The Stars Beyond The Veil

by Charlemane

05 - Chapter Five: Shipping and Handling

Chapter Five

Shipping and Handling

“This is an evacuation order! All citizens are to proceed to the designated teleportation areas for immediate departure! ALL citizens! Evacuate the area immediately!”

- Mass Evacuation of Celestia’s Providence - 2510 E.C.

Soap. I had wondered why Nightshade had bought soap when we stopped at that supply store. As we limped back to his apartment from the fight, I wondered about a lot of things. I wondered why I let myself get dragged into his little gang war. I wondered why I didn’t have the nerve to say no to him, or why I entered that hell hole despite the fact that I knew it would get ugly. Maybe I was a pushover. Maybe Nightshade made an error in judgement. Maybe it was both. Maybe I should have just turned around and made a life for myself on the station, instead of running off to get my wings back. Maybe I should focus on something else.

Soap. Why did he buy soap? Was he expecting things to get nasty? Or was it something else?

When we made it back to Nightshade’s apartment we were both dead tired, though Nightshade had the worst of it. In the firefight, I had gotten lucky. I wasn’t hit, miraculously, and my only injuries were a couple bruised ribs and a few cuts and scrapes. Nightshade, however, wasn’t so lucky. A bullet nailed him in the flank, and he had several close calls along his withers. Long bloody streaks remained where bullets had grazed him in the fray, bleeding slowly but steadily as he limped alongside me. His hooves were a mess, cut up from the glass around Clip’s body, forcing our progress down to a painful limp.

Nightshade’s apartment was in an area on the fringe of gang turf and civilization. Few ponies walked through that area, and those who did gave us worried glances as we limped past. I did my best to support him, but he waved me off. Our progress back was slow, at best. As soon as we made it back, Nightshade keyed the door and then stumbled inside, calling for the clock doc. The little machine rolled over and in a few moments, Nightshade slugged down one of the reddish orange potions stored in its refrigerator, before collapsing on the floor and grunting painfully.

“Bullet, left flank.” He told the machine. Immediately the doc took action. It withdrew a syringe from its refrigerator and injected it into his flank. Nightshade grunted. The doc continued its work, and started barraging the injured area with several magic fields. The bullet popped neatly out, caught in a levitation field, while healing magic simultaneously closed the wounds. Nightshade winced and then relaxed, sighing gratefully as the damage along his withers mended, the tissue steadily re-growing until it was back to a healthy shade of pink. After a few minutes, only the scars remained.

When it had finished with him, the doc turned to me, scanned me, and then powered down. I guess I wasn’t worth the trouble, not that I was seriously injured anyway.

Nightshade lay still for a moment, and then sat up, groaning as he reached a more comfortable sitting position.

“I’ll never get used to that,” he muttered. “Damn things taste like popcorn.”

“What did you just drink?” I asked.

“This thing?” he said, holding up the last bottle of reddish orange liquid, before replacing it in the refrigerator. “It’s a catalyst agent. It speeds up magical reactions in ponies.”

“So, not a healing potion then.”

“Heh, healing potion? Nah, I don’t have enough bits to afford that kind of luxury.” said the buck with his very own clock doc and an apartment that looked like it was still up for sale.

“You have a clock doc.”

“Favors.” He grinned. My stomach churned.

Nightshade wobbled as he got his legs underneath him. I steadied him with a hoof, and then he waved me off.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I need to get going anyway, and you need to get cleaned up.”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be more worried about your health? Like, rest up or something?”

“I should, but I know some ponies who need to know about the drugs we found in the hideout. Time sensitive stuff. Just chill here. I’ll be back soon. And get cleaned up while you’re at it.”

“I’m fine.” I said, meaning it. “I really wasn’t injured or anything, and I can patch the suit up just fine with the remains of the last one.”

“N-no that’s... not what I meant.” Nightshade faltered. His grin became a grimace, and then he handed me the soap.

I didn’t take it. I just stared at it.

“Uh... what’s this for?”

Nightshade was silent for a long time. He stared at me, eyes widening.

“You mean you don’t know?” Nightshade said aghast, his left eye twitching.

“Know what?” I asked.

“Horizon... you smell like a latrine.”

Soap...

THAT’S WHY HE BOUGHT SOAP? I was outraged! I was... suddenly thinking about the last time I had taken a shower. My thoughts shot back to L6, and then I found myself struggling. Obviously, it was before the water had been shut off in my apartment, and most of my time was spent in space. I’d work, come home, eat, crash and then... repeat.

Goddesses...

I hadn’t bathed in years!

Suddenly, everything made a lot more sense. I had wondered why people always hated me being around. Personally, I thought it was just discrimination against blank flanks, but, no, they wouldn’t see I was a blank flank because I always wore my flight suit. The disgusted faces, the ponies hiding their children, ponies walking away quickly, hell, even Junkyard started to make sense.

I was a walking miasma!

