Chapter 18
Ghost

“We have lost much. Our friends, our family, our identity, our knowledge. Today, we weep for the things gone, and embrace what things may come. But, my fellow Equestrians, no matter where you are, tomorrow, let us not mourn that which shall never return, but rather, let us look forward.

“We have, tomorrow, a new opportunity. A blank slate. Though our gilded age may be over, though our castles and culture lie frozen beneath the icy wastes, what we choose this day, our destiny, remains our own. Let us rise to the challenge! Let this not be a day where we look fearfully into the night! Nor Let us be cowed by the unyielding wrath of space! No! Let us feel not doubt! Let us feel no fear! But instead, unite! And declare with one voice into the darkness, ‘WE. SHALL. NOT. PERISH!’”
- 3355 E.C. - The New Solar Republic is established.

It was my turn on the hot seat and I was bored. Out here, the chances of running into trouble went down exponentially the further you got from civilization, and boy were we far from civilization. Apparently Estoc’s definition of a short distance wasn’t exactly in line with mine. His estimate failed to take into consideration the Bandit’s capabilities and while we had only two jumps left until we reached our destination, we had spent the last eight heading deeper into the eastern spiral and far, far away from any known planets. But, just because I was the pilot, didn’t necessarily mean I had to sit on my ass the entire time, and there was a conversation I needed to have that was long overdue.

Lady Tickintime Aurora Clock sat pitifully on my dirty, smelly, poor excuse of a couch, in my dirty, smelly, extremely poor excuse of a ship, still wearing her dirty, not quite as smelly, excuse of a utility jumper, while she shifted uncomfortably on her seat with her ears splayed back like a kicked puppy. She stayed silent throughout, avoiding my gaze and chewing her bottom lip while continuing the vow of silence she took every time I looked at her.

“You can give me the silent treatment all you want,” I said, “but I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got an hour before the next jump, and you can bet that I’ll be back after I’m done.”

It took some time for me to grapple with the realization of just who Tick was after I had finished my talk with the prince about his errand. Honestly, I was feeling a bit conflicted about the whole thing. She was definitely a noble according to the prince, at least by the standards went in the Core, but I would have to be stupid if I didn’t acknowledge her skill as a mechanic. She shattered everything I normally associated with the upper class: the pomp, the arrogance, the greed, in fact it was pretty fair to say that she was probably one of the most generous and kind ponies I knew of her class, not that I had a long list to compare to. Or maybe she was and I simply hadn’t seen enough of that side of her yet. It was a tough call, really, and one that I wasn’t about to make in haste. For now, I decided to classify her as an oddity. A pearl among swine, so to speak. Okay...yeah, I should stop trying to come up with new metaphors.

Tick remained unmoved. Her body still save for the occasional flick of her eyes across the floor and the odd swish of her tail across the seat cushions.

“So...what? Am I supposed to call you by titles from now on for you to talk to me? My Lady Clock?” It was mean of me, I knew, but at this point all I wanted was a reaction. It was enough.

Tick winced, “Don’t!” she nearly yelled, and then in a quiet tone said, “please, don’t. Not you too.”

I felt dirty, but it was progress. I relaxed a little and took a breath. “Alright, Tick, no titles then. How about I tell you a secret instead?”

Her eyes made their way up to mine. Apprehension in them. “What kind of secret?”

“I had Fritter look into you,” I said evenly. “I don’t know why you’ve been hiding, but between him and his network, he was going to dig something up on you sooner or later.”

“Exactly what I said,” I explained. “Believe it or not, Tick, you’re a pretty suspicious character. A pony as skiled as you are wouldn’t just work for free, not in a million years. And the way you burn through bits is enough to make my head spin. You’re way too easy with your bits and time, and that’s not a good habit to have if you’re trying to hide.” Of course I wasn’t exactly qualified to talk about hiding, given that Jess had found me inside of a few weeks. By that measure, Tick was better at it than I was, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before my pride as a stallion would let me admit it.

“S-so… um, w-what are you gonna do? N-now that you know?” Her voice had that kind of tremor that would make most ponies knees buckle. I couldn’t blame her for being afraid. If I was in her position, I’d be afraid too. Ransom would be the least of her problems. Greed is a powerful motivator, and so is revenge. Take any of the ‘lesser’ ponies, put them in a room with one of the movers and shakers of the universe and you’ll see real quick how much civilization is left in the universe. Thankfully, my principles always came first, no matter how often I’ve been screwed by the top.

She blinked and swallowed as confusion bled into her features. “Why?” she asked.

