• Published 3rd Aug 2020
  • 1,395 Views, 125 Comments

The Black Between the Stars - Rambling Writer



Applejack is trapped aboard a disintegrating, alien-infested space station, monstrous creatures hounding her every move. She's alone. She's confused. She's tired. She's scared. And she's not going down without a fight.

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15 - This End Up

Applejack battered on the glass. Screamed. Begged. Sobbed. No response. Trixie stayed right where she was, unmoving.

0:09.

She was going to die barely twenty feet from her closest ally because they couldn’t speak.

For one wild moment, Applejack considered firing into the glass in frustration. But even if she hadn’t been out of ammo, it would’ve been a stupid idea. Too many risks and Trixie still wouldn’t have heard it.

Applejack pounded one last time on the glass and stopped. The exertion of her breathing echoed inside her helmet and she suddenly realized she was sweating when she wanted to scratch between her ears. Her throat was scratchy and her lungs were empty. She wasn’t going to get anywhere by punching the glass and screaming. No, she needed to think. Like that was going to be easy.

0:08.

So. What did she have? Nothing that made noise that could get through. A gun with no ammo. A stun gun. A wrench. Her suit. Anything built into it, like her TranScribe, or her flashlight, or her oxygen supply, or-

Her flashlight.

Applejack flipped it on immediately and waved it back and forth through the window. The white light danced across the walls and over the furniture, dim against the interior lights but definitely there. It was her only shot. Maybe, just maybe, if Trixie saw it-

Trixie moved. She glanced at the spot. Applejack stopped making big, sweeping motions and went to little wiggles. Then back to big waves. Clearly artificial. Clearly something worth investigating. Clearly. Please.

Trixie slowly turned around, keeping her flamethrower up. When she saw Applejack, her aura vanished and her jaw dropped. Applejack laughed aloud and waved. “Get over here!” she yelled. “Please!”

Moving like she was sleepwalking, Trixie stumbled over to the window. Once she managed to close her mouth, she tilted her head back and forth at Applejack, then breathed onto the glass and traced something in the fog with her hoof, big and clear: ⸮ႱA She frowned, rubbed it out, and traced something else, a bit more wobbly: AJ?

Applejack quickly nodded, exaggerating the motion so Trixie could see it. Trixie smiled, but it was short-lived. She put a hoof on the glass, staring out at Applejack, her expression flat. Her ears twitched. Applejack could see dozens of thoughts running behind her eyes, but she didn’t know what any of them were. She put her own hoof on the glass, opposite Trixie’s, and they looked at each other through a foot-thick sheet of quartz glass that might as well have been a mile of steel.

Then Trixie raised her head like she’d been hit in the butt with a taser. She grinned, made some “wait here” motions, and darted away without waiting for a response.

“Trixie!” Applejack yelled. “You’d better-” Better what? Trixie knew what she was doing.

0:07.

Hopefully.

They didn’t have analog clocks up here, only digital ones, but as Trixie failed to return, Applejack could hear a second hand ticking away. Tick. Tick. Tick. And with every tick, Zecora got-

Applejack!” Trixie yelled through the earpiece. “Are you okay?

Applejack nearly laughed out loud in relief. “I- Long story. Where are you?”

Another security checkpoint, just like the reactor. Why haven’t you come in yet?

“I tried, but, Trixie, the airlocks won’t open. There’s some- I dunno, some kinda lockdown or somethin’.”

What? I… I suppose that MIGHT be possible, if you wanted to absolutely keep something from getting out of the station…

“Thing is, there’re aliens already out here already. Killed one of ’em.”

Wait, what? How-

Never saw anythin’ like it inside. Some kinda telepath — is that the word?” Applejack rubbed her head against the inside of the helmet as best she could. “Mental magic or whatever. Only one I saw out here, though.”

0:06.

Trixie’s thoughtful humming was briefly too much for the system to take and her voice dissolved into a haze of static. “That’s-

“Listen, Trixie, there’s someone else out here. Zecora. She’s-”

Oh! Trixie knows her. She was quite smart and unorthodox. Is-

“She’s runnin’ low on air. Real low, she’s only got like five minutes left. I-”

Trixie’s voice immediately dropped a few registers. “Are you still at the window?” she asked quickly.

“Yeah, but-”

Hang on, Trixie is finding you an airlock.” Her typing sounded like a machine gun being fired. “Okay, the airlock nearest to here is… go about three stories down and a hundred feet to your right, if you’re looking inside. You should see signs. Trixie will open that one and we can meet up.

