Chapter One

The sun was high above Zeehale, baking the sandy floor that spread out for miles in every direction. It would have been near impossible for anyone to travel by foot unless you could fly and that was exactly what Scratched Wrench was doing. Of course, she was wearing a protective cloak that Aerostorm got her for her second birthday, but that was just common sense on a desert junk world like this. Flapping her wings to propel her further, Scratched raised an arm as it began to beep while the com in her ear crackled.

“Hey Scratched, ya see it yet?” Zaat asked as soon as she tapped the button to open the channel.

“Maybe,” she said, starting to descend in loose circles while straining her eyes to see if she could spot the supposed scavenge spot. “Going to go land; I’ll send up the flare if it is.”

“Be careful,” Aerostorm chimed in with a huff. “I don’t want to deal with you burning your hooves again ‘cause you forgot to cover up.”

“Oh hush, you love to nurse me,” Scratched replied with a grin as she looked at her hooves to make sure she was wearing those protective boots for the sand and metal.

“Yeah I do but you hate being cooped up,” her girlfriend shot back. “Which makes my job a real pain in the tail.”

“Yeah…” Scratched whined, shaking her head to the side as she knew Aerostorm was completely right. Wincing in pain as a bit of the sun got onto her exposed head, Scratched raised a hoof to fix her hood and scanned the ground again. “Not seeing any reflectivi-wait, hold on.” Flying lower, the pegasus was able to see a sheet of metal sticking up from the sand. “Yup, found it guys,” she told them as she shot the flare into the sky.

“Good to hear it and I see the flare,” Aerostorm told her. “We’ll be there in a second; please don’t hurt yourself.”

“Oh please, I could only do that if I were trying,” Scratched snorted, rolling her eyes. “-”

“And don’t you make some sort of joke, Scratched, or you’ll be sleeping on the couch,” Aerostorm warned her.

“Come on, it’s my place!” Scratched complained with a grin on her face.

“Your parents’ place, and I’m pretty sure they’ll agree with me that you’d deserve the couch after pulling the same joke again,” Aerostorm said smugly.

“You got anything to add, Zaat?” Scratched asked her other friend.

“Oh as if I would be stupid enough to get between you two,” the parrot said. “I’m not one anymore.”

“It’s a shame,” Scratched said as she hovered. “We got you to eat so many worms back then, right Aero?”

Aerostorm giggled while Zaat just grumbled in the background. “Remember that big fat one, that was almost as long as your wingspan, Scratchy?”

“Oh yeah; Zaat was halfway done when he gagged on it and spat it out?” Scratched was giggling now, struggling to stay upright.

“Oh yeah, very funny,” Zaat spat. “Wasn’t so funny when our parents came in and grounded us for a week for it.”

“Ya that sucked majorly,” Scratched said as a shadow covered her. “That you guys?” she asked.

“Yeah, I see your marker down there,” Aerostorm said. “We’re coming down.”

“Glad to hear it, my wings are starting to get tired,” Scratched said back as the faint rumble of the engines of their ship came within hearing range. Flying upwards as careful as she could, she saw the rear hatch of the Excelsior open. Flying into the airlock, she shut the door before entering the ship properly, walking towards cockpit while unbuckling her coat and shaking out her yellowish coat and pale white mane. Placing the coat on the hook she had installed for that exact reason, she sauntered into the cockpit where Zaat was busy with the crane-magnet while Aerostorm was keeping the ship steady. Smiling as she slipped in close to the tan griffon, she placed a kiss on her white forehead between the red streaks which got her a wing swat from her girlfriend.

“Must you do that every time I’m trying to fly?” Aerostorm grumbled as she kept her blue eyes focused on the screen in front of her, though she flashed a loving grin at the pegasus.

“Well, I’m sure that Zaat would complain if I were to kiss you anywhere else,” Scratched said as she slid into the other chair, shifting over their views of the ship’s system to her screen and began to look over them. “Plus, I love the taste of griffon; it’s very addictive.”

“Flirt,” Aerostorm smirked, her talons squeezing the control sticks ever so closer together before she relaxed her grip with the Excelsior rightening out. “Now keep an eye on those generators you slapped together; saw a bit of low alert near the transfer to the grav engines.”

Nodding her head, Scratched opened up the remote diagnostic view of her engines and traced the tubes before she spotted the problem. “Nothing to worry about, seems like there is a loose cap down there.” She then slid the screen onto her armband with it hovering in front of her in a slightly patchy holographic three-dimensional image. “Going to go take care of it now before something does happen.”

“That’s a good girl,” Zaat muttered as he stood up himself. “Going to properly attach this wreckage you found and mark the location; we might find larger pieces that other people might have missed.”

“Good,” Scratched said over her shoulder as she picked up her toolbag. “Should net us some more credits so we can work on Excelsior, whatever it is.”

“Or just slap it on Excelsior,” Aerostorm teased as Scratched and Zaat left the room with the parrot snorting as the pegasus sputtered indignantly.

“You complaining about Excelsior?” Scratched said as she trotted down to the engine room and began to make her way to the loose cap that was smacking the alert sensor.

“She’s ugly as shit, almost certainly would fail all official regulation examinations and still an in progress construction,” Aerostorm said over the com as Scratched slid her way around the tubes and pipes, angling herself in just the right position to lift the cap and start to slide it back on. “But she’s fast as hell, turns on a ball pin, sturdy like no tomorrow, and she’s ours.” Aerostorm then chuckled. “Plus she was put together by the sexiest mare in the entire galaxy.”

“Oh get a room you two,” Zaat complained playfully as Scratched did a visual examination, checking things over personally. “And make sure the com is off this time when you do, okay?”

Both of them giggled at their friend’s remark but Scratched quickly finished her work before she made her way to where Zaat was working. Heading down to the hanger bay after slipping on her protective coat, she saw her other best friend working with the crane controllers to bring up the scrap they had found. Scratched raised a wing as a guest of wind blew in a wave of sand while the crane continued to wheel in the broken ship part. “So what is it, Zaat?”

“Looks to be a fin for a Terakian ship,” he said, peering through his goggles at the scrap. “There is more there down there but it’s almost high day and there’s no way we can wait out here to harvest the rest of it until it’s cool enough - we’d be way too low on fuel.”

“Yah,” Scratched did the mental math for how much it would cost them if they did stay for the full eighteen hours for high day to pass and did the work and saw it would eat away almost all the credits they had saved up to refuel. “So how much do you think it will get us?” she asked, gesturing to the fin.

“Eh, maybe four hundred or so?” Zaat shrugged his shoulders as he deactivated the crane and had the bay doors close. Scratched frowned at that and Zaat nodded his head in agreement. “I know, barely enough to cover the cost but if we clean it and make sure that it’s a clean break, we could get more.”

“Yeah,” Scratched said distractedly as she moved to the fin and began to inspect it more closely, moving to the open side of it as Zaat began to move it to the proper storage container for their finds. Thankfully the fin was still intact save from where it had been attached with no holes on either side and she pulled out her tools to examine the inside of the fin. Turning on her light, Scratched saw that they were in luck. While the wires were a near-complete write-off, the inner mechanics were still in one piece and after attaching it to her armband mini computer and to the ship’s battery, they were working just as new. “We could get a couple hundred mo-”

“What happened to your fetlock?” Zaat asked, causing Scratched to jolt in surprise. Before she could hide the limb, the parrot pulled her leg out. “Scratch… Aero is going to be pissed.”

“It was just a brief flash and it doesn’t hurt that mu-gah!” she shouted with Zaat giving her a raised eyebrow look. “That only hurts because you’re pushing on that!” she snapped before he could even start lecturing her.

Shaking his head, he let go of her leg and held his hands in the air. “Ain’t my headache when your girlfriend starts to harp on you.”

“Yes it will be when I get you back for getting me in trouble,” Scratched grumbled as she shook her leg. “Come, let’s get back to Aero so we can get home.”

Nodding his head as she helped Zaat do his final checks to make sure everything was shut down, put away and properly secured, the two made their way back to the cockpit where Aerostorm was already making the turns to head back to Zeehale Habitation Zone Alpha. “So did we find anything good,” Aerostorm asked, looking briefly over her shoulder as they slid into their seats.

“Eh, maybe enough to cover the trip but it does show there might be a full ship dumped more or less intact from how good that fin was,” Scratched said as the wires and other internal components were always the first to be ripped out when a ship was scuttled.

“That’s good,” Aerostorm said as she started to enter in the coordinates for their home before pushing back in her chair to step out and stretch. “Now let me see that leg of yours,” the griffon said as she walked over to Scratched and held her arm up. “I heard what you two said in the hold, so let me see.” Whining as her girlfriend lifted her leg, Scratched braced for the lecturing when she felt Aerostorm’s beak kiss her leg. “Ain’t as bad you two made it out to be.”

“Never said it was bad,” Zaat said as he moved into Aerostorm’s seat. “Go, I’m going to take first shift, you two go sleep or someth- You know what? Don’t; just sleep. I don’t need to see that.”

“You’re probably the only guy in the galaxy that wouldn’t want to walk in on us,” Scratched said as she leaned into Aerostorm, enjoying the feel of her soft feathers and fur.

“That’s ‘cause your girlfriend is practically my sister,” Zaat replied. “And seriously, I don’t want to see someone who’s like a sister to me in the middle of that!” He shuddered, tail flicking.

“And as her parents have more or less adopted me as their other daughter, that would mean walking in on both of your sisters going at it,” Aerostorm said, draping a wing over Scratched and pulling her closer in.

Zaat made a face, turning around to face them. “I did not need that image, thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Aerostorm sang over her shoulder, laughing with Scratched as they walked to their quarters. Scratched dumped her toolbag in the corner of their room while Aerostorm shook herself out again, holding her wings and arms out until they popped with the griffon letting out a comfy groan.

“That’s going to wreck your joints, you know,” Scratched warned as she gave her girlfriend a look.

“That’s a myth, right up there with the thing about caf stunting your growth,” Aerostorm retorted. “They did a study on that kind of thing years ago, proved it didn’t do a bit of harm.”

“That came from a Gratetan study and you know how little it takes for them to be bought off,” Scratched replied from her side of the bed.

“It was also backed by independent studies by Lhat’kan, Hesturlandian, Fagratan and Muusthans,” Aerostorm fired back, leaning over their bed. “It ain’t nothing wrong with cracking my joints, missy.”

“Missy,” Scratched reared back, holding a wing to her chest. “Why, I have never been so insulted in my life, you, you, you no good feather duster cat!”

The two looked at one another, then broke out laughing and falling onto the bed.

“Feather duster cat?” Aerostorm managed to squeak out after getting her breath, staring up at the pegasus and nuzzling her neck. “Scratch, that has to be your worst one yet.”

“I know,” Scratched pouted, starting with doe eyes at Aerostorm. “Still love me?”

“Always,” Aerostorm said, pulling her in for a kiss and snuggling in close for the long fly back home.

Chapter Two

Scratched Wrench let out a groan as someone started to shake her, pressing herself into Aerostorm’s side.

“Come on, I know you’re up,” Zaat said, shaking her some more. “I did my six hours now it’s yours.”

“But comfy,” Scratched whined, scrunching her eyes tighter.

“Yeah, don’t care,” Zaat said as he ran a finger down her spine, causing the pegasus’s eyes to snap open. She turned her head to glare at the parrot who simply gave her a pat on the side. “Good, you’re awake. Now go take the controls, I’m bushed.” Dusting off his vest, he left the room, heading for his own bunk across the hall.

Grumbling under her breath, keeping it quiet as not to wake Aerostorm, Scratched looked around their room. It was a cozy room with actual carpeting across the floor, their bed against one wall with two nightstands on either side and their dresser directly across with a monitor above. On Scratched’s side of the bed was the door to the bathroom with the door to the ship on Aerostorm’s side. It was as nice as their room back home, only larger but without their knicknacks, pictures and other junk they’d gotten since they had been together.

Speaking of the griffon, Aerostorm was laying on her side, the blanket pushed off. Smiling as she listened to her girlfriend snore, Scratched risked waking her up by placing a kiss on her forehead while she covered the griffon up.

Stifling a yawn, Scratched left their room and walked down to the small area at the back of the Excelsior that they had turned into their eating room and made herself a cup of caf before walking back down past the bunks and into the cockpit, stealing a look to make sure Aerostorm was still asleep and seeing how Zaat was doing. Both were asleep with the parrot having shed his vest and snoring on his bed.

Pushing the panel to shut their doors, Scratched continued her way into the cockpit and moved into the pilot’s chair, sitting down and doing her best to get comfy - something that wasn’t easy when both Zaat and Aerostorm were bulkier than her. Setting her caf in its holder, Scratched turned her attention to the monitors to see how the ship was doing. While it was high-day and she couldn’t switch to the real-time view due to the likelihood that the glare of the sand would blind her, Scratched found herself missing the whole experience. It was oddly soothing to see the sand just pass by and more than once her friends had found her just sitting and watching it.

Shaking her head as she lifted the cup to her lips, Scratched reached over to turn on the news band.

“nd another five worlds have left the Lhat’kan Federation, with only four solar systems left. Their demands for independence against the corruption of the government was approved by a coalition of-

Scratched clicked it off, wincing as she shook her head. While many would be happy for those people who’d gotten their independence, her mother had taught her that all these free worlds were actually a bad sign. They more than likely wouldn’t be able to handle their populations and hadn’t actually been granted independence, instead just being written off as losses. And since it was happening more and more often, it was a sign that a civilization collapse was imminent. Something about the cycles of empire and how almost every galactic nation was on the verge of going belly up. The only things holding the entire galaxy together were that Hesturland was still stable with Equuis supporting them and no nation had decided to go out in a blaze of glory by declaring a war to drag everyone else down with them. Scratched winced again at the thought - while some scavengers she knew might have said that war was good for business, she preferred peace overall. It was more stable and less bloody.

“And less ships blown up means more we can pull up intact,” Scratched muttered to herself. “And that means more credits for us and maybe we can actually leave.” Scratched then took another sip of her caf, keeping an eye on the screen. “Then again, where could we go?” She let out a sigh. Maybe a few thousand standard years ago, it would have been good to explore the galaxy and make it on their own but now it was actually safer and more profitable to stay put. Hesturland was the obvious answer but it was so far away.

Maybe they could go to one of the archive worlds, and help out there? It was one of the last true wonders of the old intergalactic alliance; the notion was that since a galactic collapse of civilization was going to happen it would be best to store all the knowledge on multiple planets for the next generation to use. There was one being worked on a couple systems over and they could always offer their help for a price. If not that, maybe they could find something else.

Holding back a sigh, Scratched pulled up the diagnostics of her ship’s system on her armband mini computer again and began to go through everything, making notes to overhaul the shield generators, fix the issue with the hopper feeding ammunation to their solitary weapon post and take care of the loose floorboards in the spare bunkroom along with the other issues with Excelsior. Once, before it had made what most had said was its final landing, the modified star yacht had been a prize vessel, and Scratched Wrench had sworn to see it back to full functionality, if not better. She had managed to get it to the point where people would recognize the broad, triangular shape, softened by the gentle down-curve of the wings, of the model. She still needed to finish the remaining internal repairs, something she always enjoyed doing as proven when she got her cutie mark by fixing the toaster’s heating coils.

But that was for later. Now, she had her shift at watch.

Four hours into her shift, Scratched heard the clicking of someone walking into the cockpit behind her. Tilting her head backwards, she saw Aerostorm leaning over her before she felt her girlfriend place a kiss on her neck. Smiling, the pegasus shifted upwards and pressed a kiss to her cheek.

“Hey love, what are you doing up?” she said softly, staring up into those blue eyes.

“Missed you,” Aerostorm said, cooing into her ear before wrapping a wing tight around her with Scratched leaning into the hug. After a few moments passed, they broke the hug with Aerostorm looking at the monitors showing the desert sand. “Anything happen?”

