“Azura? Azura wake up!” a familiar voice called from a long way away. “Azura, wake up!” the voice came closer and closer, almost as if it were right next to me. “Azura! WAKE UP!” someone shook me violently, and my eyes snapped open.
Trott stood over me, a look of panic on his face.
“What?” I said groggily as my brain began its boot sequence.
“Azura, we may have a security breach,” Trott said, taking his hooves off of my bed.
“Security breach?” the phrase instantly woke me, “what do you mean security breach?”
“Follow me, I’ll explain on the way,” Trott said as he galloped out of my room. I paused for a moment to pull on my security barding, and quickly followed my friend into the hallway.
“So what’s going on?” I asked as we galloped the length of the torus.
“I was in one of the security stations, the one near the docking area, looking for a screwdriver. One of the monitors started blinking and said that the docking codes had been accepted.”
“Docking codes? Someone’s trying to board?”
“Potentially,” Trott began to climb the ladder into the central spire, “but it could just be a bug or a resupply shuttle,” he continued when I floated out of the exit past him. We kicked off, floating down the end of the ship where incoming shuttles docked.
“I don’t think so, they sent supplies up here with us,” I said pushing past one of the emergency seals. There were two seals that separated the station into thirds when closed. They also provided and airtight seal on all the ventilation systems throughout the station.
“How much farther?”
“It was the security station near the docking ports at the far end of the shuttle.”
We reached the right door, and squeezed inside. Trott floated over to the terminal and started tapping away.
“Ahm, here,” he said, pointing to the terminal, “recent docking logs. These two were resupply shuttles,” he highlighted the two bottom entries, “this one was us,” he highlighted the second most recent entry, “but this one here,” finally, he highlighted the most recent entry, dated no more than five minutes ago, “that’s the concerning one.”
“Docking can be approved from the ground, and up here, right?”
“Yes, but this one came from on board.”
“Can you trace who it came from?” I asked.
“No, but I can trace where it came from,” Trott hammered the terminal for a few moments before saying, “a public terminal. In the cafeteria.”
“Okay. I’m gonna head over there, see if the pony who confirmed this order is still around. How long until our mystery shuttle docks?”
“Two hours and fourteen minutes. I’ll stay here and check for updates. Take one of these.” Trott tossed me a radio headset from the wall. Catching it with my magic, I fixed it to my ear.
“Keep me updated,” I said, floating out of the security room and kicked off back down the way I came, toward the facilities torus.
As I floated down the central spire, something dawned on me.
“Trott, you can’t approve docking requests from the cafeteria terminal. Only the security ones,” I said stopping my propulsion, allowing the air resistance to slow me down.
“Oh, right. But the terminal… hold on a mo’,” there was the sound of hooves tapping at a terminal before Trott swore loudly in my ear.
“What?” I asked, concerned.
“Whoever our hacker is, they are very clever. They’ve scrambled the IPs.”
“English please.”
“Every terminal on the station has a number assigned to it, so it can be identified on the network. Each number has a name attached to it, which tells me which computer it’s coming from,” Trott sighed, “our hacker scrambled these IDs so I can’t tell which terminal the approval came from.”
“Can you un-scramble them?” I said, now simply hanging in the air, my mane floating off of its own accord.
“Not without restarting the whole system, which at this time is not an option,” Trott gave another frustrated sigh, “okay check the last two security stations. Look for any sign of recent use of the terminals,”
“Copy that,” I muttered, reaching for a hoof hold along the walls of the station, and dragging myself forward.
The three security stations were at the front, rear and middle of the station, the front and rear ones just behind the emergency seals.
I reached the center station and hit the door release. The fluorescent light flickered and buzzed to life inside the tiny room. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. The weapons cabinet was locked, the terminal inactive and its keyboard slightly dusty. It was clear nopony had been in here for a long time.
“Trott, middle station is empty. Moving to station three.”
Outside the windows, the sun blasted its way into the station, the windows magically adjusting their tinting to filter the light down to non-dangerous levels.
Before long, I reached the final security room which was stationed a few meters from the entrance to the power generation area at the rear of the station.