“Because you don’t strike me as a noble. Sure you might have a title, and more wealth than I could possibly imagine, but despite all that you actually seem like a decent pony. I’ve taken a lot of shit over the years for the stupidest things. Hell, there’s probably fifty of ponies like you that I would just love to jet out an airlock.” Tick winced. Mentally, I cringed. Maybe I could have phrased that better. “Look, I can’t even begin to relate, but for what it’s worth, once upon a time I was fed up with my job too. I don’t know why you left whatever life of comfort you had, even if I’ve heard good and bad stories about ponies doing the same. Hell, maybe you’re like that one buck who decided he wanted to run a flower shop instead of a law firm. The point is, I don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t care.

“You are a good mechanic,” I said. “You are a damn good mechanic. I dare say you are probably the most gifted individual I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. You do shit that makes my head spin, and in a manner that I find kinda scary, in the same kind of way that Nightshade is scary with his…uh, him...ness.” I groaned, shaking my head while trying to find the words. It was a short, futile battle. I sighed, “as far as I’m concerned, you’re just a mechanic. My mechanic. Maybe you’re some kinda crazy, rich thrill-seeker, or whatever, but you’re good at what you do, and I’m thankful for that. So don’t think I’m gonna go batshit crazy and shove you out an airlock just because you’re rich, okay?”

Not that I would. Then again, I suppose it depended on the pony. I wouldn’t mind shoving Mega out an airlock. No! Bad Horizon! Focus!

“By the way, I’m...uh, sorry for what I said earlier. About nobles,” I added.

She snorted, a wisp of a smile working its way back on her muzzle, “It’s…fine.” A giggle. “Actually, it’s kinda accurate,” she laughed.

“I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to gag whenever mom dragged me off to our social functions,” Tick said. Her face twisted, taking on a sterner, more austere look as she raised her nose several inches, “I do say, Miss Clock, your dress looks absolutely breathtaking! Whomever did you commission it from?” Her voice had taken on a nasally quality that I found particularly grating. And immediately after she had finished, her demeanor shifted, assuming a quieter, almost musical tone.

She daintily raised a hoof to her face, and breathed, an eyebrow raised conspiratorially in what I had to stretch to call a practiced gesture. “Oh, I simply couldn’t tell you that, my dear Mr. Alpenrose,” she said demurely, “after all, a girl simply must keep her secrets,” Tick stuck out her tongue and retched.

“Not as long as I can help it,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “If I never set foot in another ballroom I’d be a happy mare.”

“It’s kinda surprising, actually. For all your background you’ve done a great job dropping your accent. You actually sound like a sane individual,” I said.

Tick laughed. “Well, when you spend most of your time hanging around techs and engineers they tend to rub off on you,” she said with a shrug, and then giggled, “It used to drive mom and dad nuts.”

I shook my head. “I can’t even begin to imagine,” I said with a shrug. “So how did you end up on a mining colony, anyway?”

She blanched, focusing on a decidedly more interesting portion of the floor. “That, really isn’t something I’m comfortable talking about for right now,” she said diplomatically.

“Let me guess, it’s something to do with you and the so-called prince over there?” I nudged my head in the general direction of the cargo hold, where said pony was busy fishing out the rest of his things from the escape pod.

She grimaced, “Well, that was part of it, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

I shrugged, the motion in my shoulders catching my wings up with it. “Not a problem, I think I should probably be getting back up to the hot seat anyway. Current detours or no.”

“Thanks,” she said, and then, slipping off the couch returned working on whatever project sat disassembled on the floor.

Well that was easy, I thought to myself as I ascended the ladderwell on my way back to the pilot’s cabin. It was easy. In fact, it was remarkably easy. Who knew that actually talking to somepony could let you learn so much about their history? It would certainly save me a lot of bits too, skipping the whole buying information thing. Come to think of it, that’s a really bad habit.

“Wow,” I muttered under my breath, marveling at my sudden burst of insight, “I am fucking stupid.”

I was still in the hot seat by the time we reached our final jump, and while Nightshade went to wake Jess, Tick and her Ex crowded around me up in the pilot’s cabin. The experience was less than optimal. Multiple times the two had to be separated, interjecting between the various snipes they threw at each other whenever they argued. It got so bad, once, that they made the mistake of waking Jess. She sorted them out real quick. I don’t know what kind of kung-fu they teach the PBJ, but I sure didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it. The prince’s brand new shiner was evidence enough of that.

“Only as much as your barbed commentary, dear.” Estoc replied, passing her a sidelong glance, “which is to say, not at all. Honestly, you’re form seems to have lost its edge. Have you neglected your exercises?”

“Only because I haven’t had to sharpen it on any hard objects,” she replied coolly.

