//------------------------------// // 06 - Chapter Six: Return to Sender // Story: The Stars Beyond The Veil // by Charlemane //------------------------------// Chapter Six Return to Sender “Tragedy. At 10:13 this morning a massive asteroid struck Celestia’s Providence before the evacuation effort could reach its final stages. The planet and surrounding colonies have gone dark. Millions are presumed dead, and disaster teams have been dispatched to the planet to search for survivors. In the meantime, the rest of us must continue doing the only thing we can. We must believe. Believe in the bravery of those who venture into the destruction and... pray. Pray for their safety.”  - ENN Broadcast: Destruction of Celestia’s Providence - 2513 EC Static. In the precious minutes following his announcement, we stood together in the semi-dark, quietly listening to the C-Band for any sign of incoming trouble. It was Nightshade’s idea. I watched him squat by his container, taking quick glances outside the viewport while the static blared in my ears, popping occasionally with pain inducing volume. I tried telling him the exercise was pointless. Without the right equipment, you cannot hear what people are saying on the C-Band. All you can hear is static: bursts of loud, screaming white noise followed by deaf silence. Short of a starship’s communication suite, nothing could interpret it. Nightshade, however, ignored my objections, insisting instead that we listen in. So we did. I scanned the C-Band with my WAND and tuned-in to the only active frequency. Immediately, static screamed into my ears. It came at regular intervals, broken by silence as one transmission ended and another began. As far as I could figure. The two ships were probably just chatting about approach vectors and scan reports, typical communications between vessels in convoy. Or, maybe that was the point! The bursts of static remained long and even, meaning that whoever was talking was probably giving a report of the current situation without any real sense of urgency, as if everything was normal, and the pilot, or comms officer, was bored. And under that line of thinking... My mind worked over a few possible conclusions and settled on the most likely, or at the very least, the most hopeful: They didn’t know we were there. Yet. “Hear anything?” Nightshade asked, still keeping a wary eye on the two ships outside the viewport. “Yeah, a lot of static,” I replied. “But from the sound of things we may be in the clear, for now.” “That’s one thing in our favor then.” Nightshade nodded. “What do we do?” Nightshade took a backwards glance at the window, before resting his gaze on the airlock door. “Well from the looks of things we’re trapped in the cargo hold of a derelict transport, and from what I’ve seen of our getaway ship, we’re as good as dead.” He declared. I facehoofed. The sole of my boot clinked against my visor. “That’s not helpful.” I said. “You’re welcome,” he replied dryly, “but in all seriousness, we’ll need to lock down this area before the boarders get here. They’ll want to make sure their delivery hasn’t been tampered with, and we need to be ready for them.” “Any ideas?” I asked. “Well, we’re not short on cover. If we try to hide, there is a small chance they won’t find us.” He shook his head, “I doubt it though.” “Why is that?” “As soon as those teams land they’re going to start looking for signs of passage,” he said, “and from what I remember, we weren’t exactly subtle in getting in. Any strike team is bound to notice the work we did to clear the wreckage.” I thought back to the hull. I had really done a number on it trying to clear a path inside, and worse, the cuts were still fresh. “So that leaves-” “Fighting,” he said, “fighting or running, and while we’re stuck in here we can’t do much running.” “Damn.”   “On the bright side we’ve still got plenty of cover, it should give us a better shot at engaging them once they try and penetrate this area.” Nightshade mused. “Engage them?” I said incredulously, “Engage them with what? Apples?” I flung one of the biohazards at him and he swatted it away with a hoof. The offending foodstuff careened away, bouncing off a bulkhead and rebounding out of sight. “The cutters,” he clarified. “Cutters aren’t weapons.” I said. “No, but anything can be lethal when used incorrectly.” His damn grin flashed through my mind’s eye. Whatever he had planned I was already against it. “Ever hear of a slicer mine?” he continued. “A what?” “It’s a little trick I picked up,” he explained. “How many of those charges do you still have on you?” I nosed through my pack and started counting. “Three,” I said, “four if you count the one I- Oh! I remember seeing some in the maintenance bay. I don’t know if they’re still fresh though.” “There’s no harm in checking them. The bay might have something I can use for building the mine.” Nightshade said. