• Published 10th Oct 2018
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Voyage of the Equinox - Starscribe



Equestria's first interstellar ship is crewed by the best and brightest Equestria has to offer. Twilight Sparkle and her friends are determined to uncover the origin of the mysterious alien Signal, no matter what it costs. A comment-driven story.

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Chapter 7

Investigate the Storage Room 49%

Twilight couldn’t help but agree with Applejack. Spike’s apparent degradation in sanity—undetectable though it was—made confronting this mission critical.

But just because Twilight was determined to get inside and see what had happened didn’t mean she had to be an idiot about it. There were machines in there, and she couldn’t even guess at their function with a glance through the window.

“Applejack, you there?” Twilight asked over the radio. It had been almost two hours since she’d seen the cargo bay for the first time, enough for her to clamber into a space suit and get all the stiff zippers closed. Enough to formulate a plan. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t captain of the Equinox just because she was an Alicorn.

“Reading ya,’ Captain.”

“Did you go to the bridge like I asked?”

“Sure did.”

Twilight hesitated in front of the cargo bay, leaning back and forth on her hooves. “Check on Spike for me. Still in his quarters?”

There was a brief pause, a crackle of static over her headset radio. “Sure is, Twi.”

“I need you to…” she took a few steps back, into the umbilical hallway. “Seal Bulkhead Pegasus-Green.” It clicked into place, and the little light below the window went green signifying a solid pressure seal.

“What are you thinkin’?”

Twilight didn’t answer. “Are you reading any lifesigns in cargo bay two?”

“No. Twi, I told you Spike was in his quarters. I’m up here, so who would be in there? Our friends are all still asleep, if that’s what ‘yer thinkin’.”

“Depressurize cargo bay two, Corridor Pegasus Green, and Umbilical Uplink Pegasus.”

“I assume you mean the slow and safe way, and not the way that means losing half a ton of air and everythin’ that isn’t bolted down into space.”

“Yes,” Twilight agreed. “I can wait.”

She heard the hiss start a minute later, and she sat down on her haunches to wait. There was no dust to see billowing around her, no other visual signs except for the thin red gage projected onto her helmet slowly going down. It took nearly half an hour.

Eventually she heard Applejack’s voice come back over the radio. “I hope your space suit was workin,’ because there’s almost as little air in those sections as around us.”

“Good.” Twilight rose to her hooves, then stepped aside, as far towards the stairs as she could without smacking into another sealed bulkhead. “Cut all power to the sections I named, even life support.” The lights went out around her, and Twilight’s helmet warmed to life. But all power didn’t mean quite everything. There were still red lights near the floor, a visual sign to the crew occupying these sections that they’d lost power. “Open the interior cargo-bay door.”

Twilight heard nothing, but she felt it. The floor shook through her hooves, just a little. She waited another minute or so for safety, before finally poking around the corner.

The bulkhead between her and the cargo bay had caved inward a little, deforming under the weight of several projectiles. “Looks like I made the right choice. Some kinda’ booby trap.”

“And you’re going in alone? Twi, are you—” But Twilight didn’t hear Applejack’s response, because at that moment she teleported through the door rather than opening it. Not any more difficult than it would’ve been on a planet, despite what members of the other tribes sometimes thought. Planetary motion was a lot more complicated than a starship decelerating along a single path.

Twilight was inside. There were bits of metal scattered everywhere, several of which were sunk straight into the wall or the now-destroyed bulkhead. A clever little construction, using electromagnets and timing circuits and still glowing bright red with energy where it had fired. I probably should’ve cut power a few days before we tried this. Or maybe that wouldn’t have been enough. She couldn’t see any other traps, not at a glance.

The cargo bay was much as it had seemed from the outside, as though someone utterly insane had opened every box without bothering with a manifest. Yet Twilight’s eyes were drawn to the back of the room, where the “camp cube” had been cut open. Food-wrappers covered the floor, and plastic containers meant for holding plants were filled with something that unmistakably would’ve stunk if there was any air. She looked away from the bubbling putrescence, shining her headlamp inside the crate.

Inside, among many other things, she could make out the emergency cryo pods—or what was left of them.

These were the last resort against mission failure. An entirely enclosed stasis system, which might enable them to crawl inside and await rescue even if the ship fell apart around them. It might be landed on an asteroid, or a planet, or even just used right here.

But the system had been butchered. Lines had been cut, glass shattered, circuits strewn everywhere. Twilight lowered her head slightly, climbing over a spent welding torch to get inside. She wasn’t imagining things—there were only five pods here, not six.

“Applejack, you still there?”

“About to have a bloomin’ heart attack,” came the response, after a long string of profanity. “What do ya’ think?”

“Can you think of anywhere on the Equinox large enough to fit a cryo-pod?”

“A few, why? What’s that have to do with Spike?”

“Any of them that you wouldn’t have seen?”

“Ah, well. Only the Lander. I’ve inspected every inch of the Equinox otherwise. But the lander was returning perfect greens to the computer, so ah didn’t bother.”

“Meet me at the lander,” Twilight said. “Bring a gun.”

“What about Spike?”

What about Spike indeed.

- Seal him in his quarters. This is well beyond insanity—this is intentional sabotage. Until we have more time to figure out what’s going on, we can’t risk what he might do if he discovered we know.

- Get him first. Spike never would’ve done this, no matter how crazy. Not to mention, he’s a dragon. If something or somepony dangerous is aboard, he’ll be in better shape to fight it than a pair of freezer burned ponies.

- Just let him sleep. We have no evidence Spike has done anything wrong, or that he was even involved. But just because we don’t know doesn’t mean we have to take risks. If he is a hazardous element, best keep him away while we confirm his innocence.

(Confidence 150 required)

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