Ponies didn’t hate me, they hated my smell! More images floated to my mind. The irritable ponies in the Tuck n’ Roll, the pissed-off vendors in the food court, the disgusted face of that one shipping client, one by one they all added up to a single, monumental conclusion:

People hated me because I stank.

Favors. The word resounded in my head.

FUCKIN DAMMIT!

There must have been something about my face. Nightshade stifled a laugh, and then, after making a valiant effort, lost the battle. He had to sit down!

“Give me the damn soap.” I growled, face hot. The soap bar hit my head and plopped to the deck.

“See you around Horizon.” Nightshade laughed. “I’ll be back later.” The door hissed shut behind him. I fumed, glaring after him, before returning my attention to the soap, my newfound nemesis.

“We’re going to have some quality time, you and I.” I said to the soap bar. “Oh yes... quality time.”

---

A hot shower had never felt so good, especially since I shed the new flightsuit in order to perform some repairs on it. I really did stink! The hot water felt blissful and after a good sudsing up, the dirt and grime, built up over years of sweat and abuse, finally broke away, carried to the drain by the rivulets of hot water pouring off my sides. I could not remember the last time I had taken a shower, especially a hot one, but damn did it feel good.

Thirty minutes of bliss later, I finally got out of the shower. I dried off, made use of the facilities, and then, thinking I should probably address other hygiene issues, I brushed my teeth. Lucky for me, Nightshade had a spare brush stowed neatly behind his mirror. I brushed, spat out the paste and then stopped, noticing myself in the mirror.

Even after the shower, I still looked like hell. My mane hung wet around my face, framing the bags under my eyes. I had an ugly bruise on my side and I had cuts all over my face and body; cuts that reminded me of a certain event I had been trying to forget about for the last hour, something that came back with crippling force.

“What am I doing?” I asked myself, placing a hoof on the mirror.

What was I doing? I had just spent the last thirty minutes taking a shower in the home of a stallion whom I was certain was going to kill me. Not even an hour ago, he had held a gun in my face demanding me to explain why I couldn’t help him in the firefight.

The whole mess was his fault. He dragged me out to find my WAND, nearly got me killed, and then up and blamed me for his poor judgment. Granted, he saved my ass, but that didn’t justify what he did. He nearly got me killed! And he did get someone killed. In fact, he just killed a whole room full of ponies. With help, of course, but still.

I thought back to Clip. I thought of her body laying on the floor of the lounge in the red light of the flare. I thought of the ganger’s blood pooling in the room. I thought of the face of Daisy Dawn, dead with a bullet planted firmly in her skull, all because of a judgment call made by the same buck I had helped limp back home.

And there I was, happy and comfortable from a warm shower. What the hell was I thinking?

I didn’t want to go in there. I wanted to find my WAND but...dammit! I didn’t want to go in there! I didn’t want to get shot at! I didn’t want to do any shooting! All I wanted was... all I wanted was to fly.

And I still could. Technically I wasn’t wearing my WAND yet, but...

I stared at my WAND, set neatly on top of the bathroom counter. The focusing gem still shined, but its surface was covered in sticky red residue. Brownish blotches marred it where Daisy’s blood had spattered and dried. It was undamaged, but... I didn’t know if I could wear it without feeling sick. I shuddered, deciding to clean it off. I tasted copper in my mouth as I picked it up and spat it into the sink, spitting afterward until the flavor was gone.

I turned on the sink and watched the water drain pink, my tired eyes drifting back and forth from my WAND back to the reddish water in which it sat.

Daisy was dead because of this thing. She died because Nightshade needed me to do something for him, and getting my WAND back was just a means to do that.

Then a thought struck me.

I didn’t have to get involved. I didn’t have to go into there. Heck, I could have left at any time. I had a choice. Nightshade offered me the weapon. He didn’t force it on me. I didn’t have to take it, but I did.

I took the weapon.

Horrified, I backed out of the bathroom, stumbled, and landed on my bruised side. A dull pain lanced through my body and lingered.

I took the weapon. He urged me to do it, but I still took the weapon.

I took power into my hooves with the intent to use it against somepony else, for personal gain.

And I paid for it, I thought grimly. I was at fault too, and now I had to live with that guilt.

I looked at the apartment in a new light. Everything was still very clean, except now there was a big bloody spot where Nightshade had collapsed prior to his impromptu treatment. Beyond that, the room was devoid of life. The clock doc still sat where it had powered down, and everything else was still maintained in its freakishly neat state. I checked a clock on a nearby wall, a minimalistic silver thing that meshed well with the rest of the room.

Eight o’clock. Nightshade had been gone for the last hour. I spent more time in the shower than I had thought.

Technically, I could still leave. I hadn’t killed anyone, directly anyway. I could put the station behind me and just disappear. No more gunfights, no more dangerous situations... right? Maybe I could go live a normal life somewhere else. I was clean now! I could find work! I didn’t stink! I... didn’t really know. Could I leave? If I did, wouldn’t Nightshade find me? And besides, if I left where would I go? I was a wanted pony, even if I didn’t commit the crime. If I went back to the PC, or anywhere else, I would just be arrested and that would be that. The truth was I couldn’t go back, and, judging by how I fared so far, I couldn’t make it on my own either.

