The Black Between the Stars

by Rambling Writer

21 - Dawn of the Hunter

Pumps chugged and ponies breathed, but no sound came from the opposite side of the door. Bon Bon was gone, as was whatever had taken her.

Maybe.

Every guard had their guns pointed at the door, Applejack included. But her aim was shaking back and forth as her heart pounded and she gasped, air moving in and out. It was over so fast, just a few seconds. Bon Bon had been there, then all of a sudden she wasn’t there anymore. What was that thing? Was it what Twilight had run from?

Spike slapped the floor with a hand. “E-everybody!” he yelled. “On your feet! We need to keep moving!” He couldn’t hide the shaking in his voice, not entirely.

Nopony complained as they got to their feet, but Applejack suspected they were just too scared for that. They all seemed quiet and oddly precise with their movements, like they were forcing themselves to move.

Applejack stood up, took a few long breaths, and turned around, getting a better look at the room they’d tumbled into. At least this one was lit. It was a broad, tall room, not unlike atmospheric maintenance. Much of the floor space was taken up by water tanks — truly enormous water tanks, several dozen feet across and more than three times that tall, each surrounded by a dense latticework of struts and girders to support the weight and connected to many, many pipes. Each tank had several panels to monitor and control it; it wouldn’t do to have the water contaminated, after all. On the far side of the room, Applejack could make out a door that looked more like an elevator door than the others she’d seen. Above them, not far below the (thankfully visible and well-illuminated) ceiling, ran a series of catwalks, connecting a control room with the water tanks.

Spike jerked a finger up. “There’s an exit up there,” he said gruffly. “That’s where we’re leaving.”

Spearhead opened his mouth as if to protest, paused, then closed it again, set his jaw, and shouldered his gun.

They’d started with seven people. Now they only had five: Applejack, Spike, Flash, Aegis, and Spearhead. The squad organized into an outward-facing wheel, every direction covered by someone. Applejack was facing “right”, relative to the direction they were traveling, but kept looking at the door they’d entered through. She suspected she also wasn’t the only one. Right on the other side of that…

But she heard nothing.

Somehow, it wasn’t very reassuring.

They zigged and zagged up a set of stairs to the catwalks. All the while, their hooves (or claws) clanked loudly on the metal. The stairs were narrow; their circle became a line and Applejack felt boxed in, constantly getting jostled onward until it was all she could do to keep up with everyone else.

They must’ve gone up seven or eight stories by the time they reached the catwalks and the floor was very far away. Swallowing, Applejack shuddered and resolved to not look down any more than she had to. Easier said than done, though, especially when their footsteps rang hollowly throughout the room and the echoes very clearly came from below them. She kept herself busy by reloading her shotgun.

The door wasn’t far, practically right next to the staircase and a control room. “I got the door,” Spearhead said gruffly. He took a step towards it.

Something clanged nearby; everybody whirled around, guns up, searching. Another clang, then another, and another. Applejack’s ears twitched this way and that, listening, listening. Was it the monster? It sounded big enough. But there was something off about the sounds. It was like they were… in the walls.

Then the pitch changed. It was above her and getting louder.

The thing was in the vents and it was getting closer.

Spearhead seemed to realize this at the same time Applejack did; in a panic, he bolted for the door, stomped the button to open it, and immediately dove on through.

Right into the waiting maws of a horde of drones.

They were sitting right beyond the doorframe, waiting. The second Spearhead was through, before anyone could react, they descended on him like a flood. Spearhead screamed as he went under, changeling after changeling bursting from the shadows. And for a moment, Applejack looked past the pile, and all she saw were more changelings. Watching them.

Her survival mode kicking on, she ungracefully lunged forward, landing on the floor just close enough to hit the button again. The door slammed shut, cutting off Spearhead’s dwindling screams, and Applejack shot the panel. That was how you sealed these sorts of doors in the movies, right? Right. Something banged hard against the other side of the door, again, then again, yet it stayed shut. Still, she shuffled back on her rump, keeping her shotgun on the door in case it opened.

It didn’t.

She bumped into Aegis; he helped her to her feet. “They were… waiting,” he whispered. “Like-”

Clang. It was right above them.

“Down the stairs, move!” yelled Spike. No organization this time; Applejack and Aegis dashed madly down. Spike and Flash, being lucky enough to have wings, simply leapt over the catwalk railings and fell, fluttering their wings just enough to keep pace with the groundbound ponies.

“They were waiting for us!” babbled Aegis as he stumbled down. “That- That was deliberate! It has to be! That monster was driving us into a trap!” It sounded like he was making excuses, trying to convince himself.