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time.” I nodded. Nightshade started back toward the airlock and I trotted to follow him. After a few paces, the C-Band crackled loudly. The static changed. The even static bursts were replaced by shorter ones. Some of the exchanges were followed by long pauses, and then interrupted by much more rapid transmissions. I stopped. “What’s wrong?” Nightshade asked, halting at the airlock. “Traffic is picking up on the C-Band.” I said, “It sounds like they’re getting suspicious.” Or they had spotted the Bandit, I thought grimly. “Then we’ll need to hurry. Come on.” We reentered the airlock, raiding the maintenance bay beyond for supplies. The charges were all dead but one, which Nightshade took while he ripped the wiring from a wall panel, securing it to some tubing he grabbed out of the spare parts that were laying around. By the time we were back in the cargo hold, he had loaded a new charge into his cutter and was busily splicing the wire into the cutter’s internal circuits. “Give me one of those fresh charges,” he ordered, “I’ll need one or two more for this to work.” I floated him another charge, which he secured to the cutting edge of the blade with the rest of the tubing. After a few more tweaks, he let go of his project and let it hang in the space between us. “There, that should-” The rest of what he said was lost as a low, metallic boom shook the ship. For a half-second I stood frozen, fearing that the sparkle drive had overloaded, and we were all about to die. Moments turned into seconds, and aside from a small flicker in the emergency lights, nothing happened. After a few moments of quiet, I started breathing again. “What was that?” I asked nervously. “That’s the sound of our time running out.” He explained. “Get to cover, they’re boarding.” We sealed the airlock behind us as we reentered the cargo hold, taking positions behind the crates nearest the door while we waited for our guests to arrive. Grabbing his improvised weapon, Nightshade trotted next to the door, setting the cutter thingy in the space next to the airlock, before rushing back and taking cover behind the crate across from mine. Across the gap, he turned to me. “Horizon, when they crack the airlock, I want you to float the cutter inside and draw back the slide. Got it?” “Got it.” I replied, nodding. “Good,” he said, “get ready.” I don’t know how long we waited there, the seconds lasted years. The ship moaned under the periodic booms of whatever was striking the ship. Two booms, three. With each impact the emergency lights flickered, blacking out the room as the wreck rotated onto its dark side. Vividly, I was reminded of the lounge in the slums. The ship boomed, the lights flashed almost like the flash of gunfire, and for a moment I remembered the faces I’d seen, their vivid expressions of fear and confusion overwhelming me. “Calm down Horizon. Take long slow breaths and focus on something.” Nightshade said. I was hyperventilating. Mentally, I tried shoving the images of the lounge out of my mind, taking long slow breaths to ease my racing heart. I squeezing my eyes shut, I focused on the crackle of the C-Band. Short exchanges of static filled my ears. They were rapid transmissions, but at an even, calm pace. They were wary, it seemed. Obviously they had discovered something, but without a direct feed from the Bandit, I would never know what. Another boom sounded from somewhere on the ship this time seemingly from just beyond the airlock. “Anytime now.” Nightshade said, pressing himself tight against his crate. I imitated him on my side, poking my head around the corner of my container, just enough to keep an eye on the door. Thunk. I froze, my eyes glued to the airlock. Thunk. Thunk. Hoofboots. The muted hiss of gas filled the chamber beyond. Panic crept into my chest. “Focus, Horizon.” Nightshade warned. I exhaled, nodding weakly before resuming my breathing exercise. The airlock door jolted, and then squealed as it cranked open. Through the opening gap, I caught a glimpse of our attackers. They were armored. Dull colored plating, painted in brown and black fatigues, sat over their flexweave flight suits while they stood guard inside the chamber. The lead pony magically leveled a weapon through the door, while a second reached into the manual override and turned the crank inside. Judging by the magic field around the weapon, the leader was using a WAND. “Now! Horizon!” Nightshade yelled. I focused, pushing the mine around the corner and through the gap. The two visible occupants drew back in surprise, the leader dropping his weapon in favor of trying to push the bomb back out with his own WAND. The bomb halted in space, caught between the conflicting energies of the two WANDS. The pony at the door abandoned the manual override in favor of trying to disarm the new threat. I drew back the slide and ducked for cover. FIZZRK. BANG! For an instant a scream of steel drowned out the environment. The cutter exploded in a fireball, flinging razor sharp shards of metal in all directions. Shrapnel pinged off the containers as pieces of the charge embedded themselves into every nearby surface in a deafening roar of metal on metal. Nervously, I peered back around the corner of my small cargo container. The lead pony had taken the brunt of blast, and his gored body floated limp amid the attackers. The second writhed in the plague ridden air, his bleeding hide exposed to the caustic atmosphere. A third pony emerged from behind them, weapon raised, injured, and already succumbing to the ambient poison. “Go!” Nightshade called, jumping from cover. Nightshade charged, sliding under the attacker’s weapon as he fired, spinning and bucking the pony into the wall with a sickening crack. “Here, take a weapon!” Nightshade called, prying a rifle from one of the bodies and flinging it in my direction. I caught weapon with my WAND, doubling back into the cargo hold while Nightshade retrieved one for himself. The C-Band exploded