Our Little Homeworld

by Horizon Runner

2.2: Khar-Selim

Time: …

Location: …

She floated, like mist in the old mountain valleys. Silence swathed her, smothered and strangled her, but she'd given up the struggle hours ago. There was nothing here but echoes of distant, hateful laughter, fading into a stillness worse than death.

There was nothing here, and there would never be.

She cried into the emptiness.

She cried, and cried, and cried, and cried…

But something touched her, pushed her into motion, something blue.

And

she

fell...

Time: 3:01

Mothership Position: Hoorsuk Orbit.

Location: Room 41-30, Scaffold Medical Wing, Scaffold, Kharequus Orbit.

Her eyes fluttered open. A white ceiling resolved in her view, a round light fixture staring blindly down at her. A heart monitor beeped beside her, and thin sheets shifted faintly against her coat. Tears tickled her cheeks. She barely registered any of it. It all felt so…

Quiet.

For the first time in nearly twenty years, the space behind her eyes was silent.

She'd been seven years old, when her gift had first spoken to her, and she'd forgotten what life was like without the universe whispering in her ear. Gone were the ripples of electromagnetism, the faint hum of gravity, the warm light of magic filling the air around her. It was as if the world had switched to monochrome, as if all the life had withered and died away.

She closed her eyes again, and the first of the sobs ripped its way out of her chest.

Her gift was gone. The prophecy lay broken, and her gift was gone. The Dark Voice had shattered both of them.

"Miss Pinkie Pie? You're awake?"

The words broke against her, and she opened her eyes again, tilting her head to look. A stallion was crossing the room to meet her, clad in a white coat. "My name is Syrette," the stallion said, smiling as he stopped at the side of her bed. "You're in the Scaffold medical wing."

Sitting up took every ounce of willpower left in Pinkie's heart. Her mane slid limp across her neck as she rose, and her eyes trailed down to the dim strands. How it used to be. The natural order of things.

The doctor coughed, lightly, levitating a clipboard out of the pocket on his white jacket. "Miss? I'm sorry to disturb you, but could you perhaps answer a few questions for me?"

Pinkie pulled in a breath, tasting the sterile air. Focus. She had to focus. The prophecy… was it broken, or just struck?

"Do you have any known medical or arcanomedical conditions which could have…"

Pinkie pressed the sound away from her thoughts. No time. Needed to think.

"How long was I asleep?" she asked.

The doctor stopped his questioning mid-sentence. "A… a few hours. It's a little past one o'clock."

Four hours, roughly. Time enough for the other chosen mare to have made it back to any part of the planet's surface, and searching the entire planet would take too long. Obviously.

No. Solutions.

"The Mothership," Pinkie said. "How long until it comes back?"

The doctor hesitated. "Tomorrow, I believe? I'm not sure the exact time."

So little time. Fifteen years she'd spent preparing for the prophecy, and now a single day's actions would determine whether it flew or burned. Pinkie sighed, a tiny smile crossing her face.

She'd had it easy long enough, she supposed. Her magic was powerful, and while Pinkie was perfectly happy to let it do as it did, she wasn't blind to its effects. She was inequinely lucky, to start with, and she had a way of making friends with the most unlikely ponies.

How much of that had been her magic, and how much of it had been her? The distinction had never really mattered before, but now...

Pinkie wrinkled her nose as a thought occurred to her, something her Auntie Cake had taught her, a long time ago.

"A pony is their magic. Mares and stallions of science like to draw lines between mind and magic, but really they are the same thing! There is no pony alive who does not have at least a little magic in them!"

Now, Auntie Cake meant well, but even her husband knew she got a little carried away with her spirit-y stuff sometimes. She had this thing about herbs… which wasn't really important at the moment. Pinkie shook her head.

"Doctor?" she asked. "You said 'arcanomedical' before, right? That means diseases and stuff that mess with a pony's magic?"

Syrette nodded. "Such conditions are rare, but they might help explain how you—"

"Okay, great," Pinkie hurriedly interrupted. "Followup question: have you ever heard of a pony who lost her magic? Forever?"

She bit her lip. She could be wrong, of course. Her aunt and uncle could have been wrong.

