusion.  “So you had a war like we did?” Live Wire asked with as much diplomatic tact as he could to keep Morales talking.  He was unsure of how to handle Mote. Morales looked at Mote with a fuming scowl as if he could see the other avatar.  He seemed to be angry at first, then disapproving next.  “I suppose you would know eventually.  Yes, the Combine is a thin shadow of what we once were.  Personally though…” He paused to rethink his comment, unsure of how much he could really say.  “We had become a bloated weave who tried to forget itself.”  Live Wire tried to keep his growing worries from showing on his face.  That sounds ominous.  I wonder if this ‘bloat’ led to his shipmates getting killed as much as the minefield did. Sprocket’s heart went out to him.  Damn.  His people are reaching out to us for help, we’ve got to get off this rock!  She forced a highly enthusiastic smile and clapped her hooves together.  “Well then, let’s hope what’s left is the best bits, eh?  Now, how about we modify this reactor here to work with our fuel.  Shouldn’t take too much effort, just feed a smaller amount of fuel from both ends, and modify the reaction chamber to trigger the shell collapse.  The only tricky part is how to funnel the residue into a container. We burn it off in the drive plume when we’re on the go… Hmm. I might need to work up a flare spigot.”  The very idea of the work was getting her excited.  To be the first to both examine alien technology and demonstrate the Initiative's engineering prowess all at once was jazzing her up so much any need for sleep was utterly forgotten.  “I’ll need the full diagrams to the ship along with the schematics. Specifically the electrical system.   Also, I need to get to the machine shop right away! … You do have a shop right?” “Naturally.” If anything, Morales was just glad Wiggly seemed like she was two pots deep into black coffee.  Until main power was restored, maintaining the counter gravity was as taxing as a light jog, and he was a year out of shape.  The power pack the ponies had provided wouldn’t last the night, and he was acutely aware that they had not brought very many.  “You can investigate the chief engineer’s office.  I imagine that he had a great many technical journals on hand as he once told me he was a recent transfer to the Akira as well.  As for the machine shop, it is only a short way back towards the bow on the starboard side.” “Perfect!”  Wiggly clapped her hooves as a manic grin cleaved her maw.  “Bro, go with Mores and find the journals.  I’ll take a pack and see about making those modifications.” The need to ask for such documents and Wiggly’s growing excitement only compounded Wire’s worries, a notion silently mirrored by Morales. Unlike the cathrex, he knew her enough to voice his misgivings. “Uh, Wiggs, are you sure you know what you're doing?  It’d be one thing if this was one of our reactors, but this thing?” Giving off a series of disappointed ‘tsks’, Wiggly roped him into a side hug and shot him a toothy smirk. “Wire, pu lease, this thing they have here is baby stuff, I’m talking they demonstrated something just like this in history class.” “I don’t remember ship components being a topic of history class, gears for brains.” Using a wing, Wiggly pointed at various parts of not just the reactor, but the wiring and tubes around it. She rattled off identifying names and purposes for each one like a machine. After a solid minute of that, she rolled her head towards the pad. “Mote, back me up on this. How did I do?” “The hologram acted as if she was a teacher in class, as opposed to the bewildered doctor next to her. “Statement: your knowledge of this reactor is on a professional level.” Morales finally found his voice. “I - I don’t know if I should be scared or not.” Letting Live Wire go, Sprocket made for the exit. Smug satisfaction burned as bright as the sun on her. “What can I say? I’m a child of Twilight Sparkle.” Twilight Sparkle?  The name was hauntingly familiar to Morales so much it started to ache. He instantly cast aside it being a name of his kin, and yet he knew he heard it from somewhere. Was it on one of the holo-shows? Ignorant of Morales aggressively searching his memories, Live Wire huffed at her, and tried to flick Sprocket’s horn with a hoof. “You just made that up.” Yelping from light pain, Wiggly used a fetlock to gently rub her sore horn, and to make sure the lightning cover was still in place. “I could be,” Sprocket countered with a raspberry.  “She had a lotta kids, like fifty or something.  I’m probably a great granddaughter,” she proclaimed with pride.  “Yea, okay, sure. You let me know when you tap into that trust fund of yours. Until then, imma let you get this reactor working, while I go save Winter from the stove. I trust her behind the helm, not in front of an oven.” As he turned to leave, Wiggly flew over to playfully block the exit. “The only place you’re going is the machine shop with me, Buster Brown.” “Why?  I’m a chef, not a mechanic.” Sprocket tugged on Mote’s pad with a wing and dragged it into his view. “Wiry, you see those hands?” Furrowing his brow, Wire observed the two cathrex’s hands, drawing similarities to minotaurs and centuari.  