Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 107: Black Lotus

Yes, I could have punched the stallion in the face. He had a plasma rifle, but he also made the single critical mistake of letting me get within hoof’s reach. However, I was a reasonable, smart mare with lots of brainpower and who really wanted to go inside because my spacesuit had one hole in it already and even though the duct tape was holding up I was not entirely sure how long that would be true.

So yes, I let him hold me at gunpoint and lead me into the airlock. There was a chance I could reason with everypony onboard the station and tell them that it was a bad idea to cause another war. I had to be clever and smart and charismatic and--

I lost focus for a second because there was a gun pointed at me. The outer door sealed shut and the airlock pressurized. A little voice told me to murder him while I had the chance. The intrusiveness of it actually froze me up long enough for the airlock to finish cycling and for the inner door to open.

Another guard was right outside, with another plasma rifle. The killing urge faded.

“Let’s go,” the stallion behind me said. He motioned with his gun. I stepped inside. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be in there anyway.

“Take me to your leader,” I said.

The two stallions glared at me.

“Heard that one before?” I asked.

“It’s not funny to just reference things,” one of them said. “That’s not a joke. It’s just reminding ponies that something exists.”

“Tough audience,” I mumbled.

A mare’s voice came from the next room. “I think they’re being pretty nice, considering they should have shot you the second they saw you.”

I followed the voice. The command section was the same futuristic white and chrome as the living quarters, but with a lot more screens and control panels, only about half of which were working.

“Welcome to the Hub,” Cube said. My half-sister sighed and leaned in her chair. “Chamomile, what the buck?”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

“Oh, you think seeing me was a surprise?” Cube asked. She glanced over at me, frowning. “How do you think I feel?! I’m not going to ask how you did it, because I saw the capsule dock.”

“What can I say? I just don’t know when to give up.” I gave her a smile. “It’s good to see you. I was sort of worried things would turn violent up here, but if you’re in charge we might be able to talk this out!”

“You are a living nightmare,” Cube growled. “You shouldn’t have been able to get within a thousand miles of this place! The sheer odds--!”

“I get it, I’m impossible,” I said. “Can we talk about maybe a ceasefire, ending the war, peace between all ponies, that kind of thing?”

Cube rubbed her forehead. Her headache was so bad even I could feel it.

“We can at least agree that it’s a bad idea to fight on a space station,” Cube sighed. She waved for the guards to stand down. “One stray shot and all of us are going to have a bad day. As long as you promise to behave, we’ll talk.”

I nodded.

“Good,” Cube let out a long breath. “We aren’t planning any strikes anyway. Cozy Glow wanted to use them as a show of force, not a political policy. Once the Enclave higher-ups agree to negotiate fairly, we can start using them on things like monster nests where they can do some real good.”

“I mean that’s not the worst way to use them,” I admitted. There were a few places that could probably use an orbital strike and everypony would be better off.

“Ma’am?” one of the stallions said. He was looking over at a control panel on the wall. “Looks like we’re getting a transmission from the ground.”

“This isn’t a scheduled check-in time,” Cube said. She stood up, taking a moment to steady herself when she hopped off the chair. I saw the deck slip under her a little. The rotating gravity was tricky.

“They probably heard about how I got up here,” I said.

Cube stopped, holding onto the chair she’d gotten out of. “How bad?”

“To be fair, I don’t think a lot of ponies died,” I said.

“You don’t think a lot of ponies died,” Cube said slowly. “How many is a lot? A hundred?”

“There were the two at the gate,” I said. “Then-- should I count Rain Shadow? I’m not even sure if he’s really dead.”

Cube didn’t look sure either. “Skip it if you didn’t see a body.”

“Okay. Then I knocked out a couple ponies but I think they’re still alive. Maybe. And Four is…” I swallowed.

“So two or three ponies,” Cube said. She relaxed a little. “That’s much less than I expected. Maybe we can swing this into a positive.”

“Also I stole a rocket.”

“Well, yes,” Cube admitted. “But that’s not a big deal.”

“And blew up the rocket base.”

She stopped. Her headache got worse. Even the two stallions could feel it. I saw them wince at the migraine growing so large that the pain was filling the space around us.

“They evacuated first,” I explained.

“Mmph,” Cube bit back a retort. “At least I know how much I have to apologize for. Maybe I can sell it as being an eye for an eye after what we did to the Enclave rocket program. Cozy Glow might be okay with that.”

“She’s a really reasonable mare,” one of the stallions agreed.