“Nope,” Scratched said with a bit of a yawn. “Starting to see a bit of the other scavenge sites though, so the engines are working a bit harder than they should be.”

“Anything we should be worried about?” Aerostorm asked with all due seriousness, eyes scrutinizing the feed to their engines powering their ship.

“Don’t think so, but we could take a look at it once we get back home,” Scratched said with another yawn before frowning. “Also note to self, fix coffee machine. The caf ain’t working.”

“Or you could just be tired,” Aerostorm said with a smirk before giving her a frown that was mitigated by a cough. “Wait, how many cups did you have?” she asked once her throat was clear.

“Two or three,” Scratched replied. “And I think I got gypped. The guy who grows ‘em swears one cup should keep you awake through a Gratetan performance of a Lhat’kan opera.”

“You definitely got gypped then,” Aerostorm replied. “Besides, caf that strong’s supposed to be considered a controlled substance.”

“If the proposed regulation had passed, it would have been,” Scratched retorted. “But government staffers live on caf that strong, so the one attempt never made it beyond the first committee meeting, from what I heard.”

“Why am I not surprised.” Aerostorm shook her head, covering her mouth as she coughed. “Still, we know that we should go back to our regular guy and not trust some offlander.”

“Yeah,” Scratched nodded her head and stretched out her wings. “Though it did help that the poor sod hadn’t properly adjusted to Zeehale’s time and was completely clonked when I went to buy the beans from him. Got it for a steal.”

“Maybe that’s why you got gypped because you were trying to gyp him?” Aerostorm said with a grin on her face.

“More like he was trying to scam me all along, but was too tired to realize he wasn’t charging what he planned,” Scratched said. “It’s actually decent enough, just nowhere near as strong as I wanted for a six hour shift.”

“We can take care of that when we get home,” Aerostorm said as she sat down in Zaat’s chair. “Now you’ve got two more hours in my chair before you got to go.”

“And if I don’t get up, whatcha going to do?” Scratched with a suggestive smirk.

“Well, I could just sit on you,” Aerostorm said, making it a point to count with her talons. “I could pick you up and place to you to the side, or on my lap or better yet,” she leaned in close to Scratched face, breathing close in her face. “I can put you back to bed as you’re ready to drop.”

“With-” Scratched said hopefully.

“I need to fly, silly,” Aerostorm giggled, booping her nose and laughing louder at Scratched’s pouting. “Maybe later when we get home, okay? It’s been as long for me as it’s been for you, you know.”

“I know,” Scratched whined, looking back to the monitors to make sure they were still on track before yawning. “While you’re here, can ya please get me some more caf?” she asked, holding out her cup.

“Only because I love you,” Aerostorm told her, taking the cup from her and purposely swatting her in the face with her tail.

Scratched chuckled. “You’re lucky I was too tired or I’d be biting that tail!” she called over her shoulder.

“Oi!” Zaat leaned out of the doorway to his bunkroom. “Some of us are trying to sleep here!”

“Sorry, Zaat,” they both said to their huffing friend, blushing and trying not to giggle .

The closer they got to Zeehale Habitation Zone Alpha, the more dump sites they spotted with other crews working on them. Due to Zeehale’s size and the fact that most harvester sites were charging an insane amount of credits to haul with not that much credits being paid back, most people simply set their ships to crash into the sands instead.

Sitting in her chair to the left of Aerostorm, Scratched was going over the costs for what repairs they would need while Zaat was monitoring the news band, keeping an ear out for any trouble in the area. At one point, he rolled his eyes, which caught Scratched’s attention.

“Something we should know about?” she asked.

“Nothing too serious,” Zaat replied. “It’s pretty quiet, except for a little excitement at the Space Barn a few hours ago. Some guy broke one of the Big Man’s three platinum rules and got tossed out on his ear.”

Aerostorm shook her head. “They never learn, do they? So which one did he break?”

“No intoxicants,” Zaat replied. “They caught him with a flask of Terakian ale.”

“Ouch.” Scratched shuddered. “No wonder the guy was thrown out - anyone dumb enough to drink that stuff in the first place deserves to get caught.”

“No kidding.” Zaat rolled his eyes again and turned back to the band controller and begin to dial in the control tower. “Can’t wait to get back home and rest my claws on proper ground.” He then slipped the mic attached to his headset back towards his mouth.

“Same,” Aerostorm said as she flew over Choohall Hill and then down the gulf to Zeehale Habitation Zone Alpha. Like most settlements on Zeehale, it had a large spaceport near the surface, while the majority of the residential and business sections were located in the warrens some distance below, designed to protect the inhabitants from Zeehale’s temperature extremes.

Angling the ship to the residential hanger’s doors, Zaat was signaling to Aerostorm to wait as he spoke into the mic before the doors opened up and they flew inside and towards their landing site. Flying over the other ships at one tenth the power level per the law, Aerostorm was about to bring the ship down for a landing when the alarms started to blare with the rumbling of an incoming ship roaring towards them with a Terakian ship hovering above their spot, flaring its lights at them. Before they could properly react, Zaat threw off his headband in pain as someone started to yell at them.

“Hey, move that piece of junk, I’m trying to land here!” the pilot, male by the sound of the voice, called out.

Zaat went to grab the mic, ready to blast the other flier. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here‽ This is-”

“I don’t care what you’ve got to say, bub, but move your damn ship now!” the other person shouted.

“You’re the one that needs to move their damn ship!” Zaat shouted back, trying to be heard over the alarms.

“I was here first!” he continued to argue with them as several security shuttles began to zoom towards them. “Now move on before I need to get security involved!”

“You’re an idiot if you think they’ll side with you,” Zaat grumbled over the mic as he signalled to Aerostorm to put the ship in low hover with the idiot landing in their spot. Before he could spout out anymore stupidity, Zaat turned off the mic and stood up from his chair along with Scratched and Aerostorm before making their way to the ramp and hopping off onto the floor of the hanger to stand before the security officers with security captain Tough Sentence standing in front of the ship of the offlander.

Taking the speaker from one of his officers, Sentence began to shout. “Sir, please leave the ship immediately. We need to take your statement to deal with these kids.” He gave them a quick wink, alerting Scratched, Aerostorm and Zaat that he was pulling one of the oldest tricks in the book to deal with these types of people.

“About time someone in law got here,” the voice grumbled loudly before the engines on the ship shut down and the ramp was extended. What came out was a surly looking Terakian unicorn being twice the size of Scratched with a bruised red coat and dark blue eyes. He was wearing a vest over his bulk with the butt of some gun tucked inside a pocket. “I want these kids arrested for harassing me as well as flying that piece of junk around. Must be some sort of law against flying something that hideous.”

Scratched, Aerostorm and Zaat all shot him dirty looks, but it was Tough Sentence who spoke first. “Sir, despite your complaints, there are no laws regarding starship appearances. If there were, all Uglies would have been outlawed years ago.”

Scratched barely bit back a snicker. Uglies were, of course, any type of vessel, usually starfighters, that had been cobbled together out of scrap and ex-military surplus. They were mainly used by pirates, smugglers and other outlaws, and for the most part, no two were alike in terms of capabilities. She did recall hearing about one long-defunct mercenary gang that had made their Uglies based on a standardized set of schematics, and another military group who’d developed a different but still standardized Ugly design, then put it to use in defending their homeworld from hostiles, but they were exceptions rather than the rule.

“And speaking of complaints, we have several for you,” Tough Sentence gestured with his wings to his officers while using his horn to keep the stallion in place. “For starters, you are in the residential section of the hangers and we would have had your ship towed away if not for the other thing. Destruction of property is a very serious matter, especially as it was one of our hanger doors!” he snapped as the officers slapped cuffs on the pilot and began to drag him away despite all the protesting he was doing.

The alicorn then turned around and gave Scratched a look and she briefly wondered what a real one was like but they only existed in Equuis and were princesses. The ones they got were not immortal beings with unimaginable power, thankfully or they’d be in trouble with Sentence a lot more often. “Scratched, I’m aware you just got in, but I would like it if you can come with me to see what we can do about the damages he did with his gravity gun.”

“I would love to but we do need to check in our scavenge haul…” she said, a bit hopefully while batting her eyes.

“Zaat can do that and as it is an emergency, I will ignore that little attempt of bribery,” he glared at her with the pegasus sighing as she and Aerostorm climbed in the shuttle with the captain sitting in the driver’s seat before taking off.

Clutching the sides, Scratched gave Aerostorm a look as if to ask her if they should bring up the almost certainly illegal speeds he was going with the griffon shaking her head. Before long, they pulled up to one of the hanger door or where it should have been. Instead both of the large metal doors were on the ground in warped shapes while the people there were trying to set up portable shields to cover the wide gap before late-day was over and low-night began.

Scratched didn’t bother to wait for the shuttle to come to a complete halt before flying over the doors which already had teams examining them and removing panels as best as they could. “Oh by the stars, this is ugly,” she muttered as she pulled one panel up and dropped it to the side and looked inside. “Very, very, ugly.” She began to feel the bent and cracked inner mechanics before she threw herself as flat as she could on the doorframe, trying to stick her head into the the hole she made to get more vision to the damages before Aerostorm pulled her back out with a bemused look on her face.

“This is going to be a lot of work,” Scratched said, eyeing the other door before looking at Sentence. “We will need to remove all the panels, buff them out and completely rehaul the inner machines for the doors as I don’t know how much we can save.”

“We can pay you twenty credits an hour for your work Scratched,” Sentence said with a sigh. “We don't have that big a budget to pay you more but that should be reasonable enough.”

Scratched gave Aerostorm a look before nodding her head. “That’s fine but I’d like to get home first, have some food with my parents and rest; is that okay?”

“Of course,” Sentence said as the offlander who did this ship was being towed near them to a special holding spot for trouble makers. “See you in five, eight hours?”

The two of them nodded at this with Sentence dismissing them. Spreading their wings, both of started to fly back to the Excelsior where Zaat was talking to the lead scavenge manager as all the stuff they gathered today was sitting outside the ship.

“Hey Zaat,” Scratched called out as they landed in front of him. “You got this under control?”

“Don’t I always?” he smirked before he slapped a hand against the wing they found. “I’m going to keep this one, seems a bit too good to sell without learning more.”

“Seems smart,” Aerostorm said as she examined the serial code on the wing. “Four eight one five one six two three four two,” she said with a frown. “That sounds familiar…” She looked at Scratched who was already searching in her mini computer.

“Those were winning lotto numbers for some guy,” Scratched said with a smirk. “Hey, maybe we will get lucky because of them?”

“Maybe,” Aerostorm said, slapping a wing around Scratched. “But I’m lucky already ‘cause I got you.”

Scratched gave a snort before shaking her head at the griffon. “That was beyond corny, Aero,” she teased before giving her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek. “Come, let’s get home, see mom and dad, get some good food in us and then hit the hay.”

“Just the hay?” Aerostorm gave her a grin as she whispered into her ear as they started to walk to the elevators. “Who are you and what have you done with my girlfriend?”

Scratched blushed and giggled at this, trying to come up with something to fire back but nothing came to her as they rode down to the residential sections of Zeehale Habitation Zone Alpha. She settled for a pout and a hip bump which only got Aerostorm to smirk wider as they walked down the hallway before they stood in front of a door 503 and knocked on it.

“Is that you, girls?” Check Mark called out.

“Yes mom,” they both said, leaning into each other as Scratched placed her hoof onto the door scanner opposed to using her keys. Unsurprisingly as the door scanner was never ever fixed, the door remained shut with Scratched muttering a curse under her breath as she started to fish for her keys.

“Better not be swearing Scratched,” Steady Aim called out from inside with Scratched flinching guilty. “Just give me a moment, I’ll get the door for you.”

“I’ve got it Dad,” Scratched said, digging deeper into her bag before finally pulling out the key. Before she could actually unlock the door, Steady Aim opened the door and flashed them both a grin.

“I told you I got it girls,” Steady Aim waved them with his wings with Aerostorm snickering as Scratched pouted and put her key back away. “So how did it go?” he asked, already dressed in his security officer uniform even though he wasn’t due in for a few hours.

“Fairly well,” Scratched said as the two of them unloaded their stuff into the bench marked Stuff ‘N’ Junk that Scratched had made when she was younger.

“We found a good number of stuff we can sell,” Aerostorm said as she floated over to Check Mark to help her in the kitchen. It was fairly well standard apartment with living room, kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms and a master bedroom with its own private bathroom. Thankfully, Scratched’s bedroom had been big enough to hold both she and Aerostorm comfortably when Aerostorm had first moved in, so they hadn’t needed to break down a wall.

“That’s nice dears,” Check Mark said as she worked on the meal, slapping her talon with a spatula when Aerostorm tried to peek into the cooking pan.

“Ow!” Aerostorm said, holding her talon to her chest in pain with Scratched snickering.

“You know better to do try and sneak something, love,” Scratched said, leaning in to kiss her girlfriend’s cheek when her mom’s wing slapped the back of her head. “Ow, mom!”

“No one likes a smartass, Scratch,” her mom said as she continued to work on the meal before pointing to the bathroom. “Go wash up and set the table,” she waved them away with her wing as they left to do exactly that with Aerostorm sliding into the bathroom first, a talon over her mouth as she coughed before she closed the door behind her.

“So Scratch,” Steady Aim said as he began to set the table with Scratch washing up at the kitchen sink. “There was a lot of commotion a while back, any idea what that was?”

“Eh it was nothing,” Aerostorm said through the wall before she opened the door with a wing over her mouth. “Some idiot broke in.”

“...how?” Steady Aim asked with narrow eyes.

“With a ship gravity gun, dad,” Scratched said easily enough.

“A ship gravity gun‽” he practically shouted, causing everyone to stare at him in surprise.

“...yeah, that’s what Scratched said,” Aerostorm said slowly, looking at Scratched with concern.

“That’s a highly illegal weapon for any ship or person to have!” he said, slamming his wings open.

“Well, yeah,” Scratched said trying to understand what her father was getting at. Sure everyone knew that they outlawed in every region in space and any who had it was dangerous but- “Dad, your nose is bleeding!”

Raising a hoof to his bleeding nose that was now gushing, Check Mark dropped her spatula in surprise as everyone rushed to help him. “Scratch, get some towels to block his nose, Aero, the coagulant injector!” Check Mark snapped as she helped him into his seat as the two of them raced through the apartment to get what they were told.

Pulling out the towels and passing them to her mom, Scratched waited for Aerostorm to bring back the injector. It didn’t take the griffon long; stumbling as she brought in the med box in and pulled out the proper injector for Steady Aim.

After a few seconds, his nose had stopped bleeding and Check Mark had got a clean towel to clean his face, Steady Aim looked at Scratched. “Thanks girls, I’m better now.” He then gave Scratched a look. “What were we talking about?”

“That guy who broke in with the gravity gun,” Scratched told him.

“Well, I’m sure Sentence has him locked up, right?” he asked as he tossed bloody cloth into the hamper.

“Yeah; he was pretty steamed up when he got there and had the idiot shipped off to holding. Scratch got a job to fix up the doors he broke though so there’s that.” Aerostorm said as she went to help Check Mark serve out the food. “Ooo, some nice trout; thanks mom!” Aerostorm gave her a kiss on the cheek with the three year old pegasus giggling and shooing her away playfully before placing the plates down on the table for everyone to eat. It was a short meal as Steady Aim had to go to his shift and Check Mark had to go grade some tests, leaving the two of them alone.

After taking care of the dishes and the small water fight that followed, the two of them went to Scratched’s bedroom for a nice nap, each of them falling asleep in the other’s feathery embrace.