“Thanks, I-”

MOVE!

Applejack didn’t bother with a goodbye. She bounced down the station, following Trixie’s directions. Soon, she spotted the airlock door, buried a short ways into the infrastructure: Arboretum. Perfect. She glanced at her TranScribe: 0:05. This was going to be close.

A network of lines spiderwebbed out from it, each labelled with a different module. Applejack followed the one marked Shuttle Bay and it took her right back to Zecora. She was resting limply against a bulkhead, probably dead tired. At least she wasn’t dead.

“Hey, Zecora!” Applejack eagerly. “We’re gettin’ an airlock open. You ready?”

No response. Zecora was barely even moving.

“Zecora?” Applejack jetted up next to her and squinted through her visor. “C’mon, let’s get movin’.”

Inside her helmet, Zecora’s eyes were barely open, and the only sign that she was even still alive was a slight twitching of the lips as she breathed.

Applejack’s blood ran cold. She couldn’t be… They still had time. “No, no, c’mon, y’ still got-” She looked at Zecora’s TranScribe, glowing bright red with a warning.

WARNING! OXYGEN DEPLETED! END YOUR EVA IMMEDIATELY!

“Oh, Celestia, no…” Applejack shook Zecora; her eyes fluttered weakly, but didn’t open. “No, no, no, don’t die on me now…”

Without thinking, Applejack grabbed at the connector hose for her air tank and screwed both sides of the connection shut. She sealed off Zecora’s suit and popped the empty air tank off, tossing it away. Her hooves shaking, terrible thoughts running through her mind, Applejack pressed her old tank into its spot on Zecora’s suit. Air hose connected. Tank open. And in two seconds, the warning on Zecora’s TranScribe vanished.

Almost immediately, Zecora’s breathing became deeper, more like she was sleeping. She blinked twice and groaned, sending a hail of static across the intercom. She coughed weakly, strongly, and gasped. She didn’t look alert just yet, but she had air.

Applejack grinned as her heart rate dropped. “Alright,” she whispered, praying the way her air was suddenly hot and damp was just her imagination. The air in her suit would last. It had to. “C’mon. Let’s get you safe.” She wrapped her forelegs around Zecora’s trunk and carefully jetted away.

As they slowly scooted around the station following the relevant line, Zecora began stirring more and her breathing grew stronger. By the time they reached the arboretum, Zecora was awake enough to object to being carried around. Applejack released her and squinted at the screen for the airlock’s computer, shining dark red: Lockdown in effect. No usage of the airlocks is permitted. Swell.

Zecora patted down her suit and found her oxygen tank. She glanced at Applejack’s suit, at where her oxygen tank ought to have been, and twitched. “You gave to me your air supply?” she asked. Her voice was still weak, but not as bad as before. “I… Thank you, but I must ask: why?

“You were gonna die,” Applejack said without looking at her. “Simple as that.” She tapped the airlock button, just because she had to. No response. “I figure I got enough air to wait out a few minutes.” She did her best to ignore the way the warmth inside her helmet definitely wasn’t her imagination any more.

Was it going to be a few minutes, though? How long could it be to unlock an airlock? Trixie had been able to hack the reactor from a computer a long ways away. Was it harder to do airlocks for some reason? She was smart. She was fast. She ought to have them open by now. Unless she’d run into something she hadn’t expected.

Or had something happened to her?

“I got a friend,” Applejack said, hiding the dread that had started gnawing at her. “Trixie. She’s real good with computers and she’s openin’ the airlocks up right now.”

The airlock status screen stayed firmly red.

This Trixie… She is able, yes? You think she’ll triumph ’gainst this test?

“Yeah,” Applejack replied, her mouth dry. “She’s beaten worse.”

The airlock didn’t open. Applejack’s heart pounded like a metronome, ticking away the seconds. The air in her suit got hotter, wetter.

Applejack nodded in an attempt to do something. “She can do it,” she said. “She-”

The screen suddenly flickered from red to green; Applejack stomped on the button without bothering to read anything and the airlock rumbled open. The pair quickly darted in and Zecora punched the button on the inside. As artificial gravity slowly came back on and they settled on the ground, the wind from inrushing air ruffled their suits. When the green light signifying full atmospheric pressure came on, Applejack immediately popped her helmet off and took sweet, sweet gulps of ordinary atmosphere. She was never going to take air for granted again. (And she didn’t even risk anything, not like Zecora had. Wuss.)

