Chapter 1: Arrival
Chapter 1: Arrival
The front doors of the examination room slid open smoothly as a pair of unicorn guards entered, carrying between them, with their combined magic, the form of an unconscious dark blue unicorn with a golden mane. The room was a square one, the walls completely white and flat, not a mark marring its perfection. In the center was a simple white slab, and above it hovered a white light, giving off a headache-inducing glow. To either side were trays loaded with medical supplies; bone saws, syringes, different kinds of serums, all were included, and more. The unconscious pony was wearing a simple white patient vest, like you would find at any hospital. On the back, a long, blue, glowing, segmented bar indicated that her body was fine, but the blood covering her said differently.
The guards dragged her over to a table, and metal bars went around her body and hooves, locking her in place. A fifth one nestled around her neck and began glowing, suppressing her magic. A white pony in a whiter lab coat, an earth pony this time, entered. He trotted over to a computer screen with a scan of the patient’s brain, looked at it for a moment and then nodded, waving to the blue pony with an impatient hoof. One of the lab assistants, a pink pony with a red mane walked forward, a syringe in her hoof, and injected the patient with a blue-green serum. The patient’s eyes fluttered open, momentarily containing the sluggishness of the newly-awakened. Then, a second later, they were wide open, the unicorn suddenly alert. She struggled against the restraints with all her force, actually straining them. Then she tried wiggling out of them. All this proved futile and the doctor approached the examination table.
“Please don’t do that,” he said, in a voice completely devoid of the usual kindness of doctors, clipped and very official, “We don’t want to have to hurt you, but we will. Do you know where you are, Ms. Golden Wrench?”
“Yes. Examination Room B. The Medical Barge Hopeful. Can’t be any more specific. You haven’t told me where the fuck we are!” Wrench suddenly began struggling again, and the doctor pressed a button on the side of the slab. Suddenly, dark yellow electricity coursed through her body, and she abruptly tensed up, and then went limp.
“Calm down Ms. Wrench. We simply want to know what happened down there, on Tares III.”
“I told you, I’m not sure! There was something down there. I saw it, but I can’t remember it! Like a dream you know you had, but just keeps escaping your memory.” Her eyes darted around, her pupils constricting until they were as small as the head of a pin. She seemed to have given up the struggle, but the guard ponies kept their eyes on her just in case.
“Just start at the beginning. I’m sure it will come back as you go along.”
“Fine. We were dispatched on a mission to Tares III. A simple job. The company running the mining op. down there had lost contact with them. We were supposed to fix their communications array…”
“I’m sorry. We?”
“Yeah, we. Me, Golden Wrench, Engineer Third Class. Trigger Happy, you know, the yellow pony with the cyan mane. He was a soldier, a private in the armed forces. The third member of our happy little group was Solara. She was some sort of a scientist. She was all white, with a grey mane. Weird cutie mark, some sort of yellow-orange spiral, with the point at the top. Don’t you know this stuff already?”
“Yes, but the more details there are, the more likely you are to remember the rest. Go on.”
“All right then.” She grew calmer as she began talking, as if remembering these things was restoring her to semi-sanity. “Like I said, it was supposed to be a simple mission. If I’d known what was down there, I wouldn't have volunteered for it…”
We exited hyperspace about a hundred or so miles from the atmosphere, giving us plenty of time to look at the planet. Tares III, known to many as ‘that uninhabitable rock’, was the friendliest-to-life planet in the Tares system. The sun was an enormous Red Giant, putting out enough curies to fry an egg on the surface of Tares I, which was about twice as far from it as Equestria is from our sun. The curies on Tares III were low enough for a pony to survive, as long as they didn't expose themselves to it. Still, the surface was pure red, and covered in deep craters. The planet was three or four times the size of Equestria, but not populated by any life forms, like all the other planets colonized by pony-kind. The atmosphere was mostly CO2 and Nitrogen, but was kept out of homes with filters. The atmosphere contained little oxygen, but the station had enough oxygen tanks to survive for decades without outside assistance.
Our shuttle was a box with a pointed nose, the point being the cockpit. It was old, too. Older than all the rest of us combined, it was a relic of older days, covered in scratches and patches of rust. The yellow paint of the Celestia corporation had all but disappeared, and the name of our mother-ship, the Envoy, painted on the side, had long since gone. The side had a huge door on it, but otherwise nothing broke up the box shape. The pilot’s seat was just a chair with several screens around it. Sitting in it was Trigger Happy, our bodyguard. He was a big pony, about a head taller than the rest of us, and built like a train. He was in his soldier RIG, a simple piece of hardware consisting of a nylon suit with eight interlocking plates. One for the chest, one for the back, one going around each leg, and two for the face. On the back was a blue segmented bar. The back of the ship was a living area. The very back held a kitchen in a small alcove, with a box filled with dehydrated foods. Lining the walls were four bunk beds. Only one and a half were obviously in use at the moment. One actually held a pony.
