“…but Armchair said that he couldn’t identify the species as any known spacefaring race.”

A mind slowly became aware of her surroundings. The world was so dark, but felt so strange. She heard voices, distant ones, but not nearly as distant as the ones she had felt before that spoke words with no sound but perfect clarity. The question that occurred to this free-floating mind, however, was not the origin of the voices, but rather concerned the origin of her own thought, and just where it was coming from.

“Yeah,” said another voice. This one was deep and rough, while the other was high and smooth. “I heard. Which is why I cross-referenced the anatomy across a database of all known species.”

“Why?”

“Why? What kind of a question is that?”

“Because what would a known, non-spacefaring race be doing out here? Unless…you found something?”

“Of course I found something. Look.”

A pause. The listener found herself drifting again, returning to wherever she had come from. Time may have skipped, and she found herself wondering which one of those voices was hers.

“A horse?” said the lighter voice. The female voice, the listener realized. Female like her, but not her. It was not her voice. “What is a horse?”

“Didn’t you read any of the educational files I gave you?”

“Yes.” Another pause. “No.”

The gruff voice sighed. “They are a species of quadruped from Earth.”

“Earth? I thought the only sentient species from Earth were the humans.”

“They are. Horses are a herbivore, a pack animal. I hear they taste pretty good.”

“So this thing is just an animal?”

“No, no, that’s the interesting part. Look at these brain scans.”

“All I see is a freak-big spike jammed into the frontal lobe.”

Another sigh. “No. Look closer. This level of nervous development…you don’t see this in dumb animals.”

“So…it’s definitely not turian.”

Laughter. For some reason it made the listener afraid. She realized that something was wrong. The world was not supposed to feel like this. She was not meant to feel; everything around her was suddenly so loud and so intense. She wanted to hide, to go back to the blackness, to run- -but she could only feel herself being pulled away, coming to something new and terrifying.

“No, certainly not. But this brain…this creature is probably even capable of speech. I’d bet my left frontal nut on it!”

“Eew, dad!

That word pierced the listener’s mind like a spike through her forehead. Images slammed into her dormant copiousness: a smiling pony, standing over her. She was so small, and he was so big and strong. Beside him was a mare, beautiful and caring

The pony’s eyes burst open, and she screamed at the agony of the memory. She flailed her limbs around, not understanding why she was on a metal table or why there were bright lights over her, or so many machines surrounding her. The machines terrified her the most- -it felt like they were closing in on her, devouring her.

“Crap, she’s gonna pull her lines out!” cried the gruff voice. “Zerdok, help me hold her!”

The pony continued to scream and flail wildly, but suddenly felt a pair of immense claws close around her forlegs.

“Calm down!” ordered the deeper, male voice. “It’s going to be okay!”

The pony calmed down slightly, feeling the sincerity in those words- -until she turned her head. When she did, she came face-to-face with an immense, wide head with a pair of wide-set eyes and a preposterously wide mouth filled with pointy teeth.

Nolonger feeling safe, the pony pulled her way out of its grip and scooted backward across the cold metal table- -directly into a pair of waiting arms.

“No, please!” she cried. “Don’t hurt me!”

“HA!” bellowed the large creature, standing and towering over the pony, pointing with one long clawed finger. “Speech! I told you, Zerdok, I told you!”

“DAD!” cried the female voice, which the pony realized was the one holding her. “Quiet! You’re scaring her!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

The pony, now shaking, turned around and looked up at the creature holding her. It- -or rather she- -was not as horrible as the other one, but still frightful in appearance. She was far narrower and thinner, and instead of thick bony plates her skin was soft and blue, with a complex set of symmetrical dark marks on her face. Instead of a mane, she had some kind of swept-back tentacles.

“Shh,” she said, holding the pony only loosely. “It’s going to be okay.”

The pony did not know why being in the arms of this monster made her feel better, but it did. Even the other one was not all that scary. His appearance was more startling than anything, but he had mostly backed into the corner of the room.

Eventually, the pony calmed down. She was still shaking from the stress and extremely tired and confused, but the panic of achieving consciousness was fading quickly.