“That doesn’t matter!” yelled Spike.

“Doesn’t matter?” said Aegis. “We’ve got something smart enough to coordinate with other changelings and set traps for us, something that’s already killed two of us by itself, and you think it doesn’t matter?!”

“Technically, no, it doesn’t.”

By now, they’d all reached the ground floor. Aegis started pacing, staring at the ground, and muttering under his breath. Spike continued, “Even with that monster, the mission stays the same. We still need to get to Neurothaumatics and find that neuromod. We just- need to be more careful.”

“So… uh…” Applejack glanced up, her ears back. “I… guess I shouldn’ta shot that door?”

“That’s alright,” mumbled Spike. “We couldn’t’ve got through them all, anyway. We’ll- find another way around. This isn’t the only way through-”

Something slammed down into the ground next to one of the water tanks, not far from Aegis. Everyone whipped around, weapons up. But Applejack let out a breath of relief when she saw that it was just a spare oxygen canister. The impact with the floor had buckled it, and she could hear gas hissing out from a crack in the tank, but no one was hurt.

His ears folded back, Aegis glared up at the control room. “You call that an attack?” he yelled. “Aim properly next time!”

The only response was something red and glowing, sailing down through the air.

For one second, Applejack had a weird thought: Is that a Molotrot cocktail?

It impacted next to the leaking oxygen tank and shattered.

When the oxygen canister exploded, Applejack felt like she’d been hit by a train. Then the water tank ruptured and thousands of gallons of water were bearing down on her.

If it wasn’t nailed down, the colossal wave picked it up and tossed it aside like it was made of styrofoam. Applejack was pounded against a wall like a nut caught between a hammer and an anvil. She instinctively took a breath and only barely managed to cut it off before she inhaled water. The water swept her aside and she flailed blindly for a grip on anything solid. She managed to grab onto a control panel and thrust her head above the water. Something washed past her: the charred, twisted corpse of Aegis after he was caught too close to the explosion, shrapnel wounds puncturing his body. She barely paid him any attention, gulping down huge breaths of air.

As water poured out of the room through the doors and other unseen gaps, it kept pouring in from the massive tank. Currents tugged at Applejack and did their best to peel her away from the panel, to throw her into helplessness again. And her hooves were blunt; she couldn’t hold on for long. She blinked enough water from her eyes to get a brief look around. One of the intact tanks was nearby. Good enough. She pulled her rear legs in and kicked off the panel.

The current wasn’t as strong as some of Equestria’s rivers, but it was still plenty strong. Applejack was immediately picked up and carried away by the water — straight toward the tank, exactly how she’d aimed. A bit of precise flailing kept her upright, and she’d soon hooked her legs around one of the tank’s vertical struts. It was slippery, but she had a good enough grip. She managed to curl up against the current and brace against one of the diagonal struts, and with that, she began climbing.

She was out of the water in seconds; it cascaded through the room harmlessly below her. More water had collected in her suit, but that couldn’t be helped for now, so she ignored it. Slowly, carefully, she clambered around the supports, back to the center of the room. “Spike?” she yelled out. “Flash?” One of her hooves slipped on a beam and she wrapped her front legs more tightly around their own strut.

Something burst from the rushing water ahead of her, like a breaching whale. A coughing Spike hauled himself out on another tank, his wings flailing like mad to shed water. A changeling leapt from the water below him and latched onto his tail; a few solid thwacks against the girders later, it limply dropped back into the water.

“Hey!” Applejack hollered over the current. “Hey, Spike!” She waved to get his attention.

When Spike noticed her, one enormous flap of his wings took him to her scaffolding. With his fingers and claws, he had a significantly better time of hanging onto the metal than she did. “Applejack! Are-” He doubled over, hacking out globs of water. “You okay?” he rasped.

“Good enough!” Applejack looked around the room, squinting at the water. “Flash! Where’s Flash? He’s gotta-” Then she spotted a blur of orange near the door. Water whisked it away before she spotted it again. Flash was attempting to swim towards them against the current, beating his wings in vain to get above the water.

Something yanked him under. A moment later, the currents exploded with red before they, too, were washed away. Applejack bit her lip and turned away, shaking. Spike tensed up next to her and metal groaned as he clenched his claws.

Even a tank as large as that didn’t have unlimited water, and the rush slowed. Gradually, the water level dropped as it filtered out of doorways and through vents. Soon, the floor was visible again. There weren’t any bodies around. Applejack wasn’t sure whether that made things better or worse. Step by step, Applejack and Spike climbed down the trusses, Spike’s gaze darting every which way. The sound of dripping bounced around and around the room as water droplets fell from walls and supports.