I cleared my throat. “Not. The time,” I warned them. They really could do that for hours. I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t been listening to it for half the trip. Now it was just irritating. “Keep it up and I’ll lock you both in the cargo hold until you either kill each other or fuck.”

“Your highness, the coordinates if you will?” I asked Estoc, interrupting his mirth.

“Of course,” he said, lighting his WAND and connecting to the navigation computer. Within a few seconds it beeped with our final destination. With little pomp, I started the charge on the Sparkle Drive and keyed the intercom.

When we landed on grid, it was a very different scene than I was expecting. I had been expecting maybe a lost wreck in the middle of deep space that some errant scanner had miraculously picked up, or maybe another destroyed battleship. You know, something somewhere easy to spot, and which didn’t involve much mortal peril. Instead we found...

“An asteroid belt,” I said, gawking at the gigantic cloud of rocks the size of mountains. It was a mess, interspersed with probably billions of smaller, harder to avoid rocks that just so happened to also be moving at speeds which would make even a racer sweat. Even as I spoke, I watched in silent horror as two of the larger ones collided in slow motion, their surfaces cracking and smashing together, sending smaller, nastier little bits flying in every direction.

On the plus side, at least the lighting was good. The nearby yellow dwarf provided more than enough light for me to see the space rock that would turn us all to paste moments before impact. “You want us to search an ASTEROID BELT?!”

“Did your little scout even bother to relay just where in the asteroid belt it was?” I yelled.

His expression hardened. “No,” He said forcefully and with enough volume to cut through my tirade. I’m not sure what it was, but his voice had a sort of presence to it that made me stop and seriously reconsider my tone. Weird psychological effects aside, it was enough to get me to calm down a little, at least.

“You have ten seconds to convince me not to turn around and leave, right now,” I said, this time at a much lower volume.

“Okay, that’s a start,” I replied while checking the scanner to make sure we didn’t have incoming. Thankfully we had landed outside the asteroid field, which meant I only needed to watch out from a few directions, but still… flying rocks.

“Industry standard plus hazard fees,” Estoc added. He was strangely calm about the whole thing. In hindsight, he probably did shit like this on a regular basis, considering his position.

I paused considering it, “Getting warmer,” I said. “Do you at least have an idea of what general area to look in other than somewhere out there?” I said, pointing out the viewport toward the cloud in front of us.

“I was getting to that,” The prince replied, annoyed. At that moment the gem in his WAND lit up, projecting an image of the belt in front of him. “When the scout traced the ship here, he made a mention of an energy signature somewhere in this area, but it only lasted for a short time.” A spheroid blob materialized around a small portion of the belt. From what I could judge of the scale, it was still a massive area to search, but it at least it wouldn’t be the entire damn thing. That did raise another concern, however.

Estoc’s eye twitched. “Well, no, but the signal did match known signatures from that era. I am confident in the info.”

“Alright Horizon I’m h-, what the crap?” Jess nearly shouted, looking out the viewport.

“My thoughts exactly,” I replied. “Apparently genius here wants us to play needle in the haystack.”

“I’ve given you all the information I have, please refrain from further insults,” Estoc said firmly. He was frowning now, almost in a disapproving fatherly fashion. It was a little unnerving.

“He’s got a point, Horizon, you’re kinda laying it on a little thick,” Tick said.

This from the mare who spent most of the trip insulting his intelligence. What? Had I not earned the right to insult him or something? I grumbled.

“You’re not seriously going to take us into that are you?” Jess said, looking a little green.

I looked out again at the miserable mess I was getting myself into, “Sure! Why not? after all it’s only a few million rocks. On that note, could you grab Nightshade and head to the guns? We’re going to need as many eyes as possible for this and I’d rather have ‘em on a swivel.”

“Hoo boy,” Jess said, and turned in the doorway, muttering nearly under breath, “fucking lunatics.”

I watched them leave, and then I turned my head back toward Estoc. “Okay then, sir, if we’re actually gonna do this, then I’m gonna need you to help find it. Can you work a scanner?”

Estoc nodded, “To a degree. Piloting mechanics were a part of my education, even if I haven’t had much use for them.”

“Good enough,” I said, and then pointed at the scanner. “Watch that monitor, and if it picks up anything that isn’t a fucking rock let me know.”

“Not if you don’t want to be paste,” I replied, settling onto the controls.

Hours. We were there for hours, and this was after we spent an entire fucking day trying to reach the place. The tension on the ship never really went down while we did our initial pass, and when that picked up nothing, I doubled back to make sure we didn’t accidentally miss something. It was long, it was boring, and it was a hell of a lot of ground to cover. After the second pass was complete and we still didn’t have anything, it became apparent that we’d have to go in.

