The Black Between the Stars

by Rambling Writer

9 - Weapons Free

“But why?” Trixie muttered again. “What would they get?”

Applejack couldn’t bring herself to ask. It’d been easy to just brush aside the “how” before. Some flub in containment, maybe, nobody’s fault specifically. Accidents happened, however tragic. (She could even ignore the clear hoofprints dragging her from the neuromod removal chamber to the garbage disposal.) But if it was deliberate, if a pony on board had done it… how would she know who was responsible? Could she even trust anyone? Or would the next pony they found just be waiting for a chance to slit their throats once their backs were turned?

“Did they communicate with the changelings? Did they think they could get something?”

Golden Oaks was a speck in an abyss. All around them, for hundreds of miles, was quite literally nothing. She couldn’t just pick a direction and flee. No, she needed an escape pod or a shuttle. And if she took one of those, she’d be limiting the chances of any other survivors to get away. Until this entire station was under control, she was basically trapped. Until a changeling found her, or her food ran out, or her water ran out, or, hay, the oxygen ran out. So many ways to die in space. Fun, fun, fun.

“Were they mind-controlled? Maybe the changelings forced them to let them out. Can aliens do mind control? But then why didn’t it happen before?”

Applejack had always been afraid of space, but all her fears before had been marked with a little asterisk labelled Paranoia. After all, if something went wrong, it had to be mechanical failure, right? And they had the best techs on the planet to fix things. Now, every bad dream she’d ever had about a single loose screw spelling death for everyone on board seemed a lot more likely. Right now, the safest thing to do would be to sit tight and wait for more qualified ponies to handle it all.

She’d never been very good at sitting.

Applejack and Trixie had sped up their searching once they found the broken holding cells, but Time Turner’s office hadn’t been in Containment. They exited out of the labs on the other side and kept walking, Trixie mumbling to herself all the while. Applejack let her; Trixie was still moving. The hallway continued on, with no sign of Turner’s office. In fact, this side of Containment had less doors than the other, with the rooms those doors led to much barer. Maybe it was meant for expansion and nothing had been built here yet.

They came to another intersection, one path going straight, another to the left. Applejack looked down the hallway in front: it soon ended at a door similar to Containment, this one labelled Weapons. Hooray. She turned left. Not far beyond, she saw another four-way intersection. Modularity was so much fun.

As Applejack walked down the hallway, Trixie trotted up next to her. “Um,” Trixie said, “not to, ah, alarm you or anything, but where are all the changelings now? If this is where they first came from, shouldn’t we have seen some before now?”

“Dunno,” Applejack grunted. She really didn’t want to be thinking about that right now. “Maybe they ain’t here anymore? Spread throughout the station.”

Right at that moment, an inky, equinoid-ish shape came out from one of the cross halls, sniffing the ground. Applejack came to a stop, blinked, and stared at-

“No!” Trixie whisper-screamed. Something grabbed Applejack’s tail and began pulling. “Back up back up back up!” Applejack shuffled backward, Trixie pulling her too fast for her to stop and turn around. All the while, she had to look at the thing, sniffing at the ground, ready to look up and spot her. Trixie yanked her around the corner, pressed her against the wall, and squeaked, “That was what I saw! Earlier! Before you met me! It-”

“Quiet,” whispered Applejack. She nudged Trixie’s hooves away. “I need t’get a better look at it.” She poked her head back into the hallway and looked.

The thing looked like vines or tentacles twisted in a shape that vaguely resembled a pony. Where the vines didn’t fully meet, holes punched through its legs, its body, its horn. Its whole body was shiny and black in a way that made Applejack think of worker ants, drones. Its eyes had neither pupil nor sclera, neither white nor black, instead just a cold, emotionless blue. Its whole shape jittered slightly and continuously, film just out of alignment. Two-inch-long fangs jutted from its upper jaw. Wings, broad and jagged and some sort of hardened slime, extended from its trunk in about the same locations pegasus wings would. The thing’s movements were fast, jerky, almost mechanically birdlike. The drone froze in its sniffing, chuffed at a certain portion of the floor, and raised its head, rasping deeply. As it looked around each hallway in turn, a too-long tongue whiplashed out and back in.