“Conference room,” Cube said. “I’m doing the talking. Even if she asks you a question directly, I answer. You understand?”

She gave me a sharp look. I nodded.

“Good. None of us want to die in space. We’re going to talk all this out like adults and go home.” Cube trotted over to a fancy-looking hatch and led us into a room that could have been anywhere on Equestria. The room was dominated by a huge screen and a conference table where all the chairs faced it and the camera system set into the wall. Cube motioned to the chairs, which all looked almost normal except for being bolted to the floor and with seatbelts built in.

I sat down awkwardly. I felt like a filly being called in front of the principal. Cube squinted at the black screen and used her magic to fix her mane, then sat down next to me, getting ready.

“Okay,” she said. “Transfer the call from the Exodus Red in here.”

The screen hummed to life, showing a test signal. Cube waited a moment.

“Is there something wrong with the signal?” she asked, still looking into the camera as if Cozy Glow might appear at any moment. Which she might, to be honest.

“Don’t blame me,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to break anything yet.”

“It should be connected,” one of the stallions said. He got up from where he’d slid into a seat and checked a wall panel. “It says it’s working. There’s a data stream.”

The screen flickered. The speakers blared with a sound midway between a dragon’s roar and pure static. I covered my ears by reflex. The sound cut into me like a knife, piercing and awful.

“Shut it down!” Cube shouted over the noise. One of the stallions stumbled to the wall and slammed his hoof into a button, the screen flashing off. Just before it went black, I thought I saw something through the tears blurring my vision. A huge eye, glaring out at us.

“What the buck was that?” I gasped.

“I don’t know,” Cube said. She stood up. “We need to make sure nothing’s gone wrong with the comm array. Both of you grab whatever tools you need and get the robot--”

“Er…” I coughed. “Okay, I had time to break one thing.”

Cube growled. “Idiot!”

“Yeah, I’m an idiot,” I groaned. My ears were still aching. Actually, my whole body was starting to ache. I felt like I’d been running a marathon. Was all the exhaustion catching up to me?

“We can manage it, boss,” the stallions assured her. “Maybe you should take care of your sister?”

Cube nodded, leaning in to look at me. “Chamomile, what’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re all pale and sweaty.”

“I donno,” I said. I winced. “I’m getting cramps all over.”

“Your spacesuit had a hole in it,” Cube noted. “It could be the bends. I know you pegasus ponies like to pretend you’re immune, but we’re talking about hard vacuum. It could have messed you up.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I groaned. I was feeling worse by the second. I could tell something was wrong deep inside me. It was the familiar crawling, prickly feeling of SIVA working. It was the sense of wrongness and being utterly broken, and it had come out of nowhere.

Cube put a hoof on my back.

“Okay, something’s definitely wrong,” she said. “You’re starting to bleed out of your gums--”

One of the guards screamed. I forgot about my own pain for exactly as long as it took to turn in alarm and feel every muscle in my body scream. It felt like every tendon was pulling tight in a different and occasionally brand-new direction.

I was still having a better time than he was. His fancy rifle had turned inside-out and was burrowing into his body. Blood sprayed into the air, splattering all in one direction. He stumbled back, gurgling and trying to pull it free.

The second guard’s screams joined him a moment later. He stumbled out of the room in a panic, fighting against the thing that had already torn deep into the muscles of his right forehoof. I didn’t need to ask my next question. I could feel the answer.

“SIVA?” I groaned.

“How did you think we made everything?” Cube asked. She looked torn. She took a step towards the fallen guard in the room with us. “Buck! What was that?!”

“Some kind of scrap code,” I groaned. “It reactivated the SIVA in the plasma rifles. And in me. I think I can fight it off, but-- how did you get your SIVA core working?”

“It… you aren’t going to like the answer,” Cube said.

“I’m in too much pain to yell at you,” I assured her.

“You remember how Dad-- how Polar Orbit was looking for… what Mom turned into?”

“...You’re joking,” I moaned, putting my head down on the conference table.

“We captured her and we’ve been using the active SIVA. Cozy Glow worked out a safe way to do it ages ago! Mom shouldn’t be able to do anything like this!”

“I think her ‘safe way’ isn’t working,” I grunted through the pain. Even my tongue felt like it was trying to tear in half.

“There has to be something I can do,” Cube said firmly. I had to admit, she had spirit. She grabbed a big white-and-red box off the wall, wiping off the spray of fresh arterial blood and leaving only the Ministry of Peace logo on the surface. I waved her off when she started towards me and motioned to one of the guards.

