Wonderbirds: Chasing the Darkness

by 8_Bit

III: These Mortal Coils

Smacking her lips, Pinkie Pie sat observing. Around her in the dim light of electric lanterns, the sounds of frenzied eating echoed through the cavernous room. It had been a blessing that she'd had the idea to delay the launching of Wonderbird Three for a couple of days. It had given her and Twilight the time to consider the possibility of food rations. If she'd been forced to bring all twenty seven creatures back to Equis from Marecury, Pinkie would have needed to provide them with sustenance while on board Wonderbird Three. Two weeks worth at minimum, plus an extra weeks worth for redundancy, for twenty seven creatures. Much of the day before launch, she'd spent transporting ration packs from Harmony Island's underground warehouses into Wonderbird Three's cargo hold.

The central module of Duskwalker was known as the escape module. It housed the large rocket-propelled pods that were designed to reach the command ship orbiting the planet. While smaller escape pods could be found in both of the other two modules, these weren't quite as capable as the primary launch system. And with the pods and necessary launch mechanisms taking up the entirety of the central module, there wasn't room for anything else, such as food storage. The same went for the rearmost module, housing fuels, coolant, water, and all the other necessary fluids for the Duskwalker to operate. Only the front module was habitable for any extended duration of time. The creatures before Pinkie had managed to siphon drinking water from the bathroom taps, but they hadn't eaten since the crawler broke down. Which was ten days ago.

Another stroke of luck was that Twilight Sparkle had planned for every eventuality. The warehouse back on the island had contained food supplements that met the dietary requirements of every sentient race on Equis. Granite, as well as his fellow minotaurs Minerva and Steelhoof, crammed down packets of grass salsa. Morpha, the chief medical officer and only changeling on board, had a similar diet to the griffons. She joined Kamryn, Robyn, Swiftwing, Orion, Gildcrest and Skyfeather in gorging themselves on pulled pork gnocchi. Pinkie was glad she couldn't smell the meat one through her helmet.

She also got the distinct impression that the First Officer wasn't keen for her to be there. Kamryn, almost identical to her sister Robyn and only differentiated by the mint green eyes to Robyn's pale pink, had been reluctant to accept the food. Several times over the last week, the remaining crew had attempted to venture into the first module to scavenge for something to eat. Every single time, the crazed ponies had found them and they'd been forced to retreat to safety. With the Captain very much an invalid, Kamryn was in charge. She had luckily been scavenging nearby when she'd heard screams coming from an access hatch. And her quest to find some food to feed her starving crew had been interrupted, to save Pinkie. Fair enough, her annoyance was justified there.

But when Pinkie had announced that she had food rations on board Wonderbird Three, all ten faces had lit up in disbelief. Like all their Hearths Warmings (or whichever cultural Winter holidays each of them observed) had come at once. Only Kamryn's expression had then fallen into one of resignation. Pinkie had taken care to follow decontamination protocols back on her ship. She'd waited in the airlock as anti-bacterial agents pulsed through the air, and gentle ultraviolet radiation washed over her. When she was clean, she'd made her way to the cargo hold and loaded two crates of food onto an all-terrain dolly. Nine creatures gave Pinkie a heroes welcome when she returned, and Kamryn had rolled her eyes. Hey, Pinkie had worked retail before. She knew she couldn't please everycreature.

"So tell us, Tres," Kamryn said, strands of pork hanging from her beak as she prodded at her food packet with a spork. "You got a plan for us to get this this hunk'a junk going again, no doubt. You gonna share with the class?"

"Oh, umm..." Pinkie felt the various eyes in the room turning to her, expecting an answer. "Well... I had time to try and figure it out on the trip here. I wanted to try overclocking the backup generators to jump start the primary motors. But when I was down there earlier, I saw that they're all already going flat out just to maintain the core systems, and putting out a lot of heat to do that. So, I don't think we can risk it. We'd either have to shut off life support to try, or try anyway and risk blowing those generators too. And we'd lose life support systems either way."

"Mmmhmm. If you're done stating the obvious, caballo," Kamryn drawled. "What's your Plan B?"

"Evacuate. Get you all onboard Wonderbird Three."