I was trapped, I realized, not by bars, or by intent, just by circumstance.

I couldn’t leave. I was stuck with Nightshade. He would probably get me killed, but he was the only chance I had at making a life anywhere other than a prison cell or a street corner. He was the last thing I had to live on, and I owed him favors if not my life.

Involuntarily, I shuddered.

I retrieved my WAND from the bathroom sink, dried it off, and then began strapping it on, doing my best not to think of the dead pony who had been wearing it little more than an hour before. Halfway through, I stopped, pondered a moment, and then took it back off.

My WAND was a crutch, I realized. I used it for everything. I used all the little bells and whistles and all the programs I could afford to cram onto it. It was so much a part of my life that I was crippled without it. I relied on it too much, and if I wanted to survive, I needed to learn how to live without it. I looked at it and set it back down. Parts of it were still pink from the rinse in the sink. I Wiped it off with a towel from the bathroom and then stowed it in my fresh suit instead. I decided that would use it only when I needed it: no more, no less.

The door hissed open.

“I’m back,” Nightshade said as he trotted inside, “and I hope you’ve got a few more hours in you because I have a contract for... us?” He stopped just past the doorframe, staring at me. It then occurred to me that I had forgotten one very important detail in all my musings: I was still naked.

A stupid kind of modesty overtook me. Ponies are usually naked, but I usually wasn’t. That, and I wasn’t comfortable showing other ponies that I didn’t have a cutiemark. I took a couple of steps back from Nightshade, face warming.

Silence reigned in the room. Nightshade struggled to keep his eyes from straying to my bare flank, but ultimately failed. Every half-second his eyes flitted there and I shifted, trying to hide the elephant in the room.

“You... you’re a blank flank.” He sounded awestruck. I took a couple more steps back and then bumped into his couch. That stupid lousy... I’m getting off track.

“I-I... ah.”

“How are you a pilot if you’re...” He trailed off, muttering to himself things I could not hear.

Quiet returned.

“I-It’s not drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I finally managed.

“Oh.” Nightshades eyes widened a little, and then softened. Pity. Celestia how I hate that look.

“You have fade?” He asked.

“Yeah, I got it from my mother.”

“That... explains a lot about you.”

“How so?”

“Oh, little things. Why you’re so defensive for one.”

I AM NOT DEFENSIVE! I bit my lip, stifling a retort.

“Why you’re always in that suit for another. How many ponies know?”

“Not many,” I replied, “a close friend, my old boss, maybe one or two others. I try to keep it hidden.”

“Keep it that way.” He finished.

After a moment of awkward silence, Nightshade coughed.

“Anyway, I hope you’re good for a few more hours because I’ve got some work for us.”

“Work?” My ears perked up, happy to turn away from awkward conversation.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “and before you start saying this is your favor, don’t, because I’m paying you for this.”

“Really?” tension crept between my shoulderblades, “what’s the job?”

“A contact I have in the shipping offices needs some cargo recovered. A barge went down in an attack just a few jumps from here, and she wants whatever is left onboard.”

“So it’s a salvaging job?” That sounded easy enough, and it definitely fell within my skill set.

“Something like that, yeah.” He paused. “I hope you have some salvaging equipment on your ship, otherwise we’re going to have to buy some.” This time it was my turn to grin.

“More than you know,” I snickered.

---

We left for the docks shortly afterward, though, not before Nightshade cleaned up the mess he left on the floor. Turned out I was wrong. He really did keep his apartment that clean. To screw with him, I nudged one of the portraits on the wall out of position before leaving. I don’t think he noticed it, yet.

In any case, I led the way back to my ship, though we ended up taking a rather long route to get there without using my WAND. I had him point out where Fritter’s food stand was, and from there, I used the station directories to point me in the right direction. It took a little while, but after getting lost a couple times, I finally smelled that delicious apple pie coming from the advertisement on the wall, and I knew we had found the right dock. Together, we stepped onto the catwalk running under the docking platform. Once up the stairs, Nightshade’s jaw dropped.

“You... fly that?” He said, pointing at one of the massive armored haulers secured at the dock.

“Nope.” I said as continued down the platform.

The second hauler had left port and had been replaced by an even larger, burlier and meaner looking ship. Nightshade’s expression changed from awe to mad glee.

“I fly that.” I pointed between the two. Neatly obscured by the two ships, and still cramped precariously between them, was the Scrap Bandit. Sandwiched between the two, much nicer looking ships, it looked like someone had left a turd floating in space, or like someone had broken off a piece of a bigger ship and never cleaned it up. A ship turd. There you go, the Scrap Bandit looked like a ship turd.

Nightshade just stood and stared, comprehension dawning on his face with equal parts confusion and outright shock. I nudged him with a hoof and he jumped, his jaw snapping to attention as he returned to reality.

“Wh... thuh...”