into traffic. A constant stream of high intensity static blared into my ears so loud that I couldn’t hear Nightshade on the short band. Wincing, I cut the line. “Well if they didn’t know we were here before, they do now.” I announced. Two more booms sounded in rapid succession, the emergency lights flickering with each impact. “What is that?” I called, scanning around for the source of of the noise. “Reinforcements.” Nightshade replied. A metallic rending sound came from behind me as a white-hot rod punched through the airlock and secured itself to the blast door. “Get away from the door!” Nightshade screamed, taking cover. I took my rifle and ran for the nearest container. A force hit the air. Fire erupted from the airlock, followed by a roar as air vented through the blasted hole. Six armed ponies pushed into the room against the airflow, weapons raised and scanning for targets. One of them spotted me as I hastily scrambled for cover, and pulped an apple floating inches from my head. I recoiled behind my container. A clang sounded out in the hallway and the roar of air stopped. The airlock ponies surged forward. Nightshade popped around his container and fired, missing twice and scoring once dead center in the leader’s chest. The leader twitched, and went limp. The others dived for cover, laying down a withering volley of suppressing fire as they spread out across the chamber. The ship shook as another boom sounded, this one directly overhead. I looked up in time to see the ceiling turn red. Another rod punched through. A bright flash. Another force hit the air. What used to be ceiling was now an opening, and three more of the heavily armed ponies floated in training weapons in all directions. I raised my rifle and started firing, spraying a mad stream of projectiles at the new arrivals. My aim was pathetic. I fired high and wide trying to walk the weapon back down onto one of the ceiling ponies. The attackers took cover, hiding among the containers secured to the ceiling, while occasionally returning fire on my very exposed position. I scrambled for cover, pressing up against a cargo container while blindly firing over its lip. Enemies behind, enemies above, in a horrified moment I realized we were trapped. “What’s the plan Nightshade?” I called, pressing myself further into my cover. Between the ceiling ponies and the ground party, I was quickly running out of wiggle room. Cautiously, I glanced around the edge of my container. Nightshade was still trading fire with the airlock ponies. One had gone down but the others were fanning out, closing dangerously on my position and as they gradually surrounded him. Above, the three ceiling ponies popped between containers, firing between movements and steadily forcing me out into the open. “Kill them, what else?” Nightshade responded. I gawked. “That’s it?” I yelled back. “Yeah, it’s nice and simple. It’s hard to fuck that up, right?” A ceiling pony popped around his container, weapon first. I ducked, and a bolt sailed over my head, scorching the crate behind me. I moved again, switching to a container closer to the wall while firing blindly behind me. Heart racing, I searched for options. I had to find better cover. For the moment Nightshade had sandwiched himself between a pair of crates and was doing well, but I was exposed to the ceiling ponies, and once the others reached my position I would be dead. Panicked, I looked around the room for a place to hide, a better location, anything. Within moments I spotted it. Overlooking the cargo bay was a small windowed room with an exposed catwalk snaking up the wall. The bay control room, I realized. My angle on the control room door was wrong, and getting there would require me to be exposed for a few crucial seconds as I jumped to an appropriate vector. Or at least it normally would, if I didn’t have wings. I breathed in, spread my wings and gathered my legs beneath me. Levitating my weapon around the container with my WAND, I fired blindly until its magazine finally ran out, cringing as another hot round landed inches from my hindlegs. I threw my weapon and popped out, darting for the ceiling with a wingbeat. Backbeat, turn. A shot sailed by. and using my wings to change my angle in time for another shot to sail past me. Inches from the upper deck, I leveled off, nearly colliding with a container as I made hasty adjustments for zero gravity. Three of the ground party whirled around at the sudden movement. Nightshade repositioned, taking down another of the distracted airlock ponies in the process, forcing them to reengage. That left the three ceiling ponies. I had lost sight of them when I made my move, and the lighting was too poor for me to see well from the ceiling. I could see the control room, however, beckoning to me. The distance would still leave me exposed, but only for an instant. I spread my wings and jumped as hard as I could. Two ponies swung around the sides of a suspended crate, weapons leveled. I beat my wings for extra speed, sailing through the door as one of the bolts to barely grazed my helmet. I pitched and rolled, smashing hard into the far wall with a thunderous bang. Pain shot through my body, throbbing in time with my head, as stars danced through my vision. I saw a flash and ducked. The control room window shattered. Shards of glass sprayed into the air transforming the air above me into a veritable blender. I struggled to regain my senses, crawling forward