I was dreading this. The mining colony was one thing. At least there, they were sensible enough to keep the facility away from the center of the field, but us, oh no, we needed to plow right into the thick of it to get the scans we needed. And this belt was a hell of a lot more dense than the one in the Core.

“Well, so much for the easy way,” I groused, and then set about plotting a course through the navigation computer. It took a few inputs, and started using the scanner’s feed to start marking the safest route through what was likely going to be the stupidest, most hair-raising flying I’d do in my life. Naturally, the Bandit failed me. The course it sent back was a stupid, winding thing, which, while technically safer than just charging in, would have us die of starvation before we finished it. Stupid ship. Oh well, there were worse things to use than dead reckoning. I glanced over the chart again and picked a random entry point and tried to ignore the first part of that term.

The Bandit closed the distance quickly, easily sliding into a wide space between the rocks as I started to meld with the flow the field. My nerves frayed. It took all the willpower I had not to just pull up and back out, but I had a paycheck to earn. Keeping one eye on a swivel, I started mapping out my course, following the disorganized flow of rock and settling into a central sweeping pattern. I decided on a 50/50 pattern. Doing my best to maximize sensor range, while maintaining as much distance as possible from...everything.

“Jess, Nightshade, how’s it looking from your end?” I called over the radio, never taking my eyes off of the field. The S-band crackled while I waited.

“So far so good,” Jess replied. “Just don’t get us killed, okay tiger?”

I took us over a large boulder, steering wide to avoid accidentally clipping the hull. I looked for an opening in the field that would make a good scanning spot, and seeing nothing immediate, kept the ship moving while glancing for anything heading my way. So far, so good.

“Alright, Estoc, I’m gonna try and get us some open space for a good scan,” I said. I banked the ship slightly to dodge an outcropping that looked like it had broken off of one of the bigger asteroids.

“Very well, I’m ready when you are,” he replied confidently, never taking his eyes off the monitor.
I spared him a glance, noting how comfortable he seemed despite everything, and huffed before returning to my own work. focusing on the field, I found a gap and brought us around, driving us deep into the clearing and then lowering our speed. With a quick glance around I noted the distances between rocks and nodded. For an initial scan, this position would be ideal.

The prince didn’t hesitate. With a crisp glow of his WAND, the scanner burst into life, several streams of information pouring into the system. I took a moment to glance over the data, before returning my attention to the field outside. As another massive rock broke away from the pack, I realized our window was closing. I waited, as long as I could.

“Horizon, we’ve got incoming. Big one, closing fast from below,” Nightshade said.

Immediately, I hit the ventral thrusters, and felt my body sag into the seat as the G-forces took hold. Next to me, Estoc grunted, suddenly struggling to stay on his hooves. With an undignified grunt, his tush hit the ground. I brought the nose down and turned, orienting the the viewport with the oncoming threat while I reversed thrust.

Rotating ponderously along its axis, an asteroid the size of a freighter spun its way toward us. Judging by our vector, however, we would easily clear it. I fired the main thrusters to be safe, taking us well away from its path.

I groaned. Well, if it was going to be easy…. I looked around for our next opportunity while re-aligning with my original flight plan, pulling off the thrusters as our speed reached a safe cruise. It wouldn’t be good if we moved too fast. I doubted the Bandit would be able to change course if things went sideways. I glanced over the field, looking for the next scanning point.

I didn’t have to wait long. Some of the rocks ahead shifted enough to provide a good vantage point. I tweaked our heading to match.

“Alright, Estoc, round two,” I said, watching a rock sail harmlessly past the left wing. Within moments we were in the open again. “Do it.”

Estoc nodded and the scanners flared again. Ignored the feed this time. The window probably wouldn’t last as long this time around, and I didn’t want to be caught unawares.

It did. Ten minutes became twenty, thirty, and on and on. The minutes dragged, more from the tension I felt from maneuvering in the heavily saturated asteroid belt. Most belts weren’t this bad, but I suppose if we were searching for some kind of ancient ship, it would end up in a place like this. We hit seven more scanning spots before we had to double back to cover more of the the section that the prince had indicated. It was grueling work, and if we weren’t worn out by the time we started out little hike, we sure as hell were by the time we were halfway done.

A light on the control board came on, as we finished another damn scan. I was past done with this shit at that point. What conversation had taken place before we started had drifted off into to little more than updates on nearby objects and the occasional scan result. The time spent inside, had even started to wear on Estoc, whose attention had started to drift after the spending who knew how much time searching the belt.