“Yes?” I grinned. Nightshade paused for a moment, seeming to gather himself.

“What the hell is that thing?” He pointed.

“It’s a salvage ship.” My grin broke into a sheepish smile as I imagined that a single, tired joke flew through both of our minds. Nightshade kept staring, his eyes snapping from joint to joint of the engineering nightmare that was the Scrap Bandit.

“That... thing can fly?” He finally managed.

“Nope.” I said truthfully. “It can move, and that’s about it. By the way, you might want to suit up, Once we get outside the hangar, the ship is going to get a bit drafty.” I kicked off to the hull of the bandit and landed with a magnetic thunk. Nightshade simply stared, looking back and forth from me, to the ship I was boarding. I pried open the hatch and allowed myself a private smirk before ducking inside.

The Bandit was as I had left it. No one had bothered to try and impound it or strip it for parts so that was good. Personally, I doubted that anyone would want to, considering the condition everything was in. I started safety checks while I waited for Nightshade to board, and then, once satisfied that the Scrap Bandit wouldn’t explode during ignition, I headed back to the cockpit. Nightshade was waiting for me there.

“There’s a hull breach in the cockpit.” He said.

“Ya don’t say.” I replied, while strapping on my WAND.

“Why... is there a hull breach in the cockpit?”

“I like the view?”

Something inside him snapped. I don’t know if it was the messy state of things, the disrepair of everything in the ship, or the design of the ship itself. Seeing Nightshade visibly perturbed while looking around felt... vindicating, entertaining even. I half expected him to start cleaning when I wasn’t looking.

“How... how can you fly this thing! This is insane!”

“Hey just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean it’s not functional.” It wasn’t, but that I kept that bit to myself. He didn’t need to know that anyway, after all he was the pony who dragged me into this. I pulled one of the straps taught and began to feel a familiar tingle in my head. At least my WAND still worked. I started flipping switches with it as I went through my usual activation routine. Simultaneously, I floated my helmet out of my suit and slipped it on. I heard a telltale click, and relaxed. Once more, the world became muffled and tinny, processed through the speakers in the helmet.

“This thing is... is...”

“Trust me,” I said through the suit’s speakers, “whatever you’re about to say, I’ve said it before, on many more occasions than you might realize. Sure the Bandit needs a little TLC... okay a lot of TLC, but it works. Just trust me on this okay?” I said, hitting the ignition. The ship shuddered, emitting a low hum before it jolted, and all the interior lights died.

Grunting, I gave the main console a good kick. Immediately, the power returned. Nightshade gawked.

“We’re going to die...” He mumbled. More probable words had never been said.

“This was your idea.” I grinned but he couldn’t see it. “Again, you’ll want to suit up, The air in here gets a bit thin once we’re out in the black.” Nightshade took another fast glance at the viewport and then rapidly wriggled into his suit. I focused on the pilot harness, making sure it was nice and secure before I even attempted to undock . A few moments later I felt a tap on my withers. I looked over to Nightshade who was dressed and pointing a hoof at his helmet.

“Use short-band. Frequency Sierra, one dot five-niner.” I said. Nightshade nodded and pushed a few buttons on his sleeve with his hoof.

“Thanks.” He said. His voice sounded tinny through the radio.

“No problem. We can talk like this, though, you might want to head back into the corridor while we’re moving. I don’t want you flying out the viewport if we take a hard turn.”

“That’s a risk?”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Okay then.” Nightshade looked once at the open viewport and then back at me. He shook his head and then muttered something so low I couldn’t even hear it over the radio. He started futzing around with his sleeve controls and my WAND beeped with new instructions.

“These are the coordinates for the downed ship. The sooner we get there the better.” He said.

I nodded.

“let’s get moving then.”

Very, very carefully, I eased us out of the dock, and started toward the entrance. Traffic, of course, was terrible. This time, however, I had a secret weapon: favors. I helped a smaller ship get into the fray and, low and behold, one of the others decided to help me in return. I was out of the hangar in five minutes. Close calls be damned, I could get used to that. I took us outside the docking perimeter and checked the coordinates. Surprisingly, they were nearby, just two jumps into deep space. How anyone could go down so close to safety was anypony’s guess, but at least the trip would be short.

I charged the Sparkle drive, and off we went.

---

Two jumps and a little over two hours later, we landed on grid. Well, almost. A quick scan after the jump finished revealed that we were about 150 kilometers off target, a fair distance, but one that we could easily make on thrusters without having to power up the drive again. Deciding to let the Sparkle drive cool, I brought the ship about, and from there we made our way to the job site. What we found, however, was not pretty.

From the distance the ship looked as if it was still intact, a valuable, salvageable husk that would have made Junkyard drool in a previous life, and might well have guaranteed I would be paid for that day’s labor. As we closed the distance however, I could tell something was off. More and more details came into view, and as the damage became more visible, I started noticing the tiny specks of color surrounding it. A sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach, churning harder and harder with each kilometer we covered.

