Chapter Three: Epiphany
“No signs of life, Admiral. We’ve been pinging her once every few minutes and conducting regulation thermal scans. Nothing new to report.”
The tinny voice died away as the signal piped through her personal headset, causing her to wince slightly as she adjusted to the new auditory presence. Placing a hoof to her ear, she relayed her commands.
“Assign a squad to go investigate the wreck, and keep an eye on those radiation scans. We can’t afford more losses and I don’t want to have to explain to the High Command why so many of our strike teams are melting.”
With a “yes, ma’am!” the connection closed, and as the static died away she removed the headset and draped it around her neck with her magic. Gazing out over the deck before her, she surveyed soldiers and technicians alike poring over computer readouts, surveying maps, calculating descent angles, and compiling data for use by herself, her subordinates, and their various strike teams. When they showed no signs of falling behind their daunting schedule, she allowed herself a few moments to relax as she draped her hooves over the railing near her station at the helm, reengaging in her surveillance of the space beyond.
Admiral Winter Tempest stood proud at the foredeck atop an inclined dais jutting out from the ship's main floor. A staircase leading downwards towards the main level of the helm lay behind her as she stood near a podium upon which a screen was placed, traced with lines of scrolling data which summarized her ship’s diagnostics, telemetry, and the conditions of her deployed strike teams. This screen, like most others lining the walls of the A.S.V. Noctilucent’s helm, was calibrated for easy hoof-touch access which allowed Tempest to send commands, move teams, prepare weapons, and defend her ship all with the touch or sweep of a hoof. It made making her orders that much more direct, complex, and important to get correct lest the crew beneath her should discover the etymology of her surname.
The Admiral herself, dressed sharply in her snug regulation dress-blues, played with the tassels of her red silk scarf before turning suddenly from the podium to make her way down the steps and across the walkway laid before her. The splash of red fabric which stuck out from her neck was a personally-assigned article given the condition of her still-healing scars, and she always wore it to hide the evidence of her failures from the crew who believed that she, as her mountain of fallen adversaries would attest, was invulnerable on the battlefield.
Her teams of engineers and technicians below worked more furiously than ever to impress her into casting a blind eye, fearing that their efforts might not be enough as they competed against one another--ultimately to the ship’s benefit--to ensure their own protection. Her outward personification of utter frigidity and malice was a little trick she had picked up all on her own, and she was always impressed at how successful it had made her in the end.
Passing through a broad white door which automatically opened before her with a slight hum and a whisk of air, she brushed a hoof through her radiant icy mane held high and flaring, tapered and trimmed as it trailed down her neckline, releasing a few stray hairs of bright electric blue which floated down upon her dress blues and her stark white skin beneath. Flicking her equally maintained tail as she strolled, Tempest took a few minutes to walk to her destination down the long hallway which acted as the major artery in this particular wing of the ship, eying the many officers and soldiers, technicians and scientists, engineers and other maintenance staff rushing about to complete those various tasks and assignments they had been attempting to avoid. Her presence alone shocked them into action as it always had, and her silent animosity carved her an unobstructed pathway towards her destination.
Lost in thought, she stopped before the doors of a large laboratory and eyed the unicorn chemist on the far wall that had addressed her over the intercom, checking to see if the team around the mare was working as furiously as they sounded over the relay. To her surprise, she had never seen them so busy: paperwork was flying and beakers bubbled and smoked as various mathematicians and scientists scrambled to conduct their tests,mixing unknown fluids and isolating various radioactive isotopes as their duties entailed.
Tempest tread carefully around teams of distracted scientists towards a surprisingly young mare bent awkwardly over in her swivel chair, clad in a stark-white lab coat singed and stained with unknown caustic chemicals in various places. The chemist's hoof was carefully placed by a small red knob attached to a long glass tube, the whole apparatus clinched tightly in a steel clamp and half-full of a viscous clear liquid. Her focus was on a glass plate filled with a solid quarter-inch of rainbow ooze, which crackled and fizzed violently as a single drop of the clear liquid, carefully applied as the mare twisted the knob on the side of the glass tube, reacted upon impact. When the reaction died, the patch of rainbow gel directly below the glass tube appeared completely colorless, with various shades of grey and black mixing and swirling together while the rainbow gel around it remained untouched and un-sapped of color.
“I’m guessing this means you know what the hell that is, am I correct?” Tempest queried, her interest piqued by the reaction taking place before her eyes. While her training did not complement the sciences, her childhood fascination with the subject peeked through whenever she had the opportunity to come to this section of the ship.
“Close,” the chemist before her muttered, her eyes moving from the glass tube’s knob to a small clipboard on her right, levitating a pencil and scribbling down notes and calculations as her hooves tapped furiously on a calculator. A few seconds later, she spun her body in her chair and levitated the clipboard to the Admiral, who glanced at it quickly before grabbing it with her hoof.
“Please, I prefer soldier-speak. Would you mind summarizing?” Tempest snapped, her bright red eyes blind to the significance of the swirling lines and mathematical equations before her as she threw the clipboard back on the white table with a loud clank!
“Sure!” the purple unicorn quipped before crossing her legs and removing the goggles firmly planted below her compact horn with a twinkle of baby-blue magic, leaving red rings of skin around the eyes which beamed in excitement at her find. “The base reacted as expected when we titrated it, and given the concentration of the solute and the chromatography analysis we conducted , the polychromatic semi-solid those teams collected from the wreck is definitely the residue of an accelerated Dragonsfyre combustion engine, though an old one.”
While most of her words meant nothing to the Admiral, one fact poked through the mire her words created, one which the chemist summarized in a flash of cognizance.
“This is left over from a powerful engine outburst, Ma’am. It looks like whoever made this mess made it in a hurry. Something definitely happened here that we might need to be worried about.”
The unicorn mare’s blue magic drew her pencil in a furious scribble behind her back, making a few more calculations on the clipboard already overflowing with scientific notation. Spinning rapidly in her swivel chair, she swiped up the clipboard and pressed it firmly out in front of her, taking care to not fully give it to her Admiral lest the temperamental officer decide to attempt to break it again. As her commanding officer perused her work, she afforded another observation.
“We also noted some radioactive decay present from our analysis, meaning the gel started to decay the second it was ejected from wherever it came from. I showed my findings to Diode and Anode over there.” Her hoof pointed out two light blue pegasus twins, clad in similar--though much better maintained--lab coats. “They ran some tests on it, and it looks like this gel has been there for about two weeks, assuming the usual decay-rate of an old Dragonsfyre engine’s radioactive waste.”
“Have you reported your findings to your superior officer?” Tempest queried, pushing the clipboard back towards the mare, her eyes flicking over the mare’s team to see if anyone was eavesdropping over their conversation.
“I just did, Ma’am. I got promoted yesterday, I’m now the Head of the Science team on deck!” the mare piped up happily, grinning with pride.
“That’s great,” Tempest offered back distractedly, making the mare balk in a brief flicker of annoyance and surprise at the Admiral’s brevity as Tempest checked a clock on the wall, watching in concern as the numbers clicked to issue another minute wasted. Donning her headset once more, The Admiral trotted back towards her podium at the ship’s helm, turning her head slightly to the side before giving a curt “thank you, Half-Life” to the mare behind her.
“Pleasure, Ma’am,” the scientist offered back, her legs spinning her back around to her workstation, her blue magic readying another tube for a confirmation titration as her hooves clicked in anticipation on the white metal floor, hoping for a secondary, and maybe tertiary, positive reading to make her hypothesis a fact.
Tempest was halfway to the helm of the ship before another voice crackled over her headset, causing her to stop briefly to listen to the voice on the other end.
“The strike teams have just arrived, Ma’am. They had nothing to report pertaining to the whereabouts of the package...”
“Nothing? Command assured us we would be able to find it here!” Tempest yelled, causing more than a few already-distracted technicians to jump in surprise as she continued hurriedly towards the helm of the ship to recoup their losses.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, but they swept the hold multiple times. I even sent one team to scour the surround wreckage, thinking it might have gotten lodged somewhere outside. They didn’t find anything,” the voice stated cautiously, its tone betraying his dread despite their physical distance.
After a brief moment to firmly massage the space between her eyes, Tempest gave a small, exasperated “thank you” to the stallion on the line as she turned off her headset and slung it back around her neck. Bursting through the doorway separating the overly long hallway from the helm and its grand vista, she trotted up to her stand and removed her headset, throwing it unceremoniously on the pedestal. With a slight pause and a moment to collect her thoughts, she whirled around sharply, causing the tails of her silken scarf to whip around in a rapid swipe of red as she stamped her hoof to announce her orders.