Syrette gave her a puzzled look, then rubbed his chin with a hoof "Well," he said, his voice slipping into a professional cadence, "some accounts, yes. Magic comes from a very specific part of the brain, and if that part is damaged, sometimes it can interfere with the patient's ability to control their magic." He frowned, and shut his eyes as if recalling something particularly gruesome. "Though… generally speaking, the results of such damage are… dramatic. The magical energy has to go somewhere, and if not through the normal channels, it generally bleeds out into the surrounding brain tissues, causing—"

Pinkie's heart leaped in her chest. "Okay, but the flow never shuts off?"

"I suppose not. Mind, I'm a nurse by training, not an specialist in—"

"Okay," Pinkie said. "Just… I need a second."

"Uh… yes. Take your time, miss."

She did. She breathed in, pulling in all the tension in her body, and let it out in a slow rush through her mouth. Her heart beat slowly in her chest, and the world seemed to grow around her, until she was very small.

Magic.

She had to find her magic.

She let the world be darkness, emptiness. Her mind fell open, and she began to search.

Normally, her magic burned like a sweet pink sun. Now, the landscape was desolate and cold.

But not lightless.

She strained her sight, searching, searching… and found it. A speck, deep within the tangles of her mind. She reached for it, and found something like sludge blocking her path.

She breathed in, then out. This wasn't supposed to be here. Something the voice had left inside her head?

She touched it, and recoiled. It smelled of hatred, malice, and… fear. A fear so deep and old that it had begun to rot, becoming something even worse, something without a name.

It was all Pinkie could do not to turn away from it. The stuff was nearly unbearable, but thankfully there was only a little of it here. Residue, of what the voice had done to her. She shuddered, wrapping her hooves around her body.

She allowed herself a brief shudder, then forced down her revulsion at the memory. There wasn't time, right now.

She touched the residue, pushing against the resistance. The muck seemed to squirm against her, but it didn't have the energy to fight. She pushed, focusing all her concentration on withstanding the awfulness. The light flickered behind the mire.

She grinned. "You won't win," she muttered. "Not that easy."

The mire gave, and she grasped her magic again.

It was so frail, a sputtering little light. She cleared away the muck, but still it was only a spark. Not enough to save the prophecy. Not enough to save the world.

She sighed, blowing away the remains of the sludge. "Fine," she said. "But you're still mine. We'll work it out."

She let the magic come to her. She swallowed it.

When she opened her eyes, her mane was back to how she liked it, and the universe was singing again. It was faint, so faint she hardly felt it at all, but it was there.

She grinned, then giggled, then laughed out loud.

Beside her, Syrette stared, without any understanding of what had just occurred before his eyes.

Pinkie's laughter faded fast. This wasn't over. She looked to the nurse, and nodded at him once. "Thanks," she said, "But I gotta go."

Syrette's eyes widened. "Miss, please, we don't know what made you lose consciousness. We need to determine—"

Pinkie swung herself off the bed and stood. "I'm sorry," she said. "But I can't stay. If I don't fix things…"

Fire. She shuddered.

Syrette looked her in the eye. He was a young stallion, a blue mane tied back into a braid. His eyes were the color of scotch. Pinkie met his gaze, and felt her magic behind her eyes. She needed him to understand.

When he took a sudden breath, she knew she'd succeeded.

"Celestia," he breathed, and shook his head sharply. "Go," he said.

She went.

Time: 2:26

Location: Fighter Alpha-Two, Traversing Hoorsuk Ring System.

Mothership Position: High Orbit

"I'm just saying," Rainbow said. "It's weird, right? Why are we flying quiet if we're on a rescue mission? Shouldn't they be happy to see us? What gives?"

Soarin's response fuzzed with heavy static. Consequences of using tight-beam through the dust. "Probably just a precaution."

"Nah." Rainbow's eyes picked out a shape, emerging from the dust ahead. Looked like a potato. She kicked her maneuvering thrusters, shifting left and around as the rock flew past her. The rings had been gorgeous from outside, but inside they were just dirt and ice. Mostly dirt.