As we approached, Trigger tried to initiate communications with Station Ultros, the only base on the rock. The screens lit up with static, nothing getting through. Weird, at this distance, the base should be using its short-range comm units. Maybe the comm pony was on a break or something. The base was fairly large, covering about a hundred miles of land, some parts of it above gigantic craters, and others on the edge of mountains. The land around it and some parts of the station were peppered with enormous mining rigs, giant laser drills designed to bore through the thick outer mantle and get to the juicy metals underneath. I gazed at them admiringly, practically pressed up against the glass. As I was looking I noticed the comm array. It looked undamaged. Good, at least I wouldn't have to deal with any hardware. The problem would be with the software. Maybe a bug. I’d find out when I got there. Suddenly, a hoof dropped on my shoulder.
“Hey Wrench, move back. Any closer and ye’ll pass through the glass. Ah don’t wanna have ta go get ya out there!” Trigger Happy, private, laughed at his own joke. No one else did, so he backed away from me, his face becoming serious again. “Anyway, get yer RIG on. We’ll be landing in about twenty minutes, and that fancy piece ah tech looks like it’ll take at least that long ta get on.”
I simply glared at him, causing him to back away. He was big, a muscly earth pony soldier trained in the fires of a dozen wars, but I was a unicorn. As far as he knew, I could rip him limb from limb without even blinking. He was wrong. I may be a unicorn, but I’ve only ever mastered three spells. The basic Telekinesis every unicorn knows instinctively, a localized stasis field I’d developed off of it, and a machine communion spell. The last one I was especially proud of, as it made my job easier. Any halfway-decent engineer could hack, but only I could convince a computer it wanted to let me in using nothing but a spell.
I walked to my RIG, lying on my bed, and hit a button on the back. The whole thing suddenly jumped off the bed and attached to me. I barely flinched; I had done it so often since becoming an engineer six months ago. I smiled at the surprise of the soldier, who had expected me to struggle with it. I understood why, of course. An engineering RIG, or Resource Integration Gear, was an enormous suit made of interlocking plates covering a suit of nylon. On the back was a glowing blue, segmented bar that told everybody how healthy I was. The tail had its own nylon protective sheath and plates, lighter then the rest of the RIG, as did the mane. The face was covered by two plates, connected by the nylon suit. One was solid, covering the mouth and snout, and contained a re-breather mask, which was connected by tubes to an oxygen tank next to the health monitor. The eyes were covered by a glowing blue piece of glass with, across it, several metal bars meant to protect the wearer. The face plates would retract, allowing for face-to-face conversation. On the back were a pair of arms, modeled like thin dragon arms, with five fingers, named AMRs, or Agile Magic Replacements. Normally, only non-unicorns would get them, but the corporation had accidentally mass-produced RIGs equipped with them, so unicorns got one too now. The fingers on the right 'hand' would retract, releasing dozens of small wires that would connect with a computer and absorb information after I hacked it. The other was supposed to reveal a blowtorch, but was unfinished, as I had just acquired this RIG after my old one all but exploded during an installation job on Volaris Ultra. The arms, when not in use, lay close to my back, so as to not get in the way. The whole thing was wired into my neural system, reacting to my thoughts like a part of my body, and it formed around me to fit and feel like a second skin. I willed the face-plates to retract, and they did, revealing my deep blue eyes. Everything below my eyes was still covered by a nylon mask, however.
“Fast enough for you?” I asked Trigger, who was, for the first time on this trip, at a loss for words. No one knew how fast an engineer could get his or her suit on. It was a surprisingly well-kept secret, for something all engineers did daily. I heard a giggle from behind me, and I turned.
Sitting up in her bed was Solara, our scientist. I cannot convey with words how beautiful the pegasus was. She had this flowing grey hair that somehow looked youthful, and her white body didn't give her the same just-out-of-the-lab looks as most scientists. I can’t stand that look. Of course, that was ruined by the fact she was as childish as they get, and wore a white on the outside, red on the inside lab coat. It had the health surveillance bar on the back, but otherwise looked like a regular lab coat.
“Hey, wait a minute. Trigger, if you’re there, and Golden is there, who’s piloting this metal death trap?” she asked, in her high-pitched yet world-weary voice.
“Oh, shit!” exclaimed Trigger, jumping into the pilot’s seat and almost breaking it under his bulk. He began hitting things on the holographic screen, and a steering wheel rose up in front of him. He grabbed onto it, and Solara and I strapped into our seats behind the pilot’s seat. Suddenly, a giant metal plate lowered itself across the glass at the front of the shuttle, and a screen dropped down, showing what was in front of us.