Trixie yanked Applejack back behind the corner. “What are you doing?” she squeaked. “It’ll see you! You can’t just-”

“Shut up,” snapped Applejack. She looked around the corner for the briefest of instants to get a slightly better look at the changeling. The thing looked… wrong, somehow, equine only in shape, closer to an insect than anything else. Its movements, the way light bounced off it, its just-barely-too-lean proportions, all of it made Applejack’s skin crawl off. An abomination. That was the best way to describe it.

Before, she’d had some issues about if she could shoot something alive. Now, she practically wanted to shoot it. She glanced at her gun’s display. Six rounds. Plenty. “I’m gonna shoot it.”

Trixie nearly got whiplash from the force of her double-take. “You’re- going- Well, um. I’ll… get ready to run, then, shall I?”

“You do that.” Applejack leaned around the corner and raised her gun. She’d never aimed it before in her life, but thanks to neuromods, it felt like she’d done it a thousand times a year. Luckily, the drone was looking down the opposite hallway. Sights over the head… “Also cover your ears.” She wrapped her thoughts around the telepathic trigger… And…

The gun’s report rang out and it bucked against Applejack’s shoulder like a mother. But she knew it was coming and she knew how to handle it. As she absorbed the worst of the recoil, the drone’s head snapped to one side and dissolved it a black, pulpy mess. Direct hit; the thing never saw it coming. Its body quivered for a second, then collapsed to the ground.

As her ears rang and Trixie complained, Applejack coughed out the gunsmoke and blinked her eyes clean. She kept the gun aimed at the body. From the way things were going, it’d pull some freaky alien night fertilizer and stand up again in a moment, probably with the remains of its head flowing back together. No way she was going to be the horror casualty who turned her back on the monster before it was dead.

The seconds ticked by. No freaky alien night fertilizer happened. Applejack still would’ve shot it again, just in case, but she wanted to preserve her shots.

The moments ticked by. Was she supposed to feel bad, having shot something? If it’d been a pony, Applejack supposed she would’ve been gibbering in shock. She didn’t feel anything now. These monsters had killed nearly everypony she’d worked with. Now, there was one less to hurt others. She wasn’t even that disturbed by the changeling’s head turning to paste. It wasn’t like it was red paste, after all.

“Is it dead?” Trixie asked, her voice slightly muffled. “Please tell me it’s dead.”

“I think it’s dead,” said Applejack. “And I ain’t just sayin’ that ’cause you want me to.” She took a few steps towards the drone’s body. Nothing, not even a twitch. She kept her gun up.

“Oh?” Trixie peeked around the corner and twitched. “Oh. Yes, that’s… That’s definitely dead.”

“I sure hope so.” A few more steps. The trigger was so, so tempting right about now. Just one or two shots, and she would absolutely destroy the drone’s body. No chance of getting up from that. But: shot preservation.

A bizarre sound, a wolf’s howl mixed with a dolphin’s click, suddenly pierced through the halls. It was answered by several more. And Applejack heard some strangely muted hoofsteps approaching in a gallop. She froze and pivoted her ears forward. Yes, they were definitely-

“Get over here!” Trixie yanked her back. “They heard us,” she muttered. Her breathing was quick and panicked and her eyes were wide. “They’re coming. We need to run.”

“You’re su-”

“Yes I’m sure! Why do you think I’d make this up?!” Trixie tugged. “Please!”

Screw it. Applejack galloped back over to Trixie. “C’mon. If we’re hidin’, we’re hidin’ in a frackin’ armory.” They ran down the hall, back to the Weapons door. “You can get this open, right?” Applejack aimed down the hall. Still empty.

