Making Progress

by Filler

The controls were smashed by the falling debris...

The controls were smashed by the falling debris. Every alarm sounded off in the bridge, but Apple Bloom paid attention to none of them--she knew what they all meant, and there was nothing she could do about them.

Outside was the enemy ship, void of activity. Every soul on it--pony, griffon, deer, zebra--had already been lost. The vessel was an empty husk of its former self. The dreadnought that Apple Bloom and the rest of Ponyville had feared for so long, the Night’s Phoenix. From the ashes it would be reborn, Twilight would tell her. She’d seen it herself time and time again; it coming back after they thought it had been destroyed. But there was no rebirth here, this time. It was grey and decrepit, its paint long worn off. There were no lights, no sparks among the cinders.

The nanoplague had gotten to it, and now it was getting to her.

Her crew had already evacuated when they realized it. It was hardly noticeable at first--there was a leak, a small one, in the sixth boiler room. Scootaloo tried to seal it off, and that served them well enough, or so they thought. When Scootaloo returned to the leak an hour later, the plague had worn out the amalgam she used along with a stretch of the pipe, and the floor became a lake of scalding hot water.

Scootaloo had chalked it up to it being the pipe being old and worn, as it had been, but the amalgam had worried her, as the investigative team found no trace of it on the floor. At least she had some suspicion that something else was going on; had they tried to head back to port, they would have spread the nanoplague as their lifeless ship crashed into whatever was in its trajectory.

It wasn’t until the reconnaissance team found the Night’s Phoenix that they realized what had happened. They tried to warn the rest of the crew, but by then, the nanoplague had spread to the living quarters and the engine. The ship had barely enough power to launch its pods. Whoever could leave safely did so. That was everyone except Apple Bloom.

Now Apple Bloom sat in the captain’s chair, watching her screen flash red and yellow with tiny little exclamation points in triangles pop up repeatedly, warning her of what she already knew and telling her to do what she’d already tried and failed to do. It was only a matter of time before the air supply ran out--or worse, before the plague ate through the ship’s hull.

She went through her options. The ship was drifting forwards, towards the Night’s Phoenix. Her engine was almost dead, and the ship was inoperable anyways. The distress signals were already sent out. But waiting was out of the question; the ceiling had already given away and the glass was almost certainly the next to go. There was nothing for her on the Phoenix and barely anything left for her here. What was left of the escape pods were either destroyed or infected, and she couldn’t risk spreading it. The fabrics of her suit were starting to fray.

Her screen turned black, the alarms shut off, and the lights went out. Save for the stars around her, everything was dark.

Comments

[Pump It Up]

Wow. That's... sad? Depressing? Probably more of the former.

[PresentPerfect]

Ooh, chilling.