"No evacuation, Tres. I mean a Plan B that involves getting Duskwalker moving again."

"I'm... err... still working on that one... wait, what do you mean 'no evacuation'?"

Kamryn froze, fixing Pinkie with a dangerous stare. "What do I mean?" she asked, putting her food packet to one side. "I mean me and my team, we sunk ten years into preparing for this mission. And we sure as heck aren't going to abandon it after a few months over some low batteries!"

"Oh-kay!" With a flash of lime green, Morpha had thrown herself into the fray. "Timeout, I think! She's here to help us, boss, we don't need to be getting feisty with her now, do we? Keep your blood pressure down, doctor's orders. Trust me, your future self will thank you."

With a grumble, Kamryn picked up her food packet and resumed eating.

"It's fine, I get it," Pinkie replied. "You guys have spent so long and put in so much effort just to be here. Of course you don't want to bail out. But if you can't get this lab rolling again, in four days you're all gonna be baked like cupcakes."

"Well," Morpha said, turning to face Pinkie. "The way I see it, whatever we do, the first order of business is making sure we can get safely back into the lead module, right?"

"Main engine interfaces are down there," Granite confirmed. "If we're gonna restart this puppy, that'd be the first port of call. In theory, we could mirror the controls to any interface on the crawler, for the sake of convenience. But you'd need to set that up on the terminal next to the primary backup generator first."

Pinkie thought for a moment. "Well, you guys have had a chance to watch those ponies closely, see how they behave. Anything we can use to lure them out?"

One of the minotaurs, Minerva, spoke up. "If it walks and breathes, they'll hone in on it."

"And if they catch you?"

"None of us have been slow enough to find out so far," Kamryn deadpanned.

"Well, here's hoping it doesn't spread to other creatures through bites," Pinkie mused. "Hey Morpha, how well supplied is the medical bay? You think you could whip up something that could knock them out?"

All heads turned to the changeling. "Ummm... maybe? I have enough sedatives, for sure. But you'd have a heck of a time trying to get close enough to any of them to inject them."

Pinkie remembered something she'd thought about when she was examining the backup generators. Air conditioning wasn't functioning, but air circulation was. "What about an aerosol? You should have a dispersal unit on board."

Silence fell on the group as the suggestion processed in each of their heads. "Would we be safe in here?" asked the other of the twin griffons, Robyn.

"Isolate the air supply to the primary module," replied Kamryn, her beak full of pork, cheese and pasta. "Each one has its own scrubbers and oxygenators, they can all act independently of each other. It's just simpler having one big supply. But you can cut one off from the others at any of the link terminals, it just needs confirmation from the on-duty commanding officer. It could work, Tres."

"It could," Pinkie nodded. "We'd have to sneak through the front module to the medbay. Then load up the dispersal unit with enough sedative, and take the whole thing up to the ventilation relays. That would spread it through the entire module. Should only take a few hours to fully dissipate afterwards, by which time we should be able to find all the ponies and get them restrained. What do you guys think?"

"Well, it beats kicking my hooves up and waiting to die," admitted Granite. "So, who's going?"

"I will," both Pinkie and Morpha said in unison.

Turning to the changeling to protest, Pinkie was met with a raised hoof. "Don't waste time arguing with me, Three. I'm a medic, they're my patients. I know the way to my medical bay, and I'll bet you any money that your vision in the dark is nowhere near as good as mine. You need me for this."

"But..."

"And I'll bet that while you've got some medical experience, you might struggle to work out the dosage rate for seventeen ponies. All of whom differ in size and stature, and none of them are entirely cognizant right now. Overdo it and they could suffer permanent brain damage, or even worse."

"Ughh... fine." Pinkie hated to admit it, but Morpha was right. She was the medic, and she had every right to insist she come along. "But nocreature else, I don't want any unnecessary risks."

Looking over to Kamryn, Pinkie waited for a go-ahead. Respecting the chain of command struck her as a good first step to building bridges. She knew that her face was obscured by the polarised glass visor of her helmet, but Kamryn still looked her up and down all the same. Like she was trying to get a read on Pinkie.

