“Captain’s Log: After sending a notification to Starfleet about retrieving a maroonee from Autaurus 3, I have decided to continue on the ship’s scheduled route. Normally this would merit returning to starbase and leaving the refugee in Starfleet custody, but in this situation the Burning Age’s next three stops are important supply runs. Until otherwise commanded, I will complete these supply runs and then return to starbase, in about three months. In the meantime, Lieutenant Oannar is doing her best to make the guest feel at home, and trying to discover her original homeworld.”
Twilight groaned at the picture. “No, that’s wrong! Gah! I wish I had a reference book for this.” Twilight shook her head at the crude drawing, which to anyone else would look like a startlingly accurate sketch. “I wasn’t as big on astronomy as I was magic, so while I can provide rough sketches I can’t give you the kind of detail you actually need. Gah, I can’t even remember the basic latitude/longitude coordinates!” She shook her head strongly.
“It’s not so bad,” Kahkala offered, “Your information on the sun and moon will be helpful, for sure. It just means it’ll take longer to find it.”
“If you can find it at all,” Twilight said to herself. She pulled herself onto the large bed, lying down.
“You should be optimistic,” Kahkala said, “The federation is huge! It has information on millions of star systems, it’s very good at finding specific ones.”
“Rhealm sure didn’t seem to be optimistic,” Twilight said to herself, sadness clear in her voice.
Kahkala shook her head. “Vihan is a pessimistic person. She had a very competitive childhood, and it has had an effect on her.” Kahkala was quiet for a moment. “Did you have a competitive childhood, Twilight? Do you know what that feels like?”
“Yeah, I… no. Not really. Unless you count my own drive as competition?” Twilight asked with a half-smile.
Kahkala smiled back. “It can feel like it sometimes. I heard a saying once about racing your own shadow. It went something like, ‘your shadow is your worst enemy, because there is never a victory or a loss; only the infinite competition.’”
“That’s… kind of a weird saying,” Twilight admitted.
Kahkala laughed a little. It took Twilight a second to figure out what is was, though, since it was mixed in with a purr. “It’s from kind of a weird culture,” Kahkala said, “Really, most cultures are really weird. Especially when thought about from an outsider’s perspective.”
“Really?” Twilight asked.
“Mmhm!” the catlike biped said as she gathered up the papers. “Let’s take a break. I would like to take you to the medical bay real quick, get an in-depth scan of you. You’re a completely new race, and we’re all a little curious.”
Twilight nodded. “I understand that,” she said as she climbed down from the bed, “Truthfully, I’m very curious, too. I don’t even know how many races are on this ship. For all I know, there could be one race with a lot of tribes.”
“Tribes?” Kahkala was momentarily confused. “Oh! Subspecies? No, there’s a great many different species on this ship. Personally, I’m a Catian. Captain Dolen is Human. Commander Rhealm is a Ylrodian. Honestly, there’s a lot of variance on this ship for only having a crew of 26.”
The pair headed toward the medical bay, Kahkala casually listing some of the races as they passed. As they entered the medical bay, Twilight noticed an orange-skinned biped, wearing a yellow and black uniform. Kahkala waved to him. “Hello! Twilight, this is Commander Pallik Forpeg, our head of security. He’s a Saurian.”
“Hello!” Twilight said, “I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I… actually, if you’re the head of security, you likely already know why I’m here.”
Forpeg nodded. “I hope your stay with us will be short and will permit you to return to your planet soon. I just wanted to be here for the medical scan.”
“Okay,” Twilight said. “So, what do I do?”
“Over here,” Kahkala walked over to a tall bed that stood up off of the floor. “Just lie on here, and I’ll do the rest.”
Twilight got onto the bed with a small flap of her wings, and then lay down. Kahkala pulled something out of the wall, and then waved it over Twilight’s body. “There we go! Done just like that! How about you head back to your room while I go over the scan?”
“Okay,” Twilight said, getting off of the bed and heading back to the entry to the medical bay. There, before the door, she stopped. On a whim, she activated a magic detection spell as she approached the door. The door slid open automatically, just like it should but Twilight noticed something odd: there was no magic to be detected, just like there had been none in the transporter. Either the magic was all carefully hidden (which didn’t make a lot of sense to Twilight) or this was done without magic. As Twilight headed back to her room, she pondered how someone would be able to accomplish that without magic.