I looked at the light with skepticism, trying to remember what it indicated. It was far away from the more critical alarms present on the control board. I queried the system with my WAND, and willed it to send me a text feed. After a few moments, the board complied, and a small message entered my feed. When I saw it, my eyes widened.

Estoc’s head popped up, his head swiveling in my direction, he looked at me, and then at the light on the control board with a small measure of confusion. “Is something wrong?”

I brought us to a stop, relative to the surrounding debris, keeping a wary eye on the nearby asteroids while I gently eased us out of our velocity.

“Maybe,” I said, carefully watching one of the larger rocks sail harmlessly by, “run another scan.”

Estoc turned back to his console, punched a few keys and I watched the board light up. A few moments later he said, “Nothing.”

The console light blinked again, my feed lighting up a second time, now that I was already connected.

“Do it again,” I said. Estoc gave me a weird look, but complied anyway. I watched the scan go through. No obvious problems, and no results either. I frowned. As I stared, the light started blinking insistently.

ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: ...

“Okay, what the fuck,” I growled as my feed started filling up with the stupid message. Opening a line on the S-Band I called out, “Tick? Can you check the sensors and tell me if something broke? I think the board might be going screwy.”

There was a moment before I got a response. “Uh, sure? what’s it saying?” Tick replied.

“Apparently something is hitting us with radar, but the scanners aren’t picking up anything,” I said.

Estoc immediately brightened. “Really?” his voice carried a near giddiness to it, “Is that what the light is?”

“Uh, okay sure. Give me a second to go check,” Tick responded. The line closed.

“Did you say something hit us with radar?” Jess said, suddenly sounding very alert.

The control board flashed again, a new slew of messages flooding my WAND with alerts.

“Alright, Jess, Nightshade, keep an eye out for any oddly shaped objects. The scanners aren’t picking up anything, but whatever is hitting us might be trying to get our attention.”

I banked the craft, using the lateral thrusters to adjust our position while squinting out the viewport to try and spot anything out of the ordinary. From where we were, however, the lighting wasn’t very good. We were near the bottom of the belt’s primary vein. The larger asteroids had done a fantastic job of blotting out the nearby star, which made visibility in these conditions a nightmare.

Abruptly, the alerts stopped. The control board light had stopped flashing. I blinked.

“What’s wrong?” Estoc asked, “Why did it stop?” He leaned every slightly toward the light.

I shook my head and held up a hoof to stop him as I worked through what was going on.

Why spend all that effort to get our attention only to stop once we start doing something?

Testing a theory, I moved us back into our previous position. The board started flashing again.

“Looks like we’re only getting hit from this position. Anypony see anything?”

Silence followed. My eyes kept scanning in the dark. I kept us going on a slow pitch, adjusting my field of view in case what I was looking for was hiding just outside of view. Seeing nothing, I started making small adjustments, watching the blinking light as an indicator if I was getting closer or not.

Then something weird happened. The pings suddenly stopped. For a moment I thought I had lost the signal again, but the next second, I received a rapid burst of pings, followed by a silence and a set of single pings. The action scratched something deep in the back of my mind as oddly familiar. I looked at my feed again and sorted it by timestamp:

09:31:48-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
09:31:49-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
09:31:50-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
09:31:51-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
09:31:52-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.
09:32:48-4131:08:28
ALERT: RADAR PING DETECTED.

“What is it? Did you find something?” Estoc asked, glancing back at the control board light which had once again started flashing. The readout in the feed was the same. I checked it again, and then rechecked it. Leaning back in my chair, I breathed out.

“There’s someone out here,” I said. I flipped on the forward lights, not sure if whoever was signaling us could see us, and did a banking salute. For good measure, I set the sensor suite to emit a radar pulse of our own and sent out three short blasts.

The response was immediate. The control board flashed, suddenly coming alive with a burst of pings that was too fast for my WAND to sort through. It took me a while to pick them apart, and then convert them from the archaic signalling language. At first I didn’t recognize them. the transmission was a combination of letters and numbers. I opened a notation program in my WAND and started putting the pieces together. Snippets from pilots school started coming back to me.

The pony was sending me vectors. I plugged the numbers into the flight computer, which immediately gave me a heading to bear in on. Aligning the ship, I sent out another three bursts, and waited, searching the field with my eyes for our destination.

Distantly, I could see it. Our heading was going to take us straight into the heart of a massive asteroid at a distance I was having trouble estimating. As my feed lit up with a new series of pings, I kept a wary eye on my surroundings while I translated them.