“ATTENTION ON DECK!” Tempest barked as every stallion and mare, regardless of their station or location, snapped quickly to attention. Their papers and clipboards fell to the floor, their pencils releasing suddenly from their owners’ grasps as the various soldiers and technicians in the helm stood at attention, the silence breaking as their discarded work fluttered to the ground to make way for the Admiral’s words. The only other sounds came from the computers and various machines humming and chirping as they kept the ship adrift in The Black.
“Our recovery teams have just informed me that our package is no longer aboard this vessel.”
Tempest nodded to the abandoned wreck before their eyes, still silently spinning from the activity which, not too long ago, had taken place to stir it from its eternal reverie. She looked back to her crew before continuing.
“The Science team has just confirmed that the radioactive rainbow substance found on the outer hull of the wreck shares the same makeup as that found in Dragonfyre engines, which means we are looking for a mid-to-large size vessel of an unknown designation or classification.”
Her assembled crew looked at one another in mixed confusion and surprise, a brief look which the Admiral picked up with practice ease and addressed brusquely.
“I know that doesn’t make sense to some of you new recruits or half-wits, but this basically means we are dealing with a smuggling crew: one who has the need for cheap, rudimentary, but nevertheless extremely effective methods of propulsion.”
Some of the crew gave small haughty looks to their nearby compatriots, foolishly construing the confirmation of their supposed higher intelligence as being a compliment from their frighteningly severe Admiral. The other, more wizened soldiers couldn't disguise their displeasure or concern fast enough, and for the briefest of moments their eyes betrayed their confusion as to why their Admiral was focusing so resolutely on a ship so ancient it still required Dragonsfyre to function. This, too, was picked up by the now seething Tempest.
“Second Mate,” their Admiral shouted, her voice searching for a diminutive green stallion, likewise dressed in the attire of an officer, on the far side of the deck. “Where do you place their heading?”
Her Second Mate, surprised at his commanding officer's singular address, briefly consulted with another stallion and a mare behind him before responding timidly, his voice slightly cracking as he gave his report.
“Ten!...no, umm…fifteen degrees starboard, Ma’am, with a five degree positive pitch! It looks as if they were headed towards the Monoceros Quadrant of the system.”
Allowing herself a momentary victory sneer, Tempest sighed before readying herself for what was to come.
There’s only one soul out that way who would be interested in my prize.
“Dismissed!” Tempest yelled curtly as a few more distracted crewmen and officers jumped at her words, going back to their assigned duties with a renewed fervor. Tapping a few buttons on her own podium-screen brought up a large diagram of her ship, and with a adoring eye Tempest studied its various tines and wings for signs of hull distress before launching into action. Tempest's ship was perfect in every way imaginable, and as she slowly traced the lines and curves with her hoof she allowed herself a moment to revel in its beauty.
The A.S.V. Noctilucent, her pride and joy, was an elongated trident-shaped vessel, curved in the rear like a crescent moon, its central tine longer,wider and more pronounced than its brothers. The other two wings of the ship remained swept back to provide the supports for their respective small vertical-propulsion engines which were used solely for minor course correction and, when the opportunity presented itself, for vertical takeoff and landing during visits to the Allied Maintenance Docks. The helm, placed on the very tip of the central tine, poked ahead from the main bulk of the ship to afford the command deck a 270° unobstructed view of the surrounding space, meters-thick bullet and laser-proof glass the only barrier between themselves and the crushing darkness.
There were few ships in the Alliance's vast armada more powerful, but none were more beautiful.
Pressing a button on her screen, the entire podium withdrew slightly into the floor upon which she stood, the screen reclining backwards until it lay perfectly parallel to the helm’s floor and easily within her reach. With her left hoof, Tempest slid a small digital bar next to the port-side engine forward as far as the screen indicated she was allowed, as her right hoof slid its partner the opposite direction with an equal aggression.
The helm swung around slowly and silently as the entire ship, immediately reacting to her hoof’s movements, fired the port and starboard-side engines according to her specifications. Barely visible from where she stood, the port-side engine fired to life as panels directed a bright blue and silver pulsing light into a nozzle of sparkling, and infinitely deadly, brilliance. The starboard engine, rotating on its axis, fired an equally powerful beam of blue in the opposite direction, turning the entire ship clockwise while still remaining stationary. With a minor tilt from both engines, the ship swung upwards to align its pitch with its target before shutting off completely once it had compensated for its momentum. She grinned with pride and a little hint of madness as she looked at the stars and her target beyond.
Ahh, the marvels of modern science. Let’s see those ruffians do this.
Slamming a button unnecessarily hard on the screen’s surface, she opened a communication feed which connected her to every headset and intercom on the vast ship while simultaneously sliding a red digital bar to a small number “3” as a series of beeps, escalating in pitch and volume, slowly began to grow more and more rapid.
“Prepare to jump!” she yelled, the crew behind her bracing for the rapid shift in speed which customarily followed their Admiral’s bold declaration, their ears protesting at both her loud voice’s sudden auditory assault and the growing din of the beeping console.
The beeps and clicks emanating from her screen, already reaching a fever-pitch, suddenly stopped pulsing as the clamor reached a single high note, a loud and piercing whine which took on its own weight and filled the ears of everyone on deck.
Everypony save Tempest.
With a practiced hoof and an attentive eye, their Admiral waited until the computers controlling the auxiliary engines signaled their normal positions and engine output before she punched another digital button on her podium’s screen.
~~~
From the rainbow-coated wreckage, all that could be seen of the gargantuan vessel was the main engine, contouring to the outermost edge of the crescent body, a vast slit lined in a blue and silver light that rapidly intensified in hue and lustre. When the light looked as if it could intensify no more, the entire cruiser slipped through the boundaries of their own dimensions and entered slip-space, the rear engine’s light collapsing upon itself as the ship, already being dragged away towards its destination, swept up the waves of light behind it as it flickered away like a dying computer screen.
The only remaining evidence of the ship’s existence was a lingering blinding light which flickered like a dying star before going out forever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If we push it like we have been, we should make it to Bayrut by the end of the day,” muttered Wind Dancer to the stallion behind him, his calm brown eyes focusing on the screens before him as he translated what his taxed engine was telling him into a language his Captain behind him could understand. The pegasus could hear his Captain just over his shoulder looking to and fro about the helm, but based on Bastion's disgruntled sigh the pilot knew his report was as good as it was going to get.
“As long as we have enough fuel, Windy. Make her last that long at least. Get her running and let her drift if you need to, just get us there on time. We can’t have our passengers arriving any more late than they already are.”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Wind Dancer replied smartly, clopping his hoof unnecessarily hard to his forehead in a mock salute. Rolling his eyes, Bastion turned from his pilot and trotted out of the cockpit to leave Windy to himself in the engine room. Once he was alone, Wind Dancer allowed himself a few moments to take in the sight before him, losing himself as he was prone to do in imagining all those places his Captain was ever-so-keen on avoiding.The morning light peeked around the edges of the nearby planet and began its sunrise as they orbited the nearest world, destined for a far-away moon on the far side.
With a brief glance over his shoulder to make sure he was finally alone again, Wind Dancer clicked the little button near his hoof marked ‘autopilot’ and, with a final glance over his screens to ensure his ship had understood his command, swept into his hooves two plastic toys. One of them--a squat, four-legged dragon-esque monster--had its back lined with dull plastic scales and spikes. The other was a standing, two-legged monster of a similar appearance, its cheap white teeth in its wide and apparently dangerous maw dully reflecting the light. Wind Dancer took a quick second to play with its miniature arms, which flapped uselessly below its heavily protruding jaw.
“Now,” Wind Dancer began, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he wrapped his hooves around the two monsters, one in each hoof.
“Where were we?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Captain Bastion found his crew assembled around their kitchen table eating the last of Golden Sun’s provisions, each of them visibly waking up from their respective slumbers. A steaming cinnamon oatmeal with mint and assorted freeze-dried berries mixed in laid before his usual seat on the far side of the table, a glass of rehydrated orange juice and the first cup of a new pot of a foreign dark roast standing at its side.
It was breakfast just the way Bastion liked it, and he spared a quick mental note of gratitude for whichever of his crew-members had saved some for him. As was his custom, he surveyed the condition of his vessel and its various occupants, his gaze resting on each of his crew members in turn.
His rugged mercenary Wildfire, his pink stripe slightly sullied with dirt, stood on his back legs in a zebra-like stance with his hooves planted firmly on the kitchen counter. His teeth clenched a broad, serrated hunting knife as he hacked unceremoniously into a loaf of stale bread, using his neck as a fulcrum as he plunged the knife up and down into the loaf, making slow progress as he cut himself a thick slice of the multi-grained bread.
