The Black Between the Stars

by Rambling Writer

7 - Know Thy Self

“So let me get this straight,” Trixie said. “You woke up in a trash compactor with no memory of the past week. You found a message from yourself and Princess Twilight herself about… some sort of plan you two made. But you’re locked out of that message right now because of admin privileges.”

Applejack didn’t look up. “Pretty much, yeah. I read your file on the computer and it said you’re testin’ computer mods?”

“Test?” Trixie snorted. “Trixie does not test them. Trixie uses them to their full potential!” If she was angry at Applejack looking at her file, she didn’t remotely show it.

“So y’think you can, I dunno, unlock the file or whatever?”

“Perhaps. Trixie will do her best.”

Applejack grunted in affirmation and kept her nose right above the floor. The trail was still visible, although since there was less and less of it with each step as blood dried or dripped off, it wouldn’t be around for much longer. She peeled her eyes more than she thought was possible, always on the lookout for the tiniest of specks, which could mean the difference between-

“Look out! Yo-” Bonk.

Rubbing her head, Applejack staggered back and looked up. She’d been so focused on the floor that she hadn’t been looking at where she was going, which turned out to be a door labelled Non-Chemical Waste Disposal. In other words, access to the trash compactor.

Applejack wasn’t sure what she’d find — probably either nothing or whoever had dragged her away in the first place — but she didn’t care. She ripped open the (already unlocked) door and found- nothing. Just a small, bare metal room with carts and bags for trash, rubbish littering the room, a computer terminal in one corner, and a large chute on one wall. She clicked on her flashlight and peered down the chute. It was as silent, cold, and dark as the grave, but not unusual for a garbage chute.

“Hmm.” Trixie looked around the empty room like it had personally offended her. “I was expecting more than this.”

“So was I,” Applejack responded. She examined the floor in front of the chute for the last dregs of the trail. Just a confused muddle of hoofprints overlapping each other as whoever it was shoved her in.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

Applejack groaned and stood up. “Trixie, I… I’m just a gardener. Less’n fifteen minutes ago, I woke up without a huge chunk o’ my memories an’ nearly got crushed t’death. But apparently I got a secret plan goin’ with Princess Twilight herself, somehow, even though I know as much about it as a fish does ’bout flyin’. I ain’t just graspin’ at straws, they’re all I ever had. I’m like a wet cat doin’ everythin’ t’keep her head above water ’cause that’s all I can do. No. I don’t know what I’m doin’.”

Weirdly enough, it was cathartic to admit it all, somehow. Like she’d been lying about having a solid hold on the situation and now she didn’t have to pretend anymore. Should saying it aloud have brought it all closer to home, made her break down? Maybe, but it wasn’t like it’d been sunshine and roses getting here. She’d seen plenty of dead bodies, almost died herself. It’d hit close to home already.

So she had only the barest sliver of a plan. It wasn’t like things could get much worse than that, right?

And Trixie seemed to agree. “Fair enough. I was getting bored in that locker anyway. Besides…” She grinned a grin that was either incredibly winning or incredibly punchable. “Tracking down a mystery will be a great test of Trixie’s skills.”

“I thought you said you don’t test mods.”

Trixie’s stinkeye was uniquely spectacular.

Applejack snickered and said, “Well, I ain’t findin’ anythin’ else here, so why don’t we get those gun mods.”

“Very well,” Trixie said, still glaring at Applejack. “Follow me.”

---

As Trixie led Applejack through more and more of Neurothumatics, Applejack got more and more anxious. The overall sorry state of the module didn’t improve one bit — and if Twilight was right, the changelings had first attacked when nopony was supposed to be here. Just what did the rest of Golden Oaks look like? For all Applejack knew, the rest of the station was a few sneezes from disintegrating completely.

Soon, Trixie stopped Applejack in front of a lab that had a lot more shelves inside than the others. “Right here. If you’ll give Trixie a moment…” She popped out her mini computer and, with a bit of fiddling, popped open the door. “The Neuromod Storage Bay,” Trixie said with far more grandeur than Applejack thought the place deserved. “Every single neuromod CelesTech has created is stored here. This is the repository of the future, a place where-”

“I’m sure the corporate bigwigs appreciate that marketin’ spiel,” Applejack said, “but we’re here for a reason.”

Trixie’s ears went straight up. “Marketing spiel?” she yelled. “Applejack, do you know how important the items stored in here could be? They could change the face of Equestria as we know it!”

“Yep. Frankly, right now, I’m more concerned about my own face than Equestria’s.”