“So, Kahkala,” Forpeg said, “anything we should know about our guest?”
Kahkala handed Forpeg the PADD containing the results. “How about everything? She’s almost as strong as you are, and as far as I can tell she’s a scholar. Her neural system is entirely abnormal, highly redundant, and there’s a peculiar neural formation in her horn, wings, and hooves. The rest of it is within standard mammalian deviation, particularly robust. If she gets into a fistfight it will mainly be annoying, unless it’s with someone very strong.”
Forpeg didn’t understand the medical data, but nodded to Kahkala. “Hopefully that will never come up.”
Outside the ship, a red cloud floated in space. Suddenly, the Miranda-class starship ran into it. The cloud, scarcely larger than a large cat, hit the shields. Instead of being pushed out of the way, however, the cloud hung onto the ship, and slowly began to grow. Roiling, it seemed to move of its own accord.
“It was like kicking a dog. And not a normal dog, one of those little funny ones with the squished-up, wrinkly faces. And it knows you just kicked it, but it thinks it was an accident and holds no malice toward you whatsoever,” Rhealm Vihan said with a sigh. She was standing in the Captain’s office, giving a small report. “But I did it, and Twilight, though confused, accepted it.”
Captain Dolen nodded. “Hopefully, that won’t happen. It’d be a pity to rescue Twilight and be unable to return her without breaking the Prime Directive. Kahkala is an expert in both medicine and psychology, if we can find her planet we should be able to place her on it without incident. We can even wipe her memory if we have to.”
“Assuming we can. We should probably get an in-depth medical scan of her before trying that, especially considering that even the initial scan found something odd with her nervous system,” Rhealm said.
The Captain nodded. “Point. It’s unlikely that we would be doing the insertion, anyway. It’s far more likely that would fall to experts on the matter. In any case, after the supply runs we will be handing her off to a starbase, and from there she will go through the normal system.”
Rhealm nodded back. “Hopefully the system will be one made for returning her to her home, not for naturalization.”
“I will be expecting regular updates, number one,” the captain said, “that said, keep a clear head. You already have a job, you can’t afford to worry about one alien all the time.”
Almost subconsciously, the first mate straightened up. “Yes, sir.”
The captain nodded. “Good; dismissed, but one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“Pug,” the captain said casually, “The dog breed you were thinking of. I think they’re called pugs.”
There was a beep as someone paged the captain. “Captain, this is engineering, from the bridge. Something wrong with the shields; shield strength is wavering dangerously.”
“Drop out of warp immediately and do a diagnostic,” the Captain ordered, “I don’t need to tell you what will happen if our shields fall while in warp. I will be in presently.”
As the warp drive shut down, the captain stood and hurried onto the bridge, his first mate close behind him. The officer who had the bridge immediately stood up, and the captain sat down. “I don’t expect this to take long, just run the diagnostic, find out the trouble, and fix it so we can move on,” he said, “Send a message to the outpost saying we may be running a little behind. Rhealm, go to engineering and get a detailed report when possible.”
Rhealm left immediately, taking the turbolift down to the engineering deck. There, she immediately found Jared Herod. “Anything to report yet?”
“No sir,” Jared replied, “We’re not sure what’s going on. If anything, it’s gotten worse: there’s now errors coming in from the navigational deflector. We may have to shut down the shields altogether to diagnose.”
“Troubling. Do you at least know whether it’s hardware or software?” Rhealm asked hopefully.
Jared shook his head. “I’ll let you know as soon as we know anything.”
Computers had something to do with it; that was for sure. Twilight had messed around with them enough to know that they could do a lot with the proper prodding. The doors led obviously from there: There was some (nonmagical) thing that detected when someone was nearby, and then magnets in the walls activated and pulled the door apart. Except how would they detect someone’s presence without magic? Some kind of light detection... thingy? Or echolocation device?
“All these things that I never looked into,” Twilight said to herself, “And then, suddenly, here I am, wishing I had. If I had gone into translation magic, or deeper into computing, or astronomy, or-” the bing from the door made Twilight jump a little. “Uh, come in?”