His mechanic, her face untarnished by engine grime and more clean than usual, was engaged in conversation with the upstanding unicorn stallion, though it appeared she was the main instigator of their conversation. His mouth moved slowly to chew the food which he ever so properly consumed as he remained absolutely silent, his posture perfectly straight even as the mechanic gesticulated wildly and, probably more often than was necessary, placed her hooves on his foreleg, a limb which never moved from the table almost as if it were glued there. She sat with her legs curled beneath her rump, turned completely to her side in her chair to face her silent companion, relaying her version of an apparently uproariously funny mechanical story as he smiled politely in all the right places, his eyes betraying his obvious discomfort. When she had concluded, he nodded towards the little mare politely, wiped his mouth, and left the table. Watching the Captain, he proceeded out of the dining room, around the corner, and out of sight as the crestfallen mechanic’s eyes followed him out.
Bastion's steadfast zebra lieutenant stood beside Wildfire, a towel draped around her neck as she used her teeth to place two wooden spoons in the meals she had prepared for herself and her husband. With an inequine finesse, she used her knotted tail to sweep the bowl upon her waiting back. Then, with a lithe and almost impossible agility given her cargo, she made her way around the struggling mercenary, past the kitchen counter's edge, up the little stairs by the door, and around the corner on her way to the helm to spend the morning, as she usually did, with her loving pegasus partner.
As Bastion continued in his circuit, his gaze rested on the final member of his “crew,” though he would never address her as such in front of the others. She sat just as properly as the unicorn stallion did, her white magic levitating a small china cup as its matching teapot piped up steam nearby. The china was embroidered with small little fuchsia flowers in lazy swirling patterns, and as she raised it to her lips and inclined it to force it to part with the hot liquid within, her eyes darted over to rest on the Captain’s face as his continued to examine her appearance.
She was clad in a simple lacy pink blouse with a complementary long white skirt which graced her flanks at a carefully considered length, its edges embroidered like her cup but with interwoven ribbons of bright lilac and magenta. The edges of the skirt were cropped in a diagonal fashion, its left side only slightly longer than its right. He couldn’t help but notice that the skirt hugged her frame tightly…
A little too tightly…
A little ahem brought his attention back to the mare’s face which, despite her light rouge work, was of a slightly more-red-than-usual tint. Flicking her eyes back towards the book in her lap, she laid down the formalities of the day in true proper fashion befitting her upbringing.
“Good morning, Captain. I trust you slept well,” Violet chirped, her eyes scanning the pages of her little book as her teacup levitated near her face, bobbing slightly up and down.
“I did, thank you,” Bastion stated simply before glancing back to his breakfast, his hooves attempting to wrap around his spoon in an effort to complement her heightened social standing. Failing miserably, he did what he could to eat without seeming the brute, though given his non-magical status this embodied itself into the next best thing: sticking his muzzle straight into the porridge and slurping audibly. With a little eye roll, she allowed herself a slight chuckle before taking another sip of her tea, her eyes never leaving the stallion before her as she finished off her drink, readying the teapot to dispense more of her favorite morning brew.
As he finished his meal, he wrapped his hooves around his glass of juice and downed it in a single gulp. Then, with a cursory wiping of his mouth on a nearby napkin and a small nod in the direction of the purple mare at his side, Bastion left the table without a word. Violet watched him leave over the rim of her refilled teacup, following with her eyes the sway of his long brown barding before reinvesting her interest in poetry.
As Bastion trotted towards the back entrance to the medical bay, searching for something to alleviate his head of his new-found headache, he passed three of the passengers he had picked up from the week prior passing in the small hallway, single-file, as they made their way towards the cargo bay, all coincidentally dressed in a similar midnight blue barding with long trailing cloak. Their cutie marks remained hidden just as they had the night of their arrival. By the similarities in their demeanor as they trotted forward in unison, either not noting or refusing to acknowledge the Captain, Bastion assumed that their flank-side marks, like their owners’ eyes, would be similar if not identical. The concept of three almost-identical ponies owning identical cutie marks filled him with a sense of unease, and as his curiosity grew he turned quickly to engage them in conversation.
But as he turned, the last of their cloaks whisked around the corner and the Captain found himself alone. Owing the bizarre trio’s even more bizarre behavior to his new aching brain, he shook his head to clear his mind of the mire and continued his trot towards the medical bay. By the time he had made his way down the steep flight of stairs and arrived outside the medical bay doors, he had forgotten the encounter entirely.
The new encounter he happened to find was by far more unwarranted.
Noticing that the medical bay door was ajar, Bastion pushed it open silently to find the unknown unicorn stallion with his hooves planted firmly on the main counter as he opened an overhead cabinet with his teeth. With extreme care to ensure he would not be discovered, the stallion lunged forward slightly and grabbed with his teeth a small glass vial, his sea-green magic levitating a bag towards his mouth as he recoiled from the counter, dropping the vial silently with his magic into the waiting container.
“Well, aren’t we full of surprises!” the Captain announced loudly, shaking the unicorn stallion from his clandestine activity as the Captain charged, bowling him over as he smashed violently into the unicorn's shoulder. The unicorn, caught completely by surprise, was launched over the medical chair in the center of the room, his legs flailing wildly as he struggled to right himself.
The Captain, however, was much more agile than his target: pouncing over the chair in a high arc, the Captain landed square on the unicorns back and wrapped his hoof around the stallion’s horn, lifting his prisoner’s skull by the magical appendage, its tip bending slightly from the base as it reacted to the Captain’s intense backward pressure. The scream which reflected the unnatural positioning of the unicorn stallion’s horn was accompanied by relaxing muscles as the stallion, defeated, gave into the livid Captain’s attack. The Captain lowered his head, his breath whispering through gritted teeth as he sneered viciously into the thief’s ears.
“Playing ‘doctor’, are we?” the Captain snarled in victory, his charge writhing on the floor in pain as he struggled in vain to get free.
“I AM A DOCTOR!”
“LYING LITTLE SHIT! We both know these medical supplies are worth something, but they are mine…MINE!!!” The Captain hollered back, punctuating his response with a miniscule pull on his prey’s horn. The stallion gritted his teeth silently, sucking down a breath through clenched teeth as he bore the pain as best he could.
“You know, back in the old days they would engage in a punishment for liars and thieves called ‘keel-hauling’…sound familiar?” The Captain hissed, the stallion below him utterly silent as he picked up every word. The thief’s silence was too quiet for the Captain, and as Bastion wrapped his hooves more tightly around the stallion’s horn he stretched it back with a sudden jerk as the unicorn howled in pain.
“DOES… THAT…SOUND… FAMILIAR?” Bastion bellowed, punctuating each word with a slight tightening of his grip and a miniscule jerk. The stallion, eyes dripping in tears, screamed back in a piercingly-high yelp of pain.
“YES!”
“Good to hear it! Now, I’m assuming you know where we are right now, right?”
Before he had even finished his sentence, the unicorn stallion below him screamed in torment, managing to form some basic words through the agony.
“SPACE! SPACE! WE’RE IN SPACE!” the stallion cried, more tears streaking his muzzle to mix with the blood issuing slowly from a cut on his forehead, the aftermath of the Captain’s sudden attack.
“Good, you’re learning!” the Captain jeered quietly, loosening his grip . “Now, seeing as I don’t have a keel to haul you on, I think I will have to go with the next best thing: I have an airlock and a heap of garbage to dispose of, and The Black is a mighty big place to dispose of waste.”
Pulling the unicorn’s horn back to his own muzzle, Bastion hissed into the stallion’s ear with renewed venom, his words dripping with a vicious malice.
“Let’s go for a little walk, shall we?”
Removing himself from the stallion’s back after shoving a nearby soiled rag into the stallion’s mouth, Bastion quickly bit into whatever stray pieces of hair he could find and, with a mighty jerk, pulled the writhing parcel out of the medical bay, hair follicles forcefully ripping out from the pony’s mane as he was dragged kicking and screaming towards the airlock. The Captain strutted from the room with his prize held firmly in his teeth, the thief’s hooves pounding the Captain’s thick coat in vain as they proceeded together to the thief’s doom, his muffled muzzle screaming to any kind soul who might be able to hear him. Before the execution could be completed, however, the stallion in Bastion’s clenched teeth, kicking and squirming as much as he could, issued a retaliatory blow to the already physical taxed Captain.
Grabbing a fallen scalpel with his magic, he sliced open Bastion's hind-leg just below the back knee with an unerring and impossible precision.
Bastion fell heavily as he screamed in surprise, unprepared for the vicious and precise onslaught. His cargo crashed alongside him as the Captain howled in pain much like his charge only several seconds before. Taking great care to buck the Captain in the face as he scrambled to his feet, the thief, his hooves frantically fighting for purchase on the metal floor, sprinted to the door-frame separating the medical bay and its small anteroom from the cargo bay.