"Okay then, Tres," she said finally. "Look after my colleague, sí? Take a minute if you need, then get going." Kamryn turned to Morpha. "And you, ese, wear your EVA suit. Don't want you going loco on us when you release that stuff, eh?"

Nodding, and scurrying away to suit up, Morpha's jump to action appeared to signify to the rest of the group that it was time to disperse. Pinkie looked around, impressed. They hadn't wasted their ten days of isolation. Each of them had their own task. Makeshift beds had been set up out of tarpaulin along one wall, with access to a barrel of water nearby. Several tables had been pulled close, a scattering of laptop computers sat on top. Most of them were shut, but a few were running and displaying complex lines of code on their screens. Several of the griffons had pulled the food crates aside and started sorting through them, rationing them. Unnecessary, Pinkie hoped, but for now it would help to have something to occupy their minds with.

As Kamryn grabbed a lantern and set off with Robyn in the direction of the airlock that led to the primary module, Granite walked up to Pinkie.

"You got a sec?" he asked.

"Apparently I do," Pinkie replied, watching as Minerva struggled to help Morpha climb into her bulky EVA suit. It wasn't helping her that she was trying to assist whilst juggling to keep hold of another lantern. "What's on your noodle?"

"I just wanted to say thank you, really. On behalf of Kamryn, because I know she's too proud to admit it. But things here were getting pretty desperate. You turning up out of the black... well, it's given us some fresh hope, y'know?

"Awwr, it's no biggie, really," Pinkie gushed with a wave of her hoof.

"It's a big biggie though, Like, a really big biggie. You think I don't know where we are? How risky it was for you to get here? I don't even know how you got here so bloody fast, but I'm glad you did. Kamryn's a grumpy bean, but that's only because she cares about the team she's got here. Apologies in advance for any more of her grumblings, but... yeah. Well, I've got your back with whatever you need, okay?"

She nodded in appreciation as Granite left her to her thoughts. With a few more minutes to pass before Morpha would be fully suited up, Pinkie took the chance to radio in to Twilight to explain the plan. For a few moments, Pinkie suspected Twilight was fending off a coronary. It had been bad enough when she'd first heard Pinkie's report about the pursuit she'd escaped from in the lead module. To hear that she was going back appeared to cause her anguish to double down. Twilight worried too much, justified or not. Even if, in this instance, it was justified. But Pinkie talked her through her rationalisation. That she couldn't just abandon those seventeen ponies to their fates, nor could she let them loose through the crawler. There weren't any good options, but this one posed the least risk.

By the time she'd finally ended the transmission, Morpha was geared up and standing to attention at the airlock door, talking to Kamryn. Pinkie took a steady breath, nodded in assurance to herself, and strolled over.

"Okay Tres," Kamryn said. "As soon as you two are gone, we'll isolate the air supply and start suiting up ourselves. Morpha's all good, you ready?"

"Just one thing, actually," Pinkie replied, eyeing up the control panel next to the airlock. "Would you mind just... opening and closing that door for me, pretty please?"

Kamryn cocked an eyebrow, but nodded to her sister all the same. As requested, Robyn stepped up to the control panel. She pressed one button, causing the door to whoosh open, and then another to make it hiss shut. Pinkie lifted her hoof to examine her wrist-mounted computer. She navigated through the menus, muttering to herself as she went. She gave a quiet 'ah-hah', then asked Robyn to do the same thing again. A scowl spread across Kamryn's face as her feathers began to ruffle. Robyn, meanwhile, obediently opened and closed the door again, making no effort to hide a smirk.

"You gonna play with doors all day, Tres, or you gonna get on with this plan of yours?"

"Hang on," Pinkie declared. She gestured at the door with her hoof, and it immediately shot open, causing Kamryn, Robyn and Morpha to all leap away from it in surprise. "Okey dokey lokey, all ready to go!"

"Whu... what just happened?" Morpha asked.

"I managed to clone the input signals from the control panel to the receiver circuits in the door matrix," Pinkie explained. "Then tied the cloned signals into the gesture controls in my suit, so I can wave a hoof and open any of the airlock doors on this lab. Pretty neat, huh?"