We had reached the site of a slaughter, and judging from the bodies, a recent one. Feet wide holes riddled the sides of the ship where large energy weapons had punched through its armor, slagging the ship’s thrusters and peeling away its armor plating. Great black scorch marks lined its hull near fractured craters of missile impacts, and pieces of armor hung in the black where they had chipped off, as well as miscellaneous debris from the ship’s ruined internal structure. The ship had snapped in two under the barrage. The front half of the cargo ship had canted sharply away from the hull, forming a ripped gap between its fore and aft sections, shredding open the main cabin and exposing its ruined hull structure and vital subsystems.

In the space around the wreck, debris floated everywhere: Tools, detritus, blackened armor pieces, and ponies. Lots of ponies. Very, very dead ponies. Their vacuum mutilated bodies drifted along with the wreckage in a slow, tumbling parade, while the light of the red sun cast shadows in sharp relief against the slowly rotating husk.

I stared, mute before the carnage.

“You seem surprised.” Nightshade said as he finished squeezing through the hatch to the main access corridor. “I thought you would be used to this by now.”

I shot him a dirty glare, lessened by the helmet. At least he could see my eyes in the light.

“I didn’t sign up to go running around in graveyards Nightshade.” Not that I wanted to sign up in the first place, come to think of it.

“To be fair, I did say the ship was attacked.”

“You didn’t mention no one survived.”

“That wasn’t in my information. Remember, I’m on this mission too. Look.” He pointed out the viewport and I followed his hoof. A spot on the wreck caught my attention as it rotated. Cylindrical pods sat in bays set into the ship’s underbelly. Several had split open, but were thankfully unoccupied. Two of them were missing entirely.

“So a few did escape.” I hoped.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter to us if they did, better for us if they didn’t.”

“That’s awfully callous.”

“If you knew what these ponies were trying to do, I don’t think you’d be so sympathetic.”

“What, were they criminals?” I asked.

“You’ll see. I’ll show you once we’re onboard.”

“What do you mean, ‘onboard?’ I thought we were just grabbing the cargo!”

“Right,” he said, “and to do that we need to get onboard.”

“Like hell we’re boarding that thing. I can just use the salvaging drones. We’ll be done in a few hours.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, we can’t use drones. They’ll damage what we need.”

“Then we leave the cargo bay intact, what’s the problem?”

“We need the shipping manifest.” Which the drones would destroy when it dismantled the onboard computers. Crap.

“Ugh... fine,” I sighed. An image of his grin floated through my head and I twitched, grumbling obscenities under my breath.

I pulled the Bandit alongside the wreck, getting as close as I dared without risking collision with major debris, and then I parked us in the wreck’s shadow. I flicked a switch to shut off the running lights, and then killed the interior lighting as well. As soon the lights winked out absolute darkness set in until our eyes adjusted to the ambient starlight. I relaxed, knowing that we were now, for the most part, invisible.

“We’re set.” I said, finally powering down the ship.

“Alright then, I’ll meet you outside.” Nightshade squeezed back through the hatch, leaving me alone in the cockpit.

I unlocked my harness and floated freely for a minute while I stretched and oriented myself. Then, after squeezing through the hatch, I grabbed a pair of cutters and a few charges from auxiliary storage below deck, before meeting Nightshade out on the hull.

“I’ve got the equipment. Ready to go?”

“Yeah, but... are you sure you can’t get us closer?” Nightshade said. Had I not done this for seven straight years I would have shared his unease. I had parked us a safe distance from the wreck, or at least safe enough for remote salvaging. The space between us and the wreck was little more than 100 feet, but even at that distance one had to be careful. A slight miscalculation in a jumps angle could significantly alter your trajectory, and missing the target entirely would mean a very, very long flight home.

“We’ll be fine.” I said.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“On three. One.”

“Two.”

“Three.” Disengaging my magnets, I gently kicked off toward the wreck, and watched the relative safety of the Scrap Bandit disappear beneath me. Progress was slow, our approach hindered by the cloud of debris and fractured armor plating. I used the smaller pieces to make gentle corrections to my trajectory, narrowly missing one of the larger blackened armor plates in the process. After five minutes of free flight, I touched down, activating my magnets and securing myself to the hull.

I took one last glance back at the Bandit. The ship was barely visible against the stars, a dark silhouette against the starry backdrop. Silently, I watched as the Scrap Bandit slid away, disappearing over the edge of the wreck’s rotating. I saw Nightshade land a short distance away from me. He had landed off target, but he had landed. That was a start at least.

“Com Check.” Nightshade said, trotting up to me.

“Clear.”

“Clear as well. Good. Head to the breach and we’ll split up from there. Judging by the damage it might be best if one of us takes the bridge section while the other preps the cargo for delivery.”

“So who goes where?” I asked.

“I’ll take the bridge. I need to know if the Captain had a copy of the shipping manifest.”

“Okay. I’ll secure the cargo then.”

“Sounds good, but check the other rooms on the way. Tell me about anything you find. I’ll meet you in the cargo hold once we’re finished.”

