//------------------------------//
// 26. Withdrawal 
// Story: Millennia: Beginning 
// by Thunderblast 
//------------------------------//

"I'm fine, damn it, let me up!" Anchorage protested while one of the ship's medics attempted to calm him down.

"Sir, please, just stay still for me. You need this last dose to allow for tissue to grow back!" The unicorn medic replied, a syringe with a terrifyingly long needle levitating between him and the white pegasus in a magical aura, his hoof raised and motioning to get Anchorage to at least not move. "You know how much I hate having to do this, but you leave me no choice."

Anchorage was then struck in the forehead by a very quick burst of energy that knocked him back into the bed, eyes spinning. Both me and Ashfall, seated on chairs at the end of his bed watching with widened eyes as the doctor injected the serum into his upper arm, Anchorage chuckling and slurring words as if he had been drinking all night long. 

I cringed and turned my head away while the needle pushed into his skin, while Ashfall simply watched with wide-eyes. Moments later, what ever spell had been used to sedate him had worn off and he quickly put a hoof to his forehead. "What the hell just happened? I blacked out for a second."

The medic grumbled, dropping the now-empty syringe into a medical waste bin. "This has happened twice a day for the last three days since you were shot, Anchorage. What do you think happened?" He turned and glared at him.

"Oh, so it was you knocking me out! Prick," Anchorage sat back, crossing his hooves and pouting. "When am I allowed to get out of this hoof sanitizer-scented place and get back to my job?"

"And as I've told you," the medic turned, stomping his hoof as he did so, teeth clenched. "For the last six hundred and forty-seven times, you won't leave this infirmary until we're back in Manehattan! And if you ask me one more time, I will go to the captain myself and beg for permission to strap you to this bed and tape your mouth shut if it saves me a headache!"

Anchorage simply huffed and turned away, gazing out the window that faced out towards the open ocean as drops of rain pattered onto it while the medic left the small room. For the first minute of total silence, he didn't remove his focus from the rain-soaked glass.

"Come on, buddy," Ash started, moving his chair beside Anchorage's bed. "You took a shotgun shell to the shoulder. You're lucky the bullet itself didn't do what it was supposed to."

Still looking outside, Anchorage pouted more. "But, I'm fine. The bleeding was stopped days ago. Why, for the love of Luna's royal behind, do I need to stay here?"

"To make sure you won't do anything stupid and end up hurting yourself again. Clearly this medic knows who you are just as much as I do, and I agree with his decision to keep you here. Do you understand me?"

"And I can tell you for a fact that I'm not clumsy or stupid enough to pull such a thing off, do you understand me?"

"Okay, Anchorage," I stepped in. "I've only known you a couple of months, and even I know you're somepony who takes risks," I then turned towards Ashfall. "But I see where you get it from."

Ashfall nodded, then his eyes widened and he glared at me. "Hey! What is that supposed to imply?!"

"Don't worry about it," I waved a hoof and sat back in the chair. "Anchor, just be happy you're alive. Four others didn't make it, and three of them I saw die right before my eyes. But I know the real reason why you're angry."

"Oh yeah? And what might that reason be?" He turned and stared at me, hooves still crossed.

"You're heated about the pirates getting on board. Just like me. Just like everypony else on this blasted ship. They blew a hole on the starboard side and killed four of our own. What isn't there to be angry about?"

"No, Star, I'm..." Anchorage stopped, glare fading, he turned back towards the window, now laying on his side. "Fine, you're right."

I nodded. "Usually I'm not," I sighed softly and looked down at the floor. "I should probably get back to the bridge. The captain's already likely plotting to slay me for staying a few extra minutes."

"Yeah, you might want to before he kicks you off the flight deck," Ashfall said.

I stood to my hooves and stretched, groaning as my muscles loosened from the chair I was seated in. "Alright. I'll try and stop by when my shift is over, if you're not asleep by then," I said to the both of them.

"Y'really don't have to, Star," Anchorage said. "You have an important job. The last thing we need is more pirates hitting us from behind because you weren't up there watching the radar."