Nodding to myself, I eased onto the throttle, edging over a smaller asteroid and into the open space behind it and our target. I kept it slow and steady, watching the simple intermittent pings that marked our progress while keeping my head on a swivel for stray rocks. I started counting off the kilometers to our target in my head, feeling more and more intimidated as the target we were heading toward grew, and grew, and grew. By the time we had closed to within ten kilos, the asteroid was beyond massive.

The asteroid looked like someone had ripped a mountain out of the ground. The scale put the colony in the Core to shame, and the rock itself was littered with what looked like little cracks at a distance. As we closed, those cracks became massive crevices in the rock face, some glittering with the remnants of shattered minerals, but most opening to the void, dark and forbidding.

“Energy signature! Dead ahead!” Estoc nearly shouted, giddily bouncing on his hooves. “It’s weak, but it’s there.”

Poking out of one of the crevices, nearly invisible in the shadow of a nearby asteroid, was a faint planar shape, too flat and straight to be natural. Kicking on the floodlights, I zeroed in on the shape, continually trimming off the Bandit’s speed as we got closer and closer to the shape, and started moving the light along the inside of the crack. The light barely reached, and what little I could see was enough to only make out bare shapes. There was the remote possibility that it was a vein of minerals, but that theory shattered when I caught the broken outline of an antenna, jutting out..

I had to bring us inside the crack to get a good angle. The navigation was a little tricky, avoiding small rocky outcroppings while I brought us to a stop and used the manuevering thrusters to get us inside. While the crevice wasn’t exactly small, while still outside the rock, we were especially exposed. Once we were a little safer, I brought the light to bear.

It was an ugly sight. Whatever the ship had been before, there wasn’t much left of it now. Badly battered plates had been wedged inside the crack, shattered away from the hull of the much larger vessel lying hidden deep inside the asteroid’s lightless ravine. The ship itself dwarfed the Bandit by a factor of at least ten, massive compared to the relatively small girth of my dinky little scrap barge. Any larger, and I could have fit the Bandit through its cargohold. Hell, it probably had its own hangar. Sadly, there was no real hope of salvaging it. The ship had been destroyed beyond all salvation. Signs of combat littered its hull. Missile impacts had blown clear entire sections of the ship, including a great portion of the gangway, in some cases threatening to the split the entire thing across its length. Other sections bore evidence of severe carbon scoring, some of them struck so violently that entire decks had melted together into one massive, bulbous blob of metal.

That wasn’t even counting the damage from the asteroid field. Stray asteroids had wedged themselves into the ship’s hull, effortlessly smashing through the ship’s thick layers of armor plating and penetrating into its internal structure, leaving massive dented craters in their wake. Other sections bore signs of smaller impacts, left over from centuries of abuse.

On the aft section of the ship, just behind one of its massive, shattered wings, sat the same logo I had seen on the battleship, lit just enough by the Bandit’s floodlights to be legible. On it, a purple star sat proudly on the ship’s armor, orbited by a shining sun and a black moon, and scratched by years of impacts along its still gleaming surface. Between them, five smaller white stars stood at ends of the star’s points. Beneath it, words had been emblazoned on the side in clear, if dented lettering.

My eyes wandered across its surface. Near the tail of the craft, I spotted the source of the radar pings. A small, beaten turret rotated in place, weakly tracking my ship, the barrel of its cannon busted shut by multiple, powerful impacts. Alongside it was a broken antenna, jutting at odd directions into space and missing half its length.

I heard Jess whistle over the radio, “Now that’s something you don’t see every day.”

“I wanna see!” Tick called. The next thing I knew, the door to the pilot’s cabin opened and Tick rushed in, nearly bowling over Estoc in the process.

“Yes,” Estoc said distantly, never taking his eyes off of the ship out the viewport. “You’ve done a magnificent job. I…” he sat down, and took a breath. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s amazing that thing still has power,” Tick breathed, gawking at the dead ship and the small turret stil tracking us.

Estoc nodded. “A lot of things were lost in those days,” he said. “One of them was the secrets of crystal magic. After the fall of Equestria, the colonies were never the same.”

“Gone forever,” Estoc sadly finished. “Horizon, I don’t know if you can appreciate what kind of dedication went into the creation of that ship, but know that it was made during the days when the magic of harmony was strong. Harmony that we need, especially in this day of our age.”

“Harmony is a force?” I asked skeptically. Despite his assertions, all I could see was a ship. It was a big ship, certainly, and definitely impressive, save for the fact that it was beaten to hell and back.

“Certainly,” Estoc replied, “Although most importantly, it is a force for good. I don’t suppose I could convince you to get us onboard, could I?”