toward the squat console in the room, the only cover from the mass of glass above, doing my best to swat the deadly shrapnel up and out of my way. Outside, I could see the ceiling ponies moving, trying to get their kill shot. I ducked as another bolt sailed by, planting itself firmly into a locker on the back wall. Frantically, I scanned the console for buttons to push, and my eyes settled on a very particular control. Gravity. I slammed a hoof on the button. The ship shuddered. Wires groaned as heavy containers suddenly strained against their harnesses. Glass crashed to the floor amid the sound of distant gunfire. Just outside I heard three meaty cracks. Peering over the edge of the shattered window, I spotted the ceiling ponies. Only one was still moving, his body twitching violently on the floor. For a brief moment I felt sick. “I need some help here Horizon!” Nightshade called, trading more fire with his attackers and hiding again behind his increasingly limited cover. He was completely surrounded. Two of the airlock ponies stood on opposite sides of him, in a deadly flanking position. “I’m working on it!” I called back, scanning the console for more controls. Gravity was online, as well as the loading controls and a few others I didn’t recognize. I could drop the containers with the gravity, that would give him a distraction, but I would need something more. As I scanned, my eyes settled on the most meaningful control: the bay door. “Horizon! Help dammit!” Nightshade yelled, scrambling behind his last bit of cover. “Run for the catwalk!” I yelled back. “What? why?” “Because I’m gonna flush the cargo hold!” “Oh... FUCK!” Slamming my hoof down on the button, I activated the loading release for the cargo containers. There was a deafening clang as holding pins fired in rapid succession. Everypony on the deck stopped, looking around at the sudden commotion. Containers ripped from the ceiling, crashing below as ponies frantically dived out of their way, smashing onto the deck and scattering apples in every direction. Nightshade ditched his weapon, making a straight charge for the catwalk amid the fresh chaos, surprising a pony who had just moved into position. He jumped him, body checking him into a fallen crate before galloping back into safety, just as the other ponies turned to fire. Counting to three, I activated the door control. Warning beacons flared to life inside the cargo bay, as klaxons blared warnings to clear the deck. I ducked underneath the console. With a hiss and a tremendous roar, the bay doors opened to the vacuum. Chaos followed. Air whipped around me as I took cover inside the room, ripping the glass shards out of the control room with hurricane force. I used my WAND as a shield, pushing the worst of it away as the din roared around me, and prayed I wouldn’t be hit by the deadly chaff. After a few moments of deafening noise, silence returned, broken only by the sound of my air filters. My ears rang in the ensuing silence, my haggard breathing my only companion. I checked my suit for cuts or leaks. Nothing. I was uncut. I was safe. I drew a slow, wavering breath, followed by another. I wasted a few precious moments, collecting my senses before crawling out from underneath the console. I rested a hoof onto the gravity control, and then felt my body lift as weightlessness returned. “Nightshade, are you still there?” Nervously I edged a little closer to the control room door, hoping against hope that I hadn’t activated the door control too soon. He coughed. Gingerly, I moved to the edge of the control room door, and peeked into the cargo bay. The cargo bay was empty. Where the containers had sat, none remained. Beneath the control room door, only the catwalk remained, untouched. Three rungs from the edge, Nightshade hugged its supports, still holding on for dear life and panting heavily. “A little more warning next time?” He wheezed, pushing himself up and onto the catwalk. He secured himself to the surface. “Sorry.” I chuckled. “No, no,” he breathed, sucking wind. “that was good. Heh. Just a little unexpected.” “So what now?” I asked. Nightshade caught his breath for a moment. “They’re bound to send more. We need to get out of here.” Nightshade replied. “Yeah, but, how?” I asked. Nightshade took a glance at the open bay doors, and I followed his gaze into the black of space beyond. Outside, frozen apples gleamed among the darker shapes of their broken containers. I looked back at Nightshade. Nothing needed to be said, I simply nodded, and, together, we went outside. --- We chose the long route for safety. It would not do us any good to get spotted again, especially now that we were in the range of the attack ships guns. After finding some decent cover, we hid behind a smashed piece of armor plating while taking stock of our situation from the ship’s hull. Our attackers came from two identical ships, their tailfins gleaming in the light of the red sun. They were heavily armed, each equipped with five visible cannons including one large main turret for larger prey, each cannon consisting of a barrel repeater designed for skirmishing. On their hulls their insignia flashed in the sunlight: A gold rose on a bed of thorns. I had never seen that symbol before, at least not of any sovereignty I immediately recognized. The two large attack ships held an even pace with the wreck as we floated in the abyss, their engines at low power and their vectors matched so