“Hmph. Very well. We’ll need to look up which mod is which.” Trixie stalked to a computer terminal. Applejack followed close behind, keeping her ears up. She hadn’t seen a changeling in a while and she was feeling paranoid. Just one thing out of place, and-

“Alrighty,” Trixie whispered as she sat down, “I don’t suppose you’re nice enough to be unlocked, are you?” She tapped the screen, revealing a login prompt. “No, you are not.”

“That ain’t a problem, right?” Applejack asked. She tried to sound concerned, but couldn’t quite manage it. Anything to delay a potential eye-stabbing with a needle, even if only for a few seconds.

“Fear not!” yelled Trixie. She held up her hooves like she was about to conduct some sacred ritual and had put on a dramatic voice. “The Great and Powerful Trrrrrrrixie shall use her unparalleled hacking skills to get us in!” She rotated the monitor a little and, from the back, plucked a sticky note with a password written on it. Seven seconds later, they were in the account of one Dr. Moondancer.

“Some hackin’,” grumbled Applejack. “I coulda done that.”

Trixie’s grin was eminently punchable. “Ah, but you didn’t.” She began sifting through menus so fast Applejack could barely follow. “About seventy percent of hacking relies on ponies being occasional idiots, and let me tell you-” She wagged a declarative hoof at Applejack. “-ponies are not good at security in a place like this. Trixie saw ponies who worked here replace sticky notes just like this two or three times.” She reached some sort of inventory screen and went to the search bar. “I wouldn’t be surprised if one email has a code for a safe or something, a long rant about proper security procedures, and a big, bold statement telling her to delete the email. Ah, here we go.”

Applejack leaned over Trixie’s shoulder to check. They were in the middle of a long list of neuromods with long descriptors Applejack didn’t recognize and keywords like “dance” or “archery”. It apparently looked fine to Trixie, though. She ran her hoof across one line. “Mod PPN-8, firearms… What’s the description?” She opened up a link and skimmed the resulting page. “Knowledge of all sorts regarding guns of all sorts, blah blah blah, applications in security training, good enough!” She stood up. “Look for mod PPN-8. They should be alphabetized.”

And alphabetized they were. The storage aisles had nice, clean placards on them, like they held food at the grocery store rather than experimental magic devices in a space station. The mods themselves were on shelves behind unlocked glass doors; apparently the designers had thought the room’s security was sufficient. In keeping with the rest of the station, multiple doors had been shattered and neuromods were spilled across the aisles. Applejack and Trixie followed the P’s all the way down to PPN-8. But there were multiple PPN-8s: v3, v4, v5… “Just take the latest one?” Applejack asked.

“Probably, but maybe not,” said Trixie, rubbing her chin. “I’ve heard newer versions can have problems the older ones didn’t. Hang on, I’ll check.” She raced back to the computer.

As Applejack waited, she delicately took a v5 mod from its cradle. It was an unassuming thing, basically a small steel brick with a container of purple liquid sticking out from one side, an eyepiece on another, and some bits of plastic tubing running around it. One of the masterstrokes of neuromods was how easy they were to use. Applejack lightly squeezed the brick between both hooves and cringed at the deployment needle that jumped out of the eyepiece.

It had already come to this. Breaking into labs, stealing their research, and injecting herself with it for a chance to stay alive a little longer. Applejack didn’t think it was wrong, not at all, but it definitely wasn’t what she’d expected to be doing even a week ago. If she pushed into the outbreak, what else would she be doing that she thought she’d never have to do?

Honestly, though, if taking a neuromod was her biggest concern, things were going alright.

“V5!” Trixie yelled, making Applejack nearly drop the mod. “V5 is the best!”

“Alright!” Applejack called back. “I’m taking it now!” She blanched at the needle one more time, then touched the eyepiece to her eye. The physical, wet surface of her eye. She reflexively tried to blink, but the eyepiece was in the way.

“Please wait and look forward,” a soft voice cooed. Purple lines flickered across Applejack’s vision. “Neuromod calibrating.” The waiting, however short, was terrible. Applejack’s eye was watering like mad and she kept wanting to pull the mod away. But if she did that, she’d have to start all over. Applejack ignored her heart and kept looking forward.

“Calibrated. You may learn when ready.” The voice was so soothing, so calm about this, that it made Applejack squirm. And was that the best slogan they could come up with? It sounded like she was loading a gun with knowledge and shooting herself in the head with it. Which, okay, wasn’t that far from the truth, but still.

Well. Nothing to it. She took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.

---

The needle in her eye actually didn’t hurt. It was sharp enough that it didn’t pierce her lens so much as frictionlessly slide right through. It also went through her pupil, so no nerves there. And it was in and out fast enough that it was over before Applejack knew it’d started.

But she felt it, if only for an instant. It tickled her retina. It tickled her retina.

