The Last Breath

by Hydraex2

Chapter 2 - Off to Wherever

Out in a far reach of the arm of some spiral galaxy, an explosion of purple light burst out of nowhere, only to be followed by a large, old - looking ship.

The solar system that it had jumped to was of little importance - the area was loosely populated with other life forms and didn't have anything to offer, and certainly not a military base, given that the Grand Equestrian Tetrarchy no longer ruled here.

The shock waves from the collapse of the Tetrarchy were still rippling, storming in places, across the Known Stars.

"Hey, we're not dead yet! Woooooo hooooooo!" Flare cheered over the communicator embedded in his suit, which they had all donned pretty quickly before the jump. The channel he was using was a private link between the crew of The Last Breath, which rendered the intercom largely useless, to the immense relief of Flare and Articule.

"Well, how about that?" Nashkata smiled. "What's the specs, Arts?"

"Our shields ran well. All debris was diverted."

"That's a relief. How's the rest of the ship holding up? Any issues?" Nashkata asked.

Articule's shield terminal had a full display of the ship's systems and their status. "Looks fine.. The interstellar drive needs to recharge, however. It will take longer to charge because of its disuse."

“... How much longer than usual?”

“The process will take approximately twenty-four hours.”

“What?” Nashkata screeched.

“Twenty-four hours.” Articule replied.

“You didn’t tell me that the charge would take this long!” Nashkata yelled.

“Do you not understand the purpose of a communicator?” Flare interjected. “It means that you don’t have to yell or screech every time you say something and we’ll still hear you! Fancy that!”

“You’re cool with this?” Nashkata hissed, quieter now.

"I don't think yelling is going to help the situation!” Flare said, his own voice now raising.

There was a short beep to inform Nashkata and Flare that Articule had shut off his communicator.

"Rude!" Nashkata yelled.

"Stop shouting, goddamnit!"

--------*--------*--------*--------

After all the communicators had been switched off, a profound silence seemed to haunt the ship.

Articule, for his part, was obsessing over every single imperfection in the shield generator. Nashkata was in the cockpit, using a device that had replaced paper books long ago to read about the system they were in and the planet down below. This data was gathered from the ship's database, which had an incredibly useful map of the Known Stars, as well as data from the ship's scanners. The device being used to read this information looked like a generic paper book that changed appearance to match the book in question. It was Nashkata's prized possession. This device is called a book as well, and so Nashkata was reading reading a book on the system and colony they were near.

Flare, however, was exploring.

While they had done extensive work on the ship while it was in the shipyard, they had been in something of a hurry, and had only explored rooms with some sort of damaged or obsolete system in them.

Flare's eyes wandered over the hallway. This was a side path to get through to the cockpit without going through the shield generator room, which Flare had planned because Articule had almost certainly locked him out.

However, he had been sidetracked by a room off to the side from the hallway. Now inside, his eyes wandered about the dark room as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the unlit but eerily spacious room.

It seemed as though the room was about as big as the shield or weapons control room, but it only contained a single computer rising from a pillar fixed to the center of the room, which had a gravity anchor and a seat in front of it.

Flare looked around at the walls for a light switch that he knew he would not find - space ships rarely have light switches outside of sleeping areas.

"Wow, it's dark in here."

Hearing his own voice seemed to make the room less creepy to Flare, and he walked up to the seat and sat down upon it and studied the computer.

The computer had a series of images on it, each one in color. As he glanced through the images, he noticed one in the center that gave an overview of the ship. It showed the layout of all of the ship's systems on his current floor, and had a button to switch to the top floor, which contained living quarters, or the bottom floor, which contained the generator, storage bays, and a few other odds and ends that helped to make the ship run.

He looked back at the images and realized that each one displayed a room. He decided to experiment, and clicked on an image, then on the weapons room. To his surprise, the image changed to show the weapons room.

"Wierd..."