perfectly with the wreck that together they remained perfectly still in the black sky, save for the wreck’s slow rotation. Across the hull of the cargo ship, holes scored the surface where the ship had dropped in combat teams, the tail ends of the drop pods jutting up from the armor plating they penetrated. I counted eight that I could see, which meant that more of our mysterious attackers were probably scouring the ship for us. I had planned to make a run for it once we were outside, but both ships had trained their guns on the Bandit. If I so much as made the Bandit sneeze, the cruisers would scrap the Bandit the moment its systems powered up. If we were going to get out, we needed a distraction. Another drop pod shot from the nearest attack ship, designated Eochaidh by the gold lettering painted across its armor. The cargo ship trembled underhoof as the pod pierced its plating, spitting up debris in its wake as it penetrated into the ship’s internal structure. The armor plating buckled from the impact, scoring lines across the surface and further wrenching open its damaged sections. Our hiding placed wobbled in space, eliciting a fresh crack near its base. My WAND beeped, warning me of more radiation leaking from the freshly damaged surface. I bent down to investigate. The crack was small, but wide enough for a partial view inside. All I could really see was wiring and a few torn pieces of steel, but deep inside, I also saw a glow. Curious, I calculated our position in relation to what I thought the ship’s layout was. The damage we were hiding under was on the dorsal side of the cargo ship, nearest the thrusters. It occurred to me then that we standing over the engineering section. Nearby, a large crevice in the hull marked where the ship had been hit by an energy weapon, and appeared to have shot clear into its internal structure. A mad, mad plan formed in my head. “Hey Nightshade.” I said, ribbing the pony who was currently keeping a wary eye out for trouble. “Think of something?” He replied, still scanning the hull. “I might have, how do you feel about doing something incredibly stupid?” Nightshade was silent a moment and then turned toward me. His grey eyes regarded me with skepticism through his visor. He shrugged. “At this point, I don’t see what other options we have.” He glanced up at the attack ships with a resigned sigh. “What’s your idea?” “I think you’re gonna love this one.” I chuckled. --- As far as insane, stupid, and genuinely bad ideas go, this had to be one of my worst. The engineering section was more spacious than the rest of the ship, and for good reason. It had taken a direct hit, and a melted hole remained where the energy weapon had pierced it, destroying everything in its path including a good portion of the sparkle drive’s support systems. Despite the damage, however, the sparkle drive continued to operate, the strain upon its failsafes evident in the angry red glow of its core. Brilliant rainbow-colored light shone out of the drive where its casing had melted, its exposed magical core sparking randomly. Around the drive, large cooling pipes fed into the drive’s frame, pumping much needed fluids back into the machine to help keep it stable. The pipes snaked around the room, some ending abruptly where the blast had melted them shut. Lining the walls were banks of consoles, some operational, most not, whose monitors filled with error messages warning of impending doom. Nearby, overturned chairs floated in space along with the corpses that once occupied them. As we entered through the damaged section, a warm feeling washed over me. It was almost pleasant, a subtle, warm tingle that spread from head to hooves, bathing me in what felt wondrously like a warm shower. Keen logic said otherwise. The area was inundated with intense levels of magical radiation, strong enough to bleed through the suits. With every second we wasted, we were being cooked alive. We had to hurry. “Horizon, I’m starting to have second thoughts about this. I can feel the radiation in here. I’m pretty sure that’s not a good sign.” Nightshade said, standing guard behind a support beam and keeping a wary eye on the door to engineering. Several feet away, I bent over the safe side of the sparkle drive near the coolant pipes, keeping as much distance between myself and drive’s kill zone as I could physically manage. “I know,” I said, pulling out my cutter, “and we’re not going to stay, I just need to pull the drive regulator so we can get out of here.” If anything could provide ample enough distraction for us to escape, an exploding starship would. And if the drive was as operational as I thought it was, it would be more than just a little explosion. I stuffed another charge into my cutter and activated it. The tool flared, and I got to work, dialing down the output so as not to damage the sensitive components inside. As I set the blade to the metal, the drive sparked and an arc of lighting bent back around the killzone. I froze, deciding to reduce the output a little more before continuing. My progress was agonizingly slow. I started my cut, praying I wouldn’t cut something vital in the process. After several minutes of cutting, I began to feel uncomfortably warm. The warm tingle progressed to a more searing heat over time, and from what I could see of my earth pony companion, Nightshade felt it too. We needed to get out before we passed out in the heat. Then the door opened. Nightshade shouted a warning and I kicked off the panel as another bolt flashed by me. Two ponies in armor charged in. I slammed into a wall, and then tried to jump out of sight. Tried.  