The door opened, and a white chalkboard on wheels entered the room. It was pushed by someone that Twilight identified as human, albeit one with oddly shaped ears and eyebrows. Female? Twilight thought the human was female, but realized she hadn’t actually checked with Kahkala to be sure she knew how to tell the genders apart. She(?) was wearing a uniform, one of the yellow and black ones.
“Hello!” Twilight said, “My name is Twilight Sparkle. Who are you?”
“Lieutenant Commander Pilah,” she said, “I am a Vulcan. This is what we could make similar to the chalkboard you requested. These markers can be erased from the board easily, and will wash out from other surfaces easily. Do you have any questions?”
How does that work? Why weren’t you able to get a normal chalkboard? What’s the difference between Vulcans and Humans? How do the doors work? How does the teleporter work? Why does the sound the ship makes keep changing? How is faster than light travel possible? What’s the standard procedure for maroonees? Are you a boy or a girl? How can I tell? Would the federation really keep me from going home if I knew too much? How much is too much? Have they found where my planet is? Why is the ship named the Burning Age? What do the colors on the uniforms mean?
“Nothing important, thank you.”
Pilah nodded and left, leaving Twilight alone in the room. Twilight immediately chose a black marker and began to write equations on the board. If she couldn’t find out more about the ship, non-magic amazing items, or federation, she would simply work more on the spell that got her into this mess in the first place. She would take it apart, bit by bit, and figure out just what went wrong.
Twilight’s train of thought was interrupted by the light in her room flickering. Odd, she rather figured that the lights in the ship would be more reliable.
P’traal hmmed as a looked over the medical report. “Interesting. These neural pathways in particular. There’s nothing like them in any race I’m familiar with. The architecture overall is unique, even from races with very powerful psionics. This should be studied more in-depth, it could have applications in bio-neural technologies.”
Kahkala sighed. “One thing at a time, we should let her settle down a little first before we start poking her. That said, she does seem eager to help, so you may be in luck.”
P’traal nodded. “I’ll look over the results more in-depth when I have the time. Thank you for bringing this to me. Maybe together we will be able to publish a paper on this.”
Kahkala simply said “Maybe,” before leaving. She almost bumped into Pilah, who was scanning a bulkhead.
When the Vulcan noticed the medical officer, she said, “The whiteboard has been delivered to Twilight Sparkle, as requested.” As this was said, the lights in the hall flickered.
Kahkala looked around a bit, worried. “Any word on what’s wrong with the shield?”
“No,” Pilah said, before moving on.
Rhealm moved back into the bridge, walking over to the captain. “Things are getting worse, sir,” She said, “The shield is working again, but there are roving failures all over the ship. Engineering thinks it’s a software problem, but given the way that the failures seem to move, I suspect something more malign.”
Captain Dolen sighed. “Vihan, we haven’t been in contact with anything that could possibly be malign for days. This is a fairly new ship, and it’s no secret that sometimes-” the lights on the bridge flickered, distractingly. “-sometimes the designers don’t test everything as thoroughly as they should. This is practically a shakedown cruise, if not officially one.”
“Captain,” the helmsman spoke up, “My console is acting up.”
“Log it with engineering,” The captain ordered, “They need the information. If it persists, let me know.”
“Yes, captain,” The helmsman said. He frowned down at the console, and was about to stand up when he noticed something odd: a wisp of red coming out from a seam in the console. Acting like fog, it seeped out of the console, and onto his pants. “What is-”
There was barely a moment before red fog boiled out of the console, enveloping the helmsman. He screamed in pain as energy like lightning lanced over his body. Rhealm was quick to act, pulling out her phaser and aiming it at the cloud. It was all over too early for her to do any good, though: the cloud rolled back into the console with great speed, leaving a body, charred with energy burns.
“Red alert!” the captain called, “and get medical to the bridge. There’s a hostile on-board!”
The sudden blare of noise and change in lighting made Twilight jump a little. “Red alert,” A voice said, “all hands to duty stations. Intruder alert.” Twilight panicked a little. That sounded bad. What was she supposed to do? Just stay in her room?
Various surfaces around the room had red on them. The desk, a spot near the door, the computer near the food replicator, all were colored red. Twilight went over to the one near the door, but couldn’t read the symbols on it. However, the door didn’t open, so Twilight was locked in.
