We were under the only tree in an endless field of swaying grass under a brilliant summer sky. I asked if she wanted another glass of wine. She smiled at me, her shining golden eyes half-lidded as she raised her glass. I brought the bottle up to it, a slight sound as they made contact, and the red liquid splashed into the bottom of the glass. The sound, though, surprised me as it was not the clink I had expected, but rather a distant siren. I looked at her as she took a small sip from her glass. She didn’t notice the sound, so I tried to ignore it. We were having such a pleasant time and I didn’t want to ruin it. Then the sound came again. She took another sip, paying no attention to the faraway disturbance, but to me it seemed louder this time. I looked around the field for the source, but we were alone; me and her on the grass that stretched in all directions to the horizon.
She looked at me, the meek smile on her face bringing a similar one to mine. She didn’t react when the sound came yet again, even louder than before, and I did my best to ignore it as well. As she drank, I began to pour my own glass, but the sound kept coming. Each shrill alarm was louder than the last, repeating with an intense urgency. After a few more seconds, it had become an air-raid siren. I pushed my hooves up to my ears leaving the bottle to fall into the grass, but my hooves did nothing to quiet the sound. The siren was inside my own head, and I clenched my eyes shut. I began to scream but I couldn’t hear my voice over the siren. I opened my eyes in a squint and saw the shock and worry in hers. She reached out to me. Her hoof touched my foreleg, sending a shock through my body.
I awoke.
I was on the floor, my head swimming as the alarm continued. That explained the sound, and my impact with the floor explained the shock. What was coming through the speakers was just some garbled, almost equine monologue that I struggled to understand, alongside what could only be described as the louder cousin of the air horn. I pushed myself off the floor and shook my head, my sleep-mangled mane falling into my eyes. My delirium lifted for a moment and the noise over the siren became a voice.
It was a stallion’s voice, calm, if a bit muddled, but it wasn’t the captain. I knew his voice. It must have been a lower ranking officer. I caught the tail end of the message: “… your colours. This is an emergency.” There was a period of alarm noise, pure and loud before the message repeated: “This is a code-six alarm, full evacuation. All crew move immediately to escape pods. I repeat, move immediately to escape pods. This is not a drill. Take no belongings, leave your rooms, and follow your colours. This is an emergency.”
A code-six? I thought. Impossible. It was the only word I could use. A code-six had never happened in the entire history of the Equestrian Aeronautical Division. My overwhelmed mind returned to its delirious state. Ignoring part of the warning, I shoved what few possessions I had into my saddle bags and, leaving my uniform on the hook, left my room.
I thought I had gotten out quick, but the hallway was already crowded with panicked ponies in various states of dress and wakefulness. The floor was lit with a menagerie of colours, all leading different directions. I had gotten my colour instructions on the flight to the station almost seven months earlier, and it took a moment, standing amidst the torrent of jostling bodies, before I remembered what it was: Weather team. Red.
I located the line of red lights on the floor and traced them off to my left and around a corner. I was still partly asleep, those golden, shock-widened eyes still etched into my mind as I moved at a brisk gallop into the heart of the station .The others ran along their own designated paths and I gave them little notice.
The alarm was less deafening in the corridors, and the voice continued to repeat the warning. It must have been pre-recorded. My saddle bags, poorly fastened and almost empty, flapped against my sides. The hallways and ponies blurred and sharpened at random as I followed the floor lights up some stairs and down others. I went past washrooms, the canteen, more washrooms, and some barracks, my pace increasing the more I ran. I had no idea what the emergency was; the voice didn’t say. All I knew is that it was as bad as an emergency could possibly be.
A code-six was a last resort. It implied that there were already casualties and the situation was beyond containment. When I had read that part of the guidebook, I had not taken it seriously. The chances of a code-six, the guidebook said, were effectively zero. Even asteroid impacts or structural damage were code-five or lower. Nopony knew what a code-six was, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
The running woke me. The fog in my head was lifting again, and as my awareness increased, so did my fear. The reality of a code-six, a real code-six, began to set in. Panic rose in my chest as my heart accelerated and my pace quickened further. The throbbing in my head from my abrupt awakening stayed with me and became the accompanying percussion to the pounding in my chest. I ran down more hallways, following the red lights, never stopping or second-guessing. The further along the corridors I got, the fewer other ponies I saw and the worse the overhead lighting got. Eventually I was alone; running through the station with its flickering or missing lights as fast as my hooves would carry me, fear pulsing in my veins and in my head, the floor lights leading me deeper into the bowels of the ship.
There had been many colours lining the floor when I started, but soon there were just two: red and blue. Then they branched, leaving only red, and I followed.