“I better.” Trixie pulled her TranScribe out and began hacking.

Another howl-click rang out, closer. As she fiddled with her computer, Trixie’s hooves were shaking, but her magic wasn’t. “Come on, c’mon c’mon come on…”

The sound of hooves. Applejack risked glancing over. “Trixie…”

“Just a-!”

Be-beep, and the door opened. The two ponies toppled through; Trixie slammed on a button to shut behind them. Keeping the door in her sights, Applejack shuffled backward until she bumped into a desk. Something shrieked on the other side of the door. “It’ll keep ’em out, right?” Applejack asked.

“It should,” said Trixie, scooting next to Applejack.

WHAM.

Something smashed into the door, and smashed hard. The frame rattled and Applejack’s heart rate doubled. Suddenly, that door seemed very, very thin.

“It should,” Trixie said, much more quietly. “Come on. Let’s, let’s get to the other side.”

Applejack glanced over her shoulder. Across the room, another door. Between them, nothing but desks with computers, turned over and wrecked by changelings. “Right. Yeah.”

WHAM. Applejack didn’t need to imagine hard to hear the shriek on the other side of the door. Frenzied scrabbling noises rang through the lab.

They began shuffling to the wall, Applejack aiming at the door all the while. “You’re sure it’ll hold?” Applejack asked.

“It should.”

WHAM.

“That ain’t a ‘yes’…”

“Yes I’m sure!” squeaked Trixie. “Turner told me, the doors are magnetically sealed! As long as they have power-”

The lights flickered. Then the lab was plunged into darkness as they went out. Everything seemed to stop — everything. The floor beneath Applejack’s hooves suddenly seemed too steady for its own good (they were lucky artificial gravity ran on nigh-perpetual spells rather than electricity) and she missed the whirr of a dozen machines she hadn’t realized she’d been hearing. Even the changelings outside quieted down.

“…I’m sorry,” Trixie whispered. It was so quiet Applejack could hear her gulp. “The… main reactor must’ve failed.”

“Keep movin’,” Applejack hissed to keep herself from screaming her head off. “It ain’t long ’til-”

Metal screeched on metal as the door was wrenched open. Shapes darker than black, at least four or five of them, poured into the lab.

“Down.” Applejack wrenched Trixie to the floor and pulled her into the space beneath a desk.

What in Tartarus what in Tartarus what in TARTARUS. This wasn’t fair. Not at all. Applejack looked at her shotgun again, suddenly aware of how painfully bright the readout was in the dark. Five shots. Enough to kill them all if she didn’t miss and if she killed them with one shot each and if she hadn’t miscounted.

Low, distorted harmonics reverberated through the lab like a half-dead motor, setting Applejack’s teeth on edge. A changeling was making those noises? Were they communicating? Were they just the chatter of animals?

The sounds of the changelings’ hooves were odd, like metal hammers wrapped in velvet. Muffled clinks rang out as the drones prowled the lab. What was the best thing to do? Run? Stay here? Move to another hiding spot? Fight? Try to distract them? Whenever Applejack tried considering one option, another forced its way forward; her plans stayed mired in themselves. She unconsciously flexed the leg the gun was attached to.

Next to her, barely visible in the darkness, Trixie was curled up in the fetal position and staring out blankly. Her lips were moving in a constant stream of panicked curses, but she wasn’t making any noise. Her chest expanded and contracted like the world’s fastest bellows as she breathed.

Whunck. The desk shook as a changeling leapt on top of it. Applejack could feel the vibrations from its throat as it warble-hissed. Trixie’s breathing stopped and she put her hooves over her mouth. She looked at Applejack like a scared foal looking to mommy for help. Applejack glanced up at the desk above them. Maybe-

The drone on the desk craned its head around and down and looked Applejack in the eyes.