The light from the sun cast shafts of gold through the blue and brown that made up the place. It reminded Rainbow of a time, maybe ten years before, when the Company had made camp in an abandoned amphitheater. She'd flown up to where the ceiling was full of holes, and sand trickled down into the dark in long streams. She'd asked dad who built the place, but he hadn't known. "Somepony old," he'd said. "Who isn't around anymore."

She hadn't been able to sleep that night. She had the same feeling now, like she was being watched by a bunch of ancient ghosts, judging her every move.

"Nah what, Dashie?"

Rainbow blinked, and shot an irritated glance at her comms panel. "What kind of precaution would that even be? We're not going in extra slow. We're hiding."

"Maybe…" Soarin trailed off, letting the fuzz overtake the line. "...Ha. Maybe we're not alone out here, huh? Wooo~ooo."

Dash laughed, but another rock loomed out of the dust and cut it short. "Better not say that around Thunderlane," she said as she re-fixed her course. "You've heard the 'little green mares' rant."

"Yeah, I know. Still, it's not impossible, right?"

A rock the size of a hoofball bounced off Dash's canopy. "How do you figure?"

"Well, back when they were running expeditions out to Khar-Celest, didn't they find a bunch of other ships, made differently? I thought those were supposed to be alien."

"Ah, right, the derelicts," Dash grimaced. "I've seen a few of them."

"Whoa, really?"

"Yeah. Don't remember the reference numbers, and they were barely fragments, but yeah. They were just bones, though—Gaalsien already picked them clean."

"Damn." Soarin's voice fell a little. "Sorry, sometimes I forget that you've actually, y'know…"

"It's no big deal," Dash said, letting herself grin just a little. "The boss has me beat, anyway. She's probably seen relics intact."

"But still, did you ever get the sense that, y'know… they were made by something else?"

Dash had to think back a long way for an answer. "Not really," she said. "I mean, sure, maybe, but they're wreckage. Ponies make plenty of things that wind up being wreckage."

"Even spaceships?"

"Soarin? Look down at your hooves. You see what you're sitting in right now?"

"Fair point."

They lapsed into silence for a while, and the dust rolled on by.

"Thunderlane just pinged me. I'm gonna switch over. You good?"

Dash resisted the impulse to nod. "Yeah, go for it."

"Right. Talk later. Soarin out."

Silence fell, leaving Rainbow Dash with her thoughts.

It wasn't that crazy, really. Ponies had come from space at one point, and nothing said they'd been alone. She remembered those old ships, sand drifting in slow waves across their rusting skin as evening fell. Who did build them?

She sighed, and dodged another rock. It was getting easier. There wasn't a particular pattern, but the squad's speed was slow enough that they had plenty of time to react. Not really dangerous.

Unless there really was something else out here. Something that made the Khar-Celest broadcast a Vaan'Ai signal. Something they were hiding from.

Spitfire was Sobani, same as Dash. If there'd been clear evidence of hostile action in the area, she would have told the squad. Hard intel was as good as water. Withholding it from your troops did what you'd expect.

So there was no certainty, at least. But she still had them flying silent. That meant the boss at least had suspicions, probably the same ones Dash was starting to have.

"Buck," Dash muttered. A drop of sweat rolled down around her eye and slipped to the bottom of her nose. She licked it away, and swallowed hard.

Another rock, another course correction.

Shafts of light through the dust, like searchlights.

Her nav-panel, showing a map of the rings. Twenty minutes to the signal point.

Her radar…

She saw it just as Spitfire's voice cut into her helmet. "All ships, zero acceleration."

A dot, colored yellow. Unknown contact. Before her eyes, it drifted off the scan, and vanished.

"Huddle up. Set comms to whisper-broadcast," Spitfire commanded. Outside, Dash could see the faint engine flares as the other ships started moving into a diamond formation. She nudged her fighter the same way.

She flicked a switch, setting her radio to broadcast at extreme short-range. Whisper mode.

"You all saw that, right?" Spitfire asked. "Single contact, at the edge of effective sensors?"

Dash tapped her sensor panel, spreading a window across her view. Nothing, now, but she'd seen it. Soarin confirmed first, Dash followed.

"It could have been an asteroid," Thunderlane said. "One with unusually high metal content could have slipped through the sensor filters."

"Or it could be the Khar-Selim," Dash offered. "If they got their engines back online. It's not like we'd get a signal from them in here."