I hit the release and the door slide aside. Somepony had definitely been in here. The terminal, which shouldn’t have been touched since the station launched, was still in a shutdown process, and the keyboard had been cleared of dust.
“Trott, I’ve found the station. The terminal is still active.” I cancelled the shutdown and opened the security tools. Trott walked me through how to access recent logs and user details.
“There’s over a thousand entries here, Trott. Shouldn’t there only be like, two or three?”
“Dammit,” Trott shouted in anger, “this pony, whoever they are, are too fucking clever for their own good. They must have flooded the logs with phantom entries. It could take days before we find them.”
I turned to leave the station, but stopped suddenly as an enormous, horrendous, ear-crushing sound rang up and down the station, followed closely by intense vibrations which shook the area around me as I hung in the air.
“Holy shit! What the hell was that?” I screamed as red emergency lights began flash around me. I started to drag myself towards Trott’s end of the station. Where the disturbance had come from.
“Sweet shit, that came from the docking station.”
“Docking station? I thought you said we had hours!”
“I thought we did,” Trott made a terrified yelp, “Shit, whoever just boarded is right outside the fucking door!”
“Trott!” I started, practically flying down the spire toward him, “calm down. Okay, calm down. I want you to lock that door, seal yourself inside. Use the manual lock.”
Trott’s breathing became less rapid, and finally to a normal rate again.
“Okay,” I could hear the shaking in his voice, “now what?”
“Er…” I paused for a moment to think, before I realized that I didn’t have a moment. Danger close. “Get on that security station and use those cameras. I need you to be my eyes and ears.”
Just as I floated past the entrance to the residential torus, I collided head on with Silent, who was followed closely by Morning Dew and Malin. I clutched my head and waited for the world to stop spinning. When it didn’t, I stretched my hoof out to stop myself spinning.
“What is going on? What are all these alerts?” asked Malin as Morning went to check on Silent.
“Unauthorized docking. Potential threats,” I said, continuing to Trott’s security room and hammering on the door. “Trott, that’s us outside. Can you see us?”
“Yes, yes I can,” he said feigning his composure.
“Okay, Malin, hang back here. Silent, cover our rear. Morning, you’re with me.”
Everypony nodded and took their positions. I lead the team, along the final few meters of the spire, toward the closed docking area door.
I signaled for everyone to stack up behind me, and hit the door release.
Instant chaos. Instead of the doors sliding steadily open, they were nearly ripped from their niche as to extremely burly ponies forced them open. As soon as they spotted us, they pounced.
A flurry of extremely well trained hooves flailed in front of me, stopped only by pure reflex. The mass of muscle assaulting me was hitting hard and fast, and I was quickly getting tired.
Without warning, a blurred mass of grey rammed headlong into my assailant. Silent grappled with him before kicking off back towards the first seal.
“Retreat!” I shouted, following Silent, who was looking toward Morning and Malin, engaged in a melee with the second burly intruder. Morning planted two rear hooves into the face of her attacker and, dragging Malin behind her, arrived next to me, behind the seal.
I punched in the code, slammed the lever and the two doors of the seal slammed shut, putting at least a foot of steel between us and the intruders… and Trott.
“Azura? The doors sealed and I’m the other side!” exclaimed Trott.
“Don’t worry, the lock on the security room will hold against just about anything,” I had no idea what I was talking about, but I had to keep Trott from panicking.
“What about the seal?” asked Malin, tapping a hoof against it.
“It’s hermetically sealed now. Nothing short of blowing it up with explosives,” Morning explained.
“Azura,” Trott said quietly, “they’re planting something on the door.”
“What? What are they doing?”
“They’re putting something on the seal.”
My heart stopped dead as I realized what was just about to happen.
“Get to the second seal. NOW!” I shouted to everypony, and followed them as we pulled ourselves to the second seal as fast as we could.
“Azura? What’s going on?” I could hear the panic in Trott’s voice.
“Trott. Listen to me. You’re going to be fine,” I had to lie. It was the only way, “listen to me, Trott,” his ragged breathing rippled through my earpiece as I reached the seal before anypony else.