They reached the floor. Applejack dropped from the supports and into a puddle. “Now what?” she whispered to him.

“I- I don’t- Give me a sec to think,” Spike hissed, unfolding and refolding his wings.

Right. A second. Thanks to the adrenaline running through Applejack’s body, every second not spent moving was another second wasted, another second the monster could spend getting closer to her. She was shaking all over and started trotting in place. Anything to get her energy out, even if-

Something landed on the upper catwalks. Spike grabbed her and yanked her over to the wall, plastering them both flat against it. Applejack looked around jerkily, but the light was too dim to make anything out on the catwalks. Her ears twitched this way and that and failed to pick up any sounds. In desperation, she groped at the wall, pleading to find something, anything useful. Was that a button? Button. She reflexively pressed it.

A soft chime. She glanced up; a panel with numbers had illuminated above her. It was the elevator button. The panel binged as the elevator trundled to their position.

“Come on out!” roared Spike. “I’m game! How ’bout you?”

The only response from the room was the ever-present dripping.

A louder bing than usual, and the elevator opened up. Spike suddenly grabbed Applejack and wrenched her inside, where he pummeled the Close Door button. As the doors slid shut, a dark, spindly figure dropped from the catwalks, green eyes flashing in the gloom. Somehow, Applejack pictured it grinning at them. It didn’t move.

The second the doors were shut, Spike hammered on the Emergency Stop button, making Applejack yelp. “What’re you- Spike, if we stay here, we’re deader’n a slug on a salt lick!”

“Good thing we’re not staying here, then.” Spike dug his claws directly into the metal walls, pulled himself up to the ceiling, and simply punched out the maintenance hatch. He hoisted himself up, then reached down. Applejack gave him her hoof and he pulled her on top of the car.

“Legs around my neck and hold tight,” Spike said. The second Applejack had a halfway-decent grip, Spike was climbing down the service ladder (still dripping from the rush of water) and she was bumping across his wings. He reached the next floor down, paused, shook his head, and continued. “Too obvious,” he muttered.

A rage-filled scream rent the air above them. Something pounded, the sounds echoing up and down the shaft.

“Spike…”

“Working on it!”

They came to another floor. “Off my back,” hissed Spike. Applejack clambered up, over his head, onto the ladder, and Spike shimmied over to the door. Gripping a beam above with one hand, supported on an inch-wide ledge with just his toes, he began wiggling the claws of his free hand into the crack of the doors.

CRUNCH.

The entire shaft shook; Applejack wrapped her legs tightly around the rung as something groaned above. Spike finally got his claws fully into the gap and pulled. His muscles bulged, harshly corded, as the doors inched apart. “Almost… got it…” he grunted.

A ear-splitting screech filled the shaft and sparks illuminated the box of the car above them. Then the elevator plunged downward.

By the time Applejack had recoiled, it was already gone. It raced past her, broken brakes screaming and throwing sparks, rocking the ladder in its wake. That infernal shriek wailed on for an eternal two or three more seconds, cut short only by the elevator smashing into the water below. Her heart pounded and she refused to let go of the ladder. It was only by being on that ladder, with the space it afforded, that she was still alive. If she’d been in the shaft-

Terrified, breathing heavily, Applejack looked at the door.

Spike was gone.

---

Applejack couldn’t remember climbing down, but suddenly water was lapping at her uniform and the top foot of the elevator was sticking crookedly out of the water next to her. Spike was nowhere to be seen. She looked up; nothing was crawling down after her. Taking a deep breath, she ignored the water that spilled into her suit over the collar and dove beneath the surface.

She heard it almost immediately: a banging, coming from beneath her. She flicked on her suit’s flashlight and a beam of white pierced through the water. Blood curled through that beam like a curtain caught on the wind. She pulled herself down the elevator car.

Spike was pinned at the bottom of the shaft, his legs trapped beneath the car, blood swirling around him. He attempted to push the car away and pull his legs out, but even a dragon could only do so much with no leverage. It was amazing that he was even conscious, let alone that he’d managed to hold his breath. He looked up at Applejack’s flashlight and waved frantically at her. He banged on the car again and Applejack nodded. She pulled herself to the bottom.

The water had absorbed most of the impact, but all that meant was that the car hadn’t smashed through the floor completely. It rested askew, partially off its rails, some of the floor beneath it twisted and bent. There was barely any gap to get her hooves in; Applejack cringed at what Spike’s legs felt like. But she was an earth pony. She was strong. She could do this.