Ignoring the the looks of disbelief on the two griffons, Pinkie made a big show of exaggerating her nonchalance as she strolled through the doorway. She switched on her helmet-mounted flashlight, and Morpha took a few moments to process what she'd seen, then scrambled to catch up.

"You got some pretty sweet gear," she gushed as she kept pace with Pinkie down the dim corridor. Her short legs scuttled twice as fast as Pinkie's, making haste to keep up.

Pinkie giggled in appreciation. "I know a pretty smart cookie with a flair for the dramatic. But we can talk toys later. You said you can see in the dark really good, yeah?"

"Uh-huh, all changelings can. Back in the hive days, we didn't ever get natural light in the deepest catacombs, so we kinda had to see well or we'd all just get lost all the time."

"Well... looks like I'd better lose the nightlight if we don't want to wake some snoozyheads..."

Morpha looked up as Pinkie drew to a halt. They'd reached the airlock separating them from the module infested with rabid ponies. The beam from Pinkie's flashlight flicked across the dark pane of glass set into the middle of the door, and flashes of red light danced from beyond. Morpha gave a sharp, juddering intake of breath.

"We got this, okay?" Pinkie said in the most gentle tone of reassurance she could muster. For good measure, she even reached a hoof around Morpha's shoulders. She pulled her in for a semi-hug that appeared to help steady the trembling changeling. "Talk me through this."

"So, basically," Morpha squeaked back. "It isn't that far. We go in. Keep low, slow and quiet. Stay right on my tail, and we should go unnoticed. Once we're at the medbay it'll be pretty straightforward, there's an access hatch in the ceiling opposite that can take us up to the ventilation regulators. Ten minutes tops, from this door opening to sedative dispersal."

Pinkie nodded. She gestured to the airlock door with her hoof, causing it to slide open, and then inclined her head in a gentle bow. "Suits me just fine and dandy. After you then, m'lady."

With her hooves still trembling, Morpha shuffled delicately into the flashing abyss, Pinkie only a few feet behind. They both paused as the door hissed shut again. Waiting to see if anypony came running, drawn by the sound. There was currently nopony in sight, which suited them both fine. After an agonising few moments, Morpha seemed to find her nerve, and started taking tender steps forward. In the foreboding embrace of the dark maze, Pinkie and Morpha ventured onwards. Their every move was concealed, they hoped, hidden beneath the shroud of murky twilight as they proceeded. Overhead, the menacing red beacons cast eerie, blood-red illumination that pulsed and writhed across the walls like the heartbeat of a sinister beast.

They progressed steadily, with Pinkie putting her full faith in the small changeling to guide her. And to her credit, Morpha was ever the vigilant sentry that Pinkie needed at that moment. Morpha's outline could just about be seen looking both forward and backward, on high alert for any signs of life. Her movements were deliberate. Calculated. A careful deduction of the shortest distance to their destination, taken at a snails pace that seemed as quick as she dared to proceed. Even the slightest increase to the weight of each hoofstep risked being enough to draw attention to them. It was a risk neither of them dared take.

Further and further they went through their labyrinthine nightmare. The menacing crimson beacons, their eerie light dissecting the darkness, created an otherworldly atmosphere. They sent surreal, ever-changing patterns across vents and pipes that seemed to taunt Pinkie and Morpha at every turn. The air itself felt charged with electric tension, and they remained acutely aware of the crazed ponies hiding somewhere in the shadows. It was enough to keep both of their heartrates at an uncomfortable high.

Several passages converged into a crossroads, a junction at the heart of the sinister web of corridors. Pinkie, keeping her head low, followed as Morpha led her around to the left. Then, just about suppressing a gasp of surprise, Pinkie found herself being pushed backwards. Slowly, but with a deliberate forcefulness. As Morpha wordlessly ushered her back around the corner of the intersection, Pinkie saw it in the distance ahead of them. A stream of red light from the beacon had washed over the listless, empty expression of the green mare who had almost accosted her and Kamryn earlier. Granite had called her Melody. So, that had to be Melody Sprig, a botanist and assistant medic. And she was shuffling their way.