"Hey, Lieutenant Ping is on board, remember? She has more experience with radars than me. In fact she's the one who covers for me when I'm not up there."

"If anypony, she'd be the one to slay you," Ash chuckled, Anchorage punching him in the shoulder playfully.

"Her? Nah. She's actually a very laid back mare, even in class she didn't have a problem with anypony," I smiled and opened the door. "See you both later."


***


I made my way up the metal staircase to the bridge, where as usual, I would stop and stand at attention. "Permission to step onto the bridge, captain?"

"Permission granted," Shadow said, him walking up towards me with a smile on his muzzle. Something was up, seeing as how since the attack he hadn't smiled once.

I raised an eyebrow and took a step closer. "Captain, you're smiling? Is something off?"

"Well, why can't I smile every time you step on the bridge?" he chuckled.

That sounded creepy. But that was just Shadow trying to keep himself happy. "Okay..." I slowly nodded. "But is that the reason?"

"Part of it, actually," he kept smiling. "But the other reason is, it turns out one of our sailors managed to get a hold of one of the pirates. He's somehow still alive and we have yet to get anything out of him. I was wondering if you could be of any help talking to him?"

I blinked a couple of times. "Me? Help with interrogation? With all due respect sir, I don't speak Gerffin. You're the only pony I know who does."

"That's why I'm going to accompany you as a translator. You ask the question, I'll translate it to him in his language. It won't take more than twenty minutes."

Thinking it over, I nodded, yet I knew it would be hard to stop myself from killing the prisoner on the spot. "Alright sir, but what about my position?"

"Lieutenant Ping will take over. She happens to enjoy your position," Shadow chuckled and made his way out of the bridge and downstairs with me following close behind.

"Well, I am sorry for what ever I did that makes you want to discharge me," I joked while we walked down the metal staircase.

"Hey, I'd never replace you. You're already one of the best radarponys I've ever had. It would take a lot for you to lose your job, and at worst, I'd have you doing janitor work until the end of our deployment," Shadow smiled reassuringly.

"That makes me feel somewhat better," I laughed a bit while we reached the bottom deck of the ship. "I guess while we're talking like normal ponies however, now would be a good time to bring this up to you."

"Yes, Private?" Shadow turned to me.

"I know Lieutenant Ping isn't a permanent addition to our crew. Say we're attacked again in the future, who will be sitting where I usually am?" I asked while we walked down the long corridor.

"We typically keep as many as four radarponies on board. One takes over for you while you're sleeping and the other two are usually in the primary tracking station. All of them are tracking sailors, meaning they don't have much experience with weaponry or combat. In fact, you, Private, are one of the first Marines I've had operating radar and sonar. Consider yourself lucky."

One of the first? That made me feel somewhat lucky, not that it made much of a difference however. I was just happy to be a part of the crew and nothing more. It was an honorable experience to work alongside a friend of mine, that friend undoubtedly being the commanding officer of the ship, and including new ponies I'd befriended after boot camp, yet I didn't want to feel like I was the minority Shadow would likely go easy on because of our ties. In my mind, that just didn't settle quite right.

We stopped near the bow of the ship and entered a windowless, steel room where Lieutenant Arc was seated in a chair at a table opposite of a griffon with his talons cuffed behind his back and around the chair to prevent him from lunging at anypony. 

The griffon's armor and weapons were mostly stripped of him and sat in a neat pile in the far right corner of the room, and because of the lack of armor, two patched-up and blood-stained areas were clearly visible just beside his stomach and barely beneath his chest. He trembled like a leaf, not because of fear but due to the weakness his injuries left him with. 

Even then, his beak was also slightly bloody, and the red fluid on it appeared to be new. Looking at Arc, I noticed more blood on his hoof, likely due to the griffon's inability to cooperate leading to the lieutenant giving him a quick beat-down in an attempt to get information out of him, none of which worked from the looks of it.

"Ah, perfect, you're both here. I can't understand a word he's got to say," Arc said, standing up.

"That's alright, leave it to me and Star. You did your best," Shadow replied, patting the grey stallion's shoulder while he went to stand in the corner and watch from there. The greenish-grey earth pony then turned to me and motioned for me to take a seat while he grabbed another chair for himself. I took a seat across from the griffon, as did the captain. The griffon eyed us both suspiciously and didn't say a single word.