He didn’t make it very far.
With a great shout and an agile lunge, Bastion pounced once again on the fleeing stallion, causing them both to roll and crash into the cargo hold. Surprised, the thief wheeled around to meet the Captain's hoof, which he'd swung wide on a left hook to send the thief off his feet and several feet away, skidding on the floor as Bastion followed the unicorn’s fall and darted over to finish his attack.
Recovering quickly, the stallion on the ground bucked his leg and smashed accurately into the Captain’s injured leg, causing it to snap loudly as bone severed from itself and sliced through the Captain’s skin. The bone protruded violently from his hind leg, and though the duster hid most of the real damage from view, the garment was unable to conceal the large, jagged, and unnatural bump which jutted out at a violent angle from beneath Bastion’s flesh.
The Captain’s howl of pain was unable, however, to completely hide the clicking of pistol hammers and rifle-cocks which surrounded them.
Looking up from his shattered leg, a shadow of the Captain’s memory came back with full force as he stared down the barrel of a pistol, a little silver tube with a delicate and ornate pattern attached to the top of a lethally-sharpened hoofclaw. The entire apparatus belonged to the large midnight-blue stallion clad in a deep ocean-blue cloak and hood, who stood towering over him.
The overly-large stallion which lowered over him bore no resemblance to anything he had ever seen: though his eyes were massive in comparison to his face, which did nothing but frown upon the Captain, devoid of any emotion save disdain almost as if the looming newcomer was staring at some irritating pest. His impossibly dark coat was unable to hide the lean muscle which tensed and twitched as his hoof remained upright and locked on the Captain, and while most of his body was cloaked and hidden away he bore himself as if this ship was his, as if his intimidation had no true weight or gravity. His massive eyes looked down upon Bastion as if The Captain had no power...
...and for the briefest of moments Shadow agreed.
Over his shoulder stood a team of four ponies clad in identical capes and cowls, the largest of the four placed closest to the Captain as they held their semicircular positions, their weapons trained on the two struggling stallions who'd interrupted their clandestine activities. The stallion nearest him nodded to two of his companions, who refocused their attention on the doctor as he held his weapon on Bastion.
The Captain recognized him immediately: he was the leader of their latest passengers, and the one who had lost some bits from Wildfire’s less than fair hoof-wrestling challenge. Those self-same passengers who had passed him in the hallway were spread out around the cargo hold, guns held at the ready in mouths and magical grips alike. Part of the Captain, the portion not internally howling in pain, wished that Wildfire had taken that treacherous stallion's whole arm off. The other part wanted that honor for himself.
With a cursory glance around his hold, Bastion thought quickly over how best to dispatch of his assailants, but was interrupted by the midnight blue stallion who, with his free hoof, ripped the cloak’s hood from his head to fully reveal his aquamarine eyes, massive and unblinking, a vertical slit slashed where the round pupils should have been. His head was completely hairless, which gave his entire visage an otherworldly aura.
With no small amount of discomfort, Bastion's spine twinged in fear as the stallion before him began to speak, his voice an unnatural and piercing hiss.
“I am glad we have your attention, Captain. Hand it over. Now.”
The navy blue stallion stated his order calmly as the barrel of his hoof-mounted pistol pressing itself into the space between the Captain’s eyes, the attached claws threatening to gouge the Captain's eyes out as he spoke to the wounded Captain at his feet.
“Didn’t your mother teach you to address your betters with RESPECT!” Bastion screamed, his voice punctuating his final words as his yell bounced around the walls of the wide cargo hold, causing more than a few of the leader’s lackeys to look around them in concern lest they be discovered by the crew whose whereabouts were unknown.
The following increase of pressure between his eyes and the cocking of the pistol's little clockwork hammer was the only response Bastion needed.
“I don’t know what it is you’re talking about,” The Captain offered, attempting to placate his advantaged captor.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? Well then, go fuck yourself because that’s the best I’ve got...”
“No, Captain. You have more to offer me,” the midnight-blue stallion sneered as he walked to Bastion's side and, with a flex of his arm, extended a blade from his hoof. Bastion could briefly pick out a silver serrated dagger which glittered with inset moonstones before the stallion, with an air of ambivalent nonchalance, slid the blade cleanly and carefully into the Captain’s injured leg just below the mark where the bone stuck out. With a slight application of pressure, Bastion's assailant slid the knife downwards as he leaned in with his hoof.
The explosion of pain which followed was unlike anything which the Captain had ever experienced, and he could feel that cool metal slicing cleanly through the jagged ends of his shattered bones as the dagger, that shard of frigid steel, dug deeper into his flesh. He was only released from his pain by the familiar scream of a recent foe.
“IT’S ME! ME! I HAVE IT!”
The hairless assassin stopped, his dagger lingering inside Bastion’s leg as he slowly cast his gaze up and down the stallion who had addressed him. Bastion gritted his teeth in agony as he felt the blade carve a little notch in his bones, and could almost feel every nick and chip in the blade as it sawed away.
“Liar…" their blue sadist sneered at the battered green stallion who laid on the floor near the Captain. The thief sat nursing his wounds, looking back in horror at the mad assassin before their assailant moved his gaze back to his victim. Bastion could feel the blade in his leg twitch just slightly, pressing against a nerve which shot a red-hot lance through his body as he twisted to protect his injured limb from further damage.
The clunk of a heavy metal box was the thief’s sole reply as he levitated his package outward, dropping it heavily in between the Captain and his captor. From his position writhing on the floor, the Captain looked through tear-soaked eyes at the object which had earned him a moment’s reprieve from the mad zealot’s attack.
It was a rectangular box, metal on all sides, completely seamless to the point that Bastion was unsure that it was truly a box and not an ingot of the purest silver. Its completely smooth finish ended on every side by a sharp edge which attached it to each adjoining facet, all of them completely flawless. Its base was slightly wider than the top, and when it landed heavily on the deck the resulting crash denoted its obvious density. The box’s main feature, however, was not the sharp edges or its weight. It was a curious four-pointed diamond shaped puncture which stood in the very center of its uppermost face, staring blankly at the ceiling.
It was the box which had, until just recently, been on their kitchen table.
Gazing with wonder at the ingot before him, the blue stallion slipped the knife from Bastion’s leg and slid it quickly back into whatever dark hole the hairless freak had conjured it out of. Then, without a word or a flicker of emotion, he made his way over to the mint-green stallion and raised his target’s head with his hoofclaw.
“Where is she?” the assassin muttered softly, his breath washing over the thief’s nose in a deluge of fetid necrosis.
The mysterious ‘doctor’ said not a word, his gaze directed straight into his challenger’s eyes as a single tear streaked down his face. Silence followed, only disturbed by the singing hum of the extending metal blade, that same silver knife which still dripped with the Captain’s blood and marrow now dangerously close to the thief's throat. The assassin said nothing, tickling the thief's neck with the very tip of the knife as it flicked venomously towards the stallion’s windpipe. A drop of blood traced the edge of the blade and mixed with the Captain’s as the blade slid deeper and deeper, millimeter by millimeter, into the green stallion’s throat, their eyes still locked together.
They lingered there a moment, still staring one another down, before the thief’s gaze flicked over to a metal crate on the far side of the hold which bore a seal, a heavy metal latch, a hoof-print recognition pad, and a stencil marking it with “Extremely Fragile: Magical Handling Only” in bright letters. The thief’s gaze flickered for a single moment.
But it was moment which his tormentor noticed.
“It’s here. Search the entire hold. It’s here somewhere,” the navy stallion barked furiously, his assembled team breaking from their positions as their leader remained in front of the two stallions. Bastion's head remained on the floor as his body slowly began to grow cold, stained slightly from the blood slowly pooling from his leg. The sea-green unicorn stallion’s eyes engaged with his tormentor's almost as if he was hypnotized by their mysterious blue aggressor. Bastion shuddered at the notion that those eyes might be capable of doing just as he’d thought.
“There is a refrigeration coupling on this one, Sir,” came a mare’s voice on the far side of the hold as her hoof traced the metal crate, its loud stencil design the target of her stroking hoof as she checked for dents or gashes which might mar its precious cargo.
“That’s the one. Load it into the airlock,” her leader ordered.
“You’re going to need a code for that” came a response from overhead.
The clicking of rifles and cocking of shotguns signaled the arrival of Bastion’s crew, who had silently surrounded the navy team as they searched the cargo hold. Their sudden presence on the upper balconies and walkways sent the assembled team behind their hairless leader scrambling to pick their targets, though there were too many to account for. Dextra stood at the center above the navy stallion, erect in her zebra-fighting style as her forearm balanced the stock of her carbine, mouth-grip firmly in place, her tongue tickling the trigger as she spoke clearly around the handle.