Time seemed to freeze and Applejack got a good look at the changeling, a far better one than she wanted. The strands that made up the thing were twisted more densely in its head, giving it a face just equine enough to be sickening. In what little light there was, it gleamed wetly, like oil or bile. Its blue eyes were cold, flat, soulless. Applejack would’ve felt less disgusted from looking at a rotted corpse.

Time unfroze when the changeling opened its mouth and shrieked. A tongue over a foot long and dripping with slime lashed out and swiped across Applejack’s face. She panicked and instinctively drove a hoof at its face, but the changeling moved its head back and she missed by inches, hitting nothing but air.

The hoof she was hitting with, however, was on her gun leg. And she was at point-blank range.

BANG.

Brute recoil slammed her against the back of the desk. The black fluids that splattered her in the face were cold, which was somehow worse than if they were warm. The changeling’s dead body slid limply off the desk to fall in a pile in front of her. Trixie was probably screaming next to her, but Applejack’s ears were ringing too much to hear. Something tugged at her; she went with it and found herself getting pulled down an aisle by Trixie’s magic. She didn’t know where, but “away” seemed like a solid deal.

A drone hurled itself over a desk next to her, barely visible in the dark, shrieking like a banshee. It smashed into Applejack’s side and drove her across the aisle, into another row of desks, banging against a monitor. Applejack lashed out blindly as she bounced off and threw the changeling off; it tumbled through a bank of monitors and skittered off into the dark. Applejack aimed, but it was already gone. “Trixie!” she yelled. “Light!” Her voice almost sounded normal.

“Light? Light!” And the room pulsed with pale-pinkish light as Trixie pushed magic into her horn. Long shadows dripped across the floors and walls, bobbing and weaving with Trixie’s head. Dark shapes scurried around the fringes of the light, making growly ululations at Applejack and Trixie. Applejack looked left and right; there was a changeling between each exit and two or three more prowling through the dark. She constantly switched targets with her shotgun, trying to see which one would pounce first. Or which one would be sacrificed to let the others move in. “Y’got any exits?” she whispered to Trixie.

“No,” Trixie whispered back. She gave a light tug on Applejack’s tail to get them moving. “But I’ve got hiding places.”

Super.

One changeling, walking on top of the row of desks in front of Applejack, stepped into the light of Trixie’s horn. Applejack snapped her gun to it. “Stay back,” she snarled in her meanest voice. With animals, tone of voice mattered more than words. “I’m warnin’ you.”

Whatever message her tone carried, the changeling didn’t react. It changeling glanced at the gun, then looked at Applejack again. Its tongue snaked out and it chittered. The two of them stared at each other as Applejack scooted back. The thing almost looked like it had emotions, somehow. Like it was waiting for something. Or-

She was tunnel-visioning. Applejack broke off from the staring contest and swept the gun around the room. Still changelings at the exits. But another was trying to creep forward while her attention was on the first one. It froze when Applejack aimed at it like a foal caught with her hoof in the cookie jar. They locked eyes for a moment, then Applejack swung back to the first one. It had crept forward a few feet.

They knew what she was doing. They knew what they were doing. They knew.

One of them warbled. It sounded like a distorted laugh.

Something clicked behind Applejack and Trixie yanked her down a hallway. Back rooms for testing hardware, probably. In the dark, it felt like a cave. Trixie pulled Applejack into an expansive lab as the changelings outside screeched in anger. The two ponies scrambled around a desk and ducked under it.

Trixie was panting heavily. “Oh Celestia, oh Celestia, oh Celestia…” Applejack’s own heart was pounding like nothing else; she wiped her forehead down with a shaking hoof. “Think this’ll do?” she asked, more to give herself something to do than any curiosity. She put a hoof over her gun’s display to block the light.

“It should,” said Trixie. “In the dark-”

The lights came back on, sparser than before. All around them, machines whirred to life. Computers made startup noises. Applejack groaned.

Trixie swallowed. “I… guess the auxiliary reactors came on.”

“Trixie, do the world a favor an’ just shut up.”

“Will do.”

“Y’still got the lighter?”