Chapter Three

Ray Blaster seethed in the jail cell he had been thrown into since he landed on this dung heap of a planet. This was supposed to be a simple job; find the traitor’s ship, get back the data that Goods Runner stole and kill anyone and everyone who got in his way.

He paused and turned around the cot, trying to get comfortable.

That last part wasn’t exactly part of Clear Vision’s plan but his assistant had convinced him that while these backwater desert hicks were stupid, he might need some extra firepower if things got messy so they gave him that nice ship and this nice toy these inbred yokels somehow forgot to take off of him when they arrested him. Ray gave the stock of his new gun a look and smiled… he couldn’t wait to use the device.

The unicorn then frowned as he thought about those kids that got him arrested. As soon as he found and dealt with Goods, he was going to pay those brats a lesson.

Well maybe just one of them. Chuckling to himself, Ray began to imagine how that cute little pegasus girl and that griffon would taste as he leaned back on in the cell, trying to get his internal clock readjusted to this planet’s stupid time zone and get some sleep. Come morning, he’d show all them security idiots what happened when they messed with him.

Chapter Four

Detailed Report let out a sigh as she sat down at her desk, forcing back what was threatening to turn into a yawn.

“Need more caf?” Steady Aim asked as he walked over to her, bearing two cups of the stuff.

“Thanks Steads,” she said lifting the mug to her mouth.

“No problem,” her partner said as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes darting over to the outlander in lockup and squinting for the umpteenth time with Report shaking her head. “Still can’t see anything?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” Steady replied with a sigh. “There’s something bothering me about this guy, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what.”

“You’ll figure it out soon,” she said patting his arm. “So tell me,” she said, changing the subject. “How are the kids?”

“They’re good; Scratch and Aero left early late night so they could put this new thing they found yesterday,” he said amidst the hustle and bustle of the station. “They think it’s a whole ship they found…” He trailed off as Sentence walked by and stood up slowly, eyes moving to the holding cells where their latest guest was now standing up and using his magic to pull something out of his vest.

“Steady, let it go already,” she said while the hair on the back of her neck stood up for some reason and a sense of dread started to build. “Look, we’ve got a lot of paperwo-”

“GUN!” he shouted suddenly with fear in his eyes as he struggled to pull out his piece only for their prisoner to shoot Steady Aim’s head completely off his shoulders, blood coating the back of the room.

With everyone stunned by this sudden act of violence, the shooter then turned and began to use his smuggled in blaster to kill all of her fellow security officers with sickening ease as for some reason their aim seemed to slide off the shooter. Ducking low to use her desk as a shield, Report saw more and more of her friends and colleagues fall dead around her.

Struggling to keep her breath steady as she tried to draw her gun, Report strained her ears to listen for the killer when she remembered he was a unicorn.

Before she could react, magic grabbed her neck and mane and dragged her head upwards.

“Quit squirming, you little bitch,” he growled at her, placing his gun’s barrel against her temple. “Get up and don’t try anything stupid.”

Nervously, she did as he said, her eyes flicking about to see the utter carnage and destruction he had done to the place she had worked her entire life and the people she had come to love as her family all dead.

When she was fully standing, he threw her into a terminal roughly with the gun still pointed at her temple. “I need you to find me something,” he barked. “It might have been hauled in by one of those scavengers. Serial number-”

“Wait, that’s what this is for‽” she snapped angrily, glaring at him. “Beyond the fact you can submit a fucking request to see if they pull something in already, this is on a chan-”

The world exploded in pain as he socked her in the face with the gun, and she was barely able to keep conscious.

“What did I say, you little pig bitch!” he shouted at her, hitting her again with his gun, his magic hovering on the trigger. “Be quiet and do what I say! Serial numbers, four-eight-fifteen-sixteen-twenty three-forty two.”

With blood flowing down her face and an already swelling eye socket, Report reluctantly began to type the numbers into the computer and waited to see if something came up.

By the gods, either good or bad, something actually showed up as a match. It was a tail fin and-

“That’s his ship,” the killer said over her shoulder, breathing heavily into her neck and face. “Or part of it, anyways. Where was it found?”

“I don’t know,” she said as she spat blood off to the side, glaring angrily at him. “Scavengers don’t share details of their finds unless they need to report a corpse or stolen goods.”

“Then who found it, you stupid pig,” he rolled his eyes as if she was being difficult. “You should have that, right?” The way he drawled out the last words made her wish to castrate him even more than she already wanted to. Typing away, she pulled up the crew that had pulled in the fin and her heart sank.

“The crew of the Excelsior,” he read over her shoulder before he enlarged the images of Steady’s kids. “Those brats,” he snarled with his magic tightening on his gun before he managed to calm himself and a disgusting look came onto his face as he stared at Scratched’s profile.

“Does she have family?” he asked her with Report reluctantly again being forced to open the information with the killer examining both images of her mother and her father.

“Huh, he looks somewhat familiar,” he muttered to himself, face in a puzzled state.

“That’s because you just killed him, you piece of shi-”

Again the world spun away from her as he used his gun to smack her in the face, with the pain even worse than before. She was barely conscious now, and couldn’t tell if her eye had swollen shut or he had damaged it enough that it had popped out or something. And she knew that it wouldn’t matter as he was going to kill her any second now that she was no use to him.

“Check Mark, huh?” he muttered to himself as he pushed her to the floor. “Says here’s she a teacher. That will work just fine for me.”

Glaring up at him with her one good eye, Detailed Report watched him lazily aim his gun at her head before pulling the trigger.

“Easy goes,” Zaat said over the mic to Aerostorm. “Keep it steady. I think we got enough of the ship free now.”

“Roger that, Zaat,” Aerostorm said, holding back a cough before switching over to Scratch. “How is it on your end?”

“Good,” Scratched replied, eying the Terakian ship. They left very early in the day so they would have enough time to dig the ship up and then properly harvest it. “I think I can fly in; the ramp is open.” She peered at the entrance, no doubt forced open upon crashing on Zeehale.

“Okay, go in; Zaat, cover her when you get it secured,” Aerostorm said as she slid the Excelsior into hover with Scratched flying into the ship.

Landing inside, Scratched began to pan around the ship with her flashlight. The Terakian ship was a small, one person ship that was clearly meant for speed and nothing else.The cockpit was directly ahead with only one room off to the side with stairs leading down to the engines on the other side of door.

Walking down the hallway as Zaat began to secure the ship within their own, Scratched began to mark parts of the ship that they could use for themselves to patch up the Excelsior. Peering into the sole room on the ship beyond the cockpit, she could see a spartan bedroom which would require a more thorough search afterwards. Walking to the cockpit doors, Scratched began to try and tug them open. Grunting as she put more muscle into it, the pegasus let out a squeak of surprise when she finally forced it open and landed on her face.

“Everything okay there?” Aerostorm asked over the coms instantly, worry clear in her voice.

“Yeah, just fell on my face lo-SHIT!” Scratched swore as she shined her light onto the captain’s seat and seeing the dead body there.

“What’s wrong‽” Aerostrom shouted while Zaat saying he was on his way.

“It’s a corpse ship,” she sighed with both of them groaning loudly. As per the law of scavenging, any ship that had a dead body in it had to be reported and anything they found on the ship had to be turned over which meant that this entire trip had been one massive waste of time and energy.

“I’ll set up the flags; head on out,” Aerostorm said, coughing into the mic.

“In a moment, I wanna take a closer look,” Scratch said while making a mental note to drag her girlfriend to the hospital to get that damn cough checked out at long last.

“Just be sure not to touch the body,” Zaat said unneededly as she knew full well how much trouble she could get in if she touched the corpse.

Muttering that she knew and wasn’t going to do it, Scratched walked closer to the dead unicorn. It was a stallion dressed in semi-military vest that had blood splattered on it from the gunshot wound on the head of the dead body. She could spy the gun at the bottom of control station and a metal data box. It was highly unusual as most people used data crystals to store loose information these days.

“Uh Scratch, come up here, we’ve got a call from home by your mom,” Zaat said, causing Scratched to pause and stuff the data chunk into her pocket without thinking. Flying out of the ship and onto the hanger bay of the Excelsior, making her way to the cockpit to see what her mom wanted.

Standing next to her friends, Aerostorm gave her a warm smile before turning on the communicator and everything went to hell.

On the screen was her mother but she looked completely terrified and slightly beaten up, no doubt due to the stallion holding the gun to her head.

“MOM!” Scratched shouted in utter horror and fear with both Zaat and Aerostorm gasping loudly.

“Scratch-” her mom began only for the unicorn to smack her in the face with the gun.

“Shut up!” he yelled at her before turning his attention back to them. “Listen to me, you damn brats; you’ve got something I want and you’ll give it to me.”

Scratched could only stammer with her mind unable to comprehend what was going on and was thankful when Aerostorm placed her talons on her shoulder and spoke up for her. “What do you want.”

“You three pulled up a ship yesterday and my intel tells me you went back to it,” he stated, pushing the muzzle of the gun against Check Mark’s skull with the mare whimpering. “On it, there’s a data box. Bring it back to me within the hour and she gets to live.”

Scratch took a step forwards, pulling the data box out. “I found it but we can’t get there in that short amount of tim-”

“I said within the hour or she dies!” he shouted at Scratched before an ugly grin appeared on his face. “Unless you don’t care about her…”

“You idiot, we literally can’t get back there in an hour,” Zaat snapped, slamming his fist onto the counter. “We’re at least sixteen hours out from -”

“I don’t care; find a way to get back here now or she dies!” He snorted. “And don’t bother calling the cops; corpses can’t help you.”

That caused everyone to freeze with Check Mark ceasing her crying and getting a faraway look on her face. Scratch saw how volatile and unstable this stallion was and prayed her mother wouldn’t do what she was about to do.

“Computer, status of Aim, Steady, privilege status of spouse Mark, Check,” she shouted with Scratched wincing.

“Privilege status recognized,” the computer voice called out. “Steady Aim is currently reporting no life signals. Alerting the medical staff for possible loss of life.”

Check Mark let out an incomprehensible wail before she launched herself at the stallion, smacking at him with her wings and hooves. It was for nothing as the stallion smashed her across the face with his gun and knocked her to floor before giving an angry kick with the mare letting out a pained sob.

“MOM!” Scratched cried out again, tears in her face. “For the love of god, PLEASE STOP!”

“Come to the station if you want to see her alive!” He shouted, pointing the gun at the camera. “End transmission.” he said before panting heavily before swinging the gun downwards, seemingly unaware he was still transmitting. “You stupid bitch!” he shouted as he began to kick her again and again. “I said keep quiet!” he screamed as the gun vanished from view but from the increased shouts of pain, it was clear he was using it again to beat her before he dragged her head upwards. He leaned into her face and said, “Once your bitch of a daughter brings me what Goods stole from my boss, I think I’ll enjoy screwing her before I kill her and her friends like I killed her daddy.” He then chuckled before placing the gun back against her head. “Too bad you won’t be able to see it, you old ugly cow,” he said before pulling the trigger.

“NO!” Scratched screamed, causing the stallion to spin around with wide eyes of complete surprise on his face. It was quickly replaced by fury and a snarl as he shot the screen.

Scratched stood there dumbfounded for a long second before falling to the floor and crying uncontrollably. She felt Aerostorm’s embrace, the griffon holding her close and whispering comforting sounds. Sobbing into her girlfriend’s shoulder, Scratched was aware of Zaat and Aero talking about where they should go to before she felt Zaat turn the ship upwards while Aerostorm guided her to their room, where she continued to cry into Aerostorm until she finally passed out.

Chapter Five

It was a while before Scratched was able to lift herself upright. She took a slow look around her room with the dim realization that this would be her home for the future as she could probably never go home again.

With a sad sigh, she drifted lazily out of her bedroom into the hallway of the Excelsior and made her way to the cockpit to find out what was going on. Opening the door, she saw her friends at the controls with both turning around to look at her.

“Scratch,” Aerostorm said while flying over to her and pulling her into a tight hug with her arms and wings. “Love, how are you doing?” she asked amid kisses pressed against her head and cheek.

Scratched couldn’t begin to even think of how she was feeling let alone properly articulate herself and just nuzzled into her girlfriend’s side who started to rub her back. After a while, she managed to calm herself enough to pull away from Aerostorm and ask where they were.

“Near the rim of the system,” Zaat said, softly, giving her mournful eyes. “We already alerted Zeehale Habitation Zone Beta and we would have gone there but as you know they’re a week away and he’s a lot closer…” Zaat trailed off, not willing to say anything more about him.

Scratched stared at him before nodding her head. “Smart,” she said softly before turning her eyes around and spotting something that made her breath stop short. Walking over to her computer station, she reached for the data box and turned back to her friends. “Do we have any idea what it is?” she asked them with both of them shaking their heads.

“We were waiting for you,” Aerostorm said. “And we were trying to put as much distance between us and that person, we didn’t really think of it.” Zaat nodded his head in agreement. Walking over to them and leaning back into Aerostorm’s side, Scratched activated the data box.

Ears flicking from the burst of static that blurted out, they could only make out a bit of the message.

‘-ttack … Hesturland… -th phase then will commen …’

They stared at each other before Aerostorm broke the silence with her coughing. Scratched looked at her before turning her eyes back to the data box in her hoof.

“I might be able to get more of the message out but if it is real…” she said slowly, still trying to comprehend what she had heard.

“Anyone planning an attack on Hesturland has to be insane,” Zaat said, rubbing his chin. “But with what happened, I…”

“If we had found this without that fucker doing anything, I would have written this off as some stupid joke,” Aerostorm said. “Now…”

“Now,” Scratched said in agreement, rolling the data box in her hooves. “I may be good with tech, but I don’t know enough about this to actually pull out the rest of the message without damaging it.”

“So what can we do?” Aerostorm thought out loud.

“Wait, where exactly are we?” Scratched asked as she got up and walked to her terminal. Pulling out the starmap for their region, she began to examine the nearby systems with her eyes going over each one quickly before dismissing them. Aerostorm shared a quick look with Zaat before she walked over to her girlfriend and read over her shoulder.

“Ah-ha!” Scratched suddenly exclaimed before tapping one of the systems to highlight it.

“The Jukern system?” Aerostorm asked as she tried to figure out why that system got her so excited. “What’s the-oh, the archive planet, right?”

“Of course,” Zat said, slamming his fist into his hand. “If any place would have information on how to take these things apart, we can find it there.”

“Exactly,” Scratched said as she began to put the directions into the Excelsior's computer. “And then once we know what’s going on, we can…” She trailed off as she hadn’t thought that far yet.

“We’ll cross that sand dune once we get there, love,” Aerostorm said placing a kiss on her cheek. “Just take it easy, okay? Trust me, you need to take time to adjust after something like this happens.”

“Yeah.” Scratched took a deep breath. “Yeah… I know.”

If she’d had a hand instead of hooves, she’d have clenched it. “But somehow, that guy’s going to pay for what he did - to everyone.”

Aerostorm nodded. “He will, love. He will.” Squeezing her shoulders, the griffon then led her out of the chair and back to their room. “Just come and rest for a while longer, please.”

Nodding her head, Scratched leaned into her side and felt herself begin to melt away in her soft feathers from her lovely wings.

It had taken nearly six Zeehalen days for them to make the journey from the Zeehale system to the Jukern system and they all had to busy them themselves in one way or another. Aerostorm had been piloting the Excelsior through a few detours and doubled back at points as to throw off anyone that could be following them, while Zaat kept an ear on the bands to see if there was anyone out there and keep track of the local news. Scratched had been doing maintenance on their ship, cannibalizing anything that they could use from the wreckage they had pulled aboard back home. Though after three days, they had jettisoned it into the local star as to avoid any potential tracking devices built in that they couldn’t detect. The decomposing body went with it, because having it around was just… disturbing to them.