Flash rounds perforated my escape route and I found myself trapped between the coolant pipes and the drive’s kill zone. The new arrivals trotted warily into the main chamber, training their weapons ahead of them as they approached. I edged along one of the coolant pipes, trying carefully to get closer to the wall while remaining as small and out of sight as possible. I floated up, making small adjustments, a scoot here, a nudge there, all while the two ponies spread out to find me. I climbed my way up the pipe toward the ceiling, and from there, followed it around to the kill side of the sparkle drive. The drive flared hungrily, perhaps sensing the organic tissue moving into range. The flare caught one of the ponies attention, his weapon swinging through the air toward the drive and then up the coolant pipe. I hid, willing myself to scoot a little faster. The pony strafed, moving inside the guard rail while the other paced around the far side of the chamber. Nightshade was nowhere to be seen. I moved again, making a careful, short jump behind one of the coolant pipes next to the drive. The lead pony wheeled about, firing wildly. The bolt planting firmly into a pipe above my head and spewing fluid into the open space. I bolted for the floor kicking hard and landing harder. Stupidly, the pony moved in for the kill. He jumped straight at my position and into the drive’s killzone. He realized his mistake just a moment too late. The drive flashed. A bolt of lightning struck the pony in the chest, warping the space around him and causing his body to distort terribly. The pony writhed as he disintegrated, a brilliant flash of light and color. Mortified, the other pony backpedaled away from the drive. Nightshade popped out from his cover and tackled him, dislodging the weapon he was holding before slamming him helmet first into the nearby console, shattering the display. The pony kicked booting Nightshade off him with his hindlegs while he recovered. Both dived for the weapon floating in the space between them. A growing warmth reminded me of what I should have been doing. Ignoring the fight, I moved back to the panel and resumed my cut, carefully drawing a line across the top side and ripping the rest away. Heat washed over me. The drive’s inside was just as I expected. A module, pulsing white with energy, interrupted the connection between the drive’s power intake and its primary capacitors. Behind it, I saw a pair of backups. I yanked one of the modules and let it fly, discarding my cutter in the process. Lightning arced between the connections and the remaining regulators pulsed, struggling to combat the increased load. A wave a nausea washed over me. My vision was blurry, my skin burned and I felt sick. I felt like I was melting! My WAND screamed warnings at me, dulled by a dizzying sensation that made the room sway. Gritting my teeth I pulled away from the open panel, and scanned the room through an encroaching haze. All around the room the consoles flashed red, I kicked to the nearest one and read the new message, squinting to clear my steadily worsening vision. Critical drive failure. Evacuate premises. Perfect. “We’re good to go!” I called out, kicking away from the console. Everything in the room moved in the wrong direction. I crashed into the bulkhead instead of landing. Orientation left me. My hooves scrabbled for a fresh, magnetic footing as I rebounded off the wall. In an instant Nightshade was next to me, wrapping his forelegs around me and hefting me with him toward the hole leading outside. Dizzy, I watched over Nightshade’s shoulder as the drive started to crack and flare, pulsing wildly as it drew more and more power, overpowering the remaining regulators struggling to control it. The fuse was lit. We cleared the damage and Nightshade stuck me to the deck as I steadied myself, the head in my body slowly dissipating, while my head cleared. I stumbled forward and Nightshade bumped me to get me moving. I started trotting, slowly at first, until my head was clear enough to gallop. Nightshade shot past me, and I tried to catch him. We abandoned all effort at stealth. If anyone was scanning the ship hull they would have seen two ponies rushing to the aft section as if Discord himself was on their flanks. Time ticked down in my head as we ran. The drive could go at any moment, and we didn’t have any time to lose. “Horizon! Where’s the ship?” Nightshade called from up ahead, stopping dead before the edge of a drop off before the rear thrusters. I stopped too, whipping my head back and forth trying to spot the Bandit. My eyes locked onto the attack ships, and then to the debris field disappearing around the thrusters. The Bandit was nowhere in sight. “I... I don’t see it!” I called back. My eyes snapped back to the attack ships. They were tracking something, but not on this side of the wreck. We altered course, running onto the sun side of the wreck. As the debris field once again crested the edge, I spotted it. Hiding behind the field of debris, the Scrap Bandit floated dead, its vector canted away and slowly gaining distance from the wreck. Dumping the cargo had altered the ship’s course. Jumping to the Bandit from here would be suicide. A gleam caught my eye. A frozen apple reflected light in