“There you go, horse,” said the blue girl. “Feeling better?”

“Pony.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a pony. It’s…it’s what I am.”

“Okay, pony. Do you have a name?”

“Name?”

“Yeah, a name. Mine is Zerdok. And his,” she pointed at the taller, armored creature across the room, “is Fenok. He’s my dad.”

The pony looked at the blue girl, and then at the tall monstrous thing. “You don’t look very similar.”

“She takes after her mother in that respect,” said Fenok, crossing his arms. “Not that she wouldn’t be just as beautiful as a fine krogan maiden, of course.”

“Dad!” hissed Zerdok. She turned her attention back toward the pony. “So…what are you called?”

The pony paused for a moment, searching her memory. “My name is…my name is Starlight Glimmer.”

“Wow that’s corny,” said Zerdok.

“She means that it’s a pretty name,” said Fenok.

“It’s…it’s just a name,” said Starlight, hopping down off the table. The two creatures towered above her, standing on two legs instead of four. Starlight was not sure if that was how she was supposed to stand too, but knew that she was too weak to manage it. “I don’t…” her eyes suddenly widened. “I don’t know how I got it…who…who am I?”

The two looked at each other, and then down at Starlight.

“We don’t know,” said Fenok. “We found you.”

“Found me? Found me…where? Did somepony lose me?”

“‘Somepony’?” said Zedok, nearly snorting with laughter. Fenok glared at her disapprovingly.

“We’re a salvage team,” he said. “We…found you in some kind of suspended animation on a derelict ship. The rest of the crew…”

“They died,” said Zedok.

“Ship?” said Starlight, her head swimming with memories that now all felt so incomplete and distant. “I…why was I on a ship? I…I can’t remember…” She put her hoof to her head and gasped in fright, pulling away suddenly and then pressing it back again, feeling the bits of metal that were installed there and following them back to her spine. “What- -what did you do to me?!”

“Calm down! You were like that when we found you!”

“But- -but- -”

Fenok took a knee near Starlight. She recoiled at first, because even kneeling he was still far taller than her. He stretched out a hand. “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

“I- -I don’t understand!”

“Neither do we. You’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some shi…I mean some real stuff. But you…”

“You’ve never seen…a pony before?”

“It’s not just that.” Fenok stood and clicked one of his claws against a display that was currently showing a cross-section of Starlight’s brain. The image shifted forward and expanded, forming a hologram that rapidly spread out into the rough shape of a pony skeleton.

“What is that?” gasped Zedok in awe.

“Ah, so you have been studying.” Fenok turned to Starlight and pointed at the holographic bones. “You’re body contains a prodigious amount of element zero. I mean, on a scale that should be far beyond biological toxicity. Yet somehow, you’re body has not just adapted to it, but EVOLVED to it.” He changed the image. “Your bone marrow contains cells specifically designed to harness the elemental effect and to funnel it through a kind of…energy network. That thing growing out of your head?” Starlight reached up, and realized that there was in fact a spiral horn protruding from her forehead. “It’s a kind of organic amplifier.”

“You mean she’s a biotic?” said Zedok.

Fenok shook his head. “Not just a biotic. This isn’t something you can get from eezio poisoning, even in the womb…your kind must have evolved like this somehow.” He turned his attention toward what Starlight had assumed was an empty part of the room where the lights were far dimmer. “She might even be more powerful than you.”

“Doubtful,” said a third voice. This one was lower than that of the blue girl, but Starlight still felt that its owner must be female.

A pair of heavy boots struck the ground as the voice’s owner jumped off a high bunk. She crossed the shadows, approaching the others, and for some reason Starlight felt herself backing away. Fenok looked scary, but whatever this was FELT terrifying.

When the figure came into the light, Starlight saw that she was roughly the same size and shape as the blue girl. Her skin, though, was not blue; rather, her exposed torso consisted of numerous colors that seemed to be overplayed on a pale and nearly white skin tone. Her head lacked tentacles, or even any kind of a mane, and her eyes were covered with a pair of black goggles.

“If you had woken me up like that,” she said with perfect steadiness, turning slowly to Fenok, “I would have gutted you both. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve killed a krogan…or a child.”