Well… hopefully that wouldn’t be an issue.
“Okay, captain,” Jared Herod said into the comm, “I think I’ve figured it out. Whatever it is drains energy from its surroundings, which is what is causing the issues. By mapping where the errors are in real-time, we can follow its movements. It frequents the navigational deflector and transporters, I suspect that it can feed more easily there since those are emission points. It also has begun to drain from the phaser banks since those have been powered on from the red alert. All the same, its movements are hard to predict.”
“I’m not complaining,” The captain said from the bridge, “But why hasn’t it gone for the warp core? That’s by far the most energy on the ship.”
“Looking at the logs, I think it’s tried,” the chief engineer replied, “But has been unable to. The containment field must be keeping it out.”
“That’s it, then!” the captain said, “We can use a containment field to trap it somewhere, to get it off of the ship. Photon torpedoes use antimatter containment fields when armed; if we can get it onto one of those then we could fire it off the ship.”
“How are we going to get it onto one?” Jerod asked, “What are we going to put into a photon torpedo that has enough energy to compare to the impulse drive or phaser banks?”
“An overloaded phaser rifle,” Rhealm Vihan stated.
The captain looked at her. “Many of your plans seem to involve phaser rifles, number one.”
“Captain, even type-2 phasers can be a threat to a ship when overloaded, the detonation can cause serious damage to smaller ships. If I were to set a type-3 phaser to overload, but limit the energy build up to before the detonation point, the amount of energy available would be considerable. We simply need to place it inside a gutted photon torpedo.”
“I think that would work, captain,” Jared said, “When we ‘armed’ the torpedo, the containment field would come on, and from there we could simply fire the torpedo. Vihan is an expert with phaser technology, I don’t doubt she could do it.”
The captain nodded. “Engineering, number one, make it happen.”
“Commander Forpeg,” Rhealm said, “We may need your expertise with the torpedoes.”
Pallik stood from his place at the security console. “Lead on.”
The torpedo bay was cramped, but workable. Pallik, standing over an open and gutted torpedo, straightened up as much as he could. He tapped his comm badge, “torpedo bay to Rhealm, come in. The torpedo is ready.”
“So am I,” Rhealm said as she entered the room, phaser rifle in hand. There was no way for her to stand up straight, but that didn’t phase her. “This rifle has been set up to do what we need, as soon as we’re ready it can start charging.”
“Hand it here,” Pallik said. He took the offered Phaser and fit it into the torpedo gingerly. “Torpedo bay to captain,” Pallik said, “We’re all set up.”
“Good,” the captain replied, “Continue at your own discretion. Arm and fire at will, everything is ready.”
Pallik reached down and activated the rifle. “Phaser charging,” He said as he shut the torpedo, “Let’s get to the fire control.”
The pair entered the fire control area of the torpedo bay, which looked into the ready area through a transperisteel window. Rhealm activated her comm badge. “Engineering, keep tabs on the entity for us. Let us know when it heads our way.”
“Will do,” Jared’s voice replied.
A few minutes passed before the chief engineer’s voice came again. “It’s headed your way.”
It was there quickly, a red fog that seeped out of the bulkheads and into the torpedo. As more and more fog seeped into the torpedo, the pair tensed. As Pallik examined the readouts, he frowned. “Phaser energy is dropping, soon there will be none left.”
“Load it,” Rhealm ordered. As an automated system loaded the torpedo into the tube, the fog seemed to follow it, chase after it. As the torpedo tube was sealed, the last of the fog disappeared. “Arm and fire!”
On the bridge, the captain let himself smile as a red dot streaked into space, far away from his ship. “Bridge to torpedo bay, I see a launch, I presume the effort was a success?”
“There was an energy spike a moment before launch,” Pallik’s voice replied, “But it seems to have-“
“Seems to have what? Torpedo bay?” the captain asked.
Pallik and Rhealm worked busily at their terminals. “It looks like the containment field failed momentarily,” Pallik said, “but the torpedo launched fine.”
“You did get that thing off the ship, right?” The captain asked.
