“Princess, you can’t be serious! The Empire needs you! We’ll be leaderless!”
“These ponies need me more, Captain.”
“But the Empire-”
“-will have to rule itself, for a time. I’m not going to let millions of my people die. Not so long as I can prevent it.”
“But... how long will you be gone?”
“We will be gone until it is safe once again, Captain. Whether that day is tomorrow, or a thousand years from now, we shall return.”
-Aug 13, 3339EC. Princess Cadance seals the Crystal Empire amidst planetwide armageddon.

An uneasy silence hung over the three of us as we sat with our backs to the engine core, taking careful, measured glances into the room outside while we waited for whatever the damn spiders would throw at us next. The last hour and a half had been grueling. Caught between wave upon wave of opportunistic robots and our bottlenecked exit, we had successfully mounted a defense of the inner engine room thanks to the natural funnel the space provided. Unfortunately, it was also what was trapping us inside. Thank Luna we had energy weapons. If we had to use conventional rounds, we would have run out a long time ago.

Slumped over his pistol, Nightshade sighed, taking advantage of the calm to finish cleaning the weapon before taking another quick glance around the core's edge. “You know, this is the kind of quiet that I hate,” he said, quietly surveying the battlefield before slipping back down to safety. I was too exhausted to do anything other than nod.

Jess straightened, double checking the sight on her rifle before setting back up in her firing position. “At least we’re still alive,” She replied. Her eyes never moved from the entrance and settled into a seemingly hollow focus. It was a little unnerving, but by now I had grown used to it.

"For now," Nightshade muttered. With a clack and whine he finished cleaning his pistol and snapped the charge back into position. With a small crack of bones, Nightshade stretched his leg, before finally settling back into his own firing stance.

I simply stood in place, trying to ignore the pile of dead bots we had killed, while I kept my own weapon down range.

Her word was our saving grace. Jess was right when she said the spiders were avoiding the core. Experimentally, Jess and I had used our WANDs to yank one of the live ones into the energy field we were hiding in, and we were rewarded with a wonderful shower of sparks as the shitty little things exploded when they got too close. This is not to say the little bastards made it easy for us, though. I nearly took a dirt nap when a needle fired from one of the bots grazed my suit and tore a nice gash across my left shoulder. I had since patched it, but it was a close enough call to discourage any further experimentation. From that point onward, we settled on thinning their numbers, using our excellent position to pick off targets of opportunity.

The result was a long period of waiting. We were at an impasse. We were safe, but we were stuck. And I could swear the bots had somehow realized this as well, because for the last half-hour attempts on our position had stopped. We could still see them, easily, if we wanted to risk poking our heads out into the open. They simply waited for us outside, sitting in a nicely organized firing line, with all of their barrels trained on our only avenue of escape. That action alone gave me the shivers. It was spooky, enough so that I spent a great deal of time trying not to think about it. It was like they knew. I mean, logically, we could hold the engine room for hours. They couldn’t get too close because of the blessed energy field, so overwhelming us was out of the question, and by the way they seemed to stop multiplying, I figured that there weren't too many of them left on-board. We’d killed quite a few of the more adventurous bots, but after a tense hour of defense, they did something which, for an AI, I had never even heard of: They changed tactics. They had started conserving their numbers.

It was eerie. It was terrifying. It was like they knew. They knew we couldn’t leave the engine room. They knew they couldn’t assault our position. Even during what attacks there had been, each one had been a little different. They probed our defenses, sending little strike teams at different angles to see how we’d react. In the end, we sat in a mutual stalemate. Except we had a key weakness. No matter what, eventually we would have to leave. We had to eat. All they needed to do was wait, and as machines, they could do that forever. It was like they knew, and I found it terrifying to consider what kind of genius could have programmed them that way.

“Nnngh,” My ears shot up as the sound of Tickintime moans rose a few decibels. I risked a glance back down at the poor mare as she finally stirred and slipped a hoof out, uneasily pawing the air and cradling her head as she tried to clear her senses.

Tick made a noise halfway between a sob and a groan. Her eyes fluttered open, still slightly dilated, and immediately squinted shut in the harsh light. Curling into a ball and shielding her eyes she moaned, “Why do I hurt everywhere?”

“You were hit,” Nightshade responded, taking his eyes off the entrance to address her. “The needles that penetrated your barding were laced with what used to be a powerful sedative. You’re lucky it’s had so much time to decay. You’re also dehydrated. Drink some water and you’ll be fine.”