“Him first,” I said.

Cube didn’t argue. She grabbed a healing potion out of the first aid kit along with gauze and sterile pads, letting them hover around her. I knew the stallion wasn’t dead yet. He was still twitching, so there was some life in there somewhere.

“Healing potion first, then wrap up anything that doesn’t close on its own,” Cube said to herself. I tried to get up to help, but my back legs went numb under me and sat me down on the floor. She turned the stallion over less than gently to get at the wound on his neck.

He roared and lunged at her. If she’d been a doctor or medic or anypony except a mind-reading killing machine, that probably would have killed her. I saw her expression change just before it happened, sensing the threat before it happened.

Cube shoved him back with a burst of telekinetic force. He hit the wall and slid down it, eyes rolling wildly with unspeakable pain. He was terrified and in agony. The stallion was forced back to his hooves, the plasma rifle eating him alive and leaving metal scales and twisted spars of bone and steel where the SIVA changed him. His muscles snapped and jerked as if he was being electrocuted.

“What the buck…” Cube whispered.

He lunged for her. I tore the chair out of the deck next to me, the bolts holding it down not designed to withstand a spooked Chamomile. The seat hit him before he made it to Cube, smashing him back into the wall.

“They’re infected. Like me but worse,” I grunted. That might not be strictly true in some ways. I was much more deeply infected but my case had been under control. I hadn’t felt this much pain in longer than I could easily remember. “They won’t die even if you kill them.”

“Wonderful,” Cube said. She stepped back, keeping her eyes on the stallion, and offered a hoof to help me up. I saw her balk at something. “Your skin is literally crawling,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. Still, I could feel things starting to turn a corner. I knew that unlike the dumb SIVA in the guns, I had at least some control between the cortical node I’d gotten ages ago on the Exodus Green and the fresh command codes Raven had given me on the White. Between them, I could practically feel the scrap code getting pushed back down.

“What do we do?” she asked. “You’ve had experience with this, clearly.”

“At this point? Shove them out an airlock. Even that probably won’t kill them, but the air loss will make them pass out and maybe put them into hibernation.”

I almost expected her to call the idea cruel or insane. In most cases that’s the normal reaction. Cube was a decisive mare, and had absolutely no issue with the idea of killing ponies that had been her allies a few moments ago.

The second stallion charged through the open doorway. His forehoof was just a mess of knives and bare bone. I hit him from the side, tackling him into the wall.

“Don’t let them touch you,” I warned.

Cube nodded and blasted the first zombie stallion again. He hit the wall hard enough to break bones. “Put on your helmet,” she said. “I’ll get to the airlock.”

“You aren’t wearing a space suit,” I pointed out.

“Unlike you, I have magic.” She demonstrated that by grabbing my helmet and popping it on my head with her telekinesis. In the corner of my eye I saw the zombie I’d tackled starting to stand, the mess of bone and steel clawing into the wall and dragging him up while his spine realigned with quiet pops.

Cube looked past my right ear and I realized she’d spotted the motion in the reflection of the glass. Another one of the chairs ripped free with her sorcery and she bashed him back down to the ground.

“Keep them busy,” she ordered. “I have to override safety systems to get the inner and outer doors open at once. It’ll take a minute.”

“Got it,” I said. She wrapped herself in a magical aura and flipped over, inverting gravity for herself and running along the ceiling, well out of reach of the monsters. I put myself in the narrow doorway, trapping the two zombies inside the conference room.

They hissed and spat at me. I could see terrible pain reflected in their eyes. Somewhere in there, they were still aware even while the SIVA was driving them around like puppets.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said. I could sympathize. I’d be willing to stab somepony for a shot of Med-X right in that moment. I missed having a friend that would do the injecting for me.

They charged me at the same time, which saved me the trouble of keeping track of both of them at once. It was hard to focus on them when I was fighting back an urge to black out, throw up, bleed out, and try again tomorrow. It was like a hangover but also a critical medical emergency.

I pushed through it. My back legs were too wobbly to do any neat spinning back kicks with real power behind them, but my forehooves were working pretty well. I slapped one right into the path of the other, and neither of them was coordinated enough to stop themselves from falling over even in the face of such a weak blow.

They landed in a heap on top of each other, and I took the chair Cube had left behind and brought it down on them, clubbing the stallions like baby seals. I knew nothing I did was really going to put them down for good. Not like this. Every individual part of them was twisting and growing machine parts, and the dying flesh wrapped around the gears and pistons was only a canvas for the horror.