“Place your weapons on the ground. Now.”
Their sudden presence appeared almost lost on their aggressor. He raised his head towards his new target, smiling as he did so.
“It’s already too late, zebra: my ship is en route to intercept you as we speak. If I die, you all die, and then your ship will be but a hunk of metal floating in space.”
“I FUCKING SAID DROP THEM!” she shrieked wildly, her free hoof drawing back the hammer on her carbine as her crew-mates renewed their grips on their respective weapons, preparing for the inevitable.
The cloak-clad team didn’t react. Their eyes flickered between the frightening zebra mare overlooking their work and the midnight-blue stallion who had given them their orders. After a few moments of confusion, their eyes landed on those of their similarly conflicted colleagues as they furiously mulled over what to do. From what the Captain could see from his vantage point on the floor, they looked about as afraid of Dextra and her specially modified carbine as they were of their leader who, while not directly gazing back, had his ears perked up almost as if he was gathering information about the room via echolocation, his ears swiveling on his head as he scanned the room.
A single mare, weapon in her mouth, glanced over to her leader and her surrounding compatriots. Then, without a word, she knelt on the floor of the hold and dropped her weapon, which clicked quietly as wooden stock collided with steel plate.
The midnight blue stallion closed his eyes…wheeled suddenly…and fired.
A single hole erupted from the mare’s forehead slightly above her left eye, splattering with wall behind her with blood and brain as the navy blue stallion spun, his hoofclaw’s pistol splitting the air as it roared out a ball of flame and metal. His cloak ripped from his neck as he wheeled to reveal his body beneath: he wore nothing besides swirling silver armor, his fore and hind legs clad in wide twisting lines of steel which traced whorls of silver down from his back, which was similarly plated. His hoofclaws formed a cap on his limbs which sliced gashes in the floor as he veered violently. His midnight-blue coat was perfectly flawless, without a single scratch or scar which might denote his mortality.
His flexing arm activated the trigger of his gun thrice more, sending steel bullets into the heads of the remaining three members of his team, snuffing out the lives of another mare and two additional stallions, including the leader of their party closest to Bastion. As he finished his spin, the bodies of his former subordinates slumped to the floor at the exact moment that he drew himself to his hind-legs and leveled his silver firearm squarely at the Captain, its matching hoofgun on his opposite hoof making its way through the air to linger on Dextra.
With his eyes still closed, he did something then which sent ripples of horror down the spines of every living soul present:
He unfurled his wings.
Leathery, black, titanic bat-like wings rolled themselves from his hide, tough skin stretched tightly over finger-like appendages as he extended them to their full and frightening length. Rivulets of blood pulsed visibly in the veins as they ran their precious fluid to the wing’s outermost cells, illuminated solely by the light on the far-side of the hold above the airlock which streamed through the paper-thin wings as the Captain and his crew looked on in wonder and revulsion.
It was only when he was at his most frightening did the bat-pony reopen his snake-like eyes to find the crew gazing upon his majesty, their eyes locked on his frame in awe and fear, their jaws loosening the grips on their weapons as he held his aloft to keep them trained viciously at their intended targets.
“Do not weep for them,” the assassin stated emotionless, his tail flicking in the direction of the four bodies lying crumpled by the airlock, the blood slowly draining from their paling bodies creating crimson rivers on the floor. “They failed to uphold their duties. They have strayed from Her Path, and only death can afford them Her Mercy.”
“Spoken like a true Believer” came a raspy voice from the corner, its owner staring at the zealot with a stern and unflinching gaze. The medallion around his neck clicked against the buttons on his habit as he spoke to the assassin before him.
“Your Goddess has abandoned you, it seems.”
Golden Sun’s hooves clacked on the floor as he made his way towards the mad zealot, clad only in his vestments with his hair pulled tightly behind his head in its familiar rows. Their aggressor’s wings fluttered slightly, surprise poking through his otherwise terrifying visage as he intently watched the priest whose movements towards the midnight stallion betrayed none of the fear of his companions. Noticing the structure of his faith token now bouncing on his breast, the assassin's limbs fell only slightly before returning to their positions.
“The pious have only themselves to fear, sun acolyte. He tries to snuff out the flame of Her Work, and he must be punished,” the bat-pony offered cordially, nodding his head in the direction of the unicorn doctor trembling at his feet. “He has taken that which does not belong to him, and I have come to recover it. Her Light must be shared with the dutiful, not sequestered away for the selfish...”
“Put the guns down before someone gets hurt,” Golden Sun pleaded, his voice quaking slightly in fear as the guns in the demon’s grip did nothing but linger noiselessly at their targets, barbed claws glittered dangerously in the light of the cargo hold.
“Don’t you see, Brother? He seeks to destroy the Goddess we love! He tries to unravel her divinity with his profane experiment! This one has fallen down to the lower path and must be saved from his transgressions!” the zealot screamed, his composure faltering as he struggled in vain to make the fellow believer see the virtue behind his words. Golden Sun made his way silently and carefully past the Captain towards the midnight-blue assassin, his gaze never falling.
“Please…” the priest whispered, his head kept raised as he slowly prostrated himself before the angry disciple. “Have mercy on them. Go from this place in peace and I shall forgive them of their trespasses in your stead.”
With a final slow movement, Golden Sun rested his forehead on the floor before the bat-pony’s feet, his hind quarters raised as his spine arced downward to keep his long bow perfectly straight despite his age. The crew waited above with their guns at the ready, all of them staring upon the sight in awe. They shook themselves from their nightmare as an aging stallion aboard their vessel, unknown to all of them, engaged in a fight for their very living souls with the mad demon, their very lives held in the balance as pacifist struggled against the devout steed of some infernal horror.
Not a word was spoken as the bat-pony surveyed the room, his future victims held silent by the priest lying prostrate before him, the servant of the rival Sister bowing before him in reverence and fear. He was a fellow believer, though he shirked the Majestic Night for the garish light of day. A paragon of true devotion, though the subject of his reverence was but the fallen God who had doomed Ponykind with her failures.
The pony before him was a martyr.
A believer.
A fool.
“There will be no mercy for him, priest. He will die.”
“NO!” Golden Sun screamed, his head bent up towards the mad disciple as the pistol attached to his silver claw moved from the Captain towards the green-haired stallion before him. The pistol cocked as muscles flexed, depressing the trigger slightly to click a round into place.
The next moment was a blur, and Bastion could do nothing but stare in horror as five things happened in the course of a second:
The dropping of a hammer.
The striking of a pin.
A blur of yellow and white.
The bellow of a fire.
The splattering of blood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A pregnant silence.
She dropped like a stone, yellow skin marred by the puncture in her chest as her beating heart pushed lines of blood from the wound, swirling around her as she flew through the air to land heavily on the Captain. Her eyes were wide in agony and surprise as the bullet worked its way further into her stomach.
A cannonade of fire exploded from around the ship as the mad demon, his eyes closed as if lingering in a quiet otherworldly dream, was torn apart by streaks and rails of solid superheated metal, flaying his skin from his bones and punching holes through metal armor and navy flesh, ripping his wings apart to expose the bone beneath. A smile traced his face as his body hit the floor, and as he passed on into the embrace of his Goddess his body struggled once in pain before shuddering, twitching, and finally lying still.
The green unicorn stallion rushed to the fallen yellow mare, cradling her head in his hooves as magic exploded from his horn, tears cascading down his eyes in concentration and pain as his horn, strained from the almost forgotten conflict with The Captain, rippled with the sudden influx of medical magic as he surveyed her internal organs for injury.
Their reveries were broken by the zealot's fall, and as they looked to their fallen mechanic the crew members from every corner of the hold scrambled to Chamomile and Bastion's side, Dextra holstering her carbine with her teeth as her hooves propelled her furiously towards her fallen commander.
Wind Dancer’s wings beat feverishly as he threw himself over the balcony, spinning once before snapping open his wings in a steep dive, leveling out to come to a fast trot beside his wife and the fallen mechanic as he looked around frantically to find some way to staunch the blood which trickled slowly from her belly.
The shaken priest stood silently by the body of the mad assassin, his faith token held to his chest by his trembling hoof as he issued one final prayer for his fallen brother’s soul before turning to attend to the imminent salvation of the mechanic.
A scream punched through the activity in the hold as the grey mercenary leapt from the nearest staircase, hooves locked before him as he came crashing down upon the fallen bat-pony’s skull, crushing the fallen assassin’s head and neck in a fountain of blood which cascaded from his body in great spurts, coating Wildfire’s underside in the still warm fluid.