“It could have been longer,” Nightshade said in a matter-of-fact tone, “The mix was so old that it lost some of its potency. If that shit had been new, you might have been out for days, if you ever woke up at all.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Nightshade replied, “although ‘lucky’ isn’t exactly what I’d call our current situation.”

“Oh no, what happened? I mean, I sorta remember some weird bug things but, everything is still a little fuzzy,” Tick mumbled.

“While you were out,” Jess chimed in as she returned from her firing position, “we had to drag you into this room or else we wouldn’t have made it out. I could swear they’re being controlled, but by what I have no idea." Jess sighed. "These damn bots are just too fucking clever. They’ve been content to just let us sit here and wait us out.”

Tickintime whistled, “That’s a pretty impressive AI, if it worked all that out on the fly. I kinda wish I had time to study it.”

Jess snorted, “Good luck with that, last time we tried venturing past the field, Horizon here almost joined you,” she said, nudging her head in my direction.

“I’m starting to think I need to have a supply of fresh suits, at the rate I’ve been tearing through these,” I said, glancing down at the sealed rip on my shoulder. Tickintime looked at it with muted horror.

Nightshade shook his head. “Maybe later, if we can get out of this alive,” he replied, and then turned his attention back to Tickintime, “So, our brilliant and almighty engineer, good morning! We are pinned down inside a closed bottleneck with no escape and a virtually unstoppable army of robots waiting just outside. Oh, and they explode if they get too close to the energy field. Any ideas?”

Tick’s jaw worked soundlessly as the panic set in. “I… don’t even know where to start! Wait... field? what field?”

“You… can’t feel that?” I asked, noting the electric buzz that was currently putting the hairs on my mane on end.

Tickintime focused for a moment and her eyes widened. “Oh! oh… oh,” she laughed softly, “Sorry, there’s so much ambient magic that it's hard to pick it up out of the rest of it. I feel it now though,” her expression grew somewhat wistful, “the poor engine's containment field must be damaged.”

“We’re maybe minutes away from being turned into pincushions, and she’s concerned about the health of a centuries old engine,” Nightshade deadpanned.

Tick frowned, “Hey! I’ll have you know that proper ship maintenance is an important part of making sure your engines are healthy and happy!”

“And they have feelings now?” Nightshade replied, his smirk returning in full force.

Tickintime harrumphed. “They might as well. Don’t tell me you’ve never had to deal with a finicky part that just wouldn’t behave unless you treated it a certain way,” she gave Nightshade a once-over, “or in your case a pistol that wouldn’t shoot straight. I make sure to treat all of my machines with the care and respect they deserve, otherwise how could I ever expect them to perform when I needed them most?”

Wow, that… was actually a pretty reasonable argument. Although, if she was including the Scrap Bandit in that category I was pretty sure it was still a lost cause. Either way, Nightshade seemed to accept it, if grudgingly.

“Fine. But regardless, we’re still bucked if we don’t think of something soon. Eventually we’re gonna have to leave, and I’d rather do it on our terms than theirs,” Nightshade said.

Tick frowned, deep in thought, glancing between one of the scrapped spider bots and the glowing engine core. After a moment, she said, “Well, I think I have an idea of what’s causing them to malfunction, but I’ll need to crack one open to be sure. and if that's the case then, well...” she sighed, “You’re not going to like it.”

“Hold it still!” Tick cried, cautiously craning her neck around the edge of our cover for a better look.

“I’m trying!” Jess barked back, “the damn interference isn’t making this easy you know!” The spider in question rapidly flailed its legs trying to right itself, making little purchase against the nothing that contained it as Jess blindly floated it away from its companions and into the energy field. With a loud fizz and pop, its internal components detonated, marking the third one we had failed to safely retrieve. With a groan, Jess floated it next to the others, the now useless husk still wobbling in her already unstable TK.

“Lovely,” Tickintime drawled. With a bored look she floated the new husk up, rapidly disassembling it and glancing through each of the fried components, before tossing most of it aside with a groan of frustration.

“And that was the last one in my WAND’s range,” Jess announced with a groan, “I think they’ve figured out my range on this thing. That’ll be the last one we get for a while, unless of course you can grab things you can’t see?” she added, almost hopefully.