I firmly shook my head, “No. No offence but I’ve had my fill of exploring derelicts, and besides that, look around. This whole place is a deathtrap. We’re risking enough just being here. I know you want to go explore, what, your life’s work? but I’m not willing to bet our survival on it. Asteroid belts like this one are too dangerous. Hell, just look at that thing!”I pointed to the ship outside for emphasis. “and that’s in the shade.”

Estoc sighed, sadly nodding his head, “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But what was that signal then? Aren’t we going to at least investigate that?” His voice had a hopeful quality to it. It was probably a bid to keep me working here. Although, he did have a bit of a point. Just what exactly was waiting for us on a derelict spaceship like this one? Maybe one of his previous scouts got stranded here?

I looked at the turret that was tracking us with a degree of curiosity. Obviously I couldn’t risk boarding the ship in this environment, nor did I want to, but maybe I could get information off of it another way?

The light on the control board was still flashing. Whoever was doing this was still sending me messages, only this time, from the looks of it, it wasn’t a distress signal.

Estoc was about to answer, but I raised my hoof to stop it. “Just a second,” I said, “I’m still decoding this.”

I stared at the entries, interpreting it the best that I could. As far as I could tell, whoever was sending the signals, had just asked several questions.

I got back on the sensor suite, and started making more radar pulses to respond.

“Yeah, what’s going on down there? we’ve been sitting here for the last five minutes doing pretty much nothing,” Jess added.

I keyed my radio. “If you want to come down, go ahead, so long as we’re here in the crevice I don’t think we’ll need a lookout.”

Anything that followed was immediately wiped from my attention as the control board started blinking again. Frowning, I started decoding the latest message.

Instead of a radar ping, I had received a data request through the ship’s comm suite. Oddly specific, considering it was targeted directly to my WAND, instead of the shipboard communication suite. The bypass made me raise an eyebrow. How?

“You seem focused. Care to share with the rest of the class?” Jess said from behind me. I would have jumped if I wasn’t being held down by the harness. I turned my head to look.

Jess and Nightshade had crawled down from the turrets, and entered the room while I wasn’t looking. Once again the pilot’s cabin was packed to the brim. Estoc had scooted to the side to make room, while Tick had taken a position opposite him. All of them were staring at me expectantly.

“Uh, yeah sure,” I said, turning on my WAND’s projector. A holographic window split the air in front of me as I turned my head back toward the viewport so the others could see, just in time for the next reply.

<THANK CELESTIA! After the last ship warped off I thought I was gonna be stuck here forever! Do you have idea what that’s like? It’s a long time! Like, a really, really long time! I mean at first I thought it wasn’t gonna be so bad, but…wow. I had no idea. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to talk to anypony. Please don’t leave me here?

Estoc stared in confusion, “This is…unexpected. Was she part of the one of the missing recon ships?”

The grin fell off my face. “What the fuck?” I said. Estoc gaped. The others held similar expressions, even Nightshade. So it was possible to surprise him. Who knew?

<Too long. Many cycles. Lost count. Everyone’s gone. My data isn’t so good any more and it’s been a really long time since my last update. My best guess is that I’ve been here for...um, well at least 290,000 cycles.

<Oh! Right, you ponies measure differently, um… well one cycle is about… 24 equestrian hours?

“Is this pony serious?” Tick said, “No, she can’t be! This is just…that’s just stupid! Tell her that’s a stupid joke!”

<NO! DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE! I’M NOT JOKING! PLEASE DON’T GO! PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PL-

“I don’t think this pony is kidding. Filly, stallion, whatever it is,” Nightshade said,

>Okay, how about this. What are you? If you’re as old as you claim, you’re obviously not equine.

<My designation is TSX03181125-141840. My memory is mostly corrupted. Data backup is not currently available without direct connection to the central node.

<Well EXCUSE ME! I’m not JUST a program! I’m a… a… I… um… oh dear.

<Um, so I know this is super sudden and all, but, can I come with you? I really, really don’t want to be stuck here again…forever. Again.

My WAND might not have had the greatest amount of storage, but it was still more than I’d ever need in my lifetime. Or at least it had been. Just how big was this thing?

<Whoops! Uh, let me, um, fix that really quick. I just need to pack a few things.

A screech rent the air and right into my eardrums. Screaming, I tore out the earbuds on my WAND and let them dangle free, the awful static attaining near banshee levels of volume. It noise left my ears ringing, and all the while the screeching continued for another minute or so.

“So were you expecting this on your little expedition as well?” I asked the prince.

Estoc shook his head. “I knew of the ship, but this is something new. I don’t think I’ve even heard of an AI in reference to the Stars ships. I know they were full of the best technology from the age, maybe they needed an AI to run it?”