Violet could only stare and cry her silent sobs of distress as she cradled herself in her hooves, rocking her brain into a reverie which the sight before her eyes denied her, her vision and psyche filling up with every drop of blood which was spilled by the fallen mechanic.
While some did what they could for little Chamomile, the others stared in amazement at the broad stance of their livid Captain, his leg bent awkwardly behind him as he rounded on Chamomile's attendant and hefted the struggling mint-green stallion to his hooves with his free forearm, pinning him to the wall and screaming into his face with an unbridled rage which only Dextra had been witness to:
The screams of a Sergeant watching the death of a single soldier.
The screams of her Sergeant as all of their lives were snuffed out, one by one.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, YOU LITTLE FUCK?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Bastion screamed, blood from his mouth flecking the unicorn’s face as he screamed himself hoarse. “YOU MURDERED MY MECHANIC! GIVE ME ONE REASON I SHOULDN’T RIP YOUR HEAD OFF WITH MY BARE HOOVES RIGHT NOW?!”
The ship’s proximity klaxon answered for the pinned stallion.
A red whirling light and a loud blaring siren announced the arrival of the assassin’s promised ship, and the tremors of gunfire combusting nearby rattled the ship’s hull, throwing them all into full vigilance.
“Captain! She’s bearing right down on us!” Wind Dancer shouted, his eyes fixed out a nearby window, gauging the ships distance with his practiced eye before adding: “She’s only a few minutes out!”
“You hear that, fucker?” Bastion sneered, his eyes aflare as he reapplied his hold to the struggling stallion pinned against the wall. “You’re going to be dead in minutes! I can only imagine what they will do to you when they get around to finally tortur-”
“If I die, she dies.”
That was all the stallion muttered in a macabre repetition of the demon-pony’s parting words as he did nothing but stare at Bastion, his face reddening as he hung against the wall.
The Captain’s eyes moved rapidly from the stallion in his grasp, who hung limply on the wall as he struggled for air, to his fallen mechanic. Her head was held cradled in Dextra’s lap as Violet tried in vain to staunch the flow of blood with her now-destroyed shawl, crying in frustration when her efforts yielded no sign of recovery. His mechanic’s back leg clenched tightly in pain as she struggled to stay conscious, her hooves clasped snugly in Dextra’s as the zebra smiled back at her with a look of pure serenity on her face, comforting the slowly exsanguinating mare in her arms as a single line of salty tears rinsed a light mist of blood from her striped muzzle.
The Captain took the whole thing in before returning his gaze to his fugitive. He struggled with his thoughts before growling venomously at the stallion.
“You’re going to fix her. You are going to make her well…and when you are done with your work and she becomes stable...”
He leaned in closer, his lips brushing the stallion’s own ears as he whispered his final threat:
“…then, and only then, will I allow them to rip you apart.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Captain,” the stallion retaliated, seemingly unfazed by the murderous Captain whose hooves could end his life with but a slight application of force upon his windpipe. “You’re going to run. They are not going to board this ship.”
The Captain recoiled in horror, releasing his grip on the stallion, taking a few pained steps backwards to create some distance between himself and his challenger. The green stallion fell hard against the wall of the ship, gasping for breath before making his final offer.
“Either you run…and she lives…” he stated calmly, coughing as the foreign air invaded his lungs, “…or you stay on course, and she dies. Take your pick.”
The stallion’s gamble finally apparent, silence reigned once again on deck as the Captain, his fury barely checked, contemplated his options. Wildfire shared in his murderous gaze from behind the broken Captain, a nod-from-Bastion away from bathing in the doctor’s blood as he had the bat-pony. The soft groans of his mechanic came through when they could, along with the silent sobs of the unicorn mare at her side as she cried for both herself and Dextra. The zebra did nothing but smile down at her little friend, gazing silently back into the mechanic’s fluttering eyes, singing a soft lullaby that only they could hear.
“Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to lay your sleepy head…”
Another tear slid down her face to rest on the corner of her still smiling mouth.
“Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed…” Dextra whispered, rocking Chamomile’s head in her hooves as she sang in her broken whisper, hugging the mare to herself in a final warm embrace.
The Captain paused, turned, stared into the eyes of the unicorn doctor, and gave his answer calmly as his eyes gouged holes through the very skull of his foe.
“Windy…” the Captain began, his gaze fixed on the anxious eyes of the doctor before him.“Set a course for Nagadoches. We’re running.”
“Help me get her up!” the doctor barked at Dextra, his eyes averting from the Captain only when he was assured that Bastion’s statement was not a lie. Wildfire and Windy looked on in astonishment at their Captain, the latter of the two breaking from his reverie to fly at breakneck speed out of the hold, dodging metal beams and doorways as he made his way like a lightning bolt to the waiting helm.
The unicorn stallion rushed to Chamomile’s side, struggling as he encapsulated her in his magic to levitate her through the doorway into the adjoining medical bay while Dextra, Violet, and Golden Sun followed close behind. The Captain remained planted in the cargo hold as the medical bay doors clicked shut from the other room, swaying softly on his hooves as the ship’s gravity drives adjusted to their rapidly changing course. He listened as the rumbling of slowly receding gunship blasts grew dimmer and more distant as their ship ate the miles separating them from their newest destination, sliding between the outstretched grasp of their pursuers as they hurtled through The Black.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lazy motes of light danced before Chamomile's eyes like butterflies as she opened them after her long nap, her lids struggling to hold their weight apart as she fought against an intense drug-induced lethargy. Coming up victor in her struggle, she stared silently ahead at the surgical lamp glaring into her eyes, her face recoiling away from the blinding light. With a sudden click the light died out, the filaments visibly growing dimmer as the residual heat escaped.
“Is that better, Miss?” came a soft voice from behind her head, the one place she was not able to look. She struggled to shift her head around to view the soft voice addressing her, but found it difficult to move any of her limbs. Panicking, Chamomile wrenched her head in an attempt to remedy her incapacitation before the voice spoke again.
“Miss, please, don’t move! You’ve been given some heavy anesthetics, so you won’t be able to feel anything below your neck for a while. I needed to have you essentially paralyzed for the surgery,” the calm voice spoke again, audibly shifting from behind her to just next to her ear as it continued. “Here is something to numb the pain a little, you should still be able to see and speak. Is that better?”
A wave of warm, tingling sensation moved from her right forearm towards her shoulder and chest, spreading out like sunlight as her strong little heart pumped the drug with a surge of pleasure out towards her hind quarters. The presence of that warm and tingling sensation sent ripples of tension into her flanks as her muscles spasmed involuntarily, electrical signals adjusting to the sudden relaxation of her legs as they twitched on and off spasmodically.
“Ohohoho...mama!” she crooned, the sensation trickling down to her hooves before its intensity gave out, dying out to a mere softness in her hooves and back. “Couldja do that oneeee more time, pleeeease?”
“I’m sorry, Miss: too much and you could become dependent. You will get a dose once every four hours, or until these supplies run out.”
“That’s too bad,” Chamomile mumbled, stretching as best she could given her helplessness, attempting to pop some rogue aching joints in her legs as a warm, limp, and goofy smile stretched numbly across her face.
“Please hold still, Miss” the voice once again stated calmly. “I don’t want you more hurt than you already are.”
With a slight rolling of wheels and a sudden stop by her side, a bright light began shining into her eyes which caused her to reel and jerk in an attempt to position her head away from the offending stimulus. The light followed as she moved, and she could only turn in the opposing direction to avoid it and the lingering discomfort.
“Miss…”
This was a tone she knew. This was the tone of a mother to her child, her mother to her, a command not borne in anger but reflected out of a desire to protect and nurture. A request of sincere care and affection, not anger or malice as she was used to.
Without another word, she opened her eyes as fully as she could, wincing as the light caused her pupils to dilate with a creepy constriction. When it was over, she blinked her eyes a few times and looked out into her new world, her eyes now fully open and un-weighted.
The stallion’s face which stared back was the warmest she had ever seen, bright sky-blue eyes peeking out from behind a pair of crystal thick-framed reading glasses as they recorded every minute details of her eyes contraction for future study. His short evergreen hair complemented his soft mint-colored coat, almost a light turquoise when the light hit it just right, shimmering in waves of reflected light which flashed in an opalescent sheen. It was a face she was familiar with, but it was only now that she realized just how beautiful it could be.
He was clad in a tailored doctor’s jacket, a stethoscope draped around his neck and a plastic-capped syringe clenched delicately in his teeth. The penlight he had just extinguished was held in the lustre of his sea-foam green magic, and as he acknowledged her gaze he flicked the light into a little pocket on his scrubs, placing the syringe alongside it. He gave a happy little smile back as he looked at his patient, a patient who, without even realizing it, was giving the goofiest, widest grin of her life. She wouldn’t realize this until far too late.