Trixie held up the lighter and the hairspray can.

“Good. Keep ’em close.”

Hooves pattered down the hall outside, sometimes stopping, sometimes not. They went right on by the lab. Applejack’s hind legs twitched, tensed. “Go or no?” she whispered to Trixie.

“What? No, not yet!” Trixie whispered back. “They might come back! Are you crazy?”

“No, just makin’ it up as I go.” Applejack flexed the hoof connected to the barrel of the shotgun even though it wasn’t attached to any mechanism. The gun itself itched.

“Look, we know where they’re coming from.” Trixie pointed at the door, the only door into or out of the room. “So as long as we stay here, they can only get at us from one direction. We are not getting rid of an advantage like that.”

Applejack looked askance at Trixie. “Y’got experience hidin’ from people wantin' t’kill you?”

“Well, yes. Thief, remember? I’m good at hiding.”

“Good for you. But I-”

Click.

Applejack put a hoof to Trixie’s mouth. “Hold up, quiet,” she whispered. The click wasn’t particularly loud, but it had come from too close for Applejack’s comfort. “Y’hear that?”

Click. Slightly louder. Trixie nodded and mimed zipping her mouth shut. As her mind raced, Applejack’s ears pivoted about like radar dishes.

Click. Where was it, where was it, where was it? She looked around the lab, but she couldn’t see anything that was making that sound, especially not in the dim half-light. Click.

“Oh, Celestia,” mumbled Trixie. She wiped her face down. “Something’s leaking on me.”

Applejack looked up. There was nothing above Trixie but a vent cover.

And two cold, blue eyes staring out at them.

Before she could think, Applejack was curling into a ball and bringing the gun up. She bucked Trixie away and fired at the same time as the vent exploded outwards in a hail of metal. She caught the drone in mid-jump and it awkwardly ragdolled to where Trixie had been. In spite of a gaping crater in its chest dripping oily black ichor, it unsteadily got to its feet. At least, it tried before Applejack shot it again.

But by the time Applejack was aiming back at the vent, another drone was already out. It landed on top of Applejack, too close for the gun, and roared, its tongue flicking across her face. Jaws snapping, it lunged past her hooves and sank its fangs into her neck.

Applejack didn’t feel anything, not physically. There were no cuts, no bleeding. But she was familiar with the haze that washed over her: burnout. It was like it was a struggle to think, to feel, to even care about the alien sucking her vitality away. She could push it off, but why bother? She was stuck on Golden Oaks and the only other living soul she’d seen was a convicted felon. Who was she kidding, she wasn’t going to get off. Might as well lie down and-

“Oh, no you don’t!”

The changeling squealed and its head jerked up as a ball of fire roasted its rump courtesy of Trixie blasting it with her flamethrower. Applejack’s thought processes and motivation came back in a rush. Before she could wonder what it meant, the changeling spun around and rasped at Trixie, who promptly turned tail and ran. The changeling flared its wings and moved to give chase. A move that put it beyond the barrel of the shotgun. BOOM. No more changeling.

On the ground. Several changelings were already dropping from the vent. Applejack brought up her gun, only to freeze when she saw the display: one shot left. Already? But the changelings were close. She grabbed the nearest monitor and swung it at the nearest drone. Its head snapped to one side, trailing spittle and shards of plastic. She bulled forward into the group, swinging the monitor wildly. She only got a few glancing hits that each reduced more of the monitor to crumpled plastic, but the changelings never risked getting past her.

“Applejack!”

Applejack looked up. Trixie was hefting some big, toolbox-sized gun (?) in her magic, its power cells glowing. Strange images kept flickering around the ba-

“DUCK!” screamed Trixie.