It had been a weird experience, especially as they knew so little about the stallion. After searching the ship, the only thing they could find was the earth pony gun that he’d used to kill himself and after some prodding, Scratched took it for herself.

Scratched had had some practice with guns in the past, with her dad and Aerostorm wearing her down a couple of months back. She was somewhat decent, though still very hesitant to actually use one.

For the most part, however, Scratched had just spent time sleeping or leaning into Aerostorm when she wasn’t working as to avoid thinking about the loss of her mom and dad. Leaning into her girlfriend’s soft coat and being covered by her wings helped more than she thought it ever could. Soon enough, they reached the Jukern system and began making their way to the sixth planet from the sun where the planet was in the midst of being converted into an archive world. There were a swarm of convoys going from much larger ships and the other planets to the world, no doubt bringing over varied forms of stored knowledge and building materials to Jukern VI. The larger ships were mainly frigates of a standard build with no noticeable characteristic flair from one galactic nation visible, though there was the emblem of the intergalactic agency on their hauls.

As they got closer to the planet, the hails started to came in with Zaat working to sync in with them.

“Please state your designation and purpose for being here,” a voice called out as soon as Zaat keyed into the local frequency.

“This is the Excelsior ma’am,” Zaat said over the radio. “We are requesting permission to land.”

“Please state your purpose; this planet is a part of an intergalactic operation with only those approved allowed to come within 30,000 kms,” the voice said.

“Research,” Zaat replied. “We are respectfully asking permission to use your facilities, ma’am.”

There was a moment of silence with the larger class ships moving in front of their own and the three of them were getting worried before the person re-contacted them.

“You are clear to land, Excelsior,” the person said, her voice noticeably softer now. “While this place is meant for those who come after us, there is nothing that prevents ordinary people from using it. We can talk more when you land; sending you the landing coordinates now.”

“Thank you very much, ma’am,” Zaat said while looking at Scratched who nodded her head, signalling they had indeed gotten the coordinates and sent them over to Aerostorm so she could set them down.

“You can call me Cleo,” she said before terminating the link. With that, it was a short travel from orbit to the planet, Aerostorm easily piloting around the frigates to reach the surface.

Jukern VI was in the process of being terraformed and constructed into an archive world, and as they descended, they could see the weather stations anchored in the upper troposphere, keeping any major storms from forming and interfering in the builders’ work. On the surface, massive glass domes were being built, each connected to smaller domes via bridges with landing platforms on them, and a central dome serving as the capital building of the region, if not the planet itself. Looking out, Zaat whistled.

“Impressive-looking place,” he said. “Though a bit clustered; I don’t think a guy could even move down there comfortably.”

Both Scratched and Aerostorm nodded, with Scratched longing for the wide open spaces of Zeehale. “Well, let’s hope we’re not here for too long,” Aerostorm said as she brought the ship slowly, with who could only be Cleo along with a couple other people and a large mechanical construct standing behind around her. They shared concerned looks at the inclusion of the robot but as they were about to land, they couldn’t just leave as it would give Cleo the idea that something was wrong and then things could get out of control quickly.

Bringing the Excelsior down for a complete landing, Zaat and Aerostorm checked that their own firearms were properly charged and within easy reach before giving Scratched a look to do the same. Once ready, the three of them began to disembark and meet Cleo with her entourage, the bipedal robot scanning them before its monitor face flashed red and emitted some sort of alert, moving into an aggressive position.

“You have firearms?” Cleo said, taking a step backwards with her ears folding backwards in concern and worry.

“Yes ma’am,” Aerostorm said, placing a talon on her holster. “Will this be a problem or do we need to hand them over?”

“No…” Cleo said slowly before shaking her head and regaining some confidence. “We have security measures installed in case of an incident, and I am sure that you two have proper carry permits for them, correct?” she said as she pointed a finger at Aerostorm and Zaat.

“We do,” Aerostorm replied, pulling out her permit along with Zaat, handing them over to Cleo so she could hold it up to the machine. After another moment of scanning, its face flashed green and took a relaxed position again.

“You’re clear,” she said, handing the back the permits. “Though I would like to ask you not to discharge them while here. There are a lot of fragile materials here and the paper bound books are quite flammable.”

“If we do, I guarantee it’ll be in self-defense only,” Zaat said. “That’s the only reason we carry them in the first place.”

“Still,” she said nervously. “We have means to handle any issue that could arise and there shouldn’t be any need to do so as everyone that lands is scanned before they are allowed entry.”

Both of them frowned and reluctantly discharged their weapons so that they would only have a few shots to fire before they would run on empty. This seemed to be a fair compromise for Cleo as she smiled wider and let out an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you,” she said, straightening out her outfit with her hands dismissing those behind her though the robot stayed by her side. “As you know, I am Cleo, and I am currently in charge of categorizing all the physical books along with the other means of stored knowledge,” she said as she walked into the dome. After passing a small reception area, they could immediately see rows upon rows of incredibly tall bookcases in front of them and vanishing off to either side, while the main entryway had a moving sidewalk leading to the elevators. But what really took their attention was the sheer amount of people going through different crates of books and other means of storing information before checking holographic notes hovering in front of them and then moving off deeper into the library.

“My colleagues are in the midst of converting the physical items into electronic-based means,” Cleo explained as she led them along. “There are other options in the works as well, for multiple alternate backups in the event of programming changes in the future among other possibilities.”

“These pillars,” Scratched said, placing a hoof on one of them. “They have engravings on them; binary?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Very astute,” Cleo said with a purr. “In case of a total loss, people would hopefully have these to have some recollection of the information we’re seeking to preserve.” She then shook her head, a light blush on her face. “I’m sorry, I have yet to get your names.”

“I’m Zaat,” he said, shaking her hand before gesturing to Aerostorm and Scratched and introducing them.

“We are here so we can decipher this data storage we found,” Scratched said, pulling it out of her pack. “I can get it play some of the message in it and while I could probably pull it out, I’d rather go over some of the basic mechanics of this before I go any further and risk losing parts of it.”

Cleo peered at it before pulling out a holographic list. Scrolling down it, she frowned. “That’s unfortunate,” she muttered.

“It’s not here?” Scratched asked with concern.

“Oh no, it is here, though there is a bit of an issue in that it's not displaying the right location,” she then checked awkwardly. “It is actually showing up in three places right now, in fact.”

“Do you mind if we go looking for them?” Scratched asked.

“Not at all,” Cleo said. “This place is to be a library and it would be against the very principle of a library to prevent those who want to learn from learning.” Reaching for her holographic list, she sent each of them a code clearance and a set of directions. “I do hope you can find what you are looking for.”

“Thank you,” Scratched said, nodding her head before taking her directions and with a quick kiss on Aerostorm’s cheek, she walked off into the library.

It had been a while since they had all split up and Scratched had finally reached her destination. Examining the ones in front of her, she could instantly tell that they were not the ones she needed, and cranked her head up to the books on the very top to check them to see that they were the same.

All these books were about a famous mare who had revolutionized the medical field and more or less cured every known disease out there. Scratched remembered her mom talking about her in the past and that her catchphrase was that she hadn’t cured anyone, she was just fixing things which probably was the reason why the library brought her here.

She was about to open one of the books to remember what this mare was called when she heard someone walking towards her.

Spinning around, her heart lurched as she saw the same face that had been haunting her in her nightmares, the face of the stallion who killed her parents and in his magic aura, he was holding a gun aimed right at her.

Chapter Six

Scratched felt her heart race as she saw the stallion who killed her parents aim the gun straight at her head.

“Nice to see you again,” he sneered. “Running away, that wasn't smart.” He took a step towards her with Scratched taking a step backwards. “If only had you just come back when I told you, this wouldn’t be needed.”

“We told you, it wasn’t possible for us to get back there in an hour,” Scratched said slowly.

“I really don’t care,” he spat, shifting his gun closer to her head. “You have that data storage and you will give it to me.”

Scratched was fully aware that regardless of what she did, he was going to shoot and kill her. She tried to think of something when there was a loud whirl behind them.

“Alert; unauthorized firearm detected,” one of the robots that had been with Cleo was now behind them with its hands retracting to reveal gun barrels on both arms. “Disarm immediately or lethal-” the robot was cut off when the stallion shot it in the head, disabling it instantly.

“Now, where were we-” he started only to let out a grunt of pain as Scratched smashed him across the head with largest book she could grab, knocking him unconscious. Panting with adrenaline, Scratched pulled out her gun and aimed it at his head and was poised to fire when she began to tremble.

Sweating, she tried to force herself to pull the trigger, to kill him right here and now but she couldn’t make herself do it. She couldn’t bring herself to take a life.

Not even for a monster like this.

Stuffing her gun back in its hiding spot, she turned around and ran.

“Aerostorm, Zaat, one of you guys come in,” she said over her communicator, doing her best to make it back to the lobby or find someone that could help. “It’s him, he got here somehow - I knocked him out and got away, but he’s here!”

“Scratch, what are you saying, you sure?” Zaat called back extremely worried.

“After what he did, I couldn’t mistake him for anyone else,” she said. “Yes, I’m sure!” She then heard a snarl from behind her and dropped to the floor with a blast going straight over her head and into a stack of books. “Shit he’s up!” she shouted, scrambling to get away.

“You stupid bitch, you should have killed me when you got the chance!” he shouted, firing more rounds into the bookcases with the crackle of flames starting to spread. “Get back here so I can kill you!”

Taking the risk to get into the air so she could escape, Scratched spread her wings and flew through the billowing smoke with the stallion behind her growling loudly.

Coughing as she tried to get an understanding of where she was, Scratched heard a familiar set of flapping wings.

“Scratched, you’re oka-down!” Aerostorm shouted, pushing her down with her gun firing off into the smoke before she let out a pain-filled scream and the two of them crashed into the ground.

“Aero, Aero, are you ok-oh my god!” she shouted in horror as she saw the blood pooling out of her girlfriend with one of her wings on the ground next to them. “Aero!”

“I-I,” she couldn’t even began to say anything as she began to cough horribly, causing the blood to pump out of the stump where her right wing once was even faster.

“I got her,” Zaat said, sliding in from nowhere as people ran past them, some holding firearms while the other began to try and put out the fire. With strength she didn’t even know he had, her parrot friend lifted the griffon up onto his shoulder and began to run away from the growing firefight and back outside. “Scratch, lower the ramp!” he shouted at her as they ran, with gunfire shots going off inside the library. Jolting at his orders, Scratched fumbled with her wrist computer but managed to get it down by the time he reached the Excelsior so he could run straight inside.

Following him, Scratched saw Zaat carry Aerostorm into the kitchen and was about to follow them inside when he turned his head around and shouted at her, “Scratch, no! We need to get away now! Go pilot us out of here!”

“R-right,” she stuttered, racing back into the cockpit and going through the basic checklist routine for them to take off when she heard Aerostorm scream. “Aero!” she shouted about to push herself out the captain’s seat when Zaat screamed back.

“Stay there!” he bellowed. “I don’t care what you hear, just get us out of here or Aero and the rest of us will die!”

Sitting back down, Scratched grabbed the flight controllers and took off.

Scratched had no idea how long it had been since she started flying them away from Jukern VI, her mind barely able to focus on anything beyond what could be happening to Aerostorm. She had been whimpering in pain for a while before things became quiet and then her mind began to race with all kinds of horrible things that could be happening to her Aero.

Finally, there was a padding behind her and she spun around to see Zaat covered in blood and looking completely exhausted. “The kitchen is a no go for a long time; I don’t know how much scrubbing we’re going to need to do but it won’t be enough,” he said, leaning against the wall before sliding down to rest on his ass.

She stared at him, her mouth trying to form words before he cracked a grin on his face. “She’s okay,” he said. “Took me a while, but I was able to stop the bleeding and get it locked down… but I don’t know how she’s going to cope without that wing.”

“I-I,” she started with Zaat shaking his head.

“She’s hurt, but she’ll live,” he said soothingly. “That’s the important part. Go to her.”

Nodding her head, she leapt out of the chair and made her way into their bedroom and saw Aerostorm resting on the bed. There were bandages wrapped around her upper chest with her left wing hanging off the bed and her right one…

“Hey,” Aerostorm croaked, a weak smile on her face. “How are you, love?”

“How am I-I,” she sputtered, climbing onto the bed. “How can you even ask that?”

“Because I wouldn’t know what to do if you were hurt,” Aerostorm said, taking her hoof and rubbing it with her talon. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“N-no,” Scratched admitted. “I didn’t get hit - but I should have stopped him,” she said more to herself than to Aerostorm. “I had the chance, he was knocked out for a minute, but…”

“But you couldn’t bring yourself to shoot a guy who couldn’t fight back,” Aerostorm finished, still rubbing her hoof. “I understand.”

“No you don’t. It’s all my fault,” Scratched finally blurted out, the guilt burning her up inside. “Because if I did kill him, you wouldn’t be hurt like this!” She began to sob, resting her head on Aerostorm’s side with the griffon rubbing her back.

“Love, love, my sweet love, it’s okay,” Aerostorm said softly before lifting Scratched’s head up and placing a kiss on her lips. “I don’t blame you.”

Leaning into the kiss, Scratched slowly broke it off after a minute and stared in amazement at Aerostorm. “How can you be this calm about everything?”

“Because I’m that amazing, my beautiful pegasus,” Aerostorm chuckled weakly before coughing. When she had stopped, she smiled at her girlfriend. “Besides, I may not look it on the outside, but I was far more worried about you and still am. Now come here and get some rest.”

Chuckling softly, Scratched gently rested her head on Aerostorm’s side and felt her soft wing cover her and was instantly aware of how tired she really was. Within a few seconds, she was out cold.

It had been a few cycles before Zaat had pulled them into a dying binary solar system, near the flaming shells of its two stars. Aerostorm had spent the entire time in bed, and Scratched had spent most of that time with her, but now the two rejoined their friend in the main area of the ship, looking out the viewscreen.

“Hard to believe this used to be a normal place,” Scratched said softly.

Zaat nodded. “Nobody’s quite sure how it happened, but according to the records I’ve found, something made those stars go nuts and start putting out all kinds of flares about five thousand years ago - wiped out everything else in the system. Whatever star gas is still there to be given off will be perfect camouflage for us, as long as we stay here.”

“So what are we going to do now?” Aerostorm asked, looking around. “The view’s nice, but we can’t stay here for good.”

Zaat nodded. “We still need to figure out what’s on that data box, and we need to deal with that lunatic chasing us. I think we’re going to have to hire some help, for protection.”

Aerostorm raised an eyebrow at him. “Mercenaries?”

“It’s better than nothing,” Zaat replied. “Besides, maybe if we go to where we can find them, we can also find help with that.” He gestured to the box, which sat on the table between them.

“Though there is one problem,” Scratched said, tapping a hoof onto the table. “How are we even going to pay them?”

Zaat sighed. “That, I haven’t figured out yet.” He looked up. “But, I think I know where we can start looking.”

“Where?” Aerostorm asked.

“Doa’s Bar.” Zaat gave a faint smile at the startled looks they gave. “Place has a reputation for being kind of chaotic, and it attracts a lot of… shall we say, unsavory traffic. I’ve heard some say it’s a smaller version of some place called Klugetown, though I’m not sure where that was. But they also have a no-tolerance policy when it comes to violence. Jukern VI had its security measures, but this place is even stricter. And they’re not affiliated with any planetary or galactic government - in fact, I think that place even served as a temporary neutral ground to end some war a few hundred years ago… which also broke out there.” Zaat said with a chuckle, rolling his eyes.

Aerostorm rolled her own. “Sounds like a nice place, but if we can get help there, why not?”

“I’ll do it,” Scratched said with both of her friends looking at her.