"Fair points, both," Spitfire said. "Rainbow, I want you to drift up above the rings and confirm the Khar-Selim's signal distance. Drift back when you're done.

"Got it." Dash breathed in, and gave her ship the tiniest kick.

The signal lasted about fifty meters. "Soarin, I want you to move up slow, see… you can…… back scan……….." Then, the dust swallowed it all.

Pebbles rained silently against the canopy as Dash lifted out of the rings.

The picture that resolved didn't seem as grand as she remembered it. Hoorsuk stared at her over fields of red and brown. An alien eye.

She focused on her sensors. Up here, things were much clearer, and she quickly picked up the Vaan'Ai signal.

"...Vaan'ai; ai nan-heniim... Vaan'ai; ai nan-steniir… Vaan'ai; ai nan-heniim… Vaan'ai…"

Dash shuddered. She hadn't studied Celestaani since she was a little filly, but she remembered enough to piece together the message:

"Guide us; we cannot hear. Guide us; we cannot see."

The voice was old, a recording from a hundred years ago, at the dawn of spaceflight. The mare who made the tape was long dead, but her steady words lingered on in the comm computers of a hundred spacecraft. The same words were buried in Dash's Arrow, somewhere in the comm package, ready to be screamed out into the void, a final plea for mercy from the universe.

"Guide us; we cannot hear. Guide us; we cannot see."

Dash shut her eyes. "Celestia, please let it be a malfunction," she muttered to the stars. "Please, please, please…"

She gently kicked her fighter back into the rings, rejoining her squad. Soarin was gone, still off on whatever mission Spitfire had set for him.

"Khar-Selim is where it should be," she said. "That wasn't her."

"Probably Thunderlane's assumption, but let's play it safe. Wait for Soarin to return, but watch your scans in case he flares us."

They waited. The dust pressed in around them, silent. A rock passed, casting a shadow through the rings to envelop them all. Nopony said a word.

Dash sank back into her seat as Soarin's dot appeared in her sensor screen. A moment later, his fighter drifted in out of the dust. "I lost it," he said. "No readings like engine trails, either. What's your verdict, Dash?"

"Wasn't our ship," Dash answered.

"Probably a rock," Thunderlane added.

"Right," Spitfire said. "Form up. We're moving on."

They continued on, and the rings grew darker, until only twilight remained.

Time: 2:45

Location: Cafeteria A-4

Fluttershy's eyes lingered on the rings, but she couldn't find kind words for them now. A sandwich sat in front of her, uneaten, and the cafeteria lay deserted except for her. Her shift started in fifteen minutes.

She didn't hear the door open, didn't know anypony else was present until a voice came from behind her, deep as a a river. "Hey."

Fluttershy started, her shoulders going rigid, but when she snapped her head back to look a familiar face met her. Smiling.

"Snowflake," Fluttershy said, and smiled back. "Hi."

The security chief dipped his head to her. "There's a rumor going around, y'know," he said. He gestured to the seat opposite Fluttershy, and she nodded her assent. He sat, and the lacquered metal groaned slightly under his bulk. Then he grinned, red eyes shining. "I'm happy for you, kid."

Fluttershy felt her cheeks go red. "It's only two dates," she said.

"Still," Snowflake said. "I know it's been tough, but I'm with you on this." He glanced out at the rings. "Rumor is he's a pilot. He's out there right now?"

Fluttershy's smile fell away, and her wings pressed tight against her back. She nodded, and let her eyes shift, back to Hoorsuk.

So blue. The same blue, almost, as her coat. But the sun was almost on the other side of the planet, and only a sliver of the color remained, too bright to watch.

Snowflake broke the silence. "You want to take this shift off?" he said, his voice growing soft. "Clear your head?"

"No," Fluttershy said. She shook herself, then took as big a bite of her sandwich as she could manage. Chew. Swallow. "I can do my job," she said, and took another bite.

"Medley would cover for you. You know he would."

Chew. Swallow. "It's okay, really." Bite.

Snowflake's eyes closed, and he nodded. "If you're sure." He stood. "I'll see you at the barracks, then?"

Fluttershy nodded, and Snowflake began the walk to the trams.