"Now, let's get started, shall we?" Shadow began, glancing between me and the captured griffon.


***


The interrogation took much longer than all three of us had originally planned. What Shadow expected to take around twenty minutes lasted just over an hour, with still nothing from the prisoner. It surprised me as much as it did Lieutenant Arc when at that time, Shadow decided to call it quits and give up completely on retrieving any key information from him, and instead it was decided that the prisoner would be locked away in the dungeons of Canterlot and interrogated by the royal guard there. 

Yet, following another long shift on the bridge, I found myself to be too exhausted to even sit down at the mess hall and eat, and on a second thought in my mind, I set hoof back into the corridor and started towards my shared sleeping quarters. I yawned heavily with my eyelids bent on shutting completely while I walked, my mind begging for them to remain open just long enough for me to reach my bed.

I stepped up to the white steel hatch-like door and gently yanked on the handle, dragging it open and finding the room to be pitch black. I stumbled inside, closing the door behind me and allowing for the light through the small rounded window on the top of the door to guide me through the dark. That was, until my eyes shut for a split second and causing me to lose track of where I was, thus making me trip over my own hooves and hit my chin on the small desk that sat between the two bunks in the room.

I let out a yelp of pain after my jaw met the edge of the desk and reached a hoof up to rub it gently. At that moment, the light in the room was switched on, and a considerably shocked Nightpath peeking over the side of the top bunk with the sheets tangled on his ears as if he were wearing some sort of hood to cover himself. "Star? What the hell? You scared the lights out of me."

Tiredly, I replied, "Yeah, I noticed. You had the room light off and I hit my jaw. What are you doing?" Then another thought hit me. "And where have you been? I haven't seen you... no. No one has seen you since the morning before the incident!"

I noticed his pupils shrink to pinpricks and dart from side to side. "I've been... er... around. On the upper decks working primarily."

"Nightpath, do I look stupid? The way your eyes shrunk and looked around like that, that was a very poor lie on your part. Now, I'll ask you again. Where the hell were you?" My mostly-baggy eyes narrowed onto the brown stallion while he slowly hid himself beneath his bed sheets once more. "I already know you're there, there is no point in hiding."

"I was... er..." He soon became more quiet as he spoke, and what he said was almost completely inaudible.

"I'm sorry, come again?" I glared up towards his bed, his head peeking back out and eyes locking onto me while I sat on the floor.

"I was sleeping! You know I'm a heavy sleeper!" He shouted, staring back down still.

"That's a load of bull! You were gone that morning when I woke up. Where were you actually?" I jumped to my hooves, glare hardening.

"Damn it, Star! I was in the reactor chamber!" Night snapped, tossing the sheets off of him and standing up to his hooves quickly, inadvertently hitting his head on the ceiling with a loud dong that echoed throughout the room. Stunned, he stumbled off of his bed and onto the floor before me with a grunt and a thud. "Ow..." he groaned in pain.

"I... w-wh..." I stuttered at first, eyes narrowed onto him. "What for the love of Luna were you doing down there?"

"Haven't I told you? I-I work down there now..." he rubbed his forehead as he slowly sat up. "The explosion was enough to make the reactor shut down for a few minutes. We evacuated the room believing there was some sort of leak. I volunteered to go back in and check it out. No hazmat suit, no mask, nothing. If there was a leak, I would have been killed within minutes. But the reason I did it is because I knew if there was actually a leak, I could stop it and prevent the radiation from spreading throughout the ship. It would have killed everypony."

Night's eyes slowly moved up to mine while I stared directly at him, his hoof still rubbing the small bruise on his forehead. "I knew that..." he stopped and sniffed as his voice proceeded to crack. "I kn-knew that it would kill you and the others. And nopony would ever know what happened to us. I thought of you and the hundred-other sailors and Marines on board, all of you who had families waiting. And the reality was... w-well... I volunteered because I knew I didn't have anypony waiting for me back home."