“Alright.”

We started along the hull of the ship, being careful not to brush up against any of the shrapnel remaining from the ship’s destruction. I moved with wary attention on the pieces of twisted armor plating that hung in the void around the ship. Brushing up against one of the sharp edges would mean a suit rupture, and a ruptured suit was fatal in any environment. As we neared the breach, Nightshade split off, taking one of the cutters along with a couple charges. I approached my assigned section and peered over the edge.

From up close the damage was worse than I had expected. Entire sections of the deck had collapsed, either broken down before the artificial gravity gave out or simply caved in by weapons impact. The corridor to the bridge was destroyed and wreckage from its internal structure, shredded in the hull breach, threatened to cleanly chop our suits into bits. Getting inside the ship would require me to make some adjustments.

I retrieved an energy charge from my pack and pressed it into the cutter, drawing back the slide to activate it. The hot end of the tool lit up, magical energy flaring to a blinding blue-white along its cutting edge. Across the breach, I could see Nightshade doing the same.

I started my cuts to clear away the sharper offenders, welding down the pieces of hull that were too sharp to pass safely and clearing away the remaining debris with my WAND. Eventually, I created a hole large enough for me to safely slip through and move to a piece of deck that floated freely just below my position. I hopped to it, and from there, I made a careful jump into the main body of the starship. I landed on a door, and then walked up the walls for a better angle.

The deck I had landed on was relatively clear of debris and, for the most part, intact. Reinforced struts lined either side of the entrance. It was an entrance to an open corridor, likely part of the passageway leading to the bridge. The door at the end was blocked by a collapsed beam, but with the charge remaining in the cutter, I made short work of it. Afterward, the charge died and I ejected it, stowing the depleted cartridge alongside the fresh ones. The short band crackled back to life.

“I’m penetrating the bridge now.” Nightshade said. “It looks like it was hit hard. I don’t know if I’ll find anything here.”

“Alright.” I attempted to use the door control. Predictably, nothing happened. “I’m about to enter the aft section. I’ll meet you in the cargohold to prep the cargo for transport.”

“Copy.” He said.

I tried the door control once again hoping for a change, but my luck hadn’t improved. Sighing, I started looking for the manual override. I searched for a panel near the door, while clearing aside the remaining debris with my WAND, and after a few moments I found it. I popped it open and a few wheel cranks later, the door cracked, and I heard the sound of gas rushing by. I let the environment bleed off, and then cranked the door open enough to squeeze through.

I had entered a tight corridor connected to the main deck of the ship. Several unlabeled doors split off to the sides and back while a hatch labeled maintenance sat on the floor next to the door. The door at the end of the of the hall was labeled ‘Engineering’. Recalling the damage I had seen earlier, I made a mental note to stay out of there.

I picked the first door on the left and cranked it open to investigate. Looking back, I should have picked a different door.

I had entered crew berthing, which I quickly learned had taken a direct hit from the energy weapon. A large portion of the room had been slagged, and the rest had been seared black from the heat. Worse yet, ponies had been inside at the time. The remains of several dead corpses floated where the blast hadn’t hit them. Of those who were near the impact, charred pieces of them remained welded to the floor. I gagged.

“How is progress?” Nightshade asked over the radio. Silently, I thanked him for the distraction.

“I-I haven’t reached it yet. I’m poking around the other sections to make sure we don’t miss what we’re looking for. Anything on your end?”

“No. Most of the bridge is locked down or wiped. I tried hacking in but the encryption is too heavy for what I’ve got. I’ll keep searching here. Keep looking around for that manifest on your end. I found the captain but he didn’t have it on him.”

And now I had to sort through corpses to find information. Great.

I sighed.

“Understood. I’ll keep an eye out.” Gritting my teeth, I set about searching.

Unfortunately for me, none of the ponies had what I was looking for. Everything inside the room had either been destroyed or melted. Feeling more than a little sick, I left for one of the other doors in the p-way.

The next room was not as bad, and judging by the equipment, I had stumbled across the comm station. The terminal looked to be fried, but from the icon on my AR screen the damage had been limited to the monitor. The computer was still online, and to my astonishment, unlocked. That was where my luck stopped, however. The entirety of the computer’s database had been wiped. All that was left was a cryptic message:

20JUN4131 21:09:57 - Intercepted by hostile element while en-route to objective. Clean Slate initiated. Aborting mission.

“The hell?”

“What’s up?” Nightshade asked.

“I just found the comms computer. The monitor’s shot, but I’ve got the data pulled up on my WAND.”

“Awesome! What did you find?”

“Nothing, just some message about a failed mission and a clean slate.... wait.” I checked the comm history instead, pulling up several pages worth of information. It wouldn’t give me any details other than when messages had been sent, but it did list what kind of transmissions were sent and, lucky for me, it seemed to be unaltered. Most of the entries were short transmissions, some readout updates, and a few other inane details. I filtered through the results and stopped near the final entries.

“Odd, they never sent a distress signal...” I said.