“Nope! Not my specialty,” Tickintime replied, tucking away the useable parts with the rest and carefully examining the new ones. She kept talking as she sorted through them, “Most unicorns need line-of-sight to use TK and I’m no exception. Ugh! Are you sure there aren’t any more good ones?”

“Positive. Unless you can find something useful from the pile of dead ones over there,” Jess said, nudging her head.

With a roll of her eyes, Tick floated several of the dead ones back to where she was seated, frowning as she took more and more of them apart.

“Can’t you make an educated guess?” Nightshade suggested, “I mean, they’re obviously going to explode if we try to get them closer, just being here means we won’t get them in one piece.”

Tickintime cradled her head in her hooves and groaned, dropping the remaining bots to the ground with a clack. “Look, I know! Okay? And, yes, I probably could make an educated guess, but if I’m wrong we could all die!”

Jess smirked. “That’s why they call it 'taking a risk', Sweetie.” Tick merely glared in response.

“Before we get ahead of ourselves, Tick, can you at least give us what you know so far?” I asked.

With a long, deep breath, Tickintime calmed herself down. Rubbing her chin with a booted hoof, she said, “Well, from what I’ve observed, they seem to have a flaw in their construction that causes them to explode when they come close to a sufficient power source, but that doesn’t tell us how much of an energy surge we would need to disable them, or how long we would need it to work for. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would in the first place!” Tick started pacing, “I mean, even the most traditional design philosophies still have things like energy dumps implemented in them. That’s why they can use a lot of robots to work on station cores and things like Sparkle drives. Furthermore they all use closed systems! Ambient energy shouldn’t aff- wait...”

With a sudden glow from her horn, one of the dead spiderbots was yanked from the pile, hanging lazily in front of Tick’s searching eyes. Once again, it slowly came apart piece-by-piece as tick sorted the pieces and started tearing it apart piece by piece. We all sat in silence watching her until by some revelation, her eyes widened.

She blinked, “Uh y-yeah, j-just give me a moment.” She sorted through the rest of the bot’s wreckage, flipping over a few circuit cards before setting the pile aside.

“I’m not sure, how…” Tickintime trailed off, “but these bots, um… don’t have any power source. And I can’t seem to find a logic chip either.”

Tick looked annoyed. “No brain. No power. Technically these things shouldn’t even move from what I’ve seen. Unless, whoever made these things was super clever and put them…” She blinked, and then smacked her head with a hoof. “Oh, duh. That would explain everything!”

“They’re energy leeches!” Tick exclaimed with a triumphant smile, her horn glowed a little brighter as she pulled back out a few of the circuit boards and gave them a quick once over. “See this?” she said, floating over a circuit board for us to see. It was blackened from burnout, but I could faintly see a few small silver lines criss crossing its surface in the areas that hadn’t been completely fried. Honestly, I really didn’t know what I was supposed to be seeing.

“This absorbs ambient energy and converts it into usable electricity! It’s quite ingenious actually, it would also explain why they’re still active after all these years. When we turned on the power they were able to recharge,” Tick said.

Tick rolled her eyes. “Details. Besides, all of you were telling me to turn it on anywa-” Her eyes widened as they grazed over something on the backside of the board, and her smile promptly vanished.

“Shush shh shh, one sec,” Tick said, holding a hoof in our direction while squinting at something on the back of one of the circuit boards. With a gasp, her magic fizzled out completely and the board clattered to the ground. It landed face down.

The backside of the board was just as fried as the front, with one exception. On the back of the burnt circuit board, there was a small, circular rune, intricately carved with arcane script both inside and out of the circle, as well as a small pictograph of a teardrop in the center. Despite its condition, the rune still looked perfect, almost glowing in the light. The meaning of it was lost to me, however. There only a were a few numerals that I recognized from my pilot training, the rest of it was gibberish.

Nightshade turned his head, looking at the rune before his eyes widened as well. “Is that?”

“WHAT? IS IT WHAT?” Jess snapped, “STOP BEATING AROUND THE FUCKING BUSH AND JUST TELL US ALREADY!”

“These things aren’t robots, they’re golems. They’re like them, but they’re not exactly programmed.”

“I have many skills,” Nightshade replied cryptic smile, “mostly, from a small talent with Alchemy. This, though, this takes the cake.” He said, pointing at the offending rune.