Chew.

Swallow.

…

Fluttershy stared at her half-eaten sandwich, listening as each hooffall landed further and further away. Her monosyllabic thoughts dissolved into incoherent static, which morphed into scenarios, counter-scenarios, playing out across the tension in her shoulders.

She remembered her father's smile, her mother's scowl. She remembered her happiness, and her fear. She remembered the feeling in her chest, when she'd first seen Rainbow Dash in the sickbay. She remembered how it felt to drive it down, to attack a part of her own soul. She remembered hiding, while her mother ranted at her father for coming home late, every excuse only making her angrier.

She remembered the kiss. She remembered feeling free.

She sucked in a breath and forced herself to stand. Her heart pounded in her chest.

"Sn-S-Snowflake?"

He turned without a moment's hesitation. "Yeah?"

Fluttershy looked at him, her face red, and smiled through the tears forming in her eyes. "Her name is Rainbow Dash."

Snowflake's mouth opened, and hung there for all of two seconds. Then, suddenly and without warning, he embraced her, wrapping her tight in an ocean of white coat. He was very warm, very firm.

Fluttershy let out a little "eep," and the security chief let her go slowly, pulling back as gently as a cloud.

"So that's how it is," he said. His smile was crooked, brilliant like an uncut diamond. "I'm proud of you, Fluttershy. You're much stronger than you think you are."

Fluttershy smiled, and the tears left her eyes. She hugged him, and cried into his shoulder, and in that moment everything in the universe seemed like it'd be okay.

Time: 2:46.

Location: Fighter Alpha-Two, Traversing Hoorsuk Ring System.

So far, the fighters had been passing through the thin, outer rings, lit, however dimly, by the far-off sun.

That ended.

For a moment, there was light. A gap in the rings, left by one of the moons. Dash barely had time to register it.

The darkness crashed back over them like a wave. Dash nearly jumped out of her suit.

The composition of the rings had shifted. The dust grew thicker, more rock and less ice. No light passed through here.

Spitfire authorized her to switch on her fighter's lights, and she did—revealing two long cones of brown.

Dash could almost hear Soarin let out a nervous laugh, Thunderlane muttering curses under his breath. Spitfire would probably be quiet. She was hardcore like that. But nobody spoke, at least not over the comms, and the silence gnawed at Dash's ears.

She didn't even realize she'd spoken until her own voice startled her. "I hate this."

No response, of course. Her squadmates were a hundred meters off her wings, but to her eyes, her ears, and her voice, they might as well never have existed at all. She spoke again, just to hear something besides her breathing. "This waiting stuff sucks. I'm not even sure it's better than if somebody were bucking screaming over my comm. At least then I'd know if I've got to be so bucking tense."

But nobody screamed.

The Khar-Selim's dot appeared on her sensors exactly where she expected it to. The little golden spark blinked insistently, holding Dash's eye.

A moment later, her comm panel lit up. She tuned in. At first, there was only static.

"............"

Then, words slipped through, spoken in an ancient, dead voice.

"......ai…….steniir—"

We see.

Dash slammed her hoof down on the switch, cutting the signal.

Dash shook her head. "Buck buck buck buuuuck that's creep—shit!" She yanked the controls, pulling herself around a truck-sized rock with a meter to spare. She set her lips in a grim line, focused her eyes ahead, and suppressed a snort of stupid laughter. "I am not dying to space dust. That would suck."

Spitfire pinged her a moment later. "Dash, form up to whisper distance, ahead slow."

She complied.

The comms came alive soon after.

"All in range?"

Soarin sent confirmation. Then Dash, then Thunderlane.

"Good. The Khar-Selim should come into visual range in about two minutes. I want you all doing flyovers to determine any external damage. Dash, you take the upper section, Soarin, you cover the engines, Thunderlane, get the lower hold, and I'll head for the front and see if I can't signal—"

Then, suddenly, light.

Dash blinked as her eyes adjusted and her cockpit polarized, her wings tensing in the sleeves. The world was bright around her, and as her eyes focused, she realized that the dust had broken. A clearing.

Then her eyes finished adjusting, and she realized why.

"...steniir… "

Spitfire had just stopped talking, because their orders were now irrelevant.