Now that he actually paid attention they were more akin to paws. “What about them?” Sighing because it needed to be said, Sprocket waggled a rather blunt shaped hoof at him.  “Fat chance I’m going to be able to use their tools. I need that magic of yours for the delicate work.  So unless you wanna trade horns, you have to stay with me.” It took hours to remove the ignition chamber and move it into the machine shop. After setting up the power packs, Live Wire was able to take a break to go help Winter salvage dinner while Sprocket went about making her modifications.  The center of the shop was dominated by a 3D printer that could carve most materials and put in changes the user required. So after setting it all up, Wiggly had nothing to do but wait and watch. The day had caught up to her, and she was nodding off and on throughout the process.  Morales would have been content to let her rest, but he had never spent such a prolonged time in the tank, even during normal operations. The mild yet constant strain was doing him no favors. So to stay awake, he had to resort to regaling about his favorite holo-shows.  Wiggly shared a couple of favorites with him, and the pair gabbed like true fans until a gentle alert prodded her attention. As she inspected the latest alteration, she kept yawning.  That wasn’t helping her efforts with inputting commands. Her hooves were simply impossible to use the keyboards with, and she lacked a machine interface. With Wire ignoring her calls, Wiggly had to resort to using her wing fingers to painstakingly enter commands one letter at a time. All of it was only possible because Mote translated not only the keyboard for Wiggly, but also her commands back and forth between Equiss and the Cathrex tongue. Blinking hard to keep herself awake, the pegacorn dearly wished she had a caffeine chew. “Hey, Morales, mind letting me in on something?” The terracorn begrudgingly paused his internal guessing debate on what could be Wiggly’s favorite episode.  He knew he’d forget the answer within seconds.   “Go ahead.” Entering the final correction, she turned fully to the floating gravitor.  “Could you tell me how long you guys have been watching us exactly?  Because you said you didn’t even know if we had even made it to space yet.” His avatar floated as if he was laying on his back to think.  With his physical body though, he was taken aback by the change in topic. “Ahh.  Hmm.  Mote, how long has it been?” The hologram bowed her head in disappointment.  “Statement.  Regrettably, I do not have access to historic data while separated from my larger self.”  “I figured, but I had to try.”  Morales rotated slowly in midair, scratching his chin.  “If I had to ‘ballpark it’ as you say… roughly one and a half millennia.  Give or take.”  His face fell, fully expecting her next question. And a burning one at that.  Sprocket rounded the workstation and walked up to the pad so she was face to face with him.  “Now wait a second.  If that’s true, how am I able to recognize a lot of how your stuff works? Your stuff should be light years ahead of anything I’m familiar with.” He averted his eyes, burning in shame.  “I wish I knew how the captain was told to answer that very question.  Even I know it is not something one would wish to admit to a potential trade partner. The war Mote and I mentioned earlier was… cataclysmic.”  In an outstretched hand, Morales conjured a blue and white image of the galaxy; it was frayed a bit due to his own fatigue and lack of practice.  A decent chunk of the lower right quadrant was tinged orange.  The area was more or less a uniform circle, save for a small indentation with a green star.  “This is where Equiss resides.  As the only species we found to have a proper society, we left the planet and the surrounding systems to you.  The rest…” he paused with regret. “These were how far our claws stretched a thousand years ago, back when our ancestors were first developing machine powered flight. From the outside, the Combine appeared strong, and poised to claim the whole galaxy in time.  But we were… diminished.”  The orange area suddenly shrank considerably.  Now the orange was smaller than the total stars claimed by the nations born from Equiss.  “We lost much more than territory.  Technology, culture, people, eras of history. The Akira we reside in, would have been put in a museum had it existed back then.” “By Celestia’s star…”  Wiggly cupped her mouth at the incomprehensible amount of loss that implied. “What happened?  Did other aliens come after you?” “We did it to ourselves.”  Morales banished the galactic map with a dismissive shake of a paw.  “We take to genetic tinkering as strongly as ponies have done with magic.  Unlike yourselves who were molded by magic from the beginning, we tinkered like a child with a new toy.”  He summoned a virtual creature in the other hand.  It was a brown creature not unlike the house cats Wiggly remembered on Trireme before the Sundering.  “This is how my species appeared before we started changing ourselves. Mote’s form is what we now consider baseline.  