They crouched behind a ventilation duct, their backs pressed against the cold, unforgiving wall. In the distance, Melody Sprig's stumbling hoofsteps echoed through the corridor, a dissonant melody of madness. She drew nearer and nearer, shadows from the beacon lights casting a grotesque silhouette against the opposite wall. Heartbeats hammered in Pinkie and Morpha's chests like desperate war drums, the sound reverberating in their ears as neither dared to even breathe. The darkness had to keep them hidden, it just had to.

Melody Sprig trudged past, mere inches from their concealed sanctuary. The red beacon light danced on her emotionless face, grotesque and twisted by her slack jaw and foamy, rattling breaths. She continued on her mad, aimless path, oblivious to the invisible figures crouched mere feet away. Only when the echoing hoofsteps faded into the distance, lost to the sprawl of passages, did Pinkie or Morpha dare to exhale.

Despite the silence, Morpha remained still. Concerned, Pinkie rested a hoof on her shoulder, where the frantic rising and falling of her chest became apparent. She held her hoof there for a long pause, giving Morpha a chance to regain her nerve. It was only as Pinkie's mind began to consider whether or not she might have to leave her behind, that she finally appeared to calm down. In the flickering red light, she saw Morpha's outline steady herself, give a small nod, and then rise from her squatting position. She led Pinkie around the corner once more, and proceeded down the corridor.

The close call with Melody Sprig had shaken them both up. While Morpha inched forward with a touch more haste and a stronger quiver in her step, Pinkie found herself wishing the adrenaline in her chest would abate. It was incessant. Her limbs felt light and numb, her heartrate would not slow down, and it took every modicum of her focus to keep herself creeping forward in silence. So it was a great relief to both of them when Morpha stopped in front of a doorway a few minutes later. She pushed it open, waved Pinkie inside, and eased it shut again. With a flick of her hoof, Morpha switched on the headlight attached to her EVA suit, prompting Pinkie to do the same.

It was a small room for a medical bay. A large examination table dominated much of one side of it, with several bookcases, rows of shelves and a computer desk on the other side. The back wall was decorated with several photographs and pieces of artwork, including a neat, hoof-drawn sketch of one of Duskwalker's modules. But it was what was sat flush with the back wall that drew Pinkie's attention. Two doorways, marked with codes that indicated storage rooms, one of which also had a snowflake symbol that identified it as refrigerated storage.

Pinkie went to take a step forward, but paused. Morpha had stopped to lean against the examination table, her limbs still quivering. Making her way to her side, Pinkie turned Morpha around so they were stood face to face, getting no resistance in return. Her EVA suit helmet filtered out the sharpness and intensity of Pinkie's flashlight, but still maintained transparency. Inside her helmet, Morpha's face wore an expression of pain, shock, and utter disbelief. Her eyes, brilliant red geodesic domes, were awash with tears.

"Hey," Pinkie whispered, swallowing her own anxiety. "You did it. Got us here in one piece. You did amazing, okay? We're nearly done here."

Morpha sniffed. "I know," she moaned. "It's not that. It's... it's Melody. Did you see her? Ten years we've been friends, colleagues, and we've been though so much together. Seeing her just now... she's a hollow shell of herself. A ghost. Just... a remnant. I don't know who that was, but that wasn't my Melody..."

There was only one thing Pinkie could do. She wrapped her hooves around Morpha's midriff, and pulled her in tight for a hug. Morpha didn't struggle. She only seemed to hesitate for a moment, unresponsive, unsure how to react. Then she grabbed Pinkie and held her as she let her tears flow. Pinkie almost lost her footing as Morpha leaned into her, and for a few moments the two held their embrace. Ten days of hunger, isolation, darkness and uncertainty had done their damage on the petrified changeling.

Then as Pinkie adjusted her stance, her torchlight fell on the sketch of Duskwalker again. This time, she noticed the long, thick arms drawn protruding from the upper parts of the triangular shape. She narrowed her eyes and bit her lip, thinking. A lightbulb moment. It all flooded into her brain: a fully-formed plan, and it would work. She knew it would. All it took was one realisation, set off by a simple sketch, and Pinkie understood exactly how she could get the crawler moving again. But one thing at a time. For now, she had to focus on her immediate problems.