Before the flash of synapse-rewriting magic had faded from her sight, Applejack hurled the neuromod deployer away and reflexively clapped her hooves to her eye. Between the thing touching the outside of her eye and touching her retina sweet Celestia, her eye was watering like crazy. It always did, or so she’d heard. Her engineering mod definitely had.

For five seconds, nothing. Applejack just groaned and massaged her aching eye. Ten seconds. Nothing. Fifteen.

And then Applejack knew guns.

The breadth of knowledge didn’t hit her like a train, knock her down, or overwhelm her. One second she would’ve looked at you cluelessly if you’d asked her about calibre. The next, she could’ve gone into extreme detail about dozens of different calibres and their pros and cons. She felt like she’d been firing guns since foalhood. She didn’t just know how to aim; she knew how to zero a sight, how to clear a jam, how to take apart any gun in the room and clean it and put it back together. She was never aware of it coming into her mind. It was just there.

Applejack looked at her shotgun; through her new eyes, it wasn’t just a shotgun anymore. It was a Throne S6 semiautomatic shotgun, 12 gauge, meant for close-quarters fighting. No slugs, not on a space station; pellets only, to keep the muzzle energy down. Five-round tube magazine, plus another one in the chamber, all tracked by an LED display. Very reliable and capable of being fired in space if need be. Even underwater, if you had the right ammunition (which Golden Oaks didn’t). The pressure in her mind was now comforting, familiar, an easy trigger to pull. The gun was still light, but now she knew that was because the gun was empty. Once she got some shells in, it’d be nice and heavy.

At the far end of the aisle, Trixie leaned in. “Did you get it? Do you feel okay?”

“I’ve been better.” Applejack blinked again and rubbed her eye. Still it insisted on water. “Been a lot worse, too, so I’ll take what I can get.”

“So you know guns now?”

“Like the back of my hoof.”

“Excellent. I suppose now the only thing left is to unlock your video and… do whatever it is the princess wants you to do?”

“I guess.”

Trixie was already hard at work at the computer by the time Applejack got there. Applejack risked a glance at the screen and saw nothing but a command prompt window with a long list of commands and responses she couldn’t hope to understand. “How’s it goin’?” Applejack asked.

“Effh.” Trixie blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “This is proving to be far more difficult than Trixie suspected. Whoever locked you out had privileges higher than the usual, so many of Trixie’s usual methods aren’t working.” She tilted her head to one side, cracking her neck.

“Many? Y’already tried ‘many’?”

“Trixie is very good at what she does, Applejack.”

As Applejack sat and waited for Trixie, she did the one thing she’d hoped she’d never have to do. She stopped. She slouched forward in her chair, propping herself up on her front legs, shaking all over. She felt partially terrified, one part of her brain screaming her lights out while the rest shut down all emotions and forced her to categorize everything she knew and take stock of the situation.

All of her co-workers were still dead. She was still stuck in space. And every step she took, she was deliberately plunging deeper into whatever madness was going on, completely headlong. She had nothing to go on but a single video that might not even be worth anything once she actually saw it. The only ally she’d met so far was a computer programmer. There was a very real possibility that she was going to die, just like the rest of the station, and the more she kept moving, the higher that possibility became.

But she couldn’t just wait. If waiting was her thing, she wouldn’t be up here in the first place; she’d be letting the harvesters do their jobs at Sweet Apple Acres and not caring that she didn’t have any dirt on her hooves. Moving let her feel alive. Moving gave her a chance to do something — maybe something good, no matter how small. If she survived.

Breathe, girl. Breathe. You can do this. Just keep movin’ for’ard.

“Bah!” Trixie said eventually. She pushed away from the desk in frustration, her ears back, not even noticing Applejack’s distress. “Perhaps Trixie could do this with more time in a less stressful environment, but not here and now. And don’t even think about asking if this is the best Trixie can do, because yes, right now, it is! Stupid…” She sucked in a breath through her nose. “May I have a moment?”

Applejack quickly sat up straight and pushed her hooves down hard onto the floor to hide the shaking. It wouldn’t do to break down in front of her only ally. “Have a whole minute if it’ll make y’feel better.” She knew the feeling.

“Thanks, but I’ll just need a moment.” Trixie picked up a few binders from the debris, walked into the hallway, hurled them with enough telekinetic force to lodge them in the metal wall on the other side, and walked back in. “I’m better.”

“Huh.” Applejack tilted her head. “Not even a scream?”

“Nope. I prefer to keep my lungs intact to introduce myself.” Trixie collapsed back into the chair. “It’s strange. It’s like every email has been locked by an admin. Which I suppose is possible, but…” She drummed her hoof on the legrest, then hastily went to another screen, bringing up a huge table of rows and columns. “Changelog, changelog, changelog…” After a moment of reading, her jaw dropped. “Ah, Applejack… When were you reading your email?”