“You in a bar?” Aerostorm snorted before wincing. “You hate drinking and how can you get some merc to take you seriously? I love that you want to do this, love, but-”

“But nothing,” Scratched said firmly. “You’re still recovering and Zaat can take care of you better than I can with those fingers of his if something happens. And even if I don’t drink for any reason, most bars do serve things other than alcohol, right?”

“Yes, they do,” Zaat said. “In fact, Doa’s is also known for its great food. But still…”

“Still nothing,” Scratched shot back. “I’m going in… even if I don’t have someone to watch my back.”

“Considering the last time you went into a bar with one of us and your back got punched twice, I get your point,” Aerostorm said with a rasping chuckle, before pulling her into an embrace. “We’ll be keeping an eye out from the ship though, so make sure your comm’s charged.”

Scratched nodded, nuzzling her girlfriend. “I will.”

“But please,” Aerostorm said, holding her head close to her beak. “Don’t do this because you feel guilty what happened to me.”

“I’m not just doing it because of that,” Scratched told her, a faint smile on her face. “I’m doing it because one of us has to, and I’m the only one who can now.”

Aerostorm let out a sigh, shaking her head. “Alright, fine,” she said, placing a kiss on her cheek. “We’ve got time to prepare you for being in a bar; should be fun.”

Snorting at her, Scratched felt herself smile for the first time in a while and was hopeful that things would start going their way.

Chapter Seven

Two standard days later, the trio had a plan.

It had taken them that long to figure out a path to the Oricho system, and consequently to the asteroid that housed Doa's Bar, after including several twists and turns to muddle their trail and evade anyone who might be trying to find them. With their long and winding path decided, Zaat took over flight duties, while Aerostorm was essentially confined to bed rest despite her claiming she was fine. Scratched, meanwhile, had thrown herself into her work, alternating between time in the repair bay and being prepared to go into Doa's, focusing heavily on both of these.

A little over a standard week after they had set off, Scratched was thoroughly engrossed in one of her projects when the doors to her workshop opened, and Aerostorm called her name.

“Aero,” Scratched called back, spinning around and covering her workbench with her body and wings. “What are you doing here?”

“I was curious to what you were working on, love,” Aero said, tilting her head and flexing her back. Zaat had had to do emergency surgery to save her life which resulted in him cutting to the base, leaving barely a stub of her wing joint. “You normally don’t hide whatever thing you’re tinkering on. Normally, I can’t get you to stop talking about it without drowning you in kisses.”

“I...” Scratched looked to the side before letting out a sigh and stepping to the side. “I was hoping I would be further along before you saw this.” With a gasp Aerostorm walked to the bench and took in all the wires splayed out.

“Is this what I think it is?” she asked in awe.

“If you think it is the basics of a biographic prosthetic for your wing, then it is,” Scratched said, looking off to the side. “It’s not much but it is a start.” Scratched shook her head. “It’s hard to do with what little we have and I have been pouring over all the medical books I can so I could make it as effective as possible but I’m so far away from being even remotely confident about attaching it to your nervous system, let alone having the framework finished…”

“Scratched,” Aerostorm cooed, wrapping her arms around her. “I don’t even know what to say.” She wrapped her wing around Scratched, placing a kiss on her cheek, though a little uncomfortable over how incomplete this felt with her other wing being gone. “Thank you, but I hope you are not doing this because you feel guilty or anything-”

“Aero, please, I need to do something, anything to make things right,” she said softly and sadly. “I feel that so far I’ve been the one dragging us down every time and I need to do something to fix that. So please, let me work on this in private for now, okay?”

Aerostorm rubbed her back before letting out a sigh. “All right, but don’t run yourself into the ground in the process, please?”

“I promise,” Scratched said, leaning up to kiss her check.

“Thank you,” Aerostorm said while giving her a peck of affection. “Now for that bar visit.”

Scratched let out a groan, pushing herself away from her desk. “Really?” she asked with a raised amused smirk on her face. “Now that I am trying to work?”

“What other time-” Aerostorm began only for Zaat to come into the room with a grim look on his beak.

“Come, there is some news about the library you need to hear,” he said, walking back to the cockpit.

“What is it?” Aerostorm asked with a frown on her face.

“Wait a moment, you’ll hear it; I have it saved on a loop in any case,” Zaat said waving her off with a hand. As they entered through the door, Zaat went to his terminal and began to tap in some keys before a recording began to play.

And the galaxy is still reeling at the tragic loss of the Intergalactic Archives of Jukern VI. There is still no explanation to how the massive explosion started but the loss of the collective knowledge and life is a tremendous blow to the project’s efforts. Shining Tomorrow’s CEO, Clear Vision, has promised to fully support the restoration and rebuilding of the-

Zaat cut it off at that point, and gave Scratched a worried look. “That maniac did that,” Zaat said, fingers tented. “I don’t know how he got there but we know that whatever we got here is something he would kill countless people for. That whatever you found is that dangerous.” He then looked at her. “Please, for the love of all the gods and stars above, be careful.” He then scratched his wrists and opened his mouth only for Scratched to cut him of.

“I know what you’re going to say and no, I am still going to go do this,” Scratched said sharply with a frown on her face.

“I know I can’t stop you,” Zaat responded. “I was going to say, if he shows up there? Run for it. Don’t stop for any reason, just get back to us and, if you can, get him into place behind our ship.”

“Behind?” Aerostorm asked, confused.

Zaat nodded. “Behind. As in, behind the thrusters right before I turn them on.”

Aerostorm’s eyes widened, and then she smiled. “I gotcha.”

Scratched looked a little sick at the thought, but she nodded. “Right. I will.”

“Good. Now, I’ve got to get back to the cockpit.” Zaat headed off, leaving the two alone. After a moment, Aerostorm saw Scratched turn back to her work, and she could tell that although her girlfriend was doing her best to focus, there was another distinct shudder, most likely from the thought of what she’d just agreed to. Placing a kiss behind her left ear that got Scratched shuddering with delight, Aerostorm saw her girlfriend turn around to stare at her before the idea clicked into her head and the two of them went off to their room.

Some days later, the Excelsior had landed, and Scratched had made her way from the hanger to her destination, looking at the bar. It was a two story building all by itself at the end of the street. From everything she’d heard Scratched thought it would been more… impressive but it wasn't. A bland paint job covered the building and a simple holographic sign above the door was all that it did to advertise that it was Doa’s Bar. Trotting up to the door, Scratched pushed it open to see a simple desk with a massive dragon sitting behind it with a hallway off to the right leading off to another door.

The dragon was tall with green scales and curved horns, muscles clear under the sleeveless shirt he was wearing and all around pretty intimidating. He was also flipping through a magazine before she entered the bar and gave her a raised eyebrow or the equivalent for someone that didn’t have them.

“Okay honey,” he said, sitting upright and grabbing a holoslate. “Before we even start, how old are you?”

“I’m two,” Scratched said proudly enough with him raising his other eyebrow.

“In galactic standard,” he said a bit firmly with Scratched blushing at this mistake.

“Um,” she said as she did the math in her head. “About twenty one?” she offered with dragon frowning at her.

“Look honey, you may be old enough to go in these places, but this isn’t a normal bar,” he said with his eyes flicking to the door before he looked at her and let out a sigh. “Are you being put up on some sort of dare or something? Are your friends outside now, waiting to see if you can get or not? Because look, I may be able to help but I need to know.”

“Sir, I am fully aware of this place is and no I am not here because of some stupid kid dare,” Scratched said. “Me and my friends need some help getting to Hesturland; we found something that their government would really appreciate being brought to their attention but we cannot get there alone.” Scratched swallowed. “We might not have a lot of credits on us but... my girlfriend has already been injured by this nutjob hunting us. We need any kind of help we can get.”

The dragon stared at her before letting out a sigh. “I’ll let you in and tell the boss about you; she’s a softie for honest sob stories and she might be able to help you if she believes you.” He then frowned and held out his hand. “But first, I will need your gun. Ground rule is that no one carries any weapons inside and all will be stored until such a time that it is felt you are sober enough to properly operate said weapon.”

Scratched blinked at that and hesitated in handing over her gun. “Do you really expect me to give up my sole means to defend myself?”

“That’s the rule and if you don’t like it, you can turn around,” he said with his eyes narrowed. “Besides, everyone in there are long time customers who know the rules and knows that if we catch them with so much as a peashooter, then they’ll be banned for a good long time.” He then tapped at some unseen buttons on his desk and the wall behind slid down to reveal a massive rack of stored weapons of all shapes and variants, a lot of them immediately by the sheer size alone. “As you can see, everyone in there values our services and will not be going after you.”

Scratched nodded her head and slid her gun across the table with the dragon taking it in his own hands. He checked that the safety was off before taking a small paper tag and attaching it to her gun and gave her one as well. “For later, in case my twin brother is working the desk,” he said before flashing her a smile. “The name’s Thorn.”

“Scratched Wrench,” she replied, returning her own smile.

“One more thing, miss Wrench,” he said, holding up a claw. “A DNA test; just to be sure you’re not someone who is more wanted.”

“Okay, will a feather do?” she asked, holding out a wing.

“Yes, that will work just fine,” Thorn said while holding out his hand. He gave her a flat look before Scratched got what he was indicating and plucked out one of her old feathers, dropping it in his hand. “Thank you, and I will be telling her to watch out for you; she’ll be at the counter.” He was already pulling up the intercom and running her feather through the computer.

“Okay, thank you,” Scratched said as she walked down the hall and into the bar as Thorn got off the intercom and looked at the results of his test before his eyes went wide.

“That’s…” he stared at the flashing results, almost not believing his eyes. He had to be sure before he told her. If that mare was not some sort of biological creation, then everything was going to change. If she was, then all hell would break loose as she would be beyond furious.

Scratched found Doa’s bar to be almost exactly like the one back home. It had a bunch of people sitting around tables, talking to themselves while drinking as waiters brought food back and forth. On one wall, there was a collections of photos of different mares at various stages of life, written under each was the word owner and a name attached to it.

“Must be the family spiral or something,” Scratched muttered to herself as she walked up to the counter.

“Most say family tree but I guess that’s what you get when you’re from a desert world,” the mare across the counter said as she walked up to Scratched. She was older looking; a light blue pegasus with powdery snow-white mane.

“Is it that obvious?” Scratched asked as she sat down on a stool.

“Besides your words which are typical of desert dwellers, your coat is usually that of a desert pony, you have a thinner layer of fur and feathers, giving you less insulation and making you better suited for a desert environment, and you have a faint layer of dust on you,” she pointed out as she slid a drink in front of her, which Scratched looked at in surprise - that was not anything she’d ever seen before. Hesitantly, she looked at the other mare, who rolled her eyes and hoofed over an open menu, pointing to one item on it. Seeing the name, she smiled and took a sip. “Mmm!”

“Thorn told me about you; said you needed help and you didn’t look like a strong drinker,” the bartender said, absentmindedly washing a glass with her wings before she continued on. “So I figured a strawberry-banana smoothie would be more your thing.”

“It is,” Scratched said. “Thank you.”

The other mare gave her a faint smile of her own before turning back to her work. “Glad you liked. Anyway, I have a few people here who will be what you kids are looking for; they’ve got a real soft spot for dumb kids like you.”

While Scratched didn’t like being called a dumb kid, she wasn’t about to look a gift worm in the mouth and stammered her thanks before trailing off as she didn’t know her name.

“The name is Downpour,” the mare said without even bothering to look up. “I will be right back, so stay put.”

“Yes ma’am,” Scratched nodded her head and watched the older mare leave with a sense of relief that everything was going okay for once. She looked around the bar and saw that despite all the warnings Zaat had given her, these people weren’t so bad-

Her heart froze as she saw a very familiar unicorn give her a wink and a nod of his head before standing up and reaching into his vest. Not wasting any time, Scratched jumped out of her seat and walked over to the staircase. In a split-second decision that was based on instinct, Scratched went down the steps with her parent’s killer right behind her. In the short hallway, there were several doors and thankfully, the first one she tried was unlocked. Sliding into the storeroom and mentally cursing to herself for not getting a room with a back exit, Scratched dove behind some crates in time to see him smash open the door.

“Stupid filly, that was really dumb of you to go down. Though luckily for me,” he grunted with a sneer on his face as he held up a new blaster in his hooves. “Now I will tell you this just one time; give me what I want or I -”

“What do you think you are doing here?” Downpour snapped, walking into the room behind him.

“This doesn’t concern you, you old hag,” he snapped, turning around and pointing the gun at her with Scratched’s blood going cold. “Shut up and leave before I shoot you.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Downpour said, walking closer to the stallion with Scratched struggling to force herself to save this mare. “Just put the gun dow-”

“I said, shut u-” his words fell apart as he pulled the trigger and the blue pegasus vanished in a puff of dust and a taller, green coated alicorn with a yellow mane and beaker cutie mark was standing in her place. She stared at the stallion that had just shot her before snarling out in anger and, using her turquoise magic, grabbed the gun from him to smash him across the face with the hilt, knocking him around and onto his belly. She then lowered the gun between his hind legs and fired another round with him squealing in pain before she smashed the gun through his skull.

Then, as Scratched froze, her eyes wide with terror, the other mare pulled the gun out of the stallion’s brain and aimed it in Scratched’s general direction.

Chapter Eight

Vector Gaze was doing his best not to lose his temper as he and his team made their way through the Oricho system but it was not easy. They’d had to waste so much time putting out Ray’s fires in those damn desert and library worlds, and soothing all those damn survivors’ concerns. It was good for the boss to make more direct moves while the galaxy was still unaware of them but Ray still put them all in danger of being discovered too soon.

He could still recall how furious Clear Vision was when his assistant had come in and told Clear that Ray stole that ship and those guns to go after Goods Runner for betraying them. Of anyone in the Final Order, Ray would be the last pony chosen for such a delicate mission and now Vector was stuck doing clean up duty for his messes.

His ear twitched as one of his crewmen reported that they’d finally traced the signal in Ray’s stolen disintegrator to the main asteroid. Simple enough to order a dropship of his best soldiers to aim for the hanger. With any luck, Vector would be able to kill Ray quietly and find those kids in their ship the Excelsior and peacefully retrieve the stolen information from their grateful hooves.

If not... one more burned world could be blamed on Ray.

After all, dead stallions tell no tales.

Chapter Nine

Scratched stared at the mare aiming the gun at her and began to try to figure out a way to save herself when the mare narrowed her eyes.

“You’ll tell me exactly what trouble you brought to my place in the next five seconds or I will kill you too,” she said as she walked over to where Scratched was hiding and Scratched was under no illusion she was bluffing. “Five. Fou-”

“That maniac’s been chasing my friends and I to get back this data storage we found, and we came here to hire someone who could protect us from him,” Scratched said in a rush, standing up slowly.

The mare looked at her critically, then sighed. “Well, you won’t have him chasing you anymore, at least,” she said. “Now, come out of there.”

Scratched did so, and for a moment the other mare studied her. Then, she spoke again. “Tell me, were you trying to lure him to here specifically?”

“No.” Scratched shook her head vehemently, staring at the gun still pointed at her. “We had plans in case he showed up, but we had no idea he’d beat us here. For that matter, I have no idea how he figured out where we were even going in the first place, after the last time we escaped him.”

“It makes sense that someone of his nature would end up here,” the mare said as she used her magic to rifle through his pockets and begin to pull out items. “His weapon is high grade which indicates he is from a serious organization. Someone from an ordinary criminal syndicate, slave catching, or a cult would not be on their own so this indicates that where he- Ray Blaster- was from, he was well trusted or more worryingly, a low level grunt that could use this as a common weapon.” She spared the corpse a quick glance before she returned her attention to Scratched. “From what I heard, I tend to believe the latter.” She then realigned the gun at Scratched and asked, “Do you have that data storage on you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Scratched said as she reached into her saddlebag and fished it out with the other mare grabbing and activating it.