Fenok growled, and the figure crouched in front of Starlight.

“It’s a pony,” said Zedok, perhaps too eagerly. “Dad says that it’s from you’re home planet.”

“I did not say that,” said Fenok.

“Does it look familiar, Jack?”

Jack turned to Zedok. “I wouldn’t know. The last time- -and the only time- -I was ever on Earth was during the War.” She turned back to Starlight, apparently glaring through her opaque-looking goggles. “But I do know that horses aren’t supposed to talk.”

“And yet I am talking,” said Starlight. “Which means one of us has no idea what she is talking about.”

The room fell silent for a moment, and Starlight felt and urge to step even farther back, to get away from this black-goggled biped that was now frowning down at her. Instead, though, she held her ground.

Eventually, Jack stood up from her crouched position. She turned around and started toward the door. “Horse,” she said, not turning around. “Come with me.”

Starlight looked up at the large male creature, and he nodded. Then, slowly, the pony stepped forward, and for the first time she realized that she was shaking.

“Hey,” said Zedok, stepping out from where she was standing and addressing Jack directly. “Are we still on for biotics training later?”

Her father’s eyes widened and he turned his head sharply toward her. “Biotics training?” He turned back to Jack. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

Jack looked back slowly, first at Fenok and then at Zedok. “Training? No…I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”

She turned away and faced the door. She raised on heavily marked hand, and her fingers flashed blue, as did the controls for the door. With a hiss, the heavy metal of the door slid open and jack stepped through. Starlight looked back, but then hesitantly followed.

“Hey,” she heard Zedok say, “when can I stop wearing a shirt like her?”

“When you get Sjdath to put one on,” muttered Fenok.

The door slammed closed, nearly removing the edge of Starlight’s tail and causing her to cry out in surprise. She rapidly cleared her throat, trying to regain her composure. Somehow, she knew that if she showed weakness to this Jack, her life would be in danger.

Jack hardly noticed, though. She just led Starlight forward into the darkness.

Starlight followed her, but felt uneasy. She could not remember what her surroundings were supposed to be- -although she distantly remembered walls, painted pale purple, and a cool breeze that drifted through the open windows- -but she knew that this place was strange. Not only was it strange, but it was wrong.

The rooms did not seem to be designed for ponies, or really for whatever Jack was either. There were no real hallways, but rather large, empty sinuses lined with conduits and machinery that almost seemed alive. In these vast empty spaces, rickety and rusted catwalks had been set up to move between openings. Each was lit by a string of lights on a cord strung over it, creating spots of bright yellow-white light.

The metal clanked beneath Jack’s heavy boots and underneath Starlight’s hooves, echoing through immense rooms that were otherwise filled only with a powerful humming that made Starlight’s horn hurt.

There was something else, though. Something moving alongside them, but not on the catwalk. Instead, it seemed to be moving through the ventilation system that lined some parts of the walls. At one point, Starlight paused and stared into a vent- -only to see a pair of reflective eyes staring back at her.

Starlight cried out and nearly fell of the catwalk. Jack, who had been climbing a narrow spiral staircase, paused.

“Something wrong, horse?”

“I- -I saw something in the vents! Is- -is there something living in there?”

Jack looked down at Starlight, then at the vent, which was no empty. She then turned slowly back to Starlight. “Yes,” she said, simply. Then she started walking again. Starlight looked back at the vent, and then hurried closer to Jack.

The silence between the two persisted even as the hallways began to level into long corridors. Then, finally, Jack spoke.

“Do you know how you got here?” she asked.

Starlight paused, and then shook her head. “No. I don’t…I don’t remember.”

“We found you,” said Jack. “You were inside a derelict ship. Those things, on your spine? In your head? They were hooked up to it. Real tight.”

Starlight shivered, and looked over her shoulder at the pieces of metal that ran down her spine to the base of her tail, and the several ports that were visible in her body. There were more, she knew- -ones in her head, ones she could not see but could somehow feel.

“Any idea how you got in there?”

Starlight shook her head again. “I told you. I don’t…I don’t remember anything.”

Jack paused for a long moment, and stopped walking. “Then what was the last thing you DO remember?”

