Salvation

by voroshilov

A Mysterious Signal

Penumbra had managed a whole hour of sleep before the Luminary awoke her with a shrieking ping that echoed all throughout the ship. By the time she had clawed her way out of bed and onto the bridge, Ablazed Glory, Shining Armour - a fact she still hadn’t quite gotten used to - pulsing rapidly on her chest, was halfway through decoding a set of coordinates, which the Luminary had just received.

“Captain,” the Luminary said, Penumbra giving a tired growl in response, “a coded broadcast infiltrated our communication array, I am attempting to ascertain the source and contents now.”

Ablazed Glory gave a quiet chuckle. “It’s not doing very well. Something within this transmission is scrambling the Luminary, as well as half of the systems on the ship. Whatever it is, the AI doesn’t like it.”

“Any information on where it’s come from?” Penumbra asked, carefully rubbing the sleep from her eyes with a talon, “or who sent it? Or what it is? Or any information whatsoever relating to it in any way?”

Ablazed Glory moved aside slightly to allow her to see the coordinates she was halfway through generating. “There were coordinates attached, which I’m sorting out now. I was hoping you’d help with the rest of the message, but seeing you now makes me doubt that help will come.”

Penumbra gave a sarcastic snarl, her serpentine tongue darting out between her teeth for a second - a rather infantile gesture all things considered. “Guarantee I can get the message decoded before you finish those coordinates.”

The burning alicorn turned her head slowly, squinting as she did. She mimed pulling down a pair of glasses with her middlemost talon, before giving a wry smile and turning back to her console. “You’re on. You lose, you buy me a tonne of chocolate from Arcadius.”

With a chuckle, Penumbra pulled up a console, the message’s contents attached. “Fine. You lose and you’re on cleaning duty for the next month.”

“With your habits, it’ll take me a month just to do your quarters.”

The two alicorns laughed in sync, with Penumbra finally turning to regard the encoded message, which the Luminary had been so vexed by.

It was a language she had seen before, though she couldn’t immediately remember where. It was formed of a runic alphabet, with no individual symbol the same as any other. It took a few seconds for each of the symbols to form into letters of her own alphabet, Ponish, from her homeworld.

Her entire body twitched involuntarily, as she realised what exactly she was reading. She had seen the language before as it had been designed by Emperor Nicholas, only able to be read by a specific group: his students. Could it have been sent by the Emperor? Surely not, though perhaps it had been sent long ago? Or was part of some system of his? For most others, there would have been no way that they would have been able to know Penumbra would be aboard the Retaliator at that exact time, but Emperor Nicholas had proven himself to be more than capable of prescience.

The message was fairly simple, addressed to Penumbra directly, telling her to come to the coordinates attached on the message, with the sender expressing a desire to meet with her “at last.”

As she read it over a second time, Ablazed Glory muttered, “that can’t be right,” turning to face Penumbra, she gave a confused look, “these coordinates.” She remained in thought for a second. “They lead to intergalactic space.”

“Are you sure you got them correct?”

“Absolutely, I’ve double and triple checked. Shining says I’m correct too.” She gave a glance to the pulsing gem in her breastplate. “But, extra-galactic coordinates are notoriously fluid, no one should be directing us to static coordinates if they want us to find them, not out there, anyway.”

Penumbra tapped her talon absentmindedly. “How exact were they?”

“To the lightyear.” Ablazed Glory tapped a button on the console behind her, a map of the galaxy, complete with the surrounding darkness, appeared on the viewscreen, zooming quickly to a perfectly square point in space. “Two hundred and eighty-two parsecs from the Meridian System. A, supposedly, completely static point.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand why they were so exact, if this is a ship we’re looking for, it’s likely several light years away from that point by now. We’d still be able to find them, naturally, it’s just that official practice is to account for drift and these haven’t done that. They’re too precise. You remember the note I wrote you? Those coordinates showed an area over a thousand lightyears across, these show one that’s only a lightyear.”

Penumbra nodded - though more out of polite courtesy than a thorough and understanding agreement. Ablazed Glory may have been far more knowledgeable than her in regards to such issues, but it did not take an expert to understand what she meant. In any other circumstance, she would have suspected a trap, but the fact the message was written in the Emperor’s language had overridden Penumbra’s usual caution. “We’re checking them out,” she said, giving an order where none was really needed, “can you sort out the Luminary?”

“Easily.” Ablazed Glory turned back to her console. “Luminary, transfer the message onto a physical drive, then delete all memory of it from the systems.”

With a shrill beep, a small, square disk popped out of a terminal, which Ablazed Glory grabbed in an orange bubble of telekinesis and dropped onto another desk. “Now, set a course to these coordinates.” Her near instant input - a testament to her skill with a keyboard - was answered by steady movement outside the viewscreen.

“Rift generators online,” the now fixed Luminary stated, mercifully back to its calm volume, “initiating Rift transfer on command.”

Ablazed Glory clicked her talons. “Ready when you are.”

Penumbra reached out into the void with her magic, more out of habit than anything conscious. As usual, she found nothing, though something about the expanse was foreboding to her, rather than the usual emotionless, empty silence. It was almost like a large dark room she couldn’t see into.

“Engage.” Barely a second after her order, the tear into the Rift opened ahead of the vessel, with the surrounding darkness soon being consumed by the swirling maelstrom of the realm beneath.