Zecora leaned against a wall, breathing heavily, tears dripping down her cheeks. She patted the wall like it was a treasured lover. “I thought for sure I’d die out there,” she said. “My thanks to you, oh pony fair.”

Applejack’s face immediately felt like it was on fire and she looked away. “Um. Thanks. Name’s Applejack.” She swallowed. “I, I ain’t really sure I’m ‘fair’, though.” She kept babbling to get the conversation off her. “ ’Sides, Trixie’s the one you should be thankin’, she’s the one that got this open.”

She frowned and tapped the inside door. “Took a bit longer than I thought, though.” Pause, shrug. “Mighta just been harder than she thought. I’m sure she’s fine.”

When the door opened, a burning changeling corpse toppled into the airlock.

By the time Applejack and Zecora had scurried away from it, it was already smothered, blasted by extinguisher foam. “Is it out?” Trixie’s voice said.

“I… believe so…” Blueblood’s voice said. Another extinguisher blast. “I certainly hope so.”

“Good.” Pause. “Wait. The door’s-”

“Trixie?” Applejack asked.

“Applejack?” Trixie jumped over the dead changeling, through the foam in the air, and into the lock. She was lightly splattered with changeling blood, but appeared unhurt. Her eyes lit up. “Applejack! You’re okay! And- Zecora!” She let out a giggle of relief. “Thank Celestia! I was worried- Do you know how hard it is to try to hack a computer while an alien is trying to bash your face in?”

“Eh… no?”

“Well, Trixie does. And yet she hacked it anyway.” Trixie wiped a single speck of dust from her foam-smeared uniform and smirked.

By now, most of the foam had fallen to the floor. Outside the airlock was a small bay for astronauts to get ready to enter space or enter the station proper. Blueblood was standing there, levitating a fire extinguisher at the group. He lowered it when he saw that they were safe and half-grinned nervously.

“I offer you my greatest thanks,” said Zecora. She pushed off the wall; her stance was a bit wobbly, but she was standing and was able to walk into the bay alone. “You’ve surely rescued both our flanks.”

“Don’t worry about it. Seriously, don’t, we’ve got more important things to worry about. Blueblood and Trixie are…” Trixie glanced at Blueblood.

“…in acceptable condition,” Blueblood said. His clothes had received several large tears, although he himself didn’t seem to be hurt besides a black eye and a small, already-scabbed cut across his cheek. His voice had also lost a few layers of pompousness. “We could be more intact. But we could also be less intact. At the moment, ‘intact’ seems as good as we can hope for.”

Trixie nodded and turned back to Applejack. “We’re doing fine, but we think we saw other ponies in the arboretum.”

Applejack’s heart jumped into her throat. It was easy to forget just how many ponies had been on board Golden Oaks before the changelings broke out, and yet, she hadn’t seen that many bodies. (“That many” bodies. What was this night doing to her?) Who knew how many ponies had survived?

“But we were busy trying to get to you,” Trixie continued. “If you reached the balcony and we weren’t around, we’d never meet up again. Also, we…” She shifted her weight around and her voice grew low. “We saw another alien in there. Not like the changelings. Something else.”

With Applejack’s luck, it’d be another one of those telepath things. At least she had solid ground under her now. On pure neuromod-induced habit, Applejack began reloading her shotgun. “Is the somethin’ else lead-proof?”

“I… Trixie does not think so.”

“Right. I’ll take a look, but you all wait here.” She pointed at Zecora. “You’re recoverin’-” At Trixie. “-you don’t know guns-” At Blueblood. “-and you… bduh…” Her voice faltered as she tried to think of a response that wasn’t incredibly offensive.

Then he snatched it right out of her mouth. “I’m Blueblood,” he said soberly. “I know of my reputation, thank you.”

“Ehm. Right.”

“I wouldn’t be of much help, in any case,” he continued. “I lack the, ah… strength of will that everypony- everyone else has. And I- I apologize for my- behavior earlier. It was a… defense mechanism. To keep myself from facing reality.” Pause. “It works in Canterlot.”