"Okay, Morpha," she cooed. "We have a job to do, let's get on with it, yeah? Sooner we do that, sooner we can start helping Melody, and everypony else."

Morpha pulled back, forcing a smile to crease her tear-stained cheeks. She nodded her head towards the storage cupboards. "Okay. I'll get the sedatives, you get the dispersal unit. It should be somewhere near the back, middle or top shelf."

It didn't take long for Pinkie to find the correct box. By the time she emerged back into the medbay, with the box balanced on her shoulders, Morpha was already measuring doses of a crystal blue liquid into a thick vial. She worked in silence, taking the box from Pinkie and pulling out a long, cylindrical device. Popping a small hatch open on one end, she slid the vial inside and clicked it shut. The dispersal unit gave a short, whistling alert, and an LED panel lit up green.

"Is... is it ready?" Pinkie asked.

Morpha nodded, gesturing to a switch on the side. It had a cover on it to prevent an accidental activation, much like many of the switches Pinkie had in Wonderbird Three. "Flick this, wait ten seconds, and you'll have one heck of a fog bursting out," Morpha explained. "The access to the ventilation relays is directly opposite here. Come on."

Switching off her light and following Morpha through the medbay door, Pinkie found herself back in the corridor. She looked up, seeing the outline of a hatch built into the ceiling. After a quick look around to check the coast was clear, Morpha's wings came to life in a gentle buzz. Hovering near the hatch, she pulled at the locking wheel with a light touch. It creaked open with a jolt, causing both Pinkie and Morpha to flinch. All Pinkie could do was gesture for Morpha to hurry up, and the changeling obediently zipped into the dark hole.

With her heart plunging into her stomach, Pinkie realised she could hear the distant thuds of approaching hoofsteps. Darting her head back and forth, she saw it after a few terrifying moments. From the direction they'd come from, Melody shuffled around a corner with haste in her step. She appeared to notice Pinkie at the exact moment a thin mist began to gush out of all the ventilation grates along the corridor. Pinkie braced herself to run as Melody seemed to notice her, but the pursuit never came. Melody's movements became more and more sluggish, her expression somehow even more slack and vacant. Her forward charge lost all momentum, until, right underneath a flashing red beacon, she slumped forward and collapsed on the floor.

"Morpha!" Pinkie called out. "You did it!"

A helmeted head emerged from the hatch. "It's working?"

Pinkie gestured down the corridor, where the prone outline of Melody sprawled out underneath the spinning lights. Morpha made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a gasp, but turned back to Pinkie. "Let's get back to the secondary module. We'll need the whole cavalry to find all these ponies and round them up before they come to."

Without a word, the pair of them ran back through the winding corridors back to regroup with the other creatures. No longer concerned about noise or light, they switched their flashlights on. It made the return journey a lot less harrowing, even with the veil of fog gushing from all the vents. Compared to the eternity it had seemed to take previously, they found themselves back at the airlock only a few minutes later. Pinkie opened it with a wave of her hoof, and they made their way back down the access corridor. When they opened the second airlock, three minotaurs and six griffons greeted them. All of them were wearing their EVA suits, ready for action.

"Okay, the sedative is working through the ventilation system," Pinkie announced. "Keep your helmets on until all seventeen ponies are accounted for." She turned to Morpha. "You need a breather, or you good?"

"I'm okay. Let... let me take point on this."

Pinkie nodded, then turned to address the whole group. "One thing though, before you all go. Kamryn said to me that after ten years of work, she isn't willing to abandon this lab without a fight. Can I just get a show of hooves... err, and hands... and claws... for everycreature who feels the same."

Every arm that wasn't Pinkie's rose into the air. Even Morpha's.

"So if I flew these ponies back to Equis to get them medical help, you'd all rather stay and take your chances trying to get this thing going?"

A flurry of nodding heads and mutters of 'yes', 'yep' and even a 'heck yeah' washed over the group.

"That's all I needed to know. Morpha, I'll pass over to you."

"Okay, everycreature follow me!" Morpha called out shakily, backtracking down the corridor as the group began to follow. "Flashlights on, we need to organise some search patterns. Let's do this!"

"Kamryn, Granite," Pinkie called out, as everycreature else began to file their way back towards the front module. "I think I have a plan to get this thing moving again."