Silence reigned on the radio.

“I’m coming to your section. I don’t think I’m going to find the manifest on the bridge.”

“Alright... but I need to ask. What’s with this ship? If they were under attack why didn’t they send a distress signal?”

“They were probably waiting for help to arrive.”

“Kinda of a stupid move if you ask me.”

“Not if you’re trying to avoid the law it’s not.”

“So they were criminals.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “say... what was that last part of what you said again?”

“Uh...” I thought hard. “The distress signal?”

“No before that.”

“Clean slate?”

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong? Is that supposed to mean they wiped all the drives or something?” I asked.

“No... it means they’re coming back.”

Oh crap.

“We’d better hurry,” he continued, “we can’t afford to waste time.”

“Sounds great, I’ll go power up the Bandit and we can get the hell out of here.” I turned back toward the entrance.

“No.”

“What?”

“We can’t leave without the manifest.”

“Why not? It’s just one lousy shipment! I’m sure your client can survive a damn loss.”

“It’s not about bits, Horizon!”

“Then what is it about?”

“It... Look, If we leave, I lose my reputation, and you can forget about finding more work.”

“Then fuck work! I’m not going to do this if it’s gonna get me killed!”

"Funny, I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“Funny, I didn’t take you for stupid! Oh, wait. Who dragged me into a gang war without telling me what the hell was going on? Who landed me in shit up to my ears and dragged me around kingdom come only to learn I wasn’t what the fuck he wanted? Hell, with your record I should have seen this shit coming! It’s no wonder you got your friend killed!”

“SHUT UP.”

“No! I don’t want to die!”

“Then consider this a favor.”

“Fuck your favors!”

“Horizon you will fucking do this or I will kill you myself!” Nightshade roared.

And he could. A small voice in my head reasoned with me. Grinding my teeth, I bit back an insult. The line was still open.

“Horizon?”

Oh... fuck him. Just... FUCK him.

“See you in the cargo hold.” I growled, cutting the line and stomping back into the hallway. Manifest, fucking manifest, why was the damn manifest so fucking important? Where was I? Right, going to the stupid fucking cargohold. The stupid hallway was as empty as ever, but with a deadline now pressing in the back of my mind. I searched the remaining rooms with renewed urgency. The room directly across from comms turned out to be an empty infirmary, which left the door to engineering at the end of the corridor. As I approached my WAND started popping off warnings about trace amounts of radiation and I backed off to avoid getting contaminated.

Great, the sparkle drive was damaged. Well, scratch that room off the list.

That left one direction: Down.

I opened the hatch to the maintenance deck and floated down the ladderwell.

Deck two caught me off guard. I had been expecting something much like the first deck, another short corridor and maybe some rooms, but instead all I found was a simple maintenance bay full of spare parts and welding charges and, to my surprise, a working airlock. The power to lower decks was still active judging by the functional emergency lighting on the floor, which led me to several rapid conclusions:

One, the ship still had power.
Two, judging by the ship layout I had seen so far, the sparkle drive was also powered as well.
Three, radiation meant the sparkle drive was significantly damaged and finally;
Four, broken sparkle drive, plus power, plus one strong jolt, equals one very, very bad day.

We were exploring a time bomb.

“Horizon, I’m inside the aft section now. Did you find the cargo hold?”

“I think so.” I said, suddenly feeling very small.

“Good, where are you?”

“Below decks.”

“Got it, I see you.”

A moment later Nightshade tapped me on my withers. I ignored him. Part of me wanted to buck him, the other half just wanted to be out of there. Another, strongly motivated part of me wanted to piss myself, but I reasoned that last one wouldn’t be appropriate for the time being. That, and I didn’t feel like taking another shower.

“This is?” Nightshade said, indicating the airlock.

“Only place left.”

“Time’s tickin then.”

Together we entered the airlock, and I keyed the door control. The door closed behind us, and then the airlock door malfunctioned, cutting the power to its controls and locking both of us inside. I let out a low, frustrated groan and kicked it. All I got for the effort was an aching knee.

I found the manual override and started cranking. As the other door cracked open, air started flooding the airlock and sound returned with a furious roar. Suddenly I could hear everything. The creak of the ship, the low ghastly moan of the metal, the ever-present hum of the engines, all of it assaulted my ears, building in volume as the air pressure normalized. I opened the door wide enough to fit through, and then stepped inside behind Nightshade.

Unlike the rest of the ship, the cargo hold was spacious, to a point. The ship had been packed to the brim with cargo containers of every size and description, all lined up in stacked rows, each tethered to the floor with thick steel cables connected to frames set into the floor and ceiling.

The entire section was still powered. The amber emergency lighting lit the walkways between the containers while the light of the red sun shone in from small viewports set into to walls, casting sharp shadows across the walls and floor.

As I stepped across the threshold my WAND started popping out warnings. There was radiation inside, mostly likely bleedthrough from the damaged engines on the upper level, and... something else. I checked the WAND for the environmental readout. According to the readings, there was some kind of poison in the air. Thankfully we were protected in our suits, but it would mean decontamination once we got back to Winter’s Edge.