the distance, framed in the shadow of its container. An idea struck me. We couldn’t jump from the ship to the Bandit, but we could jump from the debris field. I communicated my idea to Nightshade, and he agreed. Together, we jumped into the debris field between us and the bandit, bouncing off containers until we had a straight shot at our ticket home. We stopped at the last container between us and the Bandit, lining up up our final spacewalk. I looked at the Bandit in the distance, and judged its slight drift. Our jump was going to be a tough one, especially at this distance.The distance was still too great, if only just a little. My jump had to be exact if I was going to land at all. Without time for hesitation, I made my move. I made a calculation, judged my vector, and jumped, whispering a prayer to Luna as my hooves left safety. I entered empty space. Everything moved in unison. Behind me, loomed the two attack ships, barely occluding sun behind their mass. The cargo ship shrank in the distance, as well as the debris field and Nightshade preparing for his own jump. Ahead, the Bandit slid across my vision, slowly entering the area I jumped for. My escape, I hoped. I controlled my breathing to fight the panic building in my chest, taking slow, steady breaths, and started calculating my landing. Sixty feet. Forty. Twenty. I was on target. I would make it. I let out a sigh of relief. The Bandit grew, slightly left of my target, but on target nonetheless. I touched down on the tail end of the ship and turned, securing myself to the hull before looking to monitor Nightshade’s approach. Nightshade had not jumped as hard as I had, he was a distance behind me, but was drifting ever slightly upward. He was going to miss. Desperately I focused, my radiation addled brain struggling as my WAND attempted to alter his trajectory. The distance was great, and Nightshade was heavier than a simple tool. I strained, a migraine starting to pound inside my head. Thirty feet, his upward movement stopped, but he was still too high. Fifteen, He started to angle downward. Five. I stretched to my full length, pulling down with my WAND and extending hooves to catch him.  He stretched. We locked fetlocks and I pulled, the combined force of my WAND and my forelegs wrenching him up, around, and down to safety. He locked onto the deck, visibly shaken. “Thanks.” He said, voice wavering slightly. “We’ll talk about favors later, get inside.” Rushing across the hull, I swung myself into the cockpit through the open viewport. I locked into my harness, flicking switches on as rapidly as I dared. Systems powered up begrudgingly, but with each green light I gave myself a little cheer for victory. System power, sensors, communications. The C-Band popped to life. “That wreck is powering up! Shoot it!” uh-oh. “Copy S... wait... Sreng, I’m detecting an energy spike from cargo ship!” Thrusters. I flicked the switch and the ship shuddered horribly. I flicked it several more times, rerouting power from less vital systems to try and get even one of the thrusters to light. My WAND screamed warnings of an overload in the auxiliary power grid. I flicked it again. Navigation went online; thruster three fired, followed by two and four. “Eochaidh, its sparkle drive is overloading! Get out of there!” One more flick. Thruster one lit. We were in business. I throttled up and the ship surged forward. Nightshade swore over the comms, followed by a thud and a grunt on his end. “Oh no you don’t you little shit!” Two rounds flashed past the cockpit. I threw the bandit into a sidelong dive and pitched hard. The two attack ships slid into view. The Sreng was tracking me, its weapons spitting off rounds as its cannons spun up, while the Eochaidh had pushed all its power into its engines, burning madly to get away from the exploding cargo ship. Light flashed in the void. A large portion of the wreck’s hull bulged and warped, before several portions of its armor plates disintegrated and gave way to the exploding core of the ship’s drive. A small sun ignited inside the heart of the cargo ship, flinging shrapnel and spitting lightning from the energy vortex of the detonating drive, as a warped ball of sheer magical destruction surged outward. A bolt of lightning snapped across the lead ship, too close to the explosion, penetrating its shields and cutting a jagged line clear across its exposed underbelly. The Eochaidh lurched, keeling to one side and its armor warping under the magical strain. Its figure warped, as the space around it distorted hideously. Its armor buckled. Small explosions started breaking along the hull shedding air and debris into space until the damage finally penetrated its ammo storage. The pilot of the Eochaidh screamed over the C-Band as the ship detonated. “BASTARD! You’ll pay for that!” The second pilot screamed. I slammed on the distress beacon while pushing the thrusters to their limit. The ship rocked forward. The barrels on the enemy cannons spun up. Projectiles sailed by in a random pattern, trying to predict the vector of the bandit as we danced in the vacuum. I brought the ship into sharp, uneven turn before dodging behind the debris field left behind by the two ships, hot death trailing ever so slightly around me. I counted seconds in my head as I powered the sparkle drive desperate to get away from the ship’s guns. An error popped up on my WAND. The sparkle drive was still on cooldown. “Fuck!” I