A crackle of energy and a red glow surprised the pair in fire control. As they looked up, they saw red fog boiling out of the torpedo tube, laced with red energy, like lightning in a cloud during a violent storm. “No,” Rhealm said as she backed away from the console, “We just made it mad.”
Somewhere, far away, there was an explosion, and the ship seemed to shake a bit. Twilight frowned to herself. Now, she wasn’t a professional, but that struck her as a bad thing. She couldn’t leave her room, or ask what was going on, but there had to be a way for her to check what was going on.
Wait, there was. A scanning spell was made to detect magic, heat, or life, but if she cast all three at the same time, she could find all heat, life, and magic in the area. She closed her eyes and charged her horn. A bubble of awareness formed around her, finding her own life, heat, and magic. It extended outward, and found some heat in the walls. Further, further out, and the layout of the ship formed in her head. People were walking around, some things she didn’t recognize produced a lot of heat, and then she found another source of magic. It wasn’t alive, nor was it warm, and it didn’t have a solid shape.
As another explosion shook the ship, the captain winced. “Damage?”
“That was the second photon torpedo bay,” the report came in from engineering, “Whatever this thing is, it’s smart enough to cut off our options like that.”
“Rhealm to captain,” the first mate came in, “We escaped, I don’t think whatever it was could see us.”
“I think the energy spike was the entity breaching the containment field,” Pallik said over the comm, “which implies that it might be able to breach the field around the warp core as well, eventually.”
“Captain! There’s some kind of energy field covering the ship,” the sensor station reported, “It seems to be emanating from the crew deck... now it’s focusing on one spot in particular.”
“Captain, the energy field is focusing on the entity,” Jared Reported “It’s headed toward the crew deck now. It looks like the field is emanating from the room our guest is in.”
“I’m on my way,” Rhealm said, and took off down the halls. Pallik was left behind; Rhealm was far faster than he was. Rhealm found the room and opened the door. Twilight was standing in the middle of the room, her horn glowing brightly. “Twilight! What are you doing?” Rhealm asked urgently.
Twilight jumped a little. “I’m sorry, but I was worried, so I cast a detection spell and I found a-” As she spoke, an angry red cloud came out from the food dispenser, headed in Twilight’s direction. “-that!”
“Stop feeding it and get behind me!” Rhealm shouted, drawing and firing her phaser into the cloud. The beam dissipated in the cloud, utterly useless. Twilight, for her part, vanished from where she stood in a purple flash and reappeared behind Rhealm. The cloud advanced on the two, Rhealm backing up and firing more into the cloud. The pair began to back down the hallway, and the angry red cloud followed.
“Sir!” a pair of security personnel rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, seeing the first mate and pony through the red haze.
“Set phasers to kill and then fire into the cloud!” Rhealm shouted, and the pair of officers complied. Two phaser beams entered the cloud, and began to bellow after the security officers instead. “Now run!” Rhealm shouted.
One officer was not fast enough. He hesitated, firing another beam into the cloud, not realizing how fast it was moving. It washed over him, and as lightning coursed over his body he screamed. After a few agonizing moments, the officer fell to the ground, dead, and the cloud entered back into the walls of the ship.
“Medical to my location!” Rhealm cried, going over to the fallen crewman, and she quickly checked his vitals. “Cancel medical; he’s dead.”
“What was that thing?” Twilight said, shaking a little, “Why did it kill him?”
“As far as we can tell, it eats energy,” Rhealm said, “What were you doing?”
“But why kill him? It obviously expended energy to kill him, and he couldn’t hurt it, if anything he was-“
“Twilight!” Rhealm said, using the voice one only learns from years of being a commander in the military, “What were you doing?”
“Things were booming and shaking and everything was red!” Twilight sputtered out, “I wanted to know what was going on! I cast a detection spell and I found that thing! It’s the only other magic on the-“
“Listen to me,” Rhealm said simply, “We are in Red Alert. That means the ship is under attack. Go back into your room, stay there, and don’t cast anything. What happened will be explained later.”
“Rhealm!” the voice of Jared Herod came over her comm badge, “The thing has found the armory. The phasers are going to be a buffet for it; and it’s drawing more energy from the ship than it was before. I think you were right when you said that we made it angry.”