Tick continued instead, looking down at the rune sadly before speaking, “Golems are powered in one of two ways,” she said. “The first and most common is to use a magic nexus like a crystal and charge it with mana. You can then set it with a few objectives and it’ll create a sort of quasi-intelligence for it to do things. Like follow orders or add some basic utilities. A lot of the techs I used to work with used a sort of hybrid approach with that, using both a logic chip to handle the orders and a golem to execute them. Programming it is hard, but it makes some really, super smart bots.”

Tick grimaced. “Even the best of them can’t perform abstract thinking. They need to be programmed to do things according to a set of rules, and are not able to quickly adapt to new circumstances.” She pointed to the tear in the center of the rune, looking ill. “See this teardrop? In magic it represents life, or more specifically, the Well of Life. And these braces serve as a focus to contain it.” She let that sink in.

Sink in, it did. Before my mother died, I went to school, and there they taught us all about where magic came from.

My stomach twisted, as I looked back down at the dead little monster. It was sick, really, but I couldn’t help but marvel at it. These monsters were robots that would stay active, alive, and sun-damned sapient so long as there was a source of energy to power them. My mind recoiled at the prospect, and especially the implication that followed.

The captain’s log had said that they took a few of the bots onboard for the scientists to study. The way he said it made it sound like they only picked up maybe a handful. Yet here, centuries later, there was practically an army of them.

“Back on topic,” Nightshade said. “What’s causing them to explode when they get near the core?”

“Oh, that's easy. Their circuits overloaded,” Tickintime replied with a shrug. “My best guess is that the circuitry isn’t what it used to be after a few centuries and it can’t handle the concentrated power draw anymore.”

We all looked at the power core. With sudden revelation, Tick’s eyes flicked back and forth from the core to the three of us.

“What? Wait… no. No! No no no no. You’re not thinking what I think you are, are you? Please say no.”

“Well, it wouldn’t technically be the first time we’ve blown up an engine,” Nightshade commented wryly.

Tick’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, “You did WHAT?! ARE YOU INSANE?”

Tick looked horrified. “M-maybe, but, if I do a power surge that big, I-I don’t think we’ll get a second chance. It’ll fry anything still connected to the grid! The whole ship would… well, let’s just say it would be a flying brick.”

Tick clenched her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before sighing. “It’s… possible, I guess? Are you sure there isn’t another option?”

Nightshade sighed, “Trust me, we’ve had plenty of time to think it over. This is the only option. All others end in us being pincushions. We either blow the engine, or hope we die.”

Ten minutes later, Tickintime was putting the finishing touches on the engine core, while the rest of us huddled together on the floor, going over the options of our escape. The plan was simple. We would blow the core with the hope that the resulting energy pulse would destroy the spiderbots, and then book it back to the closest airlock. See? Simple. Not to say our plan didn’t have a wrinkle or two,

“Okay, so let me be clear. What happens if the entire ship loses power and we can’t get out?” Tick asked, pulling herself away from her work and joining our little huddle.

“Like, doors," Tick explained, "If the engine shuts down, it’ll take a few minutes for the backups to kick in. I know there’s at least two still working, but I’m not so sure they’ll be able to provide enough power to keep the doors working.”

“We would have to crank the doors. Just like we did when we hit the bridge.” Nightshade said.

“Can we open them from here?” Jess asked. “You know, before we use the pulse?”

Tick shook her head. “Not really, the door controls aren’t connected into the inner engine room. The best thing we could get would probably be the engine shield, and that wouldn’t help us at all.”

“What about the doors we had to open manually? Would those still be open?” I asked.

“Well, assuming you disengaged the door controls, yeah. They should still be open,” she replied.

“Well, if the backups work the power should be back up by the time we get there right?” Jess said.

“Assuming at least one of the backups still functions at that point,” Nightshade replied.

“There’s always a manual override inside the airlocks.” Tick said. “It’s a safety feature. It’s been part of the design of ships dating all the way back to the early days of spaceflight.”

“Alright, so, recap.” Jess straightened, her WAND glowing brighter as it started projecting a composite map from the data we had both gathered. A map formed between the four of us, fizzing and popping in time with the thrum of the engine core. “Assuming the pulse works, and we manage to knock out enough of the bots to get by, we make our way back to the airlock, here.” A thin red line snaked its way through the map and stopped at a cubed node several clicks away from our starting position. It was a good run, a real good run, but not unmanageable.

“To save time we should seal up before we start moving. We may not have time once we’re inside,” Nightshade suggested.