Applejack threw herself to the floor and the remains of the monitor, pressing her hat to her head. A changeling jumped on her; she rolled over to try and throw it off-

Her coat suddenly stood on end as everything was cast in a plaid glow. Plaid. The drone shuddered, released her, and stumbled away. Applejack glanced up; a bizarre, multicolored laser swept back and forth across the room as Trixie screamed like a maniac. The beam didn’t leave any marks anywhere, but the drones it hit were left dazed, like they’d been smashed across the head with a frying pan.

Abruptly, the beam cut out. “What?” Trixie yelled. “No! You stupid machine, don’t do this!” She smacked at it and metallic rings sang through the air. Literally sang; Applejack thought she heard snatches of words in there. The drone nearest to her was standing unsteadily on its feet and staring at a countertop like it held the meaning of life. No use in wasting an opportunity like this. Applejack pulled out her wrench and whacked it in the head.

It promptly exploded into jelly beans.

And whenever a jelly bean hit them, so did the other drones. Applejack didn’t get a chance to move before jelly beans smacked against her face, but she didn’t feel anything besides, well, jelly beans hitting her in the face.

Um. Well. Okay. She’d take it. She looked up; no more changelings were coming from the vent. “Hey, uh, Trixie?”

“Do you want Trixie to sing you a lullaby?” Trixie snapped at the laser. “Is that it?” Abruptly, the power cells doubled in brightness for a second. “Well, I’m sorry, but-”

“Trixie! We’re good.”

“-you’ll just have to- Hmm?” Scowling, Trixie looked up, only for all expression to vanish from her face in an instant. “Where, where, where are the changelings?”

“They’re… uh…” Applejack scooped up a hoofful of jelly beans and held them out to Trixie. “Right here.”

“Really.” Trixie examined the jelly beans closely. She picked a few up in her magic and turned them all over individually like a jeweller examining a diamond. “Really.” She absent-mindedly patted the laser. “Never mind,” she said. “You did good.”

Applejack took a step back as the laser hummed. Something about it felt… off. Out of step. “Uh… y’know what that is?”

Trixie sniffed at a jelly bean. “Chaos magic laser,” she said casually.

The bottom of Applejack’s stomach fell out and she cringed away as if stung. “What?” They might as well be bathing in radiation.

“Chaos magic laser,” repeated Trixie. She tossed the beam away and pointed over to where a frame had been ripped apart. “They called it the DisQord Beam — and that’s with a capital Q instead of a lowercase c. Given chaos magic, it probably wouldn’t work right if they gave it a ‘proper’ name.” She looked down at the gun. “You prissy little thing,” she said affectionately.

“Uh-huh.” Applejack backed away and half-fell onto a chair. Her legs were shaking from adrenaline. “Y’wanna… just… take a break for now?” She rubbed her neck. The changeling’s attack hadn’t left any physical marks, but she felt numb.

“Let’s. Usually, if I’m found, something went very wrong, and I need a moment to reset.” Trixie squinted at Applejack’s neck. “Didn’t you get bit there?”

“Yep. Mind went all woozy, but it didn’t leave no marks. Dunno why.”

“…Aliens?”

“Sure. Aliens.”

Trixie probably said something more, but Applejack’s mind just sort of folded in on itself. Changelings weren’t just animals. No, they’d been too smart for that. They’d tried getting one to flank her while her attention was diverted and, rather than taking the obvious one route into the lab through the door, had crawled through the vents to get the drop on her. They were intelligent, maybe as much as a pony.

And with that realization came a flood of questions, almost too many for Applejack to handle. Did the researchers know that their test subjects were sapient? What were they even doing with the changelings? Had they convinced whatever pony freed them to do it? Was it only the equinoid drones that were sapient or did that include the blobs? Had they both been studied? Were there any more “variants”? Was all this wreckage simple revenge or was it something more sinister?

Oddly enough, neither idea stung as much as it once would have. Maybe it was because Applejack had just fought off several of them, had seen them die, had taken them down herself. She knew they could be beaten, intelligent or not. Before, they’d been this enigmatic, faceless, unstoppable force of nature. Now, they were just freaky (if smart) aliens. Their blood might not be like any being’s on Equus, but they still bled. And as long as they hit her, she’d hit back.