Starlight thought back, and instantly knew that she could not tell Jack. The memories were not clear, but they were painful. There was screaming, struggling against a force stronger than her- -and so much pain, so much fear. A blur of color, and a pair of weeping faces. That was the last real memory she had- -but there were other things too. Things that were not quite memories. They were clear, and almost artificial, like pieces of a dream- -except that Starlight had never dreamt before. She had never slept. She had never eaten, or walked, or spoken to a tattooed biped. She had done nothing and been nothing until a few minutes ago.

“Crew failure to respond, life support failure,” she stated, almost instinctively. “No life signs, protocol: defined, Core to stasis. Initiate automated distress beacon for recovery.”

“Let me guess. You have no idea what that means, do you?”

“I know…I know something bad happened,” said Starlight, rubbing her forehead. “I…I just don’t know what.”

“You’re ship got a whole punched in it is what happened. Everybody on board got turned into a goddamn space mummy. Except you.”

“They’re…they’re dead?”

“I thought you didn’t remember them.”

“I don’t. Bu the crew…the crew is important.” That assertion made her head ache. “I don’t…I don’t understand. Where am I? What- -what even are you?”

Jack did not answer. She just kept walking. Eventually, the floor flattened to the point where a catwalk was no longer needed. At this point, Jack stopped and turned toward one of the walls.

Starlight was confused at first, but then turned to the wall and realized that it was actually transparent- -and that she was looking through a massive array of windows into the starry depths of space.

“We’re…we’re in space,” she said in awe, stepping forward. Somehow, she had always known- -but at the same time, never been sure. Now it was here before her, spread out in its infinite vastness. She saw the countless thousands of stars- -and realized that she somehow knew their names.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said, looking out at the vastness. Starlight looked up at Jack. “Can you…can you even see it with those goggles on?”

“I can,” she said. “And I can see it a lot better than you can.”

“Can I ask…what are the goggles for?”

Jack sighed. She turned toward Starlight and lifted the goggles. Starlight gasped. Beneath, there were not proper eyes; instead, Jack possessed a pair of silvered, nearly luminescent orbs.

“How do you get eyes like that?”

Jack lowered the goggles. “Funny,” she said. “I once asked the same question. And the answer’s still the same. You’ve got to kill a lot of people.”

“You…you kill?”

“It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at. It is the only thing I will ever be good for.” She paused. “And…to be honest, at this point, it’s the only thing that makes me happy anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for something you didn’t do. Don’t even apologize at all. It’s a sign of weakness, horse.”

“I have a name, you know.”

“Lucky you.”

The pair turned back to the window. Starlight leaned over, looking past Jack’s rear and down the hallway- -and seeing that it was lined completely with immense windows.

“There’s a lot of windows here, aren’t there?” she said, trying to break the awkward silence.

“Yes, there are,” said an oddly cheerful voice that definitely was not Jack’s.

“What- -who said that?” said Starlight, jumping back and looking around. She had only ever heard three voices in her life that she could remember, and they had all come from sources. This one, meanwhile, seemed to come out of nowhere.

“We did,” said the voice.

“Where- -where are you?”

“Here. We are here.”

Jack sighed. “I have not had enough morphine yet today to deal with this…”

“I- -I can’t see you,” said Starlight, looking around. She gasped. “Are you invisible?”

“We hope not. That would be bad. How would we ever find ourselves?”

“Stop messing with her, Armchair.” Jack’s voice was as calm as ever, but showed just the slightest modicum of annoyance.

“Armchair?” said Starlight, understanding the definition of the word- -somehow- -but not what it had to do with anything in this context.

“We are Armchair,” said the voice. “You are standing inside us right now.”

“Wait a second,” said Starlight, raising one eyebrow. “Are you using the royal we, or are there actually more than one of you?”

“There are seven of us.”

“Seven?” said Jack, suddenly seeming slightly concerned. “You told me you had at least forty! Seven geth can barely walk!”

“Geth?” said Starlight.

“We are geth,” said Armchair. “Artificial, sentient programs. This vessel is our body. You are…we do not know the word. A combination of parasites and pets. We have dudes walking around inside of us, and we find it amusing.”