Although her lungs were beginning to ache, Applejack wiggled her front hooves into the tiny, tiny crack. She used that little bit of leverage to orient herself, placing her rear hooves on the “ground”. Then she heaved, lifting with all her earth pony might.

But the car didn’t move. Didn’t even budge, not one millimeter. She redoubled her efforts. Nothing.

Spike frantically tapped her on the shoulder and held up three fingers. He lowered one, another, the last one, then mimed lifting with both his hands. He had to do it again before Applejack got what he was trying to say: 3, 2, 1, lift at the same time. She nodded and worked her hooves in deeper.

Spike banged the elevator car with three claws. Then two. One. And the two of them, each a fine specimen of one of the strongest species on Equus, lifted with all their might.

Yet strength could only get one so far in situations like this. The car refused to move, and a second stretched into an hour as Applejack tried and tried and tried to lift. Suddenly it moved a millimeter and for a second her heart soared; then her vision was obscured by a swirl of ribbony red and she heard bubbles as Spike failed to hold in a scream.

Her lungs were burning as Applejack released the elevator. Spike was rocking back and forth, clutching at his legs, where fresh strands of crimson were flowing out from beneath the car. She tapped him on the shoulder; when his attention was on her, she put her front hooves together and slowly pulled them apart. She pointed at the elevator and did it again.

Lifting the elevator up wasn’t going to do anything. What about levering it away and pushing it to the side?

Spike nodded and Applejack swam back to the surface. She gasped down massive breaths of the sweet, cold air the second she had the chance. Spike was barely three feet under. Just three feet. She could get him out.

But she couldn’t find any good spots around the elevator to brace. Either there wasn’t enough space, or there was too much space, or she wouldn’t be pushing the car properly. She swam back and forth, getting more and more panicked, trying to find a good spot, any spot, to push.

There wasn’t any.

Applejack began hyperventilating. It couldn’t end like this. She could… She could do this. She had to. She took a deep breath and plunged beneath the water. By now, it was very red.

Spike was still tugging at the elevator, but weakly, and his wings were limp. He looked up when Applejack tapped him on the shoulder; his eyes were already terribly bloodshot. Applejack shook her head sadly. Spike clenched his jaw tightly and nodded.

Out of options, they looked at each other through the swirling crimson haze. Applejack’s head was swimming, but she somehow knew that Spike’s was running as fast as it could.

Then he pointed up, out of the water. Applejack shook her head and tried pushing at the elevator car one more time, no matter how fruitlessly; she couldn’t leave him, no matter what. Spike pointed again; Applejack shook her head again. Spike glared at her.

Then he opened his mouth and took a deep breath of water.

Applejack screamed, massive bubbles escaping her. Already Spike was spasming, coughing, reflexively reaching for air he couldn’t get. Applejack almost tried lifting again, but after that scream, she needed air. She pulled herself up the elevator. Every cough, every water-irritated hack, she felt through the metal. Less and less with each foot she went up.

She broke the surface and gasped, taking in huge gulps of air. She almost went back down, but what was the point? She couldn’t move that elevator, not if she had a year. And Spike…

Spike.

And everyone else with her.

Dead.

She was alone.

Somewhere along the line, Applejack’s gasps for air became sobs and tears mingled with the water running down her face. Weakly, almost on autopilot, she grabbed for the top of the elevator and pulled herself onto it. She curled into a ball on that hard metal surface, bits and bobs sticking out here and there, chilled to the bone by the water that filled her suit, and wept in the darkness.

Comments

[Level Dasher]

Oof. So I was almost right. Except not even Spike made it...

[Erhannis]

Man, having trouble wrapping my head around Spike being dead. This is a fic, ao the normal rules don't apply, but he's normally not "allowed" to die (like, as much as anybody in MLP, I guess), so the fact of his death keeps failing validation.

[Thranx]

Oh... Spike. I thought he'd make it. I guess that's why only Applejack and Trixie were added for the character tags. Along with Twilight. .

[EatenbyaGrue]

When the oxygen canister exploded

Um, how exactly does pure oxygen manage to explode? The canister could rupture sending shrapnel everywhere but later we see

charred, twisted corpse of Aegis after he was caught too close to the explosion

so it apparently literally exploded. Generating some serious amount of heat... somehow.

[Foxtrot-Mayflower]

11307196
Real life physics need-not-apply.

Just ignore the simple break in physics in favor of the storyline, and since most people wouldn’t (and haven’t) batted an eye on this I think it’s not such a big deal even if I myself noticed it’s wrong.