My ears drooped slowly as my previously furious expression softened significantly. "Surely you've got to have somepony worried about you..."

Night slowly shook his head, staring down at the floor. "Not a soul. If anypony it would be a colt I knew at the Baltimare orphanage. But he's been with a family for years."

"Orphanage...?" My eyes widened. "What... about your family?"

"Father abandoned me when I was three. According to the head of the orphanage, h-he said he made a mistake," he sniffled again, a tear streaking down his cheek. "And that he couldn't afford to take care of me. He said I was a mistake and meant it..."

I was at a loss for words. All along, Nightpath didn't care much. Now I knew why. Slowly I lifted a hoof up to lift his chin so he could look at me, and I smiled as best as I could. "Hey..." I spoke softly. "You're not alone. My father thinks I'm a mistake too."

"But did he happily pass you off to an orphanage to live the entirety of your colthood...?"

"Well... no. I moved away as soon as I could, didn't leave a note or anything. Just took what I could and ran away to Canterlot where I've lived ever since. It was a rough start but I got along eventually. But now I'm here," my smile was slowly fading but I managed to keep my lips pursed to look like one. "Hey... I'm sorry about everything. I really truly am, and honestly... I'm happy for you now."

"W-why is that?" Night wiped a tear from his eye.

"You talked to me about something that has been hurting you for years. It's good to speak your mind from time to time, even to friends," I answered while I slowly stood.

"B-but... I've always shoved you away. I've beaten you down. We're not friends..." He watched as I stood up.

I smiled warmly down at him. "We are now..."

Night softly and very inaudibly whimpered. I held the smile for a couple of moments before removing my cover and hanging it up on a small hook attached to the poles of the bed specifically for that use. "On a side note, we both should really get some rest. Long day tomorrow, and tomorrow evening we should be back in port."

Night nodded slowly and stood up. "Right... You're right," he said before climbing up to the bed above mine slowly and crawling back under the covers, sighing softly. "Goodnight, Star."

After removing my jacket and also hanging it up, I yawned and switched off the room's ceiling light, nestling into the warm sheets of my bed. "Goodnight."


***


Around nine the pursuing morning, Shadow stepped onto the bridge alongside Lieutenant Arc. Those of us in the room stood up at attention while he entered.

"Good morning, everypony," Shadow said, walking up to the front of the room where he normally seated himself while the lieutenant poured himself a steaming cup of coffee. "Won't be much longer until we're back to civilization. I recognize each of you are anxious to recoup with your families," he continued while he settled into his chair.

Lieutenant Arc strutted by, resting himself on a chair beside the captain's, taking a long sip of his coffee prior to relaxing into his seat. Like usual, not a word was said by the impassive stallion while he locked his gaze out on the open ocean ahead of us. For once, there were hardly any clouds in the sky, and much of the dense weather was left far behind us, and it seemed as if we would finally have a routine trip back. 

Even more so, within a few minutes of them entering, the nearby L.R.S Lacus was within view in the distance to escort us into our own waters as Shadow requested. If we were to be attacked again, we had another line of defense to help out, but at close proximity they would not be much of a help, as any weapons fired from the Lacus would further damage our already-crippled ship.

The hours passed faster than usual, my attention not once removed from the screens of either the weather radar, and the sonar. Since just less than a week before, I made it my personal mission to report any disturbances as early as I possibly could, and not once did I think of myself beginning to go insane from that and the lack of sleep I had been getting.

Very soon, the sky behind us was beginning to darken while the sun set ahead of us, an array of breathtaking colors mixing throughout the sky and spotty clouds around it, also outlining the distant skyline of Manehattan as we approached it. From here, Shadow made contact with the Lacus and dismissed them from our escort to return to their position further to the north that they were forced to abandon to come to our aid.

The closer we came to the city, the more beautiful it became. The buildings were almost completely lit up, and the tallest of them, Trotterdam Tower, had been lit up in the colors of the Lunar Navy, which only pointed to the story of the Eclipse being attacked becoming nationwide. That also meant annoying media reporters harassing everypony to try and get a scoop of information to publish for the rest of the world to hear. It was frankly the last thing I wanted to deal with when we got back.