Applejack stared at him. This was Blueblood? If he’d been like this from the start, he would’ve been… more than tolerable. “W-well, uh…” So what was she supposed to say now? “You’re forgiven, I… guess. Ehm… Y’all stay here, and you two-” She pointed at Trixie and Blueblood. “-make sure Zecora’s fine.” She checked her shotgun out of habit, even though she’d already loaded it. Full up. “I’m goin’ out.”

“Stay safe out there,” Trixie said. “Just- stay safe.” Blueblood opened his mouth, but the most he could manage was a nod.

Applejack nodded back and turned to the exit. Deep breath, a roll of the shoulders, then she took her first steps back into the arboretum.


It had taken Applejack a few weeks on Golden Oaks to pin down why she liked the arboretum so much. The wide-open spaces? No, the lobby and shuttle bay had those. The plants? Maybe, but she could spend plenty of time in the habitation decks. The color? No, just about every place she worked had some nice color scheme. All of those? Not exactly. Why, then?

The smell.

It wasn’t even a specific smell; she just liked that it had a smell. Everywhere else on Golden Oaks was sterile, altogether much too clean. But the arboretum, with its vines and trees and flowers and all those being the point, could never be sterilized. And so, with each plant giving off its own scent, nowhere else on Golden Oaks felt quite so alive as the arboretum.

Knowing that, Applejack braced herself for a pile of dead bodies as she re-entered the arboretum. The universe would love screwing her over with the irony. Miraculously, she didn’t see any. No pony bodies, anyway; she could see a few changeling bodies, here and there, maybe a few blood splatters, but altogether, nothing terrible. An hour or two of cleaning, and it’d be like nothing happened.

The arboretum maybe wasn’t as big as the lobby, but could still fit three or four good-sized houses. It was a sprawling slope, covered with grass and trees, with the greenhouse up at the top. Applejack was about to risk calling out when a gunshot rang through the arboretum.

“Shut the roof!” somepony screamed from the greenhouse. Rainbow Dash? “Shut the roof!” BANG.

“The computer’s frozen, it- AUGH!”

“Lyra! No!” BANG. “Get away from-”

Something smashed and Rainbow shrieked, shrieked like Applejack had never heard before. She promptly bolted up the hill, toward the greenhouse. She was done sitting around.

As she approached the greenhouse, she immediately knew something was up: the doors were closed and, from the red light above them, locked. But the voices had clearly been coming from inside. Who would-

A vague shape smashed into the window next to the door: Rainbow Dash. Her uniform was in tatters, blood trickled from the side of her mouth, and the shattered remains of a shotgun hung from one of her legs. One of her wings had just been crushed and it dangled at her side in some twisted shape that was barely recognizable as a wing. Whimpering, Rainbow managed to push herself up. She happened to look out the window. And she spotted Applejack.

For a brief moment, the pair locked eyes. Then Rainbow screamed, “Applejack! Open the door!” She looked over her shoulder and her good wing beat fitfully at the air. “Now!

“What? Rainbow, what’s go-”

Openthedoor!” shrieked Rainbow. When she whirled around, her eyes were huge with terror. She banged fruitlessly at the glass. “Openthedooropenthedooropenthedoor!

“Opening!” Applejack ran to the greenhouse’s external computer and, with shaking hooves, opened up the services. It was a simple five-digit code to-

IT’S COMING!” Rainbow was pressing herself against the window, cowering down away from something.

“Workin’ on it!” Applejack punched in the numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2- Her hoof twitched at the worst possible moment and she hit a 5. Cursing, wiping her forehead down, she cleared the fields and started again. 0, 1, 1-

“No,” whimpered Rainbow. “P-please don’t-”

-2, 2. The console beeped and flashed an Unlocked message. “Got it!” Applejack darted back to the window. “Rainbow, I got-”

Her heart nearly stopped. Another telepathic alien was hovering over Rainbow, restricting her body and delicately caressing her head with its tentacles. Rainbow was struggling, but limply, and each thrash was weaker than the last. When she shuddered and went still, the telepath released her and set her down. But when she stood up and stiffly turned back around to face Applejack, her eyes had turned bright red, the whites were glowing green, and purple magic was trailing from them, smokelike. The telepath backed off, as if to survey its handiwork.

“R-Rainbow?” whispered Applejack.

Don’t get too close,” Rainbow choked out, “or we’re both dead.” Her face was oddly flat and her jaw was clenched shut, but her lips were still moving. She blinked; tears ran down her cheeks as her entire body shook.

The greenhouse door hissed open.