It was a tempting prospect, that was sure, and it would explain why it had such fine control over the ship’s systems. That thought led to some more questionable territory, however. This AI had full control over the ship’s turrets. The notion made me shiver. Most AI’s weren’t super bright. Any small fault in the programming and…. I clamped down on that train of thought. There was really no backing out now.

The gem on my forehead flared to life, its amber glow nearly tripling as… something, emerged from it.

Everyone jumped back as that something danced across the air, shouting through the ship’s intercom with a distinctly electronic timbre.

“YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! I’M FREEEHEEHEE!”

Its appearance was female, not that appearance probably meant anything to it. It’s avatar was female, there you go. It was also… filly sized. A small, unicorn filly ‘sat’ in the air in front of us, sighing exultantly as her figure slumped in the. She appeared almost amber in color, but I was willing to wager that was more of an effect of my WAND’s coloration than it was a reflection of what she actually looked like.

She looked at us. A gesture I found quite terrifying considering that there was no possible way that she could have done so. There were no cameras that I knew on the Bandit, and if our WANDS had them, they were all facing forward.

“Well, now I’ve seen it all,” Nightshade said. Tick merely gaped in mute silence, at the thing, her expression seeming to bounce between appalled and fascinated.

Brightening, the filly stood up, and ‘walked’ toward us with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry! I forgot my manners. Please allow me to introduce myself,” she said, taking a polite bow. “I am TSX zero-three-zero-eight-one-one-two-seven-dash-”

“How about I just call you Tex?” I said, interrupting her before the number vomit could continue.

The program blinked a moment, suddenly becoming unnaturally stiff. “Designation accepted,” it said in a low monotone, before flipping back to its normal perky self, “Hi! I’m Tex! Nice to meet you!”

“Uh, nice to meet you too?” I said. I admit, this was really weird territory for me.

The construct shrugged, “Oh, you know, everything. Ballistics calculations, Navigation, programming-”

Tex looked offended. “Well, yeah, it’s kinda an important skill when you’ve got so many things you gotta do.”

“That...you—no, that’s-” Tick sputtered, pointing a hoof at the avatar. “YOU’RE NOT POSSIBLE!”

The AI looked amused. Hell, if she had wings she probably would have preened. “And yet here I am. I know you’re astounded at my feat of equine engineering, but honestly, a lot of thought went into my creation,” the avatar’s confidence suddenly fell, “At least I think so...I’m a little fuzzy on that bit.”

Tick’s eye twitched. “Nope!” She yelled wildly shaking her head, “Nope! I am done! I am going downstairs and I’m going to work until I forget this ever happened.” With a growl she turned and headed for the access corridor. The door shut behind her.

“Well she’s a grump,” The AI huffed. Glancing at the rest of us, she added, “So, uh… can we go?”

I glanced at my friends and prince, all of whom didn’t seem to have much to say at this point.

I had a passenger. Not in the sense that, my ship had a passenger, oh no. I, personally, had my very own passenger. On my person. In my ears. In my face. Pretending to walk around my cockpit with her shining ethereal self, practically bouncing off the very thereal walls, oh, and she wouldn’t shut up.

“Wow! This place is really a sty! Who designed this ship? It looks like somepony took a bunch of different ships and mashed them all together, and these systems! Ugh! They’re all weird and icky and slow and, ew! Who put that pointer there? That’s nasty! Bad programmer!”

“Well, your WAND does need to read your biometrics and brainwaves, so obviously I can use it to listen to other things.”

Note to self, attempting to bodily jettison yourself out of your seat while still strapped into said seat, hurts. It hurts alot.

“Don’t do that!” I yelled at the avatar. It was a pointless gesture, but having something to shout at felt really nice.

I put the ship through it’s paces on the way back. Having accomplished our objective, and after securing a nice promise to pay from the prince, I flew the Bandit until we finally hit the M-Net line back in more civilized space. Jess came to take over for me, and to my great relief, my passenger decided to entertain herself with the new pony instead of bugging me. I would have used the time to catch up on my sleep, were it not for the slew of new messages I received from various sources.

The messages were nothing too special, most of them, anyway. Aside from all the junk mail I had started mysteriously receiving--seriously how do they find me?-- one message was from Prism, asking me to schedule a video conference call with her and Jess sometime soon, a few more were from Fritter asking for updates on the trip, and the last one was from a pony I didn’t think I’d hear from again, Last Chance. that one was titled: “CALL ME! ASAP!”:

The Stars Beyond The Veil

by Charlemane

18 - Ghost