He clicked on the image again and then clicked on the shields room. Suddenly a live feed of Articule obsessively buffing a scratch on the shield generator flared to life on the space that the image used to be on. He repeated this for the cockpit and got a feed of Nashkata reading something or other. Flare wondered if it was something inappropriate - he had once walked in as she was looking at her roommate's copy of Fifty Shades of Black, and not even Articule would let her live it down.

Flare looked back down at the ship diagram so that he could see some more rooms, but instead noticed a button labeled "Door Control Mode: Off" in the upper left hand corner of the diagram's box and grinned.

--------*--------*--------*--------

"Holy shit!" Nashkata dropped her book as the door to the cockpit suddenly started slamming open and shut repeatedly.

Nashkata looked at the dashboard and checked for some sort of malfunction or control accidentally activated.

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the racket stopped.

"Old rust bucket..." Nashkata muttered to herself as she picked her book up off the floor and kept reading.

--------*--------*--------*--------

The doors to the shield room began slamming open and shut. In response, Articule cast a baleful look at the camera hidden in the corner of room. The doors closed and stood still.

--------*--------*--------*--------

Articule sat engrossed in his new find. What he failed to realize, despite all that the computer had taught him, was to appreciate how quiet certain doors were.

"HEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Nashkata yelled right into Flare's ear.

And that day he learned a valuable lesson about doors and how silently they can open.

"Holy mother of the Big C, Nash! What the hell?" Flare complained loudly, rubbing his ear.

"What do you mean 'what the hell?'" Nashkata almost sputtered. "What the hell were you doing?"

"Testing out the systems." Flare replied.

"Right."

"Look, I was just trying to kill some time, okay? And it feels like I entered this room just minutes ago, so it's obviously working!" Flare said.

"You did walk in here a few minutes ago."

"What? How long have we been stopped?"

"About fifteen minutes."

Flare groaned and fell out of his seat, where he was replaced by Nashkata.

"So what is this anyway, stalker system?" Nashkata asked, looking at the live feeds of the shield room and the cockpit.

"I dunno..."

"Well, you have only been at it for fifteen minutes."

Flare just groaned loudly again. "I'm so bored!" Flare whined.

"Stalking is not the answer, Flare."

"It is sometimes!"

"... What?"

--------*--------*--------*--------

"So... Articule... what are you up to?" asked Nashkata while staring at the shield generator. Her features were arranged to clearly indicate how very nonplussed she was.

"Fixing."

"Obsessing, more like." Nashkata shot.

Articule said nothing, but instead elected to continue poring over every detail of the shield generator.

"And... why?"

"Why not?"

"Fuck you."

"I'm busy."

Articule gently pushed Flare's head away from the generator, it had been steadily drifting closer. "Why do you care?"

"Because it's pointless."

"Details are never pointless."

"They can be."

Articule pushed Flare's head away from the generator, it had been mere inches away from the pristine surface.

"Well, how are these important?" Nashkata asked.

"... I don't know."

"Then why are you doing it?"

"Pass the time, I guess." Articule was starting to shut down under interrogation, so Nashkata decided she really didn't care enough to press the matter further. However, she whipped her head around at Articule's next words.

"Flare, why are you licking the shield generator?"

--------*--------*--------*--------

"Well... this is nice!"

Flare had dragged Articule and Nashkata onto the top deck, where all of the living quarters were.

“Yeah… no.” Nashkata was thoroughly unimpressed. When it came to this ship, it wasn’t the first time by any means, nor by the same means aforementioned would it be the last.

Flare inspected the sleeping quarters, grin wide across his face. He went to take a look down under one of the beds - maybe something had been lost there long ago!

Instead, something growled at him.

Articule and Nashkata threw him strange looks.

“Maybe we should go check out the mess hall?” Nashkata offered, faintly impressed by the noise-making capacity of Flare’s digestive system.