“Azura, I--,” Trott’s voice was cut off as an immense explosion rocked the station end to end. From the first seal, a bright yellow fireball ran its way up the spire and, fed by the oxygen remaining in the station, charged its way towards us.
Malin was past the seal, but Morning and Silent were still very much within the path of the oncoming explosion. At the last possible moment, Silent charged into Morning, pushing them both into the safe area behind the seal.
I slammed a hoof on the lever and the two doors crashed together, but not before a great tongue of flames snaked its way between them and burned away at Silent, who was still protecting Morning.
Silent roared with pain as his flesh bubbled and seared before me. Both his upper and lower back were a stomach-churning dark red and brown, smoke still billowing off of him. Underneath Silent was Morning, who had been completely shielded from the flames, aside from a scorched tail.
“Malin, Morning, get him down into the med-bay, now!” I ordered. Without delay they began to drag him towards the entrance to the second torus. As they disappeared into the hole, I touched the radio in my ear and spoke.
“…Trott?” I called out into the air, “Trott, if you’re out there, please respond.”
Radio silence. Then, a sudden and very loud rush of static filled my ear. “Shit!” I yelped, ripping the radio from my ear. Tentatively, I returned it to my ear, but still only heard white noise. The intruders, whoever they were, had installed a radiowave jammer.
I floated my way into the second torus and, once my hooves were firmly on the ground, made my way along the facilities torus to the med-bay. I slid open the door to see Morning applying some form of salve to Silent’s back. Morning looked up as I entered, but continued to work on Silent.
“Azura, could you hand me that needle over there?” she asked, pointing to a medical tray loaded with gauze and a singular needle filled with a glowing purple liquid. I floated the needle over to Morning who jabbed it into Silent’s side.
His body immediately seemed to relax and his breathing slowed.
“Thanks,” Morning said, pulling the gloves from her hooves with her teeth and tossing them into a bin, “I’ve set him off to sleep. The magic in the cream works best if he’s not moving around.”
“Is he going to be alright?” I asked, my voice sounding like chalk about to snap.
“He’ll be right as rain in a few hours,” Morning looked at me carefully, “what about you?”
“What about me?” I knew where this was going, and did not want to be along for the ride.
“Well… you and Trottalier? You seemed close.”
“What? No, no. We were just friends,” my voice betrayed me, “Really good friends…”
Morning said in front of me, not saying a thing. Instead she wrapped her hooves around me in a hug. Then I broke down. I didn’t know whether to be sad or angry, so I chose the former, the latter would come later. Tears welled in my eyes before bursting forth and running down my cheeks.
The emotion I hadn’t even realized I’d crammed into the back of my mind exploded out of me in a rush of tears, sobbing and shaking.
It’s true what they say. You never know what you’ll miss until it’s gone, and sweet Celestia I missed Trott.
Since I ended my service in the war, I’d shied away from other ponies, choosing the comfort of my home rather than the outdoors. When I met Trott, he was really the only friendly pony I had come across in years. My first friend. And now he was gone.
Then it dawned on me. It was my fault. I was the one who told him to stay in the security station. The one who told him to lock the door.
As I vocalized my thoughts, Morning pushed away from me and looked me dead in the eye.
“No,” she said sternly, “no it’s not.”
“It is. I told him to sta-” my words were cut short by Morning’s hoof slapping across my face.
“You are not responsible for Trott. They are!”” she shouted, as though she were trying to force the words into my brain.
Ignoring her, I pressed my face back into her shoulder. The sadness was beginning to fade, and the anger beginning to replace it.
Save it for them, I thought. Shuddering a final time, I pulled away from Morning, and wiped my eyes.
At that moment, Malin entered, looking rather grim,
“Red and Blue, they are dead,” he said quietly. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Morning giving angry looks towards Malin, and pointing to me.
Malin immediately looked apologetic, and edged his way around the room, out of my line of sight.
From the corner of the room I heard him say, “capitaine, I am sorry for your loss.” It was a small consolation, but it meant a lot to me nonetheless.