“Hello, Miss...” was all he said.
“Hello, Handsome” was all she crooned in reply, the sedatives after-effects still having a little more sway on her actions than she thought. Catching herself, she attempted to cover her mouth in surprise with her hooves which, as she had been reminded multiple times, were paralyzed. The end result was a very loud, very brief eeep! as her head lurched forward, attempting to meet with the hooves which would never come.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” the doctor exclaimed, placing one hoof on her chest and another behind her head as quick as he could, jolted to action by her sudden attempt to hide her loud but slightly adorable slip.
“What did I say about moving your head too much, Miss?” he questioned, the little grin on his face masked by that look of annoyance any doctor with a rebellious patient accompanies with a command.Caught in her lurched-forward position with a warm pressure from his hoof depressing her chest and another furry pad behind her head, she turned her gaze, though not her head, to match the doctor’s.
“That I…umm…shouldn’t do it?” Chamomile mumbled awkwardly, turning her gaze from the hoof positioned oh-so-carefully on her chest to her doctor’s appraising face. After a few moments, he grinned in acknowledgement.
“Precisely.”
Depressing her chest with his hoof, he slowly maneuvered her body back onto the pillow with a practiced ease, pulling his left hoof out at the last second before sliding a blanket to rest snuggled under her chin with the other.
“Now please, Miss, I’m going to need to ask you to rest. You’ve had a hard day and you won’t feel so great for the next little while, but I’m confident now that you’ll be a-okay!”
He shot back a look of confidence which put her at ease, though he shared the same flicker of skepticism and anxiety that her Captain often accompanied with reassuring words. Nodding quietly without breaking eye contact, Chamomile succumbed to his movements as he tucked her blankets in around her, pushing his hooves under her as he walked around the surgical chair, making her as comfortable as he possibly could. It was an act which she, despite her lack of sensation below her chin, gratefully appreciated more for the fact that a handsome stallion like him was personally performing the act more-so than the actual pleasure which comes from a good tucking-in.
As he walked behind her head, she heard the audible pop! of a plastic cap as the doctor reappeared, a syringe gripped in his teeth filled with another light blue liquid. Sitting himself once again in his chair, he took his patient’s leg in his hooves and, switching the syringe from his mouth to his magic’s grasp, began to slide the needle into the IV line he had planted there, a little tube which entered the small puncture just above her forearm’s joint.
Just one more hole I’ve put in you.
He hesitated, thinking through his last thought carefully as the mare looked on in apprehension, silently pondering why her doctor was so blatantly petrified, lost in his own thoughts as if they were weighing the world upon his shoulders. Eying her IV line as it traced from the warm, ventilated air of the medical bay directly into the mare’s yellow flesh still slightly brown from his standard application of iodine, he dropped his syringe on the bed beside her, keeping his eyes downcast as he whispered to his patient.
“I’m sorry Miss…I’m so very, very sorry…” was all he was able to stomach, more addressing the ground than his yellow charge as he kept his eyes riveted to the tile floor beneath his hooves. “This would never have happened if I hadn’t come aboard.”
“Hey…” Chamomile whispered, placing her right hoof on his as her voice tried to raise the stallion’s chin, an act she could never accomplish in her condition. He looked back slowly, drawing his gaze from a silent speck of dust up the mare’s arm and into her waiting eyes. He found nothing but her shimmering gaze and a little glistening tear which lingered on the edge, threatening to fall off the precipice and onto her waiting cheek as a small smile crept out from her drug-induced haze.
“All of us do crazy things for the people we care about. It was just my time to chip in.”
Owing her response to his medication and not her honest sincerity, he couldn't help but give a little chuckle as he slowly depressed the plunger on the syringe, pumping the blue solution into her arm, watching for tell-tale signs of allergic reaction as the solution intermingled with her blood and flowed alongside her cells into the fast-flowing river of her bloodstream. He nodded slightly, relieved when nothing came to light.
As she struggled to keep her consciousness, she rubbed his arm slightly with her own before asking something which had been plaguing her since she’d seen his face on that bright, sunny day in Hoovesdown.
“What’s your name?”
Cradling her hoof in his arms, he smiled back before giving his reply with a little smile.
“Miss Chamomile, you can call me Salve.”
She took a little mental picture of his warm, inviting face on the off chance that he wasn’t there when she awoke, and she grinned a little as she closed her eyes, thinking over how, for all the time he’d been on the ship, she never thought to learn more about him. Her ponderings were cut off by the influx of her new drug, and the combination of the chemicals and her metabolic processes lulled her softly into a warm, dreamless sleep.
Salve lingered for a few moments, still cradling her numb hoof with his own before checking her heart-rate, a tone which beeped quietly every few seconds as the heart he rescued hours before kept on beating, each contraction and relaxation of the organ flooding him with pride and relief as it kept the mare alive and tethered to shore. He closed his eyes, sighing heavily, relaxing now that his job, at least for now, was finished
*****
“Life is a ship, Salve Breakwater” his mother’s voice hummed softly into his hair as she cradled the weeping colt, his hoofs still lingering on the coffin before him. “We weather the storms, we embrace the rain and sun, we collide with our oppressors and float alongside our companions, and when our time has come the tide carries us out from our docks and sets us adrift forever.”
She pulled the colt’s chin up, his tears dampening the jetty beneath his father’s casket, to meet her own damp eyes and her own sad smile.
“But remember, even if we are set adrift…” she began before the colt nodded and replied, staunching his tears as he repeated their family’s credo.
“We are never truly lost” he whispered back to his mother, a warm and sad smile creeping into his face.
She kissed the colt’s head, drawing him back into her embrace as she gave the boat before them a little shove with her free hoof, sending it sliding down their homemade ramp and into the ocean, the backend slapping against slacking tide as her husband slid away from their lives and into Luna’s embrace forevermore.
“That’s my boy...”
*****
Slowly, carefully, Salve raised his head from the chair, brushing sleep from his eyes as he inspected the mare by his side. She had turned slightly in her sleep and her head had moved to fall limply to the side, but just as it had been when he had dozed off: his hoof was still firmly clasped in her own. The foam brace holding her neck in place, like much everything else he had been confined to work with, had broken in some places making it almost useless. Pushing the chair away he slid to his hooves, taking great pains not to disrupt the pretty mare lying in the operating chair before him, sliding his hoof free of her grasp excruciatingly slowly lest she be disturbed.
Taking the belt which tightened the aged neck-brace in his magic, he gave it a little pull to tighten its hold, positioning her head so that her gaze remained fixed on the ceiling. Looking her over one last time, he noticed that her eyes were closed ever-so-softly as if she had been pretending to be asleep the whole time he had rested. She was almost beaming, as if she had been conscious as he dozed, sharing in the comfort of his warmth at her numb side.
With a warm smile, he checked her vitals one last time and, knowing she was safe, tiptoed out of the room.
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“How is she, Doctor?” Bastion growled in pain as Salve tightened another ancient leg brace over the Captain’s leg, pulling tightly to cinch the brace in place. The Captain, gasping under the sharp new influx of pain, gritted his teeth to mask his face from showing just how agonizing his wounds had been. The leg in question had been reset and sewn up by the Doctor, his magic a truly wondrous model of multitasking as he doped up the Captain, reset the leg, and cleaned and dressed the gash, completely with magic, all in the course of a dozen agonizing minutes.
“She is stable, Captain. I removed the bullet and any shards I could find, but we won’t know if something is wrong until she shows it,” the doctor replied, still gazing at his makeshift handiwork with a modicum of triumph and more than a little unease as his patient struggled to right himself on all four hooves.
“What do you think you’re doing?! I just reset the leg and I will be damned befor-”
He lost any ability to speak as the Captain once again slammed him against the walls of the hold, knocking the wind out of the struggling stallion as the Captain held him aloft.
“No, Doctor,” Bastion sneered, his mouth contorted in a mix of discomfort and fury as he became accustomed to the new-found sting in his hindleg. “I will be the one damned: damned for taking your sorry hide on my ship! For allowing you to have my crew almost shot to death at the hands of some maniacal bat-freak! For stealing from me! For…for…”
He stopped.
The stallion had stolen from him indeed, but the object of his theft was not so much a few paltry medical supplies: it was something far more sinister entirely. He knew exactly what the stallion had made away with from under their noses. He knew why the stallion had been there on his ship, signing up with them immediately after they had met with Battlebeak, right after they were given another job, right after they had found the rectangular box which lay there in the cargo bay, catching the Captain’s attention as if aching to be noticed.
He had taken something from the ship, that much was true...
But more importantly, he had brought something aboard.