Dark blood splattered everywhere. I couldn’t tell where one stallion ended and the next started. They were mincemeat.

The meat moved, partly-intact skulls rising up like snakes on broken necks, the mass trying to drag itself closer. I raised the chair up. It was ripped from my hooves by a sudden torrent of wind. The air turned cloudy with condensation, hurricane-force wind blowing me back into the main part of the command section.

It only lasted a few seconds, and then the roar went silent.

I looked through the doorway at the undead horror. It thrashed for a few jerky moments, then stilled. I knew it wasn’t dead. It was still too dangerous to approach, but at least it wasn’t crawling on the floor for now.

Cube waved to me. Her magic formed a sphere of force around her head and a soft glow surrounded her body. She floated through the middle of the command section. Her lips moved.

“I can’t hear you!” I yelled. “There’s hard vacuum between us-- right you can’t hear me either.” I sighed. I looked past her. The airlock hung open. I motioned to the crippled creature, then the open door, then tried to mime something with my forehead that was supposed to be magic.

It wasn’t very good but to be fair for her, Cube was psychic and read minds all the time, so she did eventually get it. She pulled the twitching mass out of the room and kept her distance from it while she shoved it out the airlock into the depressurized cargo bay, slamming the door shut behind it.

White puffed into the air, and sound returned with a rush of wind and the sound of a dozen different alarms all going at once.

“Chamomile, what the buck is going on over there?” Klein asked over the radio.

“Oh good, you’re still alive,” I said. “Can you get back to the space pod?”

“It’s a re-entry capsule, not a space pod.”

I grunted and leaned against a wall of blinking alarms, closing my eyes for a moment. “You know what I mean. Can you make it back there?”

“Yeah. Why?”

There was a tap on my helmet. I opened my eyes. Cube was looking at me, obviously worried.

“One sec,” I said to both of them at once. I took the helmet off. “Cube, we’ve got a space capsule docked in the middle of this thing. I think it’s time to evacuate.”

“We can agree on that,” she said.

“Running away so soon?” The lights around us flickered in time with the voice. It was way too familiar, especially the way my heart also fluttered in time with it. Mom. The screens on every single display in the command section changed to an unblinking draconic eye. All of them were subtly different, individually focused on us.

“And now we’ve got this to deal with,” Cube whispered.

“My two beloved daughters. One an overachiever, the other an underachiever. I’ll let you two fight about who’s who.” Mom’s laughter was cruel, and the life support fans skipped when she spoke.

“I didn’t know we were competing for a title,” I quipped. Maybe if she was looking at me she’d miss Klein.

“Everything in life is a competition, Chamomile,” Mom chastised. “You should know that. You’ve gotten plenty of participation medals, but now look at you! All grown up just like me.”

“She’s nothing like you,” Cube retorted.

“What do you want?” I demanded, cutting off whatever clever retort our mother was about to deliver. I probably shouldn’t have been so quick to bring her to the point, because on half the screens, the eye vanished and turned into a tangle of lines that I recognized after a moment as a world map drawn with intersecting triangles.

“I have what I want,” Mom said. Red markers appeared on the map, beeps accompanying each as they blinked to life. “Cozy Glow is a good ambitious little filly, but she’s from another era. She cares about survivors. I’m happy to spend a few centuries rebuilding the population.”

“Oh stars,” Cube whispered.

“She thinks she’s in control of me!” Mom chuckled. “In a few moments she’ll be receiving a message that Cube has authorized an orbital strike at every settlement in the Enclave and on the surface large enough to constitute some kind of organized society. I apologize, but you might get a few angry calls.”

“How do we stop her?” I pulled myself away from the screens and looked at Cube. She was staring at the blinking markers. Math flowed past the side of the window. I could tell it was some kind of firing solution.

“The main computer!” Cube said. She bolted past me and yanked open a closet, revealing rows of circuit boards and wires, a tangled mess of electronics blinking and clicking and counting down to the end of the world. Her magic grabbed a few at random, yanking them free. Most of the screens dimmed.

“Did it work?” I asked.

The images of the eye on the screen flickered and stuttered. Mom’s voice came out of the speakers with a burst of fresh static. “Y-y-you will OBEY!” she roared, the sound jumping and cutting out.

The word Obey hit me like a tidal wave, sending me to my knees. My right forehoof moved on its own, slapping at a panel full of buttons and flipping switches. The entire station rumbled, and gravity went sideways for long enough to toss me to the other side of the narrow donut that was the Hub. I felt blind from pain and disorientation.