But she still had an office to find.

“Hey,” Trixie said abruptly. “Thanks for. Um. Saving me.”

Applejack looked up, frowning. “Huh? Whaddya mean? I bucked you in the face.”

“Well, it’s-” Trixie twisted her mane around a hoof. “Ponies usually don’t have my back at all and- Thanks.” She blinked and looked away. “If not for you, I’d probably still be in that storage room.”

She’d only known Trixie a short while, but Applejack could guess how much those little sentences cost her to say. She’d been a thief and prided herself on working alone. And now she was thanking somepony else for helping her? Well, the least Applejack could do was return the favor. “Sure. Thanks for, uh, jellybeanin’ the changelings.”

“Um.” Trixie looked back at Applejack. Her ear twitched. “Sure.” She smiled a little.

Well, as much fun as getting buddy-buddy was, they couldn’t stay here. Groaning, Applejack hauled herself out of the chair. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get goin’.”

“Right. Maybe we got lucky and attracted all the nearby changelings to us, ha ha…” Trixie withered under Applejack’s glare and picked up the laser as she fell into line behind Applejack.

But Applejack twitched. “Eh, y’might wanna leave that here.”

“Really?” Trixie looked down at the laser like it was a treasured childhood toy, then stared at Applejack with one ear down. “Shouldn’t we take it with us? Such a laser would be an excellent tool.”

“Well, I guess you can take it,” said Applejack, “but I don’t trust myself with somethin’ if I don’t know how it works.” Honestly, breaking it would probably cause black holes to form at the bare minimum. As much as Applejack disliked the harvesters back on the farm, at least they were easy to understand. This was the battery, those were the motors, and that was the part that would never break any of the laws of magic even if you looked at it funny and insulted it.

“Hmm.” Trixie looked back at the laser. “Yes, that’s probably for the best.” She set it carefully on a table and stroked it. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “Trixie still likes you.”

The power cells buzzed.

---

They left the main weapons lab out the door opposite they came in. The lights were barely on, clearly in some sort of emergency mode. Applejack kept her ears peeled as they walked, but the station was quiet. As she loaded shells into her shotgun, she asked, “Y’know anythin’ ’bout the reactor?” Her engineering neuromods weren’t ultra-high tech, but maybe she could make a guess at the likelihood of the reactor exploding if she knew its design. Probably not, but worth a shot.

“No, Applejack,” Trixie sighed, “Trixie does not know anything about the reactor, since she is undergoing clinical testing and not reactor maintenance.” She gave Applejack a suspicious look.

“Alright.” Not reassuring, but not unexpected, either. Applejack glanced at the shotgun’s display. Back to 6. Good. Plenty to kill anything that moved. Even though nothing was moving.

They rounded a corner in these stupid modular hallways and were confronted with something different: two walls of doors, three or four to a side, too tightly packed to be labs, all with plaques next to them and locked with keycard readers. Applejack trotted over to one. “Hey, Trixie? Y’know a, uh…” She squinted at the plaque. “…Lyra Heartstrings?”

“She was a neuromod overseer. Up there in the ranks, but not quite all the way.” Trixie was already looking at the opposite door. After a second, she grinned and started bouncing in place. “And this, this one’s a lead programmer in our computer science division! This’s gotta be team leaders and their assistants! So maybe-” She dashed over to the next door, froze, and promptly began squealing. “Applejack!” She pointed at the plaque and flailed her free hoof in excitement. “Look look look!”

Applejack ran over immediately. Anything to get Trixie that excited that fast had to be big. And when she looked, it most certainly was.

Time Turner, Head of Research.

Comments

[Level Dasher]

Whew. Nice and creepy as usual. Gotta admit, I love Applejack and Trixie as a pair here. You write them really well.
Also:

DisQord

I see what you did there.

[FridayPie]

Did Pinkie design that gun?