Rhealm tapped her comm badge and answered, “Reinforce the warp core, if you can, we’ll need some way to drive it back.”
“Engineering, you have permission to drain power from all non-essential systems to reinforce the warp core containment field. That thing must not get into the core!” The captain ordered. Twilight didn’t need another hint, she ran back into her room. She was not about to risk Rhealm’s ire if something so important was going on.
As the door shut behind her, Twilight couldn’t stop thinking about what she saw. The way that the lightning arced over the man’s form as he writhed in pain, the way his flesh was burned. But more than that, the fact that it happened at all. The thing didn’t need to kill him, and he couldn’t harm it, meaning that the thing didn’t kill in self-defense. It killed because it could, and that almost guaranteed that it would kill again.
The ring of the comm demanded the captain’s attention. “Bridge here,” he said tersely.
“Bridge, this is shuttle bay 1. It looks like the thing hitting the rest of the ship hit the shuttle, too.”
“Drained dry, I presume?” Dolen said with a frown.
“Worse: the type-15 shuttlecraft we have seems to have been sabotaged, every impulse engine is heavily burned. The escape pods are throwing errors, too, and when I tried calibrating them both immediately failed. It’s likely safe to assume those aren’t going to work.”
“Understood,” the Captain said, “Try to get them going. We may need them. Comms, I need a message sent to Starfleet.”
The comms officer looked up at captain dolen. “Of course, sir. What message?”
“I’ll be composing the actual body of the message presently, but attached to it must be all the information we have on this entity. Work with science on this. We need to get this to Starfleet, so that even if we die here, someone else may be able to develop a counter, so that a future ship will not suffer the same fate.”
“Sir, shouldn’t saving the ship be our first priority?” The comms officer asked, uncertainly.
“It is, but the two of us, we can’t do that. That’s up to science, engineering, and security. We’re stuck on this bridge, waiting for the people running around doing the work. The most we can do is try to equip others to better deal with this challenge in the future, better equipped than we are. Two men have died today, and 24 more may follow. We need to be sure that the deaths, both of those who have died and may yet die, are not in vain. If we can stop it today, all the better, but the threat it poses must be dealt with in some way. Get the information, and put it in a packet. I’ll compose a message to be sent with it.”
“Captain, shuttle bay again,” the same voice came over the com.
“Yes?” the captain asked, a little impatient.
“I’ve looked at the first escape pod. It’s literally fused into the bay; it’s not going to come out. We don’t have the means to repair that, and the other pod is giving the exact same errors so I assume it’s in the same state. It’s not professional sabotage, but it’s not easily done.”
“Are you saying that this… cloud is actively trying to keep us from escaping?”
“I think so, sir. Violently, too. You think there is any hope of communicating with it?”
The captain sighed. “I don’t think so. It has killed one man with no provocation, and that’s a rather straightforward greeting. Either it doesn’t consider us intelligent, or…”
“Or?”
“Or it is a murderer, and what appears to be an unrepentant one at that.”
As Rhealm entered the room with the warp core, she looked around. The area was bustling with activity, everyone was on-edge. She walked over to Jared Herod, and simply said, “Report.”
“We may have the most heavily-contained warp core in Starfleet right now,” Jared said, “I think our best bet is to wear the thing down. If we can force it to expend too much energy eating through the shielding, it may disperse.”
“Are you sure?” Rhealm asked.
“No, I’m guessing blindly, but it’s the only shot we have. Worst case scenario, we may be able to shut down the core and then wait for the thing to leave, but I wouldn’t bet on it. It’d likely eat the backup power, and then we’d be dead.”
“How much time do we have before it gets here?” Rhealm asked.
“I’m not sure,” Jared replied, “But likely not much.”
“Commander!” Someone called. The pair spun around to see the thick red cloud flowing down from the ceiling, covering the core.
Jared rushed to a console, as the entity began to crackle with internal lightning. “Looks like the field is holding,” he said, a moment before there was an audible thunderclap and the cloud completely lit up with lightning. “Still holding, but much worse off. If it has many more of those in it-” the engineer was cut off by two more surges of energy, close together. Alarms began to blare, and the crewmen in the room began to panic as readouts began to turn red. “No! Get it off of the core!”