A new alarm joined the others. Cube saw me struggling and yanked another board out of the wall. The rest of the screens with Mom’s eye went black, leaving only a few showing the imminent attack.

“I ripped out the ground communications,” she said. “Are you okay?”

I grabbed my right hoof with my left and yanked it back, the metal thing attached to me twitching and twisting like a snake, the joints moving in ways my natural joints couldn’t.

“Buck!” I swore. My mouth filled with blood. I spat it out, slowly regaining some measure of control. The splatter was oil-black and glistening and I’d swear it moved around the edges. I grunted and pulled my right forehoof close to my body, just trying to get it out of the way. It moved like it was asleep or disconnected from my shoulder entirely.

Cube shoved me aside and looked at what I’d done.

“You idiot!” Cube swore. “You started the emergency de-orbit procedure!”

“We’re falling?” I asked.

Cube raised a hoof to kick me and stopped herself. “Yes. We’re falling.”

I looked around. There were alarms going off, and the floor was vibrating a little.

“The artificial gravity is going to be the dominant force until we hit the atmosphere, then the rotation is going to literally tear the station apart,” Cube explained. “We’ve got maybe five minutes to save the world.”

“Can we still connect to the orbital platforms?” I asked. I tried to stand and Cube took a step back, keeping her distance. It was the smart move.

“The warsat network is still online and moving into firing orbits,” she confirmed.

“Let’s point them somewhere else,” I said. “All the firing commands have to go through here, right?”

“As long as I didn’t short the wrong circuits and erase the command codes,” Cube confirmed. She opened a panel and revealed a keyboard set into the wall. Her magic danced across the keys. “Buck!”

“What’s wrong?”

“When I knocked out the ground comms I damaged part of the communications array,” she said. “We have to contact the warsats one at a time.”

“Show me,” I said.

“Select one warsat from the list, press the realign button. Connect to it. Redirect the shot somewhere…” Cube hesitated.

“Middle of the ocean,” I said. “Doesn’t have to be exact. Just aim for open water and nopony will get hurt, right?”

“Right, good idea,” she agreed. I watched how she entered the coordinates. It wasn’t just pointing it somewhere on a map. It was more like describing an arc, all variables and angles. “That’s one. Just… too many more to do.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There’s a space pod at the docking thing. You’re going to take that and get out of here with Klein.”

She frowned. “There’s no time. The pod has to be launched as soon as possible. It can guide itself but it needs to get distance from the station before this place turns into debris!”

“Exactly. So you’re going to go, and I’ll stay.” I pushed her aside and tapped at the keys, a little slower than she was. “Like this, right? Select one of the warsats, then give it the new coordinates.” I entered numbers without thinking, letting the computer in my head calculate the arc. It ended almost right next to Cube’s in the ocean between Equestria and the Zebra homeland.

“Maybe if we both do it, we can both get out of here,” Cube said. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”

“You’re the dumb one.” I gave her a sad smile. “I’m cooked, Cube. If I get in that pod with you and Klein, anything could happen. It was built with SIVA, remember? I might infect it just touching it.”

Cube growled and shoved me.

“You idiot! This whole thing is your fault!” she shouted.

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “Mom, SIVA, all of it.”

“You’re going to live through this,” she told me. “You always find some way.”

I started to deny that.

“No, shut up!” Cube snapped. “If you can survive a collapsing portal you can survive falling.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised. Cube nodded. The station shook, sending her stumbling to the side. “Go,” I ordered.

Cube fled, giving me one last look as she levitated herself up the ladder instead of climbing it, heading to the center of the station and safety. I started entering in the next warsat corrections and pulled on the helmet.

“Klein, you there?” I asked. “Cube is on the way. Launch as soon as she’s with you. And don’t argue with me--”

“Leave your butt behind, got it,” Klein said.

“You’re not going to tell me I have to go with you?”

“Oh buck no, I was just about to leave without you anyway.”

I laughed, telling a fourth satellite to dump itself in a polar ice cap. “Thanks.”

“...Good luck,” Klein said.

I turned off the radio and spoke to the empty air. “I’ll need it.”

The station rumbled again, the floor jerking under me. The way it moved was a painful reminder that I was standing on the inside of what was essentially a big wheel spinning really quickly and starting to drift into the rough patches at the sides of the road. My limp right arm shot out and grabbed the console on reflex, steadying me.

“At least you’re starting to work again,” I mumbled. There were only a few warsats left. The station beeped an alarm. The capsule was detaching from the station. One of the monitors automatically switched over to a view of the departing pod.