“Hold up. I think there’s something under here- AHHHHH!” Flare ended his questioning suggestion with a scream, which immediately caused Nashkata and Articule to scream too. Flare, for his part, was clutching his sides with laughter, while Nashkata and Articule hastily disengaged themselves from clutching each other in fright.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe that worked! You should have seen the looks on your - OOF!” Flare’s outburst was cut short by a kick from Nashkata, expertly aimed for his gut (it was a rather familiar target after a few months of knowing him).

"Owwww..." Flare groaned, clutching his stomach.

"Well then." said Articule, who had walked over to the bathroom.

Flare got to his hooves and walked over and took a look into the bathroom. "Well then."

Nashkata followed them and peaked inside. "Well then."

“... Guys, I don’t really want to go to the mess hall anymore.” Flare said.

“Yeah, maybe the showers would be better.” Nashkata complained, drawing her head out of the bathroom and attempting to waft away the smell of whatever was in that bathroom.

--------*--------*--------*--------

“OH HELL NO.”

“Communal showers! Don’t drop the - OW GOD DANG IT!”

--------*--------*--------*--------

“Remind me again why that was necessary?”

“Look, Flare can just spend some time alone in the shower room. It’s all going to be okay Artsy, don’t worry.”

--------*--------*--------*--------

“GUYS THIS ISN’T FUNNY!” Flare screamed, pounding on the door to the shower room, all alone.

--------*--------*--------*--------

“Wow…” Articule was standing in the atrium of the ship, a room in the center that had large see-through panels that seemed to let every star into the ship.

He looked all around, taking in the sheer magnitude of the cosmos.

“And to think… we have to fly across all of that.” Nashkata said.

“It’s so… empty…” Articule said, as if he didn’t even hear.

“Sure is.” Nashkata said.

The two sat in silence for a couple of minutes more, staring out into the vast expanses of an interstellar ocean.

“We won’t be alone.” Articule said simply.

“What?”

Articule just gave Nashkata a meaningful look.

“Well... yeah. Space has all types of creatures. Of course we’ll meet some.”

Articule just went back out to staring out the atrium. “Which one do you think is Equestria?”

“I don’t know!”

“... And you’re the one piloting the ship.”

“Listen, we have this great thing called a navigation system. Without it, we’d be lost. How am I supposed to know which of those millions of stars is Equestria?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just head in the direction of whichever one it is.”

“It’s going to be hours until we can do that!”

“Well then maybe you should get back to your Fifty Shades of Black.”

“I will hurt you, Articule.”

--------*--------*--------*--------

“Guys? Seriously? GUYS?”

“...”

“...”

“YOU ALL FUCKING SUCK!”

--------*--------*--------*--------

After a couple of hours, they finally let Flare out of the shower, upon which they received smacks upside the head from him for leaving him in there. He also forced them to look at every single minute tally mark he made on the wall (there were about sixty, he had actually just made a bunch all at once). Nashkata just laughed in his face at his horrible sense of time while Articule tried not to laugh. In response, Flare stormed out, muttering something about setting up a martial arts room on the bottom deck. Nashkata went back to the cockpit to read her very non-sensual book, while Articule went to some other part of the ship to obsess over (hint: it was not the bathroom).

And so they passed the time this way.

In addition, since there were no days or nights in space, they kept their own clocks and slept at different hours - Nashkata went to sleep first and woke up last, while Flare crawled into his bunk late (although any individual who was on the top deck, had there been any besides Nashkata, would have known immediately). Articule, on the other hand, took a series of short naps in or on various spots of the machinery.

Eventually the interstellar drive recharged, and the three prepared for another jump.

--------*--------*--------*--------

“All systems good.” Articule replied over the intercom.

“Okay guys, remember. No. Freaking. Screaming.” Flare reminded everyone.

“Screw you, I do what I want!”

“Damnit Nash!” Flare yelled back.

“Jump in five!” Nashkata said, cutting the shouting match short.

Articule and Flare planted themselves firmly in their seats and braced for jump. The jump itself passed without notice for them.

“We made it - HOLY SHIT!” Nashkata's voice went several octaves higher into a full on scream.