Jess nodded. “Good idea. Moving on,” the map zoomed in on the airlock, “We shut the hatch, get outside and then find our ship and transfer to it as quickly as we can.”

“The transfer could be a problem,” I added. “We’ve been here a long time, if there’s been any drift-”

“I can help course correct if we need it,” Tick offered. “Even the weakest Unicorn TK is usually more effective than what your WANDs can put out, and my MPR is about average.”

“That’s it, really.’ Jess said. “Once we’re onboard, we should be home free.”

I glanced at the engine, and then back to our group. “How soon will it be ready?” I asked Tick, hopefully sounding more confident than I felt.

Tick looked back at the engine and the mess of wires jutting out of the panel she had been working. “Two, maybe three minutes, tops,” she replied. “I’ve nearly finished what I need to do, I just need to make a couple more tweaks and then we’ll be ready.”

“Right then. Seal up, I guess,” I said. I pulled out my helmet, turning it over in my hooves before putting it on. The others did the same. I saw Tick finally secure her bubble helm before the crackle of my radio immediately filled my ears.

“Don’t forget to check your suit integrity.” Jess said as she finished securing her helmet. For a brief moment, her suit inflated, before settling back to its normal, tighter fit. “Especially you, Tick, I had to pull a few needles out of you when I found you. I want to make sure we plugged all the holes.”

Tickintime merely nodded. Her horn glowing briefly before her suit also inflated. “I’m good.”

The three of us crouched while Tick worked, keeping our weapons trained on the entrance with watchful eyes.

A crackle filled my ears as a wire short circuited from the panel. There was a brief flash, and then Tick stepped back.

Silence fell. The room was still, and we waited. One second, two, and then a deep thrum reverberated through the air, flashing the room in a pulse of bright light in time with its rhythm. I squinted in the light, a small pain building in my eyes. The thrum built in power, engine pulsing faster and brighter with every passing second until I could feel its rhythm in my chest. I shielded my eyes to guard from the glare as the pulse got faster and wilder. Then the thrum grew in pitch, louder and deafening until it settled into an ear piercing screech that made the entire ship shake.

“Cover!” Nightshade yelled, barely audible over the radio. Everyone dropped to the deck.

The rhythm broke. A massive force wave followed a deep boom. In an instant, the containment field shattered. A force hit the air, like being sucked in one direction and then blown out again. I felt an electric energy wash over me, through me, and out, charging the air with an electric buzz. The lights blew out. My WAND spazzed, the readout dying completely to be replaced with a chittering, static that flit around the edges of my vision and screeched in my ears. All sound went with it. Silence followed. The world plunged into darkness and after a moment I realized that I couldn't hear anything. Well, anything other than a screeching keen that drowned out everything else.

When I opened my eyes again, it was dark everywhere. Even the emergency lights had blown. Four headlamps activated, Illuminating bodies, faces, and visors. I looked up to see Jess talking and shaking her head unsteadily, my hearing returning in time to catch the tail end of her sentence.

“EEEEEeeeeeikeegetteeing hit with a flashbang.” Jess said, cradling her head with one hoof while supporting herself with the other.

I turned, looking back at Tick to find her muttering under her breath to the engine core while she pressed one hoof against its surface. "I’m sorry baby, I am so, so sorry.”

Tickintime gave me a long baleful glance before nodding. “Alright,” she replied.

Jess and Nightshade stacked up at the entrance to the engine room, weapons at the ready. I took a position behind them, waiting for the go. Jess waved a hoof into the open and retracted it.

She risked a glance around the corner, waited, and then gestured for us to follow with her hoof. Together, we all pushed out.

It was eerily quiet in the rest of engineering. In the dark of the emergency lights the dead husks of spiders littered the floor like little black mountains, unmoving, some with trails of smoke rising from their internal components. I surveyed the scene with a serious sense of dread as we moved through the metal graveyard toward the exit, cautiously, at first, and then faster as our urgency built.

“How much time do we have until the backups kick in?” Jess asked in a low voice as we neared the door to the corridor. The door, to my relief, was still open.

“About a minute, maybe two,” Tickintime whispered back, “if they kick in at all…”

I stopped as a brief glint of light caught my eye. Looking down, I noticed the bot at my hooves.

It was still smoking. A small plume of black smoke drifted lazily out from its internal components as it sat inert with its legs splayed out on the ground.