“Entering atmosphere now.” said an obviously synthetic voice. The ship AI, only smart enough to tell us what was going on. Trigger easily brought the shuttle to land on the station's landing pad. Enormous bay doors closed above us, as directed by the station's AI, and banged ominously shut. The door on the side of the shuttle opened with a hiss of the pneumatic motors, and . . . absolutely nothing happened. I wasn't expecting a fanfare, but there should at least have been someone there to greet us. I mean, your station breaks down and the Corp sees fit to send someone, you at least say hi.
“What the fuck? Where’s the greeting party?” said Trigger, strangely serious. I half expected him to make a joke. Instead, a pulse rifle raised itself from where it had lain on his back and he stepped cautiously out of the shuttle. We followed, me with my laser saw, a small rod containing super-heated plasma it could shoot in a controlled laser, raised from its spot above my right shoulder.
The landing bay was enormous, the ceiling so high I couldn't see it. Down the center ran a long pathway, to a door. On either side of the pathway were two landing pads. None of them were occupied, which was bizarre. Even if no spacecraft had arrived recently, there should still be a few puddle-jumpers from the drills, transporting materials and personnel. We cautiously approached the door, and I inspected it. The panel to the right of the door, the one that had once opened it, was destroyed. Its wires hung out, the screen laying several hoof-lengths away.
“Well? Aren't ya gonna do some of yer engineer magic on it an' tell it to open?” asked Trigger, his eyes darting around the dark landing bay.
“I can’t, the hardware’s destroyed. I can’t hack it, but if you stand back, I can cut it open. This door’s pretty thin, just not thin enough to be bucked open.” I walked up to the door, and my laser responded to my will, beginning to cut through the steel. After a few minutes of work, I had cut out a piece as wide as I am long, and about half as tall. I stepped through into what was the reception area, followed by the two others. A pair of benches ran down the center, back to back, and a booth to the right would have contained a pony that would check our passports and point us in the right direction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something dart away from the booth, up the wall, but when I turned and looked, heart pounding, nothing was there. I mentally berated myself for imagining things, then turned to Trigger.
“Well, no one’s here. Spooky. Where do we go to find somebody?” I said, turning to Trigger Happy. He was officially in charge, after all.
“Ah…ah don’t know. There should've been someone here ta greet us and take us ta tha array to fix it.” He was obviously unsettled. Why? What was going on?
“The people are probably just late. If we wait around, they’re bound to show up eventually.” I tried to convince myself too, but deep inside, I knew something was wrong. Call it a gut feeling.
“Yeah, probably. Weh’ll wait.”
“Meanwhile, I’ll go check the screen on that computer over in the booth and find out how the station is doing.”
“O…okay, go ahead.” Why was he so unsettled? I was so used to the image of the big, tough soldier that this new scared Trigger was actually pretty creepy to see.
I went into the booth and checked the screen. It had some sort of old computer game playing, and I turned it off. I switched to the station diagnostics, and my eyes widened at what I saw there.
“Trigg…Trigger? Did anybody tell you the station is running a red level quarantine? “
“No. Why?”
“Because it is. The whole station’s been locked down. It’s a miracle the bay doors opened for us.” Then something occurred to me. I checked the screen, and found that the quarantine did not extend to the landing bay or welcome area. Weird. That should be where it originated, right?
Suddenly, the lights went out, and the computer screen turned off. I heard some clanging in the overhead vents, and then a scream. Suddenly, something dropped down next to me. It was too dark for me to tell what it was, but it slammed into me, and I could feel a strange scrabbling on my armor. I bucked, knocking it off, and ran to the back door of the booth. I couldn't tell what was going on.
“Trigger! Trigger, what’s going on?!” No answer. “Trigger?” Still no answer. Suddenly the thing stood up and charged me again. I opened the door behind me and ran in. Whatever it was chased me. I galloped to an elevator, and frantically hit the call button. It arrived and I ran in, hitting the first button I saw, the one for the basement. The doors began closing, and suddenly the thing slammed in between them, trying to force the elevator open. This time I got a good look at it.
It may once have been a pony, but that was a long time ago. Now, strange appendages burst from its back, topped with enormous spears made of bone. Its mouth was far too wide, and filled with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth, like a shark. Its eyes were simply empty sockets, staring blindly at me. Its stomach had dozens of strange tentacles on it, wiggling back and forth. It roared once and I screamed back. My laser saw reacted, turning on and attacking. It slammed into the thing’s face, knocking it back, screaming. I frantically hit the close button until the doors closed, then sat down, my mind racing. What was happening? What was that thing?
What the fuck was going on?