Rhealm took aim and fired, the phaser energy disappearing into the cloud again. Again, the cloud bellowed toward the source of free energy, and as that happened Rhealm turned to run. As she continued firing, she sprinted for the door of the room, and the cloud was close behind her.
As Jared examined the readings, he pressed the call button. “Engineering to captain. Rhealm has the thing distracted, but I don’t think that’s going to last. If there was ever a time to abandon ship, it would be now.
“Every possible method to get off the ship is disabled,” the Captain replied, “The transporter could still work in theory, but with nowhere close enough to transport to, I’m afraid we either beat this thing… or we all die here.”
Rhealm moved slowly through the halls, checking each corner before she turned it. As she was about to round one corner, she saw the red cloud moving past a T-intersection. “Engineering,” she said, trying not to be too loud, “I think I have it turned around. It’s in the halls, looking for me, but it can’t find me.”
“Keep it distracted,” Jared said, “and try not to feed it too much. Containment field is at 48%, try to keep that thing away until it recovers more.”
“Will do,” Rhealm said. She moved down the corner, spotted the cloud, and fired her phaser at it. She then rushed back around the corner, and then took another sharp turn. A nearby door was to a storage bay. Rhealm quickly opened the door and made it stay open, ducking inside and off to one side. She saw the cloud float into the open door, and enter the room. She let herself smile; in the roomy storage bay, she could make better use of her agility.
She let the cloud float around a bit, and then she saw it head for a wall. She phasered it quickly, drawing it back into the room, and then began to circle the room.
“Containment field at 50%,” Jared said over the comm.
“What? Only two percent? Why so slow?” Rhealm almost hissed into the communicator.
“The emitters were slightly damaged,” Jared explained, “Nothing serious, but we’re feeling it in this situation.”
Rheam eyed the cloud, staying away from it as it swept the perimeter of the room. “Any way you can repair it?”
“No, not without a spacedock,” the answer came, “And even then there’s no promises.”
“…I can’t distract this thing for an hour,” Rhealm said, “We need a better solution.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, and, in theory, if we could catch it in a graviton shell, we could move it around easily.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Rhealm says, “How do we get a graviton shell inside the ship?”
“We can’t, the tractor beam only works outside the ship.”
Rhealm sighed, but then saw the cloud descend into the floor. She shot a beam at it… and it did not seem to care. “Engineering, I think it’s tired of my game.”
“Sorry, Commander. We’re only up to 51%, you’ll have to find a new game to play. I’m tracking it; it’s headed back for the hall.”
Rhealm rushed back toward the door, only for it to slam in her face. Sparks flew from the door mechanism, and then the red cloud covered the door. Lightning crackled inside of it, sparks flew from the door. Rhealm tried to shield her eyes as she backed away, but she could see the seam down the center of the door begin to glow.
“Commander, what’s going on? The door in that room stopped responding.”
“It locked me in,” Rhealm said, “I think it fused the door, now I can’t escape.” As she spoke, the red cloud vanished back into the floor. She backed away, keeping a watchful eye for even a single wisp of red gas.
“Commander, the thing is headed back toward the warp core!”
Oh no. Rhealm rushed forward, dialing the phaser up. She fired a burst at the door, disintegrating it. “I’m on my way!”
The cloud surrounded the warp core again, and after a painfully long moment there was another flash of lightning and roll of thunder, and the entire ship began to panic. “WARP CORE BREACH IMMANENT,” the computer said, “ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP.”
Jared, desperate, drew his own phaser and fired into the cloud.
“WARP CORE BREACH IMMENENT, the computer said again, “ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP.” That was very bad. Twilight ran up to her door, but it didn’t open. How was she supposed to abandon ship when she was still locked in? She teleported to the other side of the door, and looked around. That still raised the question of how other people who were locked in were to abandon ship. And how people were supposed to abandon ship in general. She knew that she was told not to cast anything, but… she cast that detection spell again, because she didn’t know what to do. She found the herself, the ship, and then the magic cloud… and watched as it descended upon a person-shaped heat signature.
She teleported herself, and arrived just in time to see the cloud being shocking the poor man. He screamed, and writhed. It wasn’t as fast as the time in the hall, it was slower, and the poor man screamed and screamed. It was torturing him!