“So…this whole ship is…alive?”

“Nominally, yes.”

“So then, why the windows?”

“Because on two separate occasions, the human Commander Shepard successfully approached and attacked geth fleets by taking advantage of the fact that without windows we could not see him approach. Therefore, we have resolved that problem through a series of windows updates.”

“You did not just say that,” said Jack, putting her hand on her forehead.

“Wait…” said Starlight. “So…if your ships had windows, then you could have seen outside and seen this Shepard coming?”

“Correct. Our lack of windows was our undoing.”

“So…you don’t have eyes on the outside?”

Jack looked up. “Yeah…” she said. “I kind of always wondered about that.”

“Um…we…um…darn it. We suppose we could have just put a camera on the outer hull. But we do not care. We like windows. It is our body, we will make it look like whatever we please.”

“I get that,” said Jack.

She looked back out the window, and Armchair fell silent for a moment. Starlight felt strange knowing that although he was quiet, he was not gone- -he was inescapable, always watching, always seeing whatever she did.

“Look,” said Jack, pointing. “That’s your ship. Or was.”

Starlight pressed her face against the window, something that was difficult with a horn sticking out of her forehead. Far in the distance, she saw the remains of a large, swept-back craft floating freely in the darkness of space, lit by armchair’s lights.

“I was in that?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Armchair. “You were. From what we understand, at least.”

“Still no idea how you got in there?” asked Jack.

“No. I know that the Equestrians have ships, but- -”

“Equestrian?” said Jack, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Starlight. “I am from…Equestria. I don’t know what that means. But…that is where I’m from.”

“We are from Rannoch,” said Armchair. “Although, in this case, by ‘we’ we mean Armchair. The others are not. Only geth are from Rannoch.”

“And what about you, then?”

Jack did not respond. She instead started walking down the hallway. “Come on,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“You’re not going to jettison our new pet-parasite, are you?”

“It isn’t up to me. We need to talk to Sdjath.”

The sinuses of the ship grew larger as Starlight was led lower into Armchair’s body. Many of them seemed to be hangers or have been converted to storage areas, a few complete with prefab rooms suspended at odd angles in their centers.

Of all these hangers and storage rooms, Starlight was led to one of the largest of them. Upon entry, she found an enormous, egg-shaped room mostly made of windows on its upper parts and lit by powerful lights that were imbedded into the walls themselves instead of strung on wires. This room was mostly filled with machinery in various stages of disarray, decay, and disassembly. On one wall, there was a rusted and pitted six-wheeled vehicle dangling from inadequate looking hooks; on the other, there was a large and torn banner with a complex symbol drawn in some kind of red-brown ink. The only sounds were the hum of the engines, the electrical sound of plasma cutting, and a strange distant music.

“SJDATH!” yelled Jack, loudly.

A plume of sparks that was coming from one corner of an extremely large piece of metal stopped. A face poked out from around the edge of the mass, and then a figure pulled her way out of top of the piece of scrap and jumped down.

Starlight had thought she had seen ugly when she had seen Fenok. She had been wrong. The creature that approached her and Jack was much, much worse. Her torso was covered in thick, plated rough brown skin. Her torso was exposed, but her long digitigrade legs were mostly covered by a long, thick skirt that split in the center. This creature’s head was covered in long fins or spines, and she glared down with a pair of harsh red eyes. Starlight was glad she could not see the creature’s whole face- -her mouth and nose, if she had them, was covered with a respirator mask attached to a tank on her belt- -because Starlight knew that if she had seen that face, she probably would have screamed.

The creature looked down at Starlight, and then up at Jack. “It is awake,” she said, her voice rasping harshly to the point where it was barely understandable. “Also, alive…and…excuse me. SIANIRIAS! For the last time, if you are going to listen to music, USE YOUR COMLINK!”

The music stopped. A creature drifted out from behind a large, cylindrical piece of scrap. Unlike the others, it was not a biped, but rather a kind of armored floating thing with six metal tentacles dangling beneath it, one wrapped around some kind of tool.