Shadow Bastion, as silent as a whisper, turned his head from the struggling stallion pinned against the metal walls of the hold towards the far end of the cargo bay where the bodies of the slain occultists had sprawled out not two hours ago, the scent of their blood still lingering in the cracks where mop and sponge had been unable to reach. The doctor’s crate lay untouched, spattered slightly with cast-off blood as the blue digital screen conveyed vital information about the crate’s cargo. The crate was locked tight, sticker and seal holding its cargo in place, its glinting padlock and hoof-scanner just begging to be manipulated.
He was locking something away.
Or preventing something from getting out.
With a loud grunt, he bit hard into the doctor’s forearm and ripped it along after him, yowls of pain cascading through the cargo hold as crew members from every corner of the ship, recovering from their mental ordeal at Chamomile’s near death experience, stampeded into the cargo hold to find out where the commotion was coming from. They were met with the most unnatural sight of their wounded Captain, trailing blood and sweat along the floor in a long slippery line, hauling the screaming doctor behind him, pulled by nothing but the skin and muscle the Captain was able to bite into as Bastion wrenched the stallion towards his crate.
Slamming the doctor’s hoof onto the hoof-scanner, he pressed it firmly with his own to force Salve’s print onto the digital display. Sensing the new-found limb, the display clicked to life, lights and digital bars scanning the surfaces of his hoof before, with a hiss and a cascade of vapor, the crate’s lid opened.
Bastion released the stallion as Wildfire pounced from the shadows, locking the doctor in a headlock as he held him to the ground, away from the Captain and entirely at the grey mercenary’s mercy. Wind Dancer and his wife landed deftly alongside Wildfire, staring at the Captain with fear and utter bafflement at his actions. Wildfire was the only one grinning as the rest of the crew crowded around the spectacle, vapor caressing their hooves as they listened intently for an explanation from their seemingly-radical Captain. When Bastion gave nothing but a look of utter contempt in the doctor’s direction, Salve cried out, his throat vibrating and rasping as he screamed as loud as he could.
“NO! PLEASE!”
Scrutinizing the doctor’s face for but a moment, Bastion reared on his front legs and kicked the lid of the crate with a mighty buck, sending the lid crashing against the opposite wall and clattering to the floor. The vapor present in the crate erupted in a cloud of mist at the lid’s sudden removal, shrouding the Captain with an icy chill. Struggling to free himself from the mercenary’s hold, Salve writhed in agony as the crate lay open, screaming in protest at the Captain, pleading for his attention as the crew watched in horror at the Captain’s cruelty.
“PLEASE, STOP! YOU’LL KILL HER!”
“Kill her…” the Captain mouthed, struggling to comprehend the completely unrelated topic which the stallion pressed on him.The advancing ship had long since been left behind. What power did he have now, with their oppressors gone and the tides turned in Bastion’s favor? It was just a ploy, some little desperate power grab. Just another lie the stallion threw haphazardly in his direction to stave off the inevitable fate which would assuredly befall him.
Besides, she couldn’t be hurt, Bastion pondered. Cammy’s asleep in the medical bay…
He gave the doctor a little look, a glare of hatred at his audacity and what little knowledge he had concerning his fate. But as he looked upon the mint-green stallion, he could only stare as the doctor’s gaze lingered not on him, but on the crate which steamed behind him. He looked around to find similar expressions on the faces of other members of his crew, Violet’s hooves placed firmly over her mouth as she stared in horror at something just behind him.
It was only when he realized that the doctor wasn’t talking about Chamomile that he turned around to find himself looking upon the contents of the crate, his gaze fixed on some point through the cloudy veil of vapor which hid the contents from view.
The cloud slowly faded to reveal nothing but darkness...
...and the little body from whom the darkness emanated.
The young unicorn mare before him, younger even than Chamomile to the point where the lines between being a filly or a mare suddenly merged together, had hair which gleamed in a solid sheet of silky blue. It was identical to the eye color of the doctor struggling to rush to her side, the one who screamed his heart wrenching wail even though the Captain could not hear it; so lost was he in what he was seeing that he wasn’t even truly sure that he was awake. He could have been so easily caught in a nightmare; blind to the surreal nature of the cargo were it not for what he saw sprouting from the mare’s skin. Her coat was a solid perfect sheet of midnight blue with equal parts black and navy fur struggling to shift the balance between one color and the other, but was patched in places with a substance Bastion would never have expected to see.
Her left side was lined with scales, metallic green with a certain purple iridescence which glinted in the light. They sprouted from her legs in patches of rock-hard armor, though solely contained on the left half of her body: the right side of her body remained unmarred from what the Captain could see. Her tail, coiled through her legs to rest tickling her chin, was lined with hair at the base, but as his eyes traced the bone towards the end Bastion saw nothing but plate and little barbed spines. Her tail was whiplike and tipped with a barb of black plate twisted venomously into a spike. Shaking his gaze from the scales on her flank, which was completely blank, he gazed finally on her eyes. The one closest to him was a deep evergreen, identical in every way to the mad pony acolyte who had been searching for her. Her eye peered venomously back at the Captain, its vertical slit tightening slightly as the muscles forced the eye to focus on their new target.
It was then that the Captain, shaken from his reverie, realized that she was alive, breathing, and staring straight back at him.
With a crash and violent whirl, the walls of the crate buckled as the mare inside thrashed, smashing the walls of the steel vessel repeatedly in an effort to free herself from her confines. As the nearest wall broke, a viscous fluid leaked in great jets from the seams, casting waves of amniotic muck around the crew’s hooves. The crew all stepped back in surprise at the frigid cold of the liquid now cascading around the floor, radiating in a wave from the now completely broken-down container. With a deft clunk the doctor was released from Wildfire’s grip, sliding to his hooves as he made his way carefully towards the naked, writhing, and very confused hybrid.
“Rippy, it’s me! It’s me! Everything is going to okay, I’m here!” Salve pleaded, working his way over to the mare on the floor who sat dripping in the muck as she scrambled to shield herself from the foreign, prying eyes she saw staring back at her. Looking frantically at the Captain, then to Dextra, then over towards Violet as she stood on the staircase in an effort to escape the flood of icy fluid, the little foreign hybrid finally rested her gaze on Salve who cupped her face in his hooves, forcing her to stare into his calm sky-blue eyes.
She stared back silently, her one lizard-like eye widening as the other, its iris a pure ocean blue freckled with white, widened in confusion, surprise, alarm, and then a brief wave of calm as she looked, saw, and finally recognized the stallion cradling her face in his warm hooves.
Gulping down some air, she stared back unblinking before whispering a single word.
“…Sal?”
The stallion nodded furiously, his mane shaking free from his attempts to wrangle it as it became more and more disheveled. He could only smile and nod, stroking the mare’s cheek with his hoof to clear off the lingering fluid.
“Yes, Rippy, it’s me! It’s Salve! I’m here!”
Silence reigned over the hold, and not a word was spoken by anypony. The Captain and Wildfire watched in amazement, their jaws threatening to fall from their muzzles and embed themselves in the floor. Dextra and the rest mimicked them, every eye in the hold save two gazing at the little mare in astonishment. The mysterious mare was the only one breaking the pattern, her own two different eyes staring at the stallion on his knees in front of her. No one else seemed to notice him as he smiled radiantly back into her face.
The crew’s trance was broken by a heart rending scream as the mare clutched the doctor with all four hooves, her eyes crammed tightly shut as she sobbed hysterically in fear, confusion, and pure unadulterated joy, her chest physically buckling as new-found air streamed into her lungs causing her to hiccup as she cried. The stallion in her hooves stroked her hair all the while, his nose and mouth buried in her mane along her neck. His rocking was unable to assuage her screams of confusion and alarm, but with every reaffirmed squeeze and every slow hush and stroke of her mane, Salve succeeded in making her screams hide away back inside the little mare who breathed deep and closed her eyes, affording herself the comfort of his embrace.
When things had begun to settle down and he was able to stretch his sore jaw back into position, the Captain advanced on the doctor and spoke over the mare’s rattling sobs.
“Explain yourself, doctor” he punched through his teeth, eyes wild with wrath at his ruined floor and the naked cargo before him.
“Captain...” Salve began, his face never leaving the mare’s neck as he stroked her mane to calm her down, her breaths becoming less and less labored as he cradled the slippery mare in his hooves.
“...This is Riptide.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?!” Bastion screamed, his crew recoiling in surprise at his sudden outburst.
“No, Captain,” the stallion began calmly, raising his head from its position on the mare’s neck as he pushed her away slightly. His muzzle brushed the mare’s forehead as he planted a little kiss near her hairline, and her head leaned entirely into his as she renewed her silent gasping sobs. He smiled and his eyes closed as he held the little mare close to his chest, resting his cheek on her head as he spoke to the little mare in his arms:
“This is my sister.”
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