“That’s weird.” I said.

“What is?”

“There’s some kind of poison in the air.”

“One of the cargo containers must have ruptured in the attack.”

“They were transporting poisonous gas?”

“It’s not gas.”

I gave Nightshade a blank stare. I doubted he could see it but he seemed to read my body language.

“Come here and I’ll show you.” Nightshade casually trotted over to the one of the containers that had broken open during the attack and pried away the rest of the lid, letting it float alongside the container in the empty space. He stepped aside, and I stepped up, peering over the container’s edge while warnings blared into my ears.

Apples. The container was full of apples.

“Now do you see why we need that manifest?”

Poisoned apples. The thought clicked. I filtered through the environmental readings on my WAND. Something was in the air but as Nightshade had said it was not a gas. It was something it identified as a biohazard, some kind of contaminant that was sticking to exposed surfaces and hanging in the air. The apples were not poisoned; the apples had plague.

“Goddesses...” I breathed, revelation taking hold.

“These apples were going somewhere,” Nightshade said, “and if they manage to mix in a batch of bad apples at the right station...”

I did the math in my head. A single shipment of apples could be spread across several colonies. If they mixed in a batch of bad apples, those could infect the local food supplies and then spread to marketplaces. From there, the epidemic would spread, and spread, and spread. Millions would die. No wonder he was so pissed at me for wanting to leave.

“We need that manifest so we know where these were headed. This probably wasn’t the only ship headed there.”

“But, all the computers have been wiped, right?”

“Not all the computers.” His voice held a hint of a smile. He pulled a small tablet out of his pack and held it up for me to see.

“I picked this off of the bridge before leaving. As far as I can tell it hasn’t been wiped yet. It’s encrypted but my contact back home should be able to take care of that. Combined with the data you pulled from the comm relay we should have enough to crack the security.”

“So what’s missing?”

“The manifest. This won’t have that information on it, just their orders, maybe a name we can track.”

“Where do we find it?”

“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me. What do you know about shipping?”

“Practically nothing. I’m a salvager, shipping is for wealthier pilots with bigger ships.”

Nightshade groaned.

Shaking my head, I racked my brain for everything I could think of. Any relevant data, things I had heard or seen in my experience. My experience as a pilot had revolved mostly around salvaging, all of my information on the shipping industry came secondhand, mostly from bucks hanging around the bars on L6-C.

Shipping, shipping... cards!

“Shipping cards!” I proclaimed.

“What?”

“Back on L6, I remember hearing a shipper complaining about the ID cards on his cargo,” I explained. “He was pissed off because the cards said he had deviated from his intended route, and his employer wasn’t going to pay him for the extra time.”

Shipping cards, tracking chips which would record your stops in the galaxy, and your intended destinations.

Nightshade began rapidly pressing buttons on the open container.

“This one’s been wiped.” He announced after a few seconds.

“If they were under attack they wouldn’t have time to wipe all of them would they?”

“Probably not... no. And one of every few would have to pass a health inspection at the docks too.”

“Which means that at least one of these crates is probably full of fresh apples.”

Decoys! I thought.

“So we need to find one of the decoy containers and pull its card!”

“Exactly.”

I took wing in the stale air, zipping from container to container, looking for inspection marks while Nightshade made his rounds down below. I don’t know how many of the damn things I checked, but eventually I found one. Tucked in a corner by the viewports was a small cargo container marked with a large white stamp, a three apple cutie mark with the caption: “Approved: 19JUN4131.”

“I found one!” I called out. Within moments Nightshade was next to me, hacking into it.

“It’s... good! It’s got what we need.”

“Great! Now let’s get the fuck out of here.” I pried the card from the container using my WAND, levitating it into my pack and turning back toward the airlock. I felt a hoof land on my withers, stopping me.

“Too late...” Nightshade announced, peering through one of the nearby viewports. One by one, the sunlight winked out from the windows as a great shadow crept across the deck, plunging the room into the dim, amber hue of the emergency lighting.

“They’re back.”
---
88% remaining...

Special thanks to the members of Silly Filly Studios for helping me edit this, especially to Zedrin and Rev for their feedback!

Comments

[BlueColton]

"People hated me because I stank."

So is that what all the cold shoulders were about, not some racial prejudice?

Your descriptive settings and attention to detail have got me thinking? What shows have you watched or books have you read to help you create this world? It's one of the most imaginative I've seen, a nice break from the usual fantasy of Ponyville.

So some pony is trying to spread a plague across the galaxy? To what purpose?

[xoid]

The remains of several dead corpses floated where the blast hadn’t hit them.

Dead corpses, ’eh? As opposed to live ones?

[Lancerlot]

7211954
Well, the undead would certainly have an advantage in space exploration, after all.

[Charlemane]

8278597
I think politicians might qualify as living corpses.

[Blewfire]

I think they mite be a little bucked.