The Khar-Selim was dead. Its corpse hung in space, silent as the void around it.

The front half looked like the schematics, boxy and angular, undecorated save for various antennae and scientific instruments studding the outer hull. The back half was gone.

The clearing was cluttered with debris, slowly drifting off from the larger hulk. Holes in the dust all around marked where smaller, faster pieces had shot off, to be lost within the rings forever.

Spitfire's voice was steel. "In. Slow."

It only got worse as they closed in. Huge sheets of hull slid past Dash's canopy as the main hulk loomed up before her. The rings weren't that thick, and the dust at the top here was thin enough that the sun was clearly seen, backlighting the ship. Dash felt something in her chest go numb as she passed into its shadow.

"Celestia," Thunderlane breathed. "Look. That scarring near the… breach point."

Dash looked, and wished she hadn't. There were holes in the hull near where the Khar-Selim… ended. Yards across, ringed by popped blisters in the metal. Laser scarring, or something like it.

"Boss," Soarin said. "This is bucked. Tell me I'm dreaming, boss."

"Quiet, Soarin." Spitfire pulled her fighter to a stop, and the others followed. "Right. Plan's unchanged. Run scans of the ship, save the data for the research team to run through. Then, we send a ping to the First Hoofstep and go quiet again."

"Aye, ma'am," Dash supplied. The others followed her lead.

It really was funny. She'd seen one fight in her life, and she was the one with the most experience aside from the boss. She wasn't ready for this. Buck, Spitfire couldn't be ready for this, whatever this was. Combat experience, Sobani training, none of it mattered.

They split, heading for their designated parts of the ship. Dash took the upper section, clustered with the tall forest of antennas that made up the Khar-Selim's main sensor array. A few lights flickered at some of the tips. One of those towers was probably sending out the Vaan'ai.

Soarin had forgotten to shut off his microphone. Dash could hear him breathing, fast and hard. He swallowed, and it took him a moment before his breath came back with a faint gasp.

Dash tried to block him out as she pulled her fighter up around what remained of the Khar-Selim's upper half.

It wasn't hard to switch focus to her sight. The laser scars were here, too. Some were single, huge blisters. Some tracked along the hull like massive, exploded welding scars. Scattered between them were more mundane marks—the kind of hole you got when a railgun shell hit tank plating.

It was almost like looking at a vehicle fresh back from a battle with the Gaalsien. Except the contexts didn't match. The Gaalsien hated space travel. That was their entire thing. You didn't get spaceships with these kinds of marks, because the weapons needed to do it were all bound in the atmosphere.

Dash forced herself to swallow.

Which meant, unless the whole squad was hallucinating, somebody else had blown the Khar-Selim in half.

Spitfire pinged her. There was no sound, just a single line of text which flashed across her helmet visor, and Dash felt her stomach drop through the floor and straight to the hells as she read the words.

Check radar. Contacts inbound. Hide. NOW.

On her sensor screen, yellow dots were blazing to life. A moment later, Spitfire turned them red.

Author's Note:

FINALLY.

Edit log:
1.1
Fixed some typos.
Filled in half a paragraph that I just straight up forgot to write.
Changed the chapter number from 2.3 to 2.2. Don't know how I made that mistake.

Comments

[Setokaiva]

Holy CRAP this is tense. I was shivering in my chair just reading the progress of the fighter squadron. I'm not even mad that it took so long, as long as I get to read more of this amazing stuff. xD

[Alexander Crestfallen]

I always forget how much I love this and then you release a chapter and I realize how much I love it. Looking forward to some more whenever you get around to it!

[mastermenthe]

Pinkie Pie... Do you plan to hide your bounty in the resource containers? Those where the only thing to properly survive unnattacked.

[StormyVenture]

Well, that sucks for all on board. Having your ship blown in half is generally fatal.

[Mahazkei]

7023781 I concur. This would be how that scene played out were the Fleet Intelligence and Fleet Command not so... naive at that part. This was planned ten years prior to now. If things aren't going as you said they should, you should go on high alert. Not send a freaking probe to trigger a cutscene.

If they could change that, I'd be totally fine with it. Realism over simple commands. This ain't a game for the meek.