It was a tired scraping that filled the air, a halfhearted screech of nails against chalkboard as eight hundred legs weakly scrabbled for purchase against an unforgiving metal surface as the spiders awoke.

The four of us peeled off, closing the distance to the door in seconds as a room full of angry glowing eyes snapped to attention, an angry chitter rising like a tidal wave behind us. I was in the back, just ahead of Tick, as we rounded the open doorframe and several needles punched into the bulkheads behind us. The sound of metal legs on steel thundered, echoing through the hallways and giving speed to our flight.

We sprinted down a straightaway, and turned. I looked back just as we rounded the next corner. I really wished I hadn’t.

It was a like a writhing mass of machines. Spindly legs stuck out everywhere, as each bot crawled over the next to get at us, needles hissing through the air behind us as each bot took aim.

“How much farther?” Tick frantically called ahead, her eyes shrunken to pinpricks at what she had just seen.

Jess skidded to a halt, the rest of us nearly plowing into her from behind. It didn’t take me long to see what the problem was.

“Crank it! crank it! crank it!” TIck called out, turning a terrified glance at the impending wave just rounding the far corner behind us. Nightshade fumbled with the panel to expose the override inside.

“Then do it manually!” I yelled back. I looked back at the end of the corridor and started firing Flashing bolts of energy vanishing into the encroaching mass.

Tick was a step ahead of me. Horn glowing, I watched her field surround the plates on the floor and with a loud cry bent them upward, just in time to intercept a needle which ricocheted up and wedged itself into the ceiling. She did the same with the ceiling, noisily closing the gap, and panting audibly afterward.

“Hurry!” Jess shrieked, just as our impromptu barricade took its first blow. Tiny legs punched through the gaps in the steel, gripping its edges, poking, and flailing about. The keening strain of metal screeched in the air as the bots slowly bent it back open, muted only by the deafening chitter of the angry somethings behind it.

“I’m working as fast as I can!” Nightshade yelled back, frantically spinning the override inside the door. Tick turned to help, her magic focusing on the door itself and shoving. The door shrieked open.

Nightshade rolled upright and sprinted, the rest of us not far behind. With a loud bang,one the metal plates ripped from the ceiling, and the bots began spilling over the fresh gap.

We didn’t stay to see the rest. We made it through one corridor, two, and then our destination sat ahead. The airlock was just as we left it. Still open from our side, and waiting for us. Jess was through first, then Nightshade, and then lastly myself and a panting Tickintime as I nudged her heavily inside.

Nightshade braced against the hatch and heaved, The door slamming shut just in time to stop a spiderbot from getting in. I watched through the porthole, as the little bastards started piling on the outside.

Growling, I ripped open the panel for the manual override, ignoring the loud warnings above to it and yanked the emergency release as hard as I could. “Brace!” I called. All four of us flattened against the walls.

Four muffled explosions fired in unison. Like a shot out of a cannon, the door blew off with a tremendous bang and whoosh, ripping the air out of the chamber. The force caught Tick. Jess and I reacted instantly, reaching out in time to keep her from flying away.

Our respite was short lived. As the spiders beat their legs against the small window, hairline cracks slowly multiplying across its reinforced surface.

“Go! Go! Go!” I yelled. One by one we crawled out of the airlock, beating across the deck toward the transit point to the Bandit just a few clicks away. I was out last, trailing behind the others as they started their jumps. Once at transit, I looked up and breathed a sigh of relief.

Even after nearly two hours, the Bandit hadn’t moved an inch. Damn, I’m good.

I was up. I was out. I was headed the right way. Satisfied with my trajectory, I twisted in space to glance back at the battleship we were leaving behind. It barely moved, really, its size and our proximity did a lot for that. Then motion caught my eye. In muted horror, I watched as gas and glass exploded airlock, spewing several spiderbots into open space and spraying tiny flashes of needles into the void at random vectors. Still more crawled out from airlock onto the hull, and from there started jumping in tens toward the Bandit above.

We hadn’t planned for this. We hadn't planned for a lot of things, come to think of it. Ah, well. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

“Huh?” I looked up and plowed face first into the hull of the Bandit. My entire weight came down on my head and shoulders as I smacked against the deck at top speed. Pain shot through my side as my wings crunched painfully beneath me. I kicked my legs and realized I was floating. I'd bounced. A green energy field surrounded me, arresting my velocity and pinning me back to the Bandit’s hull before I could get away.