I saluted it. Or I tried to. My right forehoof was still gripping the keyboard.

“Hey, knock it off,” I said. “Must be a cramp--”

The knife in my hoof slipped free from where it was stored between my bones, cutting through my suit and into the keys, destroying the controls.

“Buck!” I jumped in alarm. “I didn’t mean to do that!”

My forehoof twisted on its own like a snake and the knife came for my neck. I grabbed it just in time, falling onto my back and holding my own right forehoof in my left, barely keeping the tip of the monomolecular blade away from my jugular.

“This is new,” I grunted. My forehoof jerked and twisted, stabbing down suddenly. It barely missing my helmet. “Mom, you are such a bitch!”

I mean, who else could possibly be to blame? I adjusted my grip, getting to the base of the blade where it turned into composite bone, trying to find the seam. It was the tiniest little gap, machined beyond the precision of a mere pony, but it was still there. I pushed sideways there with all the strength in my left hoof, snapping the blade free at the magnetic seam. Before whatever was controlling me could snatch it back, I turned the knife around and stabbed it into the space just below my shoulder.

The pain was electric and terrifying. I threw up a little in the helmet. A tiny wiper automatically cleaned it up. I could have kissed whoever had designed that, after using some mouthwash.

I didn’t even have time to lie there in agony and recover before the station jerked again, the rotation stalling and gravity vanishing for a moment before returning weaker than before.

“That’s definitely a bad sign,” I groaned. I stood up and fell over immediately. There was no feeling at all in my right side except pain, and I couldn’t move my right forehoof at all. I’d severed something very important inside it in my effort to keep it from killing me. But maybe it had already done its job. The suit was all torn up from the knife.

I hopped over to the wall with the floor vibrating at a steadily increasing and unstable pitch under me, finding the duct tape I’d stashed in a velcro pocket and quickly wrapping it all around that foreleg, doing my best to make it airtight before binding it to my chest to keep it from flapping around.

“A plan would be really great right about now,” I mumbled to myself. I saw a wisp of fire outside the window.

And then everything went to Tartarus all at once.

The station slammed to a halt, braking against the atmosphere at the same time it was breaking against the atmosphere. Everything that had previously been pretending it was experiencing gravity gave up on the illusion. There was an almighty crack and a whomp of explosive decompression and I was in open space, tumbling end over end.

The helmet, which was surprisingly advanced, gave me a detailed list of everything going wrong with it with a warning tone that got my attention but didn’t make me panic more, not that I could panic any more than I already was. My heart would have been going at a million miles an hour if it wasn’t probably halfway between a knot of muscle and a turbine pump.

I was in the upper atmosphere, and I mean upper. It was so thin that it made real air look as thick as pea soup, but at the speed I was moving, that was enough to buffet me. I felt like I was skimming the surface of an invisible ocean.

Everything was starting to heat up. The air I was hitting was sandblasting me. The debris falling faster than me was below me, streaking by and burning across the sky. All it was gonna take was one bad moment and I’d be joining it in a fireball.

Instinct demanded I hide behind something. A wing-shaped piece of hull plating skipped next to me. I grabbed it with my good hoof before it could bounce away, barely keeping my grip when a wave of turbulence cracked against me.

Prayers, half-formed, spilled from my lips. I pulled myself onto the sheet of metal. It was barely larger than I was. We were already losing speed, and flickers of plasma flame puffed at the edges of the shield.

“This is such a terrible way to die,” I gasped, ducking down to avoid another steak of flame. As I did, the angle of the sheet shifted, changing the way the air hit it. A wash of flame surged around me, and I reversed the motion, the metal cutting into the air again instead of smashing through it.

It was almost like having a tiny amount of control.

Very carefully, I got all my hooves on the plate. Or at least three of them. I stood up on it, the buffeting from the atmosphere pushing it back into me.

“Okay,” I said. I braced myself, trying not to look at how much air I had left. “Let’s hang ten.”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Surfing on reentry fire with a piece of shielding is probably the most metal thing ever.

[Reese]

"My forehoof jerked and twisted, stabbing down suddenly. It barely missing my helmet."
"My forehoof jerked and twisted, stabbing down suddenly. It barely missed my helmet."?

"ducking down to avoid another steak of flame. As"
"ducking down to avoid another streak of flame. As"?

Wow. :D
Well, that was definitely an eventual chapter!
However is our here going to get out of this one, my? :D
(...Though I also wonder what targets those last few warsats hit...)