screamed. Nightshade had recovered. “Where’s the turret on this damn thing?” he yelled. “I don’t have one!” “Oh you have gotta be shitting me!” The Sreng crested the debris field, engines fully powered and ready to give chase. I turned, dodging a large piece of armor plating as more of the cannonfire zipped past in a lethal stream. The ship jolted as several rounds struck home. Thruster two died, followed by power to the distress beacon. Using my WAND I input a command to reroute through the auxiliary power, but to no effect. The damn circuits had fried during ignition. My remaining thrusters were pushing me off course, forcing the ship to pitch and yaw while the cruiser above spat hot death through the wreckage. I rolled to correct, trying to relight thruster two while simultaneously pulling up behind another large chunk of armor plating. Unexpectedly, thruster two relit. The thruster fired, and the bandit smashed into the armor chunk. The ship shuddered as the piece of wreckage sheared the topside, denting the canopy and shattering what was left of the viewport in the process. I ditched the controls in favor of clearing the plexiglass with my WAND, desperate not to get cut in the process. Another round struck home. My WAND screamed warnings at me. Thruster three was now out of power as well as thruster four. Hull breaches riddled the ship, and I was getting a massive flux in the sparkle drive. “Gotcha! You little bitch!” Another round penetrated. The interior lights flickered, and to my horror I lost the last of my thrusters. I was a sitting duck. “Where ya gonna run cunt?” the enemy pilot said with a wicked laugh. “Now hold still. I want you to see this one coming.” I switched the board power to my WAND for the cockpit controls, running rapid diagnostics through the ship’s computer. The sparkle drive was dead, thrusters were gone too. All systems were offline save for the running lights and the C-Band. We were dead. The cruiser passed just overhead on its side, the ship’s cannons tracking the Bandit while the vessel matched velocities. The main turret rotated, locking directly onto the cockpit. I stared down the barrel of a loading cannon. The cannon chambered. A particular consonant looped in my head. A flash of electric blue danced across the Sreng’s shield as a shell exploded against it, rocking the ship and throwing it off target. The Sreng fired wide, missing the Bandit as its turrets wheeled fast to meet the new challenge bearing down on it. Three more rounds followed the first, slamming into its shield with crippling force and rocking the Sreng off its bearing.   In the far distance, I spotted my salvation. A battleship, a gigantic boat that dwarfed the attack ship by a factor of two, had landed on grid, aiming all six of its massive repeaters at its cornered adversary. “Hostile ship,” a terse voice challenged over the C-Band, “you have violated the territorial space of the Earth Pony Republic. Prepare to be destroyed.” A drive jammer’s beam slammed into the attack ship. The attack ship’s thrusters fired, accelerating while its guns rapidly returned fire. The battleship stood, focusing its weapons to a point and laying down a broadside volley. Under the withering fire of the battleship’s guns, the Sreng’s shield faltered, the concentrated attack warping it red as all six repeaters rained death upon it. In moments, the focused fire penetrated.  Round after round slammed against the armor of the attack ship, which buckled under the strain until finally the gunfire pierced through its aft section, wrecking its main thrusters. The Sreng’s engines sputtered and died, the ship breaking course under the battleship’s fire. Off kilter, the Sreng returned fire, the death throes of a prey outfought, targeting down, shooting blindly into the encroaching abyss as its predator circled for the kill. The battleship’s engines fired, bringing its bow to bear. Space warped around the its tip as its main cannon prepared to fire. The pilot of the Sreng swore. Light erupted from the battleship’s bow. Drowning out the black sky with a beam like the core of a sun. The energy lance blasted through the Sreng’s weakened shields, penetrating the ship nose to tail. The pilot didn’t even have time to scream. Gutted, what remained of the Sreng hung dead in space. I stared at the spectacle with equal parts awe and horror, my vision trying to erase the discolored bar of light from the beam’s afterglow. “Distressed starship, respond.” The same terse voice called. I blinked. “Distressed starship, respond.” He repeated. Breathing felt surreal. I keyed a response. My WAND beeped. “It looks pretty bad sir, I don’t think they made it.” A distant voice said. “Distressed starship, respond.” The commander, I guessed he was the commander, ordered again. I tried sending again, and then read the error message from my WAND. Error 42: Transmission unavailable. The transmission hardware had been sheared off. The C-Band could not transmit a response. “Distressed starship, last call. Respond.” I tried sending over and over again, before switching tactics. Thinking fast, I flashed the running lights, with a simple message in code: STILL ALIVE “Copy distressed starship, prepare for tow.” I exhaled, letting out a shuddering breath, relaxing for the first time since the whole mess started. As the tension left my body, peripheral feeling returned, along with a new discovery: I needed to take a shower. ___ 88% remaining...