“Later! Get in!” she replied, half dragging me with her magic back to the Bandit’s airlock as I struggled to orient myself. I was just over the lip when a needle plinked off the hatch and into space. Nightshade shut the hatch with a heave. Jess hit the cycle. Air hissed its way back in. As soon as the light was green, no one wasted any time.

“Get on the turrets!” Jess yelled. Nightshade nodded and sprinted for the nearest access. Jess then turned to me, “Is your WAND working?”

I checked my feed. It was still active, after a sort. A wall of errors filled what I could read in my feed, but from the looks of it, it was rebooting. I nodded my head. “It's full of errors, but it's online. Sorta.”

“Ugh. Well at least yours has power. Get on the seat and get us out of here!” With that she sprinted below decks toward the belly gun.

“Um… what should I do?” Tick called after me as I started running toward the pilot cabin.

I hit the door control and then looked back. “Get down to maintenance and buckle up. It’s about to get a little wild.” The door shut noisily behind me.

Everything was as I left it. Outside, the looming mass of the battleship was speckled with flickering white dots as the oncoming spiderbots flitted in and out of the Bandit’s spotlights. I jumped into the chair, not even bothering with the harness as I primed the engines for full thrust. With building horror, I realized they were closer than I thought. A loud bang sounded, suddenly warnings lit up the dash.

“Agh! They’re coming in!” Tick cried. Looking up, I saw several of the bots latch onto the viewport shielding and start smashing.

The Bandit lurched, spinning amid the undignified cries of Jess and Nightshade as it spun on its central axis. The bots on the window flailed and then snapped off as I reversed thrust, nearly flinging me out of my own seat. Swinging the spotlights forward, I squinted into the darkness as I punched up the main thrusters. The bandit shook as the the thrusters fired launching us forward and rapidly accelerating. Debris shrieked across the surface of the hull as I took us up and away, Managed to dodge a large chunk of plating before we finally cleared the ship. Distantly I heard the report of the energy turrets go silent. When I could still see them flashing, I started checking warnings, My WAND still struggling to even display them correctly.

Frantically scanning the control board, I started checking warnings and swore. Life support was down, and reporting problems with the substructure.

We could fix it later. All I wanted to do was get us out. “Tick! Are you still with us?”

“Yeah! A little busy, but yeah!” I heard the crackle of something that I was pretty sure wasn’t radio static. Tickintime grunted.

“Great!” I hit the charger. The telltale hum of the Sparkle drive built in the background as I cut the thrusters and levelled us off, redirecting every ounce of power I could to the drive to cut the charge time. The indicator rapidly spun up.

I grit my teeth, staring at the angry red pinpricks of light shining from the battleship’s distant hull, skittering over its surface like some sick, living wave.

I was up. I was out of my seat. I was already moving. Pushing the release on the door control, I was nearly knocked off my balance as the air suddenly normalized, nearly launching me into the hallway beyond. By instinct my wings snapped open, catching the air in a furious backstroke, leveling me off enough to land on my hooves. Somewhere nearby I could hear a high pitched hiss as the atmosphere bled away, spewing out through unseen holes, while several more bangs announced the entry of more of the little bastards. I spotted one making its way toward the ladderwell to the maintenance deck, raised my leg and fired, scoring a trailing hit as it stumbled and fell the rest of the way down. Nightshade had just finished crawling out of the dorsal turret as he joined me in the access corridor.

“How many left inside?” Nightshade called over the S-Band, more to the rest of the group than to me.

“Can’t be too many more!” Jess replied instantly, “between the two of us I think we nailed most of them!”

I spotted another bot crawling out of a burst pipe in the corridor. I turned to fire, but Nightshade beat me to it, lighting it up with a shot from his pistol that took it square in the center. It burst messily, its sparking components dying quickly in the weakening atmosphere. Sparing little more than a glance at each other, we both took the ladderwell down to the maintenance level.

As we passed the deck, I got a good look at the state of the maintenance level. It was a mess. Several of the floor grates had come loose, with blackened, dead spiders sporadically littering the floor around the gaps in the deck. In the center of the room, Jess and Tick stood flank to flank, Jess cautiously training her weapon over the scene, while Tickintime panted, eyes focused as she channeled a small, flashing ball of lightning in front of her. A last bot tried to crawl away sneaking out of a grate for the engine room. Tick yelled and the room flashed as a bolt struck out. When I could see again, the bot lay still, blackened, and ruined.