But we varied wildly, from hybrids such as myself to gelatinous monstrosities.  Fliers to fully aquatic, frozen worlds to lava rivers to gas giants, there was no planet our geneticists couldn’t adapt us for.  Or try to at least.   “But it caused us to bleed like a broken blood feather.”  Morales dismissed the feline creature to move Mote’s figure between Wiggly and himself in one paw, and then to summon a revolting creature that reminded Sprocket of a monstrous centauri.  A being of six legs and four arms, it possessed slick mottled skin and an oblong face that had its lips stretched taut along with five lidless eyes.  “Tell me, Wiggly Sprocket.  Pony, whose own species deviates between horns and wings, could you ever see a day where these two beings could be called kin?” The very idea of any being willing to become such a creature revolted Wiggly so badly her stomach churned.  “No.  Maybe as friends, but kin?”   “Exactly.”  Morales let Mote go back to his side and he banished the unnerving creature. “Rebellions and uprisings led to much of the ruling body resigning in mass protest. It allowed the claw to slice the Combine’s neck. A law was forced through. Now we limit ourselves to this: two legs, two hands, and one head. No more, no less.” He gestured to his horn and wiggled his tail for attention.  “If a xenotype doesn’t break that simple rule, it is legal.  I’m sure you understand what followed.” More to cope with the heavy news, Wiggly couldn’t help but to bring a modicum of humor into things. “So even your original selves were made illegal?” A snorting humorless expression fell over him as his tail thrashed with pent up emotion.  “That was and remains a sanctioned exception. I can count on one hand how many such exceptions exist, and have fingers left over.”  He fell still for a spell, trying to hide the strain he was under. “In spite of our loss, the Combine still stands two centuries after the War for the Soul fell away.” “That’s…” Sprocket exhaled sharply. “A lot to take in.” The console chimed its completion.  Eager for the distraction, Wiggly disengaged the machinery and inspected her work. “I can’t make a proper reaction chamber without some specialist help, but this should get everything but the engines back online.  Maybe even the maneuvering thrusters if we play it smart.” Morales’s body ached and his horn burned from such prolonged exertion. His real hands were rubbing his forehead, trying to lessen the pain. His hologram however, remained sullen after unloading his kin’s sorrow. “Glad to hear it.”  He was losing the battle to hide the strain in his voice. “I fear I won’t be able to maintain the counter gravity much longer though.” “I’ll get the others,” Wiggly announced with sudden haste. “You’ve done a lot for us. You can slacken the gravity a bit if you need. Wire and I can handle it.” At first, Morales didn’t want to accept her offer, and remained in contemplative silence as she grabbed the pad and raced to find the others. On the bridge, Mote materialized in front of his real face with a worried grimace. “Concern. Perhaps you should take her up on the offer. Your vows as a medicia will not be tarnished if you do.” “I am the first cathrex ponies have ever known.”  Morales grit his teeth, glad that none of them were physically on the bridge to witness his struggle. “I will not let our first showing be one of weakness.” Mote floated over to gently cup his check, giving him a soothing expression. “And yet you laid bare much of our scars.” “They will see that we have stumbled and bled, that can not be helped. Better to see dented and tested armor fail, rather than one fresh from the smith’s hammer.”  Through his remote connection to the pad, he could see the three beleaguered ponies had gathered to heft the reaction chamber to the generator.  For close to an hour, Mote remained silently close to offer her support. The ponies were in the midst of fixing the chamber to the generator when Mote chimed in again. “Speculation.  Do you think the ponies are fortunate that the war stopped their expansion in our direction?” The distracting thought was exactly what Morales needed to ignore the numbing sensation in his horn. “Perhaps. They too readily meld machine and nerve, and are easily isolated by one station’s destruction. They have no defense against what awaits them. What we had wrought.” “Conjecture. Neither did we.” Her words weighed heavily upon him, like a noose that had been freshly cut from the tree. He was only absently aware of the ponies doing some hasty tests on the reactor before he eventually spoke again. “Let’s hope my fathers will leave well enough alone.” “Interrogative.  Would you?” Rather than give a fast answer, Morales’ slowing thoughts forced him to mull over it.  His head felt numb as his magic reached critical levels. He was beginning to forget the pressure in his lungs as well.  Suddenly, the lights around the bridge snapped and crackled before sluggishly flickering on. Morales was only barely aware of Mote cheering before she rerouted this new influx of power into the singularity projector. Bit by bit, the magic within the ship was stabilized, allowing Morales to at last get some rest.