“This one prefers Captain Sjdath to use the name ‘Si’y’ when referring to this one. Also, in addition, this one would posit that Captain Sjdath has no appreciation for Tuchankan death metal because Captain Sjdath is an uncultured heathen.”

“An uncultured heathen that pay’s your salary! And what for? To shoot things! Not to assault my ears with unpleasant noise!”

“Since when do you have ears?” asked Jack.

“I don’t. But that’s not the point.” She looked back down at Starlight. “So. Is this…animal worth any money?”

“I am not an animal!” cried Starlight. “I am a pony!”

Sdjath jumped back sharply with a loud hiss. “It talks!”

“It talks?” said Si’y, looming out from his work and floating over to the group.

“You get back to work!”

“What…what are you?” asked Starlight, looking quickly between the ugly female creature and the floating tentacle thing.

“Captain Sjdath is a member of the vorcha race,” explained Si’y. “This one is but a humble hanar, by the name of Si’y.”

“Humble my vestigial vorcha tail,” hissed Sjdath. “And I already know what I am. I am more concerned about this…thing.” She turned to Starlight and dropped to all four limbs, coming near eye-level with the pony and adjusting a control valve on her mask. “I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve never seen your kind.”

“Your seven years old,” said Jack.

“And yet Captain Sjdath has still had more romantic partners than the mercenary Jack,” said Si’y. Sdjath stood and took a swipe at him with one of her claws, but he drifted quickly out of reach.

“I somehow doubt that,” said Jack. She crossed her arms. “But I didn’t come all the way down here to swap stories about…eew. How do vorcha even…”

“It’s complicated,” snapped Sjdath. She pointed at Jack. “And I don’t go for filthy hoomies, so don’t even bother.”

“I came here to see if you found anything in that ship.”

“Ah.” Sjdath turned around quickly, the halvs of her long skirt fluttering in the wind. Starlight was glad she was wearing something under it. She did not mind nudity, considering how she herself was fully naked, but she did not want to see any more of a vorcha than she had to. “That is the rub. We didn’t find anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just that.” Sjdath gestured toward the large sections around her, which Starlight realized were portions of her ship. “I’ve been in salvage since I was a month old. I’ve seen every ship you can think of, and some you can’t. I’ve puled tech out of Reaper corpses, for hell’s sake! But this…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Like what?” asked Starlight.

“It’s your ship, you should know.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, then, you’re incompetent.”

“Just explain,” sighed Jack.

“There’s nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Look.” Sjdath pulled open a fragment of the ship. “There’s nothing in it! No computers, gravity systems, shield generators- -nothing! It’s just a hunk of metal and stone and wood!”

“Wood?”

“WOOD! There’s no technology. Nothing. I mean, look at this.” She crossed the room rapidly, putting her hand on the thing that Si’y was continuing to inspect. “This, I’m pretty sure it’s a weapon.”

“A mass-cannon?”

“No, that’s the thing. It isn’t designed to fire projectiles. It doesn’t even have moving parts! It was connected heavily to the ship’s systems, but…I don’t know what the systems were actually DOING to make it work!” She started crossing the room rapidly, stepping over tools and stains in the narrow corridors that had been made between the scrap. As she did, Sjdath summoned a small hologram from a device on her wrist, checking it closely and running a claw over its surface. “I even sent some of this stuff down to the basement for Arachne to look at.”

“And?”

“And even he can’t tell how this ship was supposed to work…I think. I’m not entirely sure. He doesn’t exactly talk.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But I do have a theory. Everything in the ship links back to one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“This.”

Sjdath stepped into the center of the pieces, revealing the desperate parts of a large transparent tube linked to hoses and wires. Starlight gasped and stared to shake when she saw it. She could not take her eyes away from the center, where wires and tubes were dangling into the still moist core of the center- -wires that were meant to be linked to her.

“No!” she said, stepping back. It looked so small inside, so tiny. Images flashed through her mind. Blurry images of darkness and of light when distorted faces stared back at her through pale yellow fluid. Of pain, and half-forgotten lonliness. “NO! I won’t go back! I WON’T GO BACK!”