She fired a magic beam at it. She didn’t know what else to do, she had to stop it somehow. However, as her beam struck the cloud, it vanished into it, doing no more damage than the phasers had done. Twilight didn’t give up, though. She held the beam steady, even though she could feel the magic being unworked when it hit the mass, and watched with glee as the cloud lifted off of the man.
Glee changed to terror as the cloud bellowed toward her.
Thinking fast, Twilight changed the beam. Heat, no. Teleportation, no. Light, no. Electricity, no. Cold? It just fed on the magic sustaining the cold beam. Desperately, Twilight started to try something, anything, attempting to grab hold of the magic that she was losing into the cloud.
And then, a spot in the cloud turned purple.
That was it. She had it. She pressed the advantage, and the spot became a blotch, and the blotch itself began to absorb the rest of the cloud. The cloud thundered and shook, and then tried to get away. No you don’t, Twilight thought to herself, pressing the advantage. More and more purple overcame the red, until, with a last defiant rumble, the last of the red cloud vanished, leaving only a soft purple glow.
And there was only one place for all that to go. Twilight tugged on the cloud, drawing it into herself. She felt it move into her horn, and then into her. It was, ultimately, a lot of magic, but not more than Twilight could handle.
As the last of the purple glow vanished, Twilight was left in the room. Then, as the adrenaline began to subside, her knees became weak, her head pounded, and this time she simply let herself pass out.
As Twilight came to, she was greeted with the remnants of a magical exertion headache. As she quietly chastised herself for overexerting herself again, she opened her eyes and was greeted by Kahkala. The Catian smiled softly, and said, “Twilight, it’s good to see you awake. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Twilight lied with a sigh.
“Are you sure?” Kahkala asked, worry in her voice. “You passed out. We’re all very worried.”
“I’ll be fine, I just overexerted myself,” Twilight said, adding a quiet “Again.” after a moment. “Look, can we get on with it?” she asked, “Just send in Rhealm or the Captain or whoever is waiting to yell at me and send me to the brig. No point in putting it off.”
Kahkala frowned and glanced up. Twilight rolled over and looked at the other side of the bed, where Captain Dolen sat, a disapproving and disappointed gaze well punctuated by his moustache.
“Twilight Sparkle,” He said slowly, “Do you know what you’ve just done?”
Twilight sighed. “I broke rules. I left my room during red alert, I entered a forbidden area, and in so doing I have condemned myself to the brig for the rest of the voyage.”
“No. More than that. Twilight, do you know what you’ve done?” the captain asked, his voice heavy.
“…what have I done?” Twilight asked, afraid to know the answer.
“You just saved the lives of 23 men and women, and maybe even more. And for that, I thank you,” the captain said, his face softening. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“…is this a situation where I’m still going to the brig,” Twilight asked, “Or am I getting a pass due to heroism?”
Dolen laughed a little. “You showed respect for the rules, but when the need arose, you put yourself in danger to protect others. I think that, given that without your actions there wouldn’t be a brig left to put you in, I’ll forgive this. Just try not to make it a habit.”
Twilight smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
The captain stood up. “Recover well, Twilight, with luck the rest of your voyage will be less interesting.”
Twilight nodded, and laid her head back. Yeah, that was quite enough excitement for a while.
As the captain stepped back onto the bridge, he saw his first mate looking contemplative. As he took the command chair from her, he spoke up. “Is something bothering you, number one?”
“Twilight seemed to know something about the being,” Rhealm said, “when she was doing the scan. She said something about it being magic, but I didn’t take the time to stop and listen to her. If I had, we may have been able to save Jared’s life.”
“Would have, should have, could have,” the Captain said, “There’s no point pondering it. But, if so, maybe you should talk to her about it. It could be that her magic isn’t unique to her planet, but one of the many mysteries of the greater galaxy. We’ll see. For now, helm! Make way to that supply drop, and try to make up for lost time. Now we need supplies as much as they do.”
Dear Princess Celestia,
Twilight stared at the piece of paper for a long time. She started to write once or twice, but each time got no further than two words before striking them out. With a sigh, she gave up, and placed the paper aside. She laid her head back on the pillow, closed her eyes, and tried not to remember the way that the person writhed as electricity arced over his body.