‘-ttack … Hesturland… -th phase then will commen …’

She stared at the device in her hooves for a long time before flashing a steel glare at Scratched. “If this is some sort of jo-”

There was a crash of footsteps from outside the door with a voice calling, “Downpour, is everythin-” Thorn and another nearly identical dragon stepped into the room.

“Mom, what happened?” the other dragon asked, staring at the dead body and then at Scratched.

“Thorn, Scorch,” the mare said turning to them and lowering the gun to her side which allowed Scratched to let out the air she wasn’t aware she was holding in. “I need you to get me-”

“Mom, wait,” Thorn said as he waved her over and whispered something into her ear. Her entire body jolted and she looked at Scratched again with new eyes. “There are also a lot of soldier looking ponies marching towards us.”

“I see,” the mare said, biting her lip as she moved to leave the room. “Change of plans. Curtain Call.”

“Swan Song,” Scorch said causing the mare to spin around.

“No,” she snapped staring up at them. “If you two think I will let you actually go for it then-”

“Mom,” Thorn knelt down to stare her in the eye with Scorch doing the same. “You raised us centuries ago from mere hatchlings, took care of us and taught us everything we know. We can tell how serious this is and how much you will need a cover to get away safely. Please, let us do this for you.”

The mare stared at them before poorly stifling a sob, and the two dragons embraced her in response. The three held each other before the two dragons let her go with her muttering she would be back in a few seconds. Thorn went with her and Scorch turned to face Scratched.

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said, leaning into her face. “She may be one of the oldest mares alive but she is very mentally fragile. She is prone to long periods of depression, she doesn’t respond to praise well and she can lose herself if you aren’t there to pull her back to the surface. Do you understand?”

“Ye-yes,” Scratched said nervously nodding her head.

“Take care of her, please,” the dragon said. “This will be very hard for her and she will need someone to help her.”

“I will do my best, I promise,” she said which seemed to reassure him enough.

“Good, now if you will excuse me, me and my brother need to go do something,” Scorch said, patting her shoulder before he walked out of the room.

Walking up the stairs, he saw Thorn walking down with a mega blaster over his shoulder and a second in one hand, which he tossed to Scorch.

“You ready for this?” he asked him.

“As much as I can be,” Scorch said as they walked to the counter, before he raised a claw to get the attention of the customers. “Okay, listen up everyone, this is the final round!” He ignored their complaints and spoke louder. “When I say final round, I mean the final round for the bar!” That got their attention with the regulars all staring at them. “There are some folks that are coming to our doors that we’re pretty damn sure are here to cause trouble. Me and Thorn are going to do our best to tell them to sod off but we’d appreciate every hand we can get.”

“To underscore how serious we think these offlanders are, we are tearing up all the tabs and letting one final round of drinks for those who stay,” Thorn said as he began to activate the defences of the bar they had installed over the years while Scorch went to the front door. “The choice is yours.”

Within a few seconds, the brothers had their answer.

Vector Gaze eyed the dusty streets leading up to Doa’s Bar with distaste but soon this business would be done. Behind him, a score of his best soldiers were following dutily. As he approached the bar, he reached out to the doors with his magic only to find it locked.

“Hello out there,” a voice called out to him. “What’s the deal with all those men?”

“Hello yourself,” Vector called back. “These stallions are here in case things go poorly, which I hope they don’t. I am here for a stallion named Ray Blaster.”

“Sorry to say that the guy is dead,” the voice called back with a chuckle. “Pulled a gun on a girl in here and that couldn’t be allowed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vector called back as he walked back into the safety of his soldiers. “Ray was a terrible pony and the universe is probably better with his death. Though, I have to ask if the mare he was threatening was a Scratched Wrench.”

“And if she was, what’s it to you?”

“She found something that was stolen from my boss and we’re just trying to get it back,” Vector said honestly enough. “Ray was over-enthusiastic in trying to get it from her and while I understand there was a bit of rough handling in trying to get it, I promise that if you just send her out, we can handle all this nice and quietly.”

“Sorry, that’s not happening,” the voice replied. “I’ve heard what you did to her homeworld and that library and I don’t think it’d be safe for her to meet you.”

“I must insist you open those doors to let me in lest we need to make things messy,” Vector said with a sneer forming on his face.

“I insist you leave before you bite off more than you can chew buddy,” the stallion called out to him.

“Look, we are coming in there one way or another; let us just do this peacefully,” Vector said. “Open the doors and let us in.”

“Not going to happen,” the voice said before cutting off the voice com.

“That’s it, take it down,” he said, tilting his head to his soldiers to blast some holes into the bar to scare them into acting smart.

...only for the blasts to merely singe the paint.

“What the …” he said as his ear flicked as he heard motors running and hidden automated gun turrets leaned out of the side of the building. Reacting on his training, he raced for cover behind one of the buildings while his front three lines were being mowed down as there was so little cover to be had in the middle of the street.

Thankfully, his men knew to fire and didn’t wait for his orders to destroy the turrets and soon enough, each one was a smoking heap of wreckage. Moving out with his fellow quick hooved soldiers, he approached the building with one soldier from a demolition squad attaching a breaching charge to the front doors.

Holding for a moment while the doors were blown apart, Vector saw his squad leaders wave soldiers in, only for them to cry out as they were met with a hail of gunfire coming from both more turrets and deeper inside the bar. With a snarl, the squads began to lay covering fire as several of his demolition units raced forwards to launch a breach charge into the room. With a mighty thud, everything shook for a few seconds before the fire started again but by that time, Vector's men were able to rush into in the room and begin to lay down even more cover fire with Vector peering into the room though his visor cam, only to see complete bedlam.

The computer inside of it began to list those shooting them as well known mercenaries, including several that the Final Order had hired in the past. His mind began to race as he tried to figure out what this bar could have possibly have on them, as his men did their best to chip away at these mercs but the tables they were hiding behind were also made of the same metal that the outer wall was and his men couldn't begin to blast through them.

Still, he had superior numbers and they were able to turn the breach into a proper staging area to take the rest of the place.

That was until a dragon appeared from behind the bar with a heavy mega blaster and began to blow apart entire squads. He was dressed in high plated body armour and clearly had some training as he was aiming for the squads that were carrying the heavier weapons.

He was also the leader of this shitshow and killing him would be the key to getting everything under control.

Aiming his own rifle with laser point, he began to focus on the dragon’s head when he heard a series of clunks. Turning his head to the side, his eyes went wide as he saw a burning keg bouncing down into the bar room and straight to their breach point.

“INCOMING!” he shouted, diving backwards as it exploded and took out more of his men. With a snarl, he leaned back into the room and managed to fire off a shot.

“THORN!” he heard a voice shout across the room with more rapid explosions from another heavy mega blaster being fired. Another, near identical dragon appeared onto the scene and leaped behind the bar but at this point, the tide had turned in Vector’s favour.

Suddenly, there was a loud roar from outside, and Vector spun around, his visor zooming in. After a moment, he cursed. “Fall back, they’re escaping!”

“I think not,” came a growl, and a moment later he fell forward, his rear legs twisting and tearing as he screamed in agony.

Then he felt an aura surrounding him for a moment. Just as quickly, a shot rang out, and he heard a wet thud as something fell next to him.

Dazed, he looked up as a pair of scaled feet stomped over in front of him, and saw a badly wounded dragon with a claw over a gaping hole in its stomach, holding a device of some sort in the other hand.

“You may have won the battle, but not the war,” the dragon sneered. “Goodbye.” He pressed the button.

And then all Vector Gaze felt was fire, and pain.

And then nothing.

“This better have been worth it,” the mare next to Scratched hissed angrily as they stood on the ramp of the Excelsior, watching the massive explosion of where the bar once stood with smaller ones ripping apart the street where more of those soldiers were standing. “You had better be worth it.” She stared intensely at Scratched before her eyes fell into something that resembled curiosity. “You have no idea to who I am, do you?”

“Ye-yes,” Scratched said with a glup. “You’re that mare who created all those cures, the foremare of the universal health standard. You’re Sp-”

The mare scoffed at her. “You know nothing.” Stepping angrily forwards to the cockpit, the mare shot back as they began to take off. “I wonder what they are teaching kids these days if that’s what you know of me.”

“My mother was the teacher back home and that fucker Ray Blaster killed her,” she snapped back angrily with the mare stiffening for good long ten seconds before shaking her head.

“I know of some jump gates that can get us closer to Hesturland, I will tell your pilot...” she trailed off as she walked in the small room with her best friend and girlfriend staring at the alicorn.

“Scratched, honey, do you know who she is‽,” Aerostorm said with terror in her voice, reaching for her gun.

“Yes I do,” Scratched said, walking to be shoulder to shoulder with the other mare who seemed pleased to see that Aerostorm was scared of her. “She is also willing to help us get this damn data to the Hesturlandians and-”

“What happened to your wing?” the mare asked, walking closer to Aerostorm who looked at Scratched for guidance.

“It was shot off by that bastard you killed,” Scratched said. “I’ve been working on creating her a replacement wi-”

“I can fix her,” the mare said with her horn glowing. A table appeared in the middle of the room, with the alicorn looking at Aerostorm. “I can fix you. Despite what I have done, I know how to fix people.”

Aerostorm gave her a nervous look before swallowing and reaching over to kiss Scratched’s cheek before climbing onto the table. “Okay, Doctor Genome, I’m ready.”

“Spliced Genome,” the mare corrected. “I never gained my medical degree.” Her magic then enveloped Aerostorm completely, with the griffon falling asleep. The mare then moved up to her right wing joint and stared at it before pulling out Aero’s left wing out. With her eyes glowing, strands of blood and bone began to sprout out of the wing joint. Watching in awe, Zaat and Scratched watched as layer upon layer of biological tissue was being created in front of them and Aerostorm’s right was coming into existence as if it was being created from a three dimensional printer. Scratched could barely stop herself from leaning over to run her hoof over the new wing to feel the feathers, but she forced herself to hold back so as not to disturb the process.

Within minutes, Spliced had completely restored the wing. She seemed like she was about to pull back when a frown flashed across her face and she leaned closer to the griffon. Before Scratched could even ask what was going on, Spliced had sent what looked like a magical pulse into her girlfriend’s chest and pulled it out. The ball was filled with something but the alicorn crushed it into nothingness before Scratched could get a good look at it.

With that done, Spliced drew her magic back into herself and Aerostorm began to stir. Scratched wanted to go to her but Zaat held her back. The griffon shook her head before looking at her wing and extended it above her head with choked sob escaping her mouth. She ran her talon over the restored wing before turning her head back to them. “Scratch, my wing is back.”

Scratched couldn’t hold herself back anymore and leaped onto the table to hold her love tightly, placing kisses on her neck and face with tears running down her own face as she felt the wing with her hooves before being hugged tightly by both of Aero’s wings and it was exactly the same as before.

“Thank you, thank you so much for giving me back my wing,” Aerostorm said through her joyous crying.

“I just fixed your wing and what was inside of you,” Spliced stated, looking uncomfortable with being given praise.

In that instant, though, the entire atmosphere of the room changed.

“What do you mean by what was in her?” Scratched asked with Aerostorm looking panicky for some reason.

“Come on Scratch, let’s just enjoy that I’m okay, okay?” she asked nervously with her heart starting to race.

“Aerostorm, what’s going on?” Scratched tried to stare in her the eye but Aerostorm wouldn’t meet them. “What did you do?” she asked Spliced Genome.

“As I said, I fixed her wing and her lung cancer, nothing more.” Spliced Genome said with her coat bristling.

Everything froze at that moment with Scratched’s mind racing a thousand miles a moment. In any normal situation, being told you were being cured of cancer would have been an even more joyous event but Aerostorm looked nervous and guilty.

With a gasp, Scratched stared at the griffon she was on.

“You knew.”

Chapter Ten

“You knew.”

Aerostorm looked nervously up at her girlfriend. “Yes, but I can expl-”

“You knew and you didn’t tell us‽” Scratched’s nostrils were flaring. “How long‽”

“Scratch, honey, please, let me explain,” Aerostorm was trying to get herself out from under the pegasus.

“How. Long.” She spat, jamming a hoof into her chest with Aerostorm wincing and looking away but Scratched brought her head back. “How long!”

“A few months after our first birthday,” Aerostorm confessed.

“You had cancer for almost a year‽” Scratched snapped, staring furiously at the griffon. “When the fuck were you going to tell me you, you damn selfish bitch, when you died‽”

“I had my reasons, godsdamnit!” Aerostorm roared back, thrusting a talon into her face before glaring at Spliced. “How dare you do this!”

“I thought it was known considering how spread out it was,” Spliced snarled out with Scratched staring at her. The mare shook her head. “This was a mistake; I should have stayed away.”

Zaat raised a wing. “Um, I for one am glad you saved her,” he said nervously. “Even if she is getting cranky about it.”

“Shut up Zaat!” Scratched screeched at him before glaring down at Aerostorm. “I can’t even stand to look at you, you selfish piece-”

“Enough!” Aerostorm screamed back. “I had my reasons, but I don’t need to hear this shit from you!”

“Fine!” Scratched hopped off her. “I’ll be in my room!” She stormed out of the room, and had the doors been capable of it, she would have slammed them shut behind her.

Zaat shook his head. “That… did not go well.” Then he looked over at Aerostorm. “Seriously, I’m glad you’re all healed, but-”

“Not now Zaat,” she snarled, storming out of the room and into his room, closing the door.

The parrot sighed. “Aye yi yi…” Then he looked at Spliced. “Care to join me in the cockpit?”

“Why?” Spliced asked with a snort.

“Because I really, really don’t feel like being by myself right now,” he said.

“If it is all the same with you, I’d just like to get to a room and be alone,” she said. “I just lost-” she broke off. “Well. I’d like to be alone.”

“Okay.” Zaat regarded her for a moment before leading her to the spare bedroom. “But if you ever feel like talking to someone, you know where to find me.” With that, he hesitated at the door. “And like I said before, I do appreciate you saving her.” The door closed behind him. Now by himself, Zaat leaned against the door and sighed. “Now to deal with those two.”

Scratched sat on her bed, pawing at their duvet angrily as she was still fuming at Aerostorm for lying to her.

All that damn coughing, all of those weeks and months of being worried about her girlfriend’s damn health and the cat-bird couldn’t tell them she was dying‽ Right now Scratched didn’t know if she wanted to undo Spliced’s work and strangle Aerostorm, or… well, she wasn’t sure what the ‘or’ was, but she’d think of something.

Huffing out again, she recalled all the times they’d laid in this damn bed and she had been sick with worry over hearing Aerostorm trying to cough out her damn cancerous lung that had fucking cancer in it that she didn’t bother to tell her about! And considering Zaat’s surprised reaction, she knew he hadn’t known about it either.

Why didn’t she just tell us? she asked herself silently. Why? And why didn’t she try to do something about it? She’d never once seen Aerostorm visiting a doctor beyond routine checkups, or taking any treatment, yet she must have gone at least once if she knew about it.

Did she actually have any treatment done?

The thought that the woman she loved had gone a full Zeehalian year without doing anything about her illness was almost too horrifying for her to contemplate, and the fact she could have died from it without ever telling them was even worse. If it wasn’t for Spliced, she would have died, and then where would Scratched be? Sure, she had Zaat, but as a friend only. Aerostorm was her soulmate.

With a sigh, she flung herself back on the bed. “What am I going to say to her?” she whispered. Fluffing out her wings out, Scratched knew she had to say something, anything, but just what was beyond her.

She was still laying in that position a few minutes later when she suddenly sat up. Grim-faced, she marched towards the door and opened it, right in front of a startled Aerostorm, her talons up to knock.

Both stared at each other awkwardly before Scratched let out a noise. “Um, come in?”

Aerostorm nodded wordlessly, and brushed past her. As she sat down on their bed, both started speaking at the same time.