She started to run, but the walls seemed to be pressing in around her. The equipment surrounding her, it was suddenly so familiar. It was broken and pulled apart, but she remembered it. It was her body, pulled apart and broken. Through the ages of her blank memory, she recalled the fear and screaming as she struggled to try to resist.

“No, no, NO!” she cried, closing her eyes. “Get out of my WAY!”

A strange sensation filled her body, rising from her limbs and surging into her torso, then forcing itself into her horn with profound intensity. The appendage burst with blue light, and the heavy pieces of the ship were engulfed in the same light and pushed easily across the floor.

“Stop her!” cried Sjdath.

“I’m on it,” said Jack, lifting her hands. They ignited with their own shade of blue light, and a sphere of light shot out toward Starlight. When it struck, Starlight felt herself suddenly grow lighter, and her hooves released from the deck.

“NO!”

The field shattered, and Starlight fell to the floor, gasping. She closed her eyes and covered her head with her forelegs. Then she started crying.

“What the hell was THAT?” cried Sjdath.

“She’s a biotic,” said Jack. Starlight heard footsteps behind her, and then jumped as a tattooed hand was placed on her shoulder. “Hey,” said Jack.

“Please don’t put me back,” whimpered Starlight. “It…it hurts in there. I don’t want to go back. I can’t…”

“Listen,” said Jack. “We’re not going to put you in there. You got that? I don’t make a lot of promises, but this is one of them. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Okay?”

Starlight looked up. Jack was not smiling, but something in her expression had changed. Starlight smiled up at her.

“I would just ask that you please refrain from using biotics in the ship,” said Sjdath. “You almost crushed Si’y.”

“This one is okay, though,” said Si’y, floating out from behind a piece of machinery and waving.

“That, and if you were to break a window…I can survive in the vacuum of space, but I know for a fact that you can’t. Of course, we have bigger problems than that right now.”

“What do you mean ‘bigger problems’?” said Jack, standing.

Sjdath released a low growl. “Our fuel situation is…bad.”

“You didn’t take the fuel from the pony ship?”

“I already told you,” snapped Sjdath. “Their ship doesn’t have an engine, or a mass core, or ANYTHING. There was no fuel, and virtually no platinum or palladium. I can’t even burn it for resources.”

“How far to the next refueling station?”

“We are in the middle of unclaimed space. There aren’t any. I was chasing this ship under the assumption that there would be SOMETHING on it we could use to get back…but now…”

“Can you get me a starchart?”

“I don’t know how it’s going to help- -”

“Just do it.”

Sjdath growled, but gave in. She pressed the controls on the device on her wrist, and an orange hologram expanded rapidly around them.

“Wow,” said Starlight, staring in awe at the diagram of stars and planets that surrounded her.

“Damn,” said Jack. “This place is the boondocks.”

“I know. The nearest mass relay is all the way over here.” Sdjath pointed. “In batarian space. But we’ll never get that far. Not without more fuel.”

Jack considered the map for a moment, walking through it and examining the planets closely. “Do we have any probes left?”

“No. Because SOMEONE fired them all at Uranus.”

“Sorry,” said Armchair, his voice transmitted from the device on Sdjath’s wrist.

“This gas giant. Can we scoop the upper atmosphere?”

“Yes,” said Armchair. “It will take Arachne approximtly two point six months to reconfigure my systems to make that possible.”

“And life support will have failed for a while by then,” noted Sdjath.

“Then our only option,” said Jack, pointing at a small moon around a tiny holographic planet, “is to go here.”

Sdjath’s eyes widened to the point where her secondary pupils became visible. “NO,” she said, flatly.

“It’s the only place within three hundred lightyears that will have any fuel.”

“Do you know what that place IS?”

“Of course I do. I’ve been there. A lot.”

“Yes, and so have I. And that’s the problem!”

“We don’t really have any other option.”

“I could butcher you all and eat you.”

“Not going to happen.”

Sjdath closed her hologram and looked around nervously. Then she slammed her fist into a large piece of metal. “This is not going to go well. You know that, right?”

“It never does.”

“Fine, then. We do this your way.” She turned her face toward the ceiling. “Armchair, we’re done here. Set our course for Omega.”