“I think that might be it,” Tick managed, panting. Squinting, she released her spell and focused again, an electric sensation sweeping the room before fading away entirely, and she slumped to the ground. “Yeah, that’s it. I can’t sense any others.”

Jess lowered her weapon and sat down, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly. “That could have gone better.” A loud bang answered her statement, and the hiss of leaking atmosphere grew several decibels. “Much, better,” she muttered. The hiss quickly died, taking last of our atmosphere with it.

A silence settled over the four of us, punctuated only by the sound of my suit's scrubbers. I sat down, wincing from a shoot of pain in my side. I'd have to get that looked at later.

She didn't respond, she just kept laughing, laying down on the floor completely before trying to compose herself. Blinking the tears from her eyes, she looked up at the ceiling and said. “Wow. That was… wow. Hee hee.”

Tick waved a hoof at us. “No, no, i-it’s not that it’s just… wow!” She laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this... alive! I mean it was just so… so...” she trailed off, probably more from euphoria than struggling for words. She didn't seem the type to me.

“Sounds like, we have a convert,” Nightshade replied. I could hear him grin.

“I mean, yeah, it was really scary! What with all the freaky soul bots of doom, and stuff, but… what a rush!”

Jess trotted up beside her, nudging her with the elbow of her foreleg. Tick swayed slightly from the impact. “Congrats kiddo, you have your first war story,” Jess said, “Now you can spend your days swapping stories with your buddies over a few drinks.”

Nightshade shrugged, “Yeah, it's something like that. Too bad about the ship, though.”

The joy immediately faded, from Tick’s eyes, replaced by dawning horror. “Oh my gosh! The ship!” She gasped, “I BLEW UP a battleship!”

“Regardless,” I interrupted. “Tick, do you know if the Sparkle drive is still in working order? My WAND is on the fritz and I don’t think I can get a solid readout from the main computer.”

Tick’s eyes refocused, looking briefly toward the engine room before she gave me a slow nod. “I think so, I was able to keep most of the bots off of it. They seemed more intent on getting at us rather than sabotaging components.”

Tick’s smile faded. “Well, most of the components. I’ll have a look at it. Is life support really gone?”

I nodded. “Last legible feed report I got said something in the substructure was putz."

Tick groaned. “Ugh, one of the few things I can’t fix outside of drydock,” she muttered. Placing a hoof to her chest, she took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay then, so... what now?”

I frowned, thinking to myself as I rolled the thought around in my head. “We need to dock, and fast. I'm not sure about you guys, but my air supply only lasts about 24 hours at most on my talisman and scrubbers so we won’t be able to make it all the way back to L6-C.”

Nightshade, “What about Winter’s Edge?” he suggested. “It is pretty close to the edge of known space.”

“That, might be doable,” Jess agreed, “there’s also less a chance of us getting turned away for having a pegasus registration if we go there.”

Jess glanced in my direction, “So how long did they give you the runaround?”

“Wait, what about the battleship?” Tick asked. “Aren’t we gonna come back for it? I mean it's not like it's gonna go anywhere.”

I shook my head. “Forget the ship,” I said, “it’s a lost cause so long as it’s guarded by those… things.”

“I agree," Nightshade said, "We’d have to hire help in order to take it back. Or get some very specialized equipment. None of which is either cheap, or safe, in some cases. I think we'd be better off selling the location to somepony with more resources.” Jess merely nodded her agreement.

“Well, if that's the case then you could donate it to the EPA?” Tick suggested.

“I know that, but at least they’d have the resources to take care of it. And you never know, maybe they would pay a finder’s fee,” Tick responded.

“While I don’t quite agree, she is right. The shrinks would have the resources for it. Play our cards right and we might be able to wring something out of them,” Nightshade said.

I sighed. “Fine, we’ll donate it. But I’m still writing this off as a loss.” I stopped a moment as a thought struck me. “Well,” I said. Nosing through my suit’s pack, I nudged out the storage cube and let it fall to the deck beside me before scooting it for everyone else to see clearly, “maybe it’s not a total loss. Anyone know how to crack one of these open?”

Nightshade looked contemplative. “Fritter might. If not, I could probably find somepony else.”

The Stars Beyond The Veil

by Charlemane

15 - Battleship Blues