“Scratched, I-”

“Aerostorm, I-”

Both stopped with a blush on their faces, then promptly started speaking again, then stopped. Finally, Scratched let out a hiccuping giggle. “I… I’m sorry,” she said. “You go first.”

“No, you.”

“No, you!”

“No-” Aerostorm cut herself off. “Scratched, I owe you a big apology.”

“No, I owe you one,” Scratched sighed. “I was way out of line. I mean, you just got your wing back and you got cured from your cancer and I started to yell at you and-”

“Honey, you had every right to yell at me,” Aerostorm said as she placed her talon on her shoulder. “I mean, I only kept the fact that I was dying from everyone I loved, all because I was too selfish.”

“Selfish?” Scratched’s jaw dropped, and for a moment she looked angry again. “Why-” She caught herself. “I was so worried about you all this time, and you were dying and didn’t tell us!”

“And I was being selfish because I kept it to myself all because I didn’t want to worry you guys!” Aerostorm shook her head. “Do you know when I found out about this? It was the same day that you took apart the toaster.”

Scratched gasped, raising her hoof to her mouth. “That’s when I got my cutie mark and when we became a couple; that’s when you found out?”

“Yeah.” Aerostorm nodded her head, leaning into her now and Scratched instinctively lined herself so that the griffon would be supported. “I was going to tell you then but you were so happy I couldn’t take that away from you so I resolved to tell you the next day but… you know what happened then,” Aerostorm said with a blush across her face as Scratched very vividly remembered then[/i], and couldn’t stop herself from giggling before she caught herself. “Things kept pushing it back and back and… well, I just couldn’t tell you after a month had passed, could I?”

“So you just kept it to yourself all this time.” Scratched sighed. “Aerostorm… if I’d known, maybe we could have done something about it sooner.”

“Like what?” Aerostorm said, taking her head in her talons. “We’d have had to sell the Excelsior to get enough money to pay for what I needed, and that wouldn’t leave us with anywhere near enough to live on during the who knows how many months of treatment where I’d be sick from all the chemo. Even then, there’d have only been a slim chance it would have killed all the cancer cells, and missing just one would have meant it would probably come back - I’ve seen it happen. I couldn’t put you through that nightmare, you or Zaat.” Aerostorm giggled as she brushed some of Scratched’s mane off her face. “Besides I would be completely bald and unsexy from it.”

“Oh come off it, you’ll always be sexy to me, even if you were a big pink chicken,” Scratched said with a giggle that earned her a playful wing swat. Then she turned serious. “But I am glad you’re better now.”

“So am I, Scratched. So am I,” Aerostorm said nuzzling her face before kissing her on her the lips. The two of them shared a long kiss before they broke it off, smiling at each other again. “Come, I think we need to tell Zaat he’s got his room back,” she said trailing a bit with Scratched scoffing.

“Of course he has his room back you silly kitty-birb,” Scratched said, reaching up to mess with her hair with Aerostorm squawking in mock protest. “That’s if you want to be here with me, Aerostorm.”

“Of course I do, you silly smol birb,” Aerostorm teased back, pulling Scratched in close, holding her back to her chest as she ran her beak along Scratched’s ears.

“Glad to see you two are getting along again,” Zaat said from the doorway, a grin on his beak. “Guess that means I have my room again.” he chuckled with Scratched and Aerostorm laughing as well.

“Oh come here you dork,” Aerostorm waved him over with the parrot jumping on the bed and the griffon pulled him close. They all laughed like they had back on Zeehale before all of this craziness began. After they got their laughter under control, Aerostorm gave both of them a nuzzle of her head. “I’m so sorry for everything again.”

“Hey, no more of that; we agreed on that. Everything is good again, guys” Scratched said, placing her hoof on Aerostorm’s beak before she frowned. “I need to do something; I will be right back.”

“What do you mean Scratch?” Aero asked Scratched freed herself from the comforting embrace of her wings.

“I need to talk to her,” Scratched said over her shoulder as she left the room and walked to the guest room. She raised her hoof to knock on the door when she heard.

“I thought you sho-”

“Spliced, is everything okay in there?” she asked with a frown on her face “Who are you talking to?”

“Just a moment, Scratched,” Spliced’s voice came back. The door opened up to reveal the stonely gaze of the older mare looking intently at her. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

“I…” Scratched found herself faltering for a moment before she collected herself. ”I want to say I’m sorry.”

“For what?” the mare seemed genuinely puzzled by this.

“For how I treated you. I mean, you gave my girlfriend her wing back and you saved her life and I just yelled at you.” Scratched felt her heart began to race and tears were starting to flow. “I could have lost her forever without you. And I don’t know what I would have done without her. I mean I never thanked you or anything or...” Before she was aware of what she was doing, Scratched had reached out to pull Spliced into a hug.

The other mare tensed up for a long moment before she seemed to melt and returned the hug, nuzzling the top of her head with her chin and rubbing Scratched’s back with her wing. “You are welcome, child,” she said softly. Scratched looked up to see a sad smile-like visage on her face before it faded away to the normal flat look. “Alright, let us see what you have found.” She moved past Scratched and walked into the next room where the mare used her magic to clear off the table she’d conjured earlier. Behind them, Aerostorm and Zaat walked in with the alicorn flashing a look at him.

“Here,” she said as she floated over a piece of paper. “Go to these coordinates; it will take us to a jump gate that will get us to Hesturland.”

“But,” Zaat frowned. “This is nowhere near the jump gate station.”

“Exactly,” she said, flashing him an annoyed glare. “Whoever is after you will be monitoring those closely. That one is a much older and very unknown jump gate. It was what I used to get here years ago and it should still be functional.”

“I’ll go set us up then and see what’s out there,” Zaat said with narrowed eyes before standing up and leaving the room. Scratched watched him go, then turned back to the others with Spliced staring hard at her with her hoof out. Scratched blinked and then reached into her saddle bag to pull out the data box with the alicorn using her magic to levitate it over and began to prod it with her magic, her eyes narrowing as she reactivated the message.

“It sounds like someone with a Terakian accent,” she said with a frown. “And this is built in their style…”

“But… “ Aerostorm trailed off with Scratched sitting across from the mare.

“But if it was Terakians, then why make it so obvious it was them?” Scratched asked. “Don’t get me wrong, it fits… it was a crashed Terakian ship where we found this thing, after all.”

“Exactly the issue,” Spliced said in what seemed to be approval in her voice. “If they were actually planning an attack on Hesturland, they wouldn't make it this obvious. Which means either they are planning on being too obvious for anyone take them seriously or someone is using them as a scapegoat. Which in itself is troubling as the Terakian Imperium is only spacefaring nation strong enough to actually pose a threat to Hesturland and with those two going at it with all of their allies, then the entire galaxy would be engulfed in war.”

“And with how everything seems to be on its way out…” Aerostorm trailed off in horror as she began to realize the sheer scope of what was before them.

“Getting this information to Hesturland may be the only way to save the entire galaxy,” Scratched said, only for Spliced to shake her head.

“No, it’s not,” Spliced said in a detached tone. “You are unknown to them and can easily be viewed as either stupid kids trying to pull a joke on them or being part of this conspiracy to attack them.” She sighed. “They know me, however. If I go to them, then they’ll know we’re serious…” The mare’s magic flared for a moment before she raised her head. “It’s time for me to go home.”

Chapter Eleven

It was later on when Zaat came to them, saying that he had found the beginnings of the jumpgate; it would still take several hours to actually reach it and who knows how much longer to activate it if they even could.

Aerostorm had yet to return to the controls as she was being cautious despite Spliced’s declaration that it was unneeded. Instead she had been watching Spliced and Scratched work on the data storage, pulling it apart as best as they could without damaging any of the components or the message itself and their reactions were proving Spliced’s theory of a frame-up.

“That’s Lhat’kan wiring if I ever saw one; see how they use secondary colours and cross over here?” Spliced said to Scratched, holding it over to the other mare who nodded her head.

“And these have to be Gratetan screws; I mean who else uses triangular heads but them?” Scratched asked with the older mare nodding her head in agreement.

“So it either means the outer shell was a ploy by these other governments to frame the Terakians or…” Aerostorm said with Scratched’s ears falling to the side while she just stared forwards.

“This plot goes so much further than a simple frame up,” Spliced said. “I just cannot see what one would gain from a galactic war. There is nothing good that comes from one.”

“Are you sure about that?” Aerostorm asked. “I mean, they could weaken the existing governments and make their own internal takeover so much easier…”

“That was the plot of that holodrama we watched last month and you know it,” Zaat called from his own spot. “Things like that shouldn’t work in real life!”

“And there more security checks in place for such a thing than you would expect,” Spliced said. “Governments like Hesturland have survived for this long for a reason.”

“How many other governments have fallen, by the way?” Aerostorm asked.

“Too many to count; most of what you see today are shells of larger empires that fell apart from even larger ones,” Spliced said. “Empires wax and wane all the time but it’s never good when something like war forces it.”

“Hey, Spliced, can you come up here?” Zaat suddenly called from the cockpit. “We got to the jumpgate but…”

At that, all three of them made their way to him and peered out the main viewscreen. “How long ago did you say it had been since you came here?” Scratched asked, turning to look at the alicorn.

“I didn’t,” Spliced said looking at the derelict jumpgate. It was mostly intact but clearly abandoned and had seen much better days. There were many panels missing from the surface, some of which were still floating in space around the jumpgate. Aerostorm gave a low whistle.

“Must have been a long time since anyone came through this area,” she said.

“Just what I was thinking,” Zaat said. “I hope one of you has some idea of how to fix this thing. Otherwise, we’re in for a long haul to another system.”

“I do, and I hope you have enough spacesuits for all of us,” Spliced told him. “Come on, let’s get to work.”

With Zaat giving his spot at the controls to Aerostorm, he and the two mares headed for the airlock and the environment suits stored there. Spliced nodded in approval at the condition of the equipment as they drew them out and began putting them on.

“So, on top of being a chemist and medic and a businesslady, seeing as you were running a bar, you know how to put a jumpgate back together?” Zaat asked as he climbed into his suit.

“When you spend several thousand years on your own, you either find new ways to keep yourself busy or you go completely out of your mind with boredom,” Spliced said. “And I prefer to keep my wits about me, thank you very much.”

Zaat raised his hands. “Just asking is all.”

“Right.” She then flicked her eyes towards Scratched. “If you will allow me.” Scratched nodded her head slowly before Spliced took her wrist computer and began to type at breakneck speed. In moments, she had a holographic rendering of the jumpgate, with a highlighted section near the control deck. “We should enter here; it will give us some indication to the overall status of its final days. After accessing the main files and restarting the engine, we can have it prepared to take us to where we need to be.”

“That’s if it still works or there is even an engine still in th… you know how to make one, don’t you?” Zaat said.

“I have lived a very long life; there is little I don’t know at this point,” Spliced replied. “Like I said, I had to find a lot of new ways to keep myself busy. During my early years, I even began to teach myself rocketry by working through the science of it all.”

“That’s incredible,” Scratched said before she blushed. “I mean, the whole knowledge thing, not the other bits.”

“You would not say that if you lived as long as I have; it is one thing to learn it but another to learn it the slow way,” Spliced said as she checked over her suit. “I think we are ready to make our approach, Aerostorm.”

“I hear you,” Aerostorm’s voice came over the com. “Approaching now and preparing for docking procedures.”

The group was quiet as the Excelsior flew into the jumpgate’s airlock and made its landing.

“Good thing we have those environmental suits,” Aerostorm reported from the cockpit. “There’s no air out there, or any way of accessing their system to try and pressurize this place.”

“Do they have a force bubble pressurization system?” Zaat asked.

“Not one that’s working, from what I can tell,” Aerostorm replied. “Better make sure you’ve got extra air packs in those things.”

“Already did,” Zaat reassured her.

“Good.”

Zaat turned to Spliced. “I’m going to seal things off in here, then we can head out. And since you’re more familiar with this place, you can lead the way.”

Spliced nodded, and watched as Zaat activated the controls.

A few minutes later, the trio had exited the ship and began to board the jumpgate.

“So,” Scratched ventured as they headed for the door. “Anything we should expect in there?”

“I don’t know; I cannot recall exactly the reason for the closure of this one,” Spliced said as her horn began to glow and cut an entrance for them to use. “Though I doubt we will see any corpses.”

“Oh?”

“They would have had a team tear the thing down if there was anything of that nature; it would be bad publicity for them to have a jumpgate where people died. Better to destroy it than to admit to their faults.” Spliced shook her head. “I’m guessing it just got phased out of general use for whatever reason and the last few crew members left it to fall apart on its own.”

“Well there’s only one way to find out,” Zaat said as Spliced finished creating her opening and the three of them walked in.

Author's Notes:

Much shorter than we usually do but we want to show we are back.

Chapter Twelve

The three of them stepped cautiously into the jumpgate station, Scratched peering around the room and trying to take in all of what she was seeing in at once.

It wasn’t all that much. To be fair, it seemed to be a simple airlock if anything though the controls seemed to be archaic with valves needed to start pressurization instead of an automatic sensor in place.

Before she could look closer, however, Spliced’s magic reached out and closed the door behind them with her magic moving the valves. She then raised a wing for them, indicating that they should wait. She held it up for a moment before she removed her own helmet and tilted her head to the side.

Zaat moved to take his own helmet off but Spliced’s magic stopped him and she replaced her helmet. “No air,” she said over the suit intercom.

“Then how did you breathe there?” Scratched asked.

“Part of my condition; I can adapt to what kills me. Not immediately, but over time. I’m well used to breathing in nothing by now,” she replied, stepping forwards towards the door of the station and pulling it open.

“We’re in luck,” Spliced said as they examined the status of the jumpgate. Despite the deteriorated state of the station from the outside, the interior seemed to be pristine. “I might be able to restore power, but let us get to the main control room first.”

The two of them nodded their heads as they followed her through the gravity-voided halls with the stamp of Shining Tomorrow's logo on the walls, stopping to check their maps at each intersection before moving on.

It took them about forty minutes before they finally reached the main control room, with white drapes over every console.

“Further proof that this was a planned shutdown,” Spliced pointed out as she removed one. “If it was a freak accident, they wouldn’t have put this stuff out. Now, if I can get into their systems and find the log...” She sat down in the chair and began to try to start up the machine with nothing happening.

“Let me check if I can get it up and running first,” Scratched said as she got lower to the ground to pull out the covering case and was about to peer in when Zaat called out.

“Hey it just turned on,” her friend said who was sitting at his own terminal. “Everything just turned on.”

“Even the air is back on,” Spliced said as she took off her helmet. “Though you should wait before you take yours off, it is still cycling through.”

“How did everything turn on, and why would this station even still have functioning systems when it was abandoned?” Zaat asked.

“Multiple redundancies?” Scratched as she stood up with Spliced leaning down to peer at her. “What is i-,” she turned her head to see a small near invisible button embedded into the bottom of the terminal. Unless she knew to look for it, she would have never seen it.

“I do not like where this is heading,” Spliced said, sitting up right as she began to examine the terminal. “This station is too well maintained and this secretive activation button...”

“Oh damn,” Zaat swore, breathing sharply. “There are log files here about fleet positioning. A privately owned one that is very large. What the hell does Shining Tomorrow need with something like that? They’re a low level galactic organization.”

“Where are the jumps located?” Spliced asked appearing by his side with Scratched on his other side.

“Hesterland space, Terakian space, Lhat’kan… this is all over the galaxy,” Zaat said as he continued to pry further into the computer before his face paled. “These personal logs mention something called ‘Final Order’… by the gods, this is some sort of hidden military organization.”

“And the first two places are not only the biggest galactic governments left, but these are deep within their space. If they were to play things right, they could not only start a war between them but maneuver things to take over what’s left standing,” Spliced said with horror in her eyes. “I knew the galaxy was in a decaying state, but this… it’s like they’re trying to force the long night to come early for everyone.”