Both the griffon and the minotaur peeled away from the group, which continued down the corridor as Morpha's voice faded away into the distance. Though Pinkie had come to expect a certain attitude from the griffons, Kamryn actually looked intrigued. Perhaps the ordeal Pinkie had put herself through had earned her some brownie points. She'd take what she could get.

"A plan's a good start," Granite said, grinning. "What's the action?"

"First, a question. These modules have retractable cranes, right?"

Kamryn raised an eyebrow. "Sí, they do, Tres. How did you..."

"There's a sketch, framed and hanging in the medbay. It shows Duskwalker with its cranes deployed. I'd already seen them when I studied the schematics, but it was the sketch that got me thinking. How strong are they?"

Granite blushed. "Yeah... I drew that, it was a gift for Melody... and each crane is independently strong enough hold the weight of the entire crawler, without breaking. Maybe a teeny bit overengineered, but I don't build anything less than a quality product."

"Perfect. Step one, I bring Wonderbird Three a bit closer, and you grab it with a crane. Or several. As many as can hold it flush to the side of the front module, ideally. Line it up so the rockets face towards the rear end of the crawler."

Now Kamryn's other eyebrow rose upwards. "You wanna elaborate on that, Tres?"

"We benefit from this in three ways. First, we can line Wonderbird Three up with the upper airlocks, giving me direct access between my ship and the crawler. Second, we can loop it in to the power grid. I got a fusion reactor onboard kicking out enough gigawatts to knock your socks off, but we can use it to take the strain off of the backup generators. And third, we get a bit of thrust for a jump start."

"A jump start?" Granite asked. "Hmm... maybe. But we've been stationary for more than a week. It also depends on how much the generators have been able to sustain the battery banks."

"Wait a sec," Kamryn jumped in. "What about using the emergency solar array as well?"

For a few seconds, Granite seemed to consider this. His eyebrows creased as the tiniest of frowns worked its way across his muzzle. "That might work," he whispered.

"Solar array?" Pinkie asked.

"As a part of the redundancies on board," Granite explained. "They gave us a few crates of solar panels, with a couple of miles of cabling. STEED's thinking was that in an absolute crisis, we could set the panels up miles behind the crawler. The rising sun would power us up and we could get moving before the light hit us. I told STEED it was pointless to send them up with us, because on their own it wouldn't be enough power, but... well, guess I'm eating my own words now."

"So, let's get this straight," Pinkie said. "Lay those panels out, a mile behind us? Gives us another mile of slack to get moving with. Combined effort of the panels and Wonderbird Three's reactor to get the power banks charged, then fire the rocket engines to give us a real jump start. Once the engines are going, crank Duskwalker to full speed and get ourselves well and truly out of the sun."

Granite turned to Kamryn. "It could work boss. Like, seriously, it could really work."

"You're actually gonna stay and help, Tres? You could just take these ponies, get them home and leave us to it."

"I hate uncertainties," Pinkie explained. "I could fly them home, but if you guys can't get going you'll all be toasted. And that'll be on me. If I stay, it gives us more chance of success, and you get a chance to escape if it goes wrong. Though, I'll only stay on one condition."

"Okay Tres, what's your bargain?" Kamryn asked, cocking her head and crossing her arms.

"Anycreature non-essential to the restart? I want them on board Wonderbird Three, seated and secure with thirty minutes to spare before the sun first hits those solar panels. If anything goes wrong, we won't have time for a full evacuation. And if it does go wrong, we bail at the first sign of trouble and get ourselves home. If all goes well though, everycreature willing to stay can disembark and I'll take the ponies back to Equis."

"We'd only need the three of us, boss," Granite added. "It sounds fair enough."

With narrow eyes, Kamryn looked Pinkie up and down again. Not that it would accomplish much. Pinkie's helmet visor was solid black when viewed from the outside, so it must had to be a performative thing. Griffon nature, maybe a show of superiority? Whatever, Pinkie didn't care, as long as she stayed in Kamryn's good books.

"Okay Tres," she finally said, offering a claw of agreement out to Pinkie. "Deal. Now, let's get this damn machine going again."