“Ehm… 2:25? 2:26? Somethin’ like that.”

“Because at 2:26, somepony removed the view permissions for literally every single email on our servers.” Trixie spun around to stare at Applejack as if that meant something. “If you’re not an admin, nopony can read anything in their inbox.”

“Seriously?” Applejack didn’t know much about computers, but she definitely knew that. “Why d’you think they did that? Were they tryin’ t’get me?”

Trixie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they were trying to keep the aliens from reading the email- Hey, don’t laugh! We don’t know they can’t! They might be sapient! Keeping information from them is a smart thing!” She swiveled back to the computer. “Whatever the reason, this was a panic move, a quick-and-dirty solution for a more precise problem because they were short on time, like using a chair as a hammer. And the permissions were changed by…” She frowned and leaned closer. “No, that is not right. Time Turner? No.”

“You’re sayin’ Time Turner locked everypony out?” asked Applejack. She only knew him by loose reputation, but that was still well enough to disbelieve Trixie. He’d seemed… friendly enough. Besides, locking ponies out of their mail just didn’t make sense now.

“Or somepony using his account,” muttered Trixie. “He was the head of the Computer Science division, so he had access to just about everything… No, it never would’ve been him…” She drummed her hoof on the table and stared at the screen. “He was… so enthusiastic about his work you couldn’t help but get caught up in it,” she said. “That stallion could make searching the phone book the most exciting thing ever.”

“Didn’t he want you to keep your mods?” Applejack asked. “It was in your file. You’d been hackin’ into the network and the scientists thought you shouldn’t be able to do that. All ’cept him.”

“He did. And to be honest, he shouldn’t have.” Trixie spun the chair around to face Applejack and rubbed the back of her neck. “I couldn’t help myself, and that was a ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’… thing. You know what I mean? And getting my mods removed wouldn’t’ve even set the testing back that much, since I’d already proved they worked. Then Dr. Turner comes along and doesn’t just let me keep my mods, he hires me. I sometimes do some database and security maintenance for him. I know him.” She pointed at the screen. “And he wouldn’t have done this.”

Trixie spun back to the screen. “But who would’ve…? And where-” She twitched and quickly side-scrolled across the logs. “Workstation, workstation…” she muttered. She stopped at a certain column. “Workstation! CRMO1… But… that’s his office…”

The words were out before Applejack knew she was saying them. “Wanna check it out? It ain’t like we got anythin’ else we can do. ’Cept maybe hide.”

Headlong.

Trixie frowned at the screen, tapping the desk. Her ears flopped this way and that. Eventually, she said, “You know that, um, with the thing dragging you leaving hoofprints and using computers… You know that probably means there’s a pony on board doing that, right? That… tried to kill you.”

Applejack swallowed. “…Yeah.”

“So… are you sure this is a good idea? I mean… what if…”

“Then if we run into ’em, we’ll try to talk to ’em, figure out why they’re doin’ this. And if they’re plannin’ on doin’ worse things, we’ll stop ’em.”

It sounded so simple when she put it like that. But for all she knew, the only way to stop them might be a wrench to the head. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do that.

It only took Trixie another moment to nod. “You’re right. Trixie knows enough magic to incapacitate a pony for a little while if we meet them.” She stood up. “Central Research is just a module over. We can be there in a few minutes.”

Once Trixie pointed the way, Applejack went first down the debris-strewn hallway. She was the big, tough, armed earth pony. Still no shotgun shells, but the wrench was as hefty as ever.

She just hoped she wouldn’t have to use it against a pony.

Comments

[Baineblade]

Eeeeee! Oooh I'm loving this story so much! I'm just curious how it'll end up now!

[Level Dasher]

Yeesh. With all that new knowledge I would think one of the first things AJ would wanna do is find some shells, but hey, to each their own.

[FridayPie]

“I’m better.”

This pony doesn't need gun. She can kill with a teacup. Now Trixie needs neuromod on stealth and CQC and she is pony Riddick.

[EatenbyaGrue]

10448044
Maybe there are no security posts near NT?
...oh who am I kidding, if there's (at least)one even in Arboretum, there should be multiple posts around/in research areas.

Trixie frowned at the screen, tapping the desk. Her ears flopped this way and that. Eventually, she said, “You know that, um, with the thing dragging you leaving hoofprints and using computers… You that probably means there’s a pony on board doing that, right? That… tried to kill you.”

"You know that probably means"

[AlsoSprachOdin]

As Trixie led Applejack passed through more and more of Neurothumatics

Something here needs a grammar fix.