“They can play the hero to whoever is left alive and rule over them for a very long time, right Spliced?” Scratched asked.

“Exactly.” Spliced looked grim. “Of course, what really scares me is if they decide to move into the next universe over after they’re done here.”

“You mean… they might target Equuis?” Scratched asked.

Spliced nodded. “And that is something I will not allow to happen.” She turned to Zaat. “You’ve got access to their data. Drain it dry so we can get everything here to Hesturland. And make sure to duplicate everything so we have backups, just in case.”

“You got it,” Zaat said as he went to work.

“What about me?” Scratched asked.

“Contact Aerostorm and tell her what we’ve found; I am going to start preparations for an automated jump.” Scratched couldn’t help her ears from falling but she wasn’t one year old and was mature enough to know others could do more good than she was able to right now.

“Right,” she replied as all of them got to work.

Clever Vision frowned as his secretary brought him an update.

One of their private, hidden jump gates had been activated without proper authorization. Looking at what ship had used his jumpgate, his eyes narrowed.

“We’ve got a problem,” he told her. “The Excelsior just jumped to Hesturland.”

The secretary nodded. “Shall I send the signal, sir?”

“Do it. If those kids can get the government to listen to them, our operation is about to get blown wide open, so we need to move fast.” The stallion steepled his hooves together. “I was hoping we’d have more time, but it looks like it’s now or never.”

“Yes, sir.” The pink mare spun around and left.

Clear Vision watched her go, and smirked at the sight - he loved the view of that flank. “And so it begins…”

Author's Notes:

Second to last chapter people.

We are nearly there.

Chapter Thirteen

After a long period of the Excelsior rattling about, they finally burst out of the far end of the portal into the Hesturland system with everyone letting out breaths of relief.

“I thought you said this ship was jumpgate-worthy,” Spliced said as she looked around. “That’s one of the roughest rides I’ve had in a long time.” She then tilted her head to the side. “I don’t believe I have died enough times to a faulty jumpgate exit to be immune to it.”

“Opposed to a normal ship explosion?” Zaat cracked. “Seriously, wouldn’t that kind of thing have disintegrated you?”

“Who says it didn’t?” Spliced retorted. “Took me almost a year for my body to finish growing back from that incident. On the upside, the timing was very convenient - the false identity I was using then had gotten old, so it was time for me to fake her death and then pretend to be her daughter and take over the bar from her. Like I’d done more times than I can count before.” She sighed. “It was almost pleasant, being able to take that time off.”

“That’s disturbing,” Aerostorm muttered nearby. “But your ridiculously strong immortality aside, we’re here and we’ve got a delivery to make.”

“Wait, I got readings here,” Scratched said with a frown as she looked at her monitor. “Big readings.” She let a curse. “It’s the Terakian war fleet!”

“How far out are they?” Aerostorm asked as she spun her chair to look at her screen.

“An hour, at most,” the pegasus said, tapping one side of her screen before her eyes darted to the other side. “And that’s the Hesturlandian fleet mustering. Shining Tomorrow or Final Order or whatever they call themselves must have kicked off their war. Are we too late?”

“No,” Spliced said, shaking her head. “We still have a chance to stop this. We just need to get to the homeworld to tell them the truth.”

“Wait, there is something here,” Scratched suddenly said. “A faint signal.”

Looking over her shoulder, Spliced looked at it. “It’s embedded in the background radiation from the jumpgate… fuck,” she hissed. “It’s a tracer signal. They know where we are.”

“Do we know where it is coming from?” Aerostorm asked as she began to power the ship up and move them closer to the homeworld of all life in the galaxy.

“Give me a moment,” Spliced said as her eyes darted across the screen before her face fell.

“What, where is it?” Zaat asked, turning his head to her. “You do know where it is, don’t you?”

It took her some time before she found her voice. “It’s on the moon,” she said shakily, peering at the screen. “From what I can tell, it is from the old industrial complex near the Gateway to Equuis.”

“That’s good,” Scratched said, causing everyone to turn to her. “We go meet with some officials from Hesturland and tell them everything so no war.”

“No, we need to stop Clear Vision at his place,” Spliced said as Aerostorm continue to fly them towards the home world.

“How do you-” Zaat began to ask her only to be cut off.

“I’ve seen his kind before; he would want a front row seat,” Spliced answered. “Get us close to the moon and I will deal with that.”

“What? No,” Scratched said, shaking her head. “We need you to talk to Hesturland so we can stop this war from happening!”

“You have enough evidence to convince them; we need someone down there to distract them,” Spliced said with the moon quickly appearing in the distance. “That is me.” she said as she made her way out of the cockpit.

“Spliced, wait!” Scratched followed her down to the airlock. “I’m coming with you.”

“Absolutely not!” Spliced snapped, wheeling on her with a furious look on her face. “This is something only I can do; you can-”

“I can actually do something!” Scratched shouted back. “During all of this, I have done nothing! My parents were killed and I was unable to do anything; the love of my life was shot and I was helpless to help her! Even on the damn jumpgate, all I did was bump a button by accident! Please Spliced,” there were tears on Scratched’s face. “My friends have done so much for this, please let me do something equally as important.”

The alicorn looked at her and placed a hoof on her shoulder. “There is one thing you can do,” the mare said softly. “Live a long and happy life with Aerostorm, Scratched Wrench.” With that the mare took a step backwards into the airlock, and using her magic, she locked the door and vented herself into space.

Scratched through glass on top of the door, watching the mare fly towards the moon before she turned around as she heard Zaat calling her back. Racing into the cockpit, she saw Aerostorm talking to an alicorn in the military uniform of the Hesturland navy.

“Civilian craft, restate your identity and purpose here,” the stallion barked sharply.

“Excelsior,” Aerostorm said to him. “We have important information regarding the Terakian fleet. Sir, you cannot attack them, this entire thing is a massive set up.”

The stallion narrowed his eyes. “Explain.”

“We have several storage units of collected information from the Shining Tomorrow company,” Aerostorm said as Zaat began to transfer the information over.

“We also had Spliced Genome here with us before-”

“Spliced Genome was with you?” the stallion’s harsh voice dropped, with a look of shock and concern on his face. “Wh-where is she? We’ve been trying to find her for ages now and-” He turned his head as someone offscreen began to speak to him. “Wait what do you mean there is a second fleet approaching?”

“Whoa Nelly, he wasn’t joking!” Aerostorm shouted as a massive fleet appeared near the moon, spreading out in an attack pattern.

“There’s another one coming!” Scratched called out as the long range radar picked up another fleet showing up behind the Terakians.

“Sir, according to this information Shining Tomorrow has some sort of super weapon on the moon!” a voice shouted from the deck of the Hesturlandian’s ship.

“Contact the Terakians, we need to pull together our strength!” the captain order to an unseen bridge officer before he turned his attention back to them. “Excelsior, get behind our fleet now. You are not equipped for this.”

“You don’t need to tell us tw-” Aerostorm said as she began to turn the ship around before Scratched yelled out.

“Incoming fire!” the pegasus leapt over and pushed the controls to the side in a desperate roll to the right, with a loud bang and waves of the entire ship trying to shake itself apart followed.

“Thanks for the save love,” Aerostorm said as she retook the controls and pushed their ship to its limits, taking a few more shots as they raced for safety behind the Hesturland fleet. “But I got it from here!

Scratched nodded her head, taking her seat and began to monitor the engines as they fled, taking a fleeting look back at the moon where Spliced was.

In any other situation, Spliced would have never even thought about returning to this place but given what she had found out at her bar, there was no way she would leave Scratched or her friends to deal with this on their own. The thought of them allowed her to overcome the voices in her head, screaming at her to run away and give up.

It wasn’t long to make her way down to the moon in any case, using her talents to push her closer to the moon and Clear Vision’s base. It was laughably easy to spot, the site clearly lit up with some sort of massive hanger several klicks away. How he managed this, Spliced didn’t know or care and simply forced herself through the forcefield creating an artificial atmosphere and landing before the armed guards dressed in black uniforms.

They were staring at her, their body posture showing they were completely uncertain of what to do but they quickly aimed their rifles at her and began to order her to follow. That was fine with her as it allowed her deeper into the base, straight to the control room with a score of people working at terminals. Ignoring her captors’ threats, Spliced found herself facing the stallion responsible for all of this.

He was sitting on an elaborate chair, facing a massive screen showing the aerial battle above. She noted that the Excelsior had managed to get behind the protection of the Hesturland ships before she turned her attention to the grinning stallion.

“So we meet at las-” he began only for Spliced to snort and shake her head.

“You are really trying to pull that line?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “How average and typical.” She turned her attention from him to stare at the room and shook her head. “Red and black; can you would-be-conquerors pick any other colour besides those two? I mean, while it does stand out and does bring out strong symbolism to blood and finality but it has been done countless times to the point it is a joke.”

“Listen here you, I hold the power here,” Clear snapped, stepping down to face her personally. “Those two juggernuts will smash each other to pieces and my soldiers will swoop in to finish off the stragglers.”

“And then what,” Spliced snarked, glaring at Clear Vision. “After you destroyed Hesturland and anyone else who stood in your way, what next?”

Spliced watched the alicorn’s face shift slowly from smugness to genuine confusion with him taking a step backwards. “I,” he stuttered, looking around as if seeing things clearly for the first time. “I don’t know.”

At that moment, countless turrets extended from hidden panels and in a moment of pure stillness everyone in the room realized what was about to happen at the same time before it was shattered by gunfire killing everyone in the room save for Clear Vision. Standing up from the headshot, Spliced saw the utter terror in his eyes before another gunshot went off and his eyes rolled backwards before Clear Vision fell to the ground, his brains leaking out onto the floor.

“No matter how many times I have to deal with him, that little moment where that fool realizes everything he worked for was based on a lie and the face he makes always makes it worth it in the end,” said a voice that managed to chill Spliced’s bones as she knew that voice. Stepping out of the shadows, a pink earth pony mare gave her an unnerving grin while pointing a gun at her. “Hello Spliced, I trust you recognize me after all the time we’ve spent together.”

“Ye-yes, but it’s impossible,” Spliced said with panic slipping into her voice as she tried to remember where and when she had seen this mare.

“Trust me, you know very little to what is possible or impossible Spliced,” the mare said with a chuckle as she reached the terminal stand, pausing only to give a kick to the corpse of the stallion she’d shot. “Though I have to ask, when do you remember me first? Was it when you were a little filly and I brought you away from the other kids playing to focus on your studying and never develop those important social skills? Was it when you were a young student and I gave you guidance to further your biological chemistry talents and the need for direct results? Or perhaps when you were studying for that ethical exam that had just been instituted in the education system that year and you failed so horribly according to my fellow judges?”

Each of those moments caused Spliced’s eyes to widen as she could recall this mare at each point of her life and took a step backwards in shock. “How?” she asked, shaking her head. “Who are you?”

“Ah, the how is a gift from the one I follow, and to who I am,” the mare laughed while rolling her eyes but keeping her gun pointed straight at her. “My name is Subtle Dancer, Spliced Genome, and you have yet to answer my question. When do you remember me? Was it at your cottage after that war I started broke out, or-”

“Your war?” Spliced asked, her heart freezing and contracting so tightly in her chest that she thought it would break.

“Oh yes,” Subtle said nonchalantly. “It was part of my plan and remarkably easy to start up a civil war, and getting you on the path of making your creations was even simpler; I just needed to play to your ego. As I did to suggest that you make them more lethal after creating so many cures as you recall, and you did so with such aplomb.”

“All those people I killed, the countless millions,” Spliced shook her head before pointing her hoof at the mare. “All of it was because of you!”

“No, Spliced, that was you,” Subtle said sharply, her face darkening. “I guided you to that point, but it was still your decision to make those viruses and kill all those people, not mine.”

“You sanctimonious hypocritical lying bitch, give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now‽” Spliced snarled at her with her horn glowing with all the spells she had discovered and mastered over the years in hopes that one of them would finally kill her and ready to unleash against this thing.

“You kill me, and this mega gravitational weapon will turn this system’s sun into a black hole, killing everyone within the star system, including Scratched Wrench and her friends,” the mare grinned with a hoof resting on the control panel. “I know her secret, the one you haven’t told her yet.” Spliced stared with all the self hatred she had for herself at the earth pony before she slowly dimmed her horn. “That’s a good girl; I was right to choose you for this point.”

“You’re the one that made me immortal, aren’t you?” Spliced spat with venom in her voice. “So I would live this long.”

“My, you are half as clever as you think you are, my dear friend,” Subtle giggled at her before nodding her head. “You are correct, of course. Why would I go through all that trouble of guiding you to become the mare you are now if you were just going to die in sixty years?”

“You are a complete and utter monster,” Spliced snarled at her.

“One that has kept a close eye on you, especially when you went over to Equestria.” Subtle said with Spliced studying the mare.

“You were there when we were at the Canterlot library, weren’t you?” she asked.

“Nice try but it was the Crystal Empire private library with you and the Bearers and that little dragon, plus that changeling, windigo and the royal consort,” Subtle grinned at her with Spliced’s heart dropping. “I was there as the maid-”

“Dusting the shelves and you stayed there while we all left,” Spliced said in horror.

“And oh the things that Twilight told her friends,” she laughed before flashing Spliced another grin. “Do you want to know what the Valley of the Alicorns is and why she thought you didn’t count?”

“I want to know how this is possible,” Spliced replied. “There is no way you could have planned all of this out this perfectly.”

“Oh there is a saying about making omelettes, Spliced. You should know it by being the former owner of a bar, after all,” Subtle’s reply made Spliced’s blood run even colder than before. “If you want to get a mare like you to this exact point of time, you need to break a couple thousand universes or so.” She began to laugh and Spliced was absolutely convinced that this mare was not lying in the slightest.

“Legal Preview and Steady Cut, were they part of your plan?” she asked.

“Of course they were, how else to further you along by dangling a mare that was genuinely doing her best to help you and Steady Cut, well, we know all about him, right dear?” Subtle laughed again. “The best part is, they had no idea about any of it. I didn’t have to do a thing to make them feel like they did about you - I just put them into a place where they would develop those feelings all on their own.” She sneered. “More recently, getting Scratched to find you wasn’t hard either. Playing these dimwitted fools along was child's play… Ray Blaster, Vector Gaze and Clear Vision were all too easy to manipulate into doing what I needed them to do.” She then tilted her head to the side. “And giving Aerostorm cancer is always good insurance as well. Too bad you cured it.”

Spliced started at this mare in shock, still reeling from what she’d said. “You are a soulless monster, hiding in the shape of a mare,” she said in disgust.

“You already said that.” Subtle tilted her head. “So unless you’ve got something original to say, you might want to sit down and shut up while I explain why you’re here.”

Spliced glared at her, choosing to remain upright. “Speak,” she spat out, doing her best to refrain from harming the mare as she knew Subtle would easily follow out on her threats if pushed. “Tell me why you did all of this.”

“Very well,” the mare said before pushing open a hatch in the floor that Spliced was only now aware of as existing, leading the theory that this mare’s special talent was subtle manipulation of existence. “I need you to go retrieve something that another dimension’s Death hid here from the one I follow... companion’s orders to make the game they play a bit more interesting.” She frowned a bit before that sick smile reappeared on her face. “That’s all I request of you; once you get it I will never bother anyone from this dimension ever again. In fact, I will even give you a gift, Spliced.”

“I don’t want whatever you are planning to give me, you monster,” Spliced said as she walked towards the hatch where tremendous power was flowing out of. Peering down it, she asked, “So that is why you did all this? You did all of this to me for this one task‽”

“Yes,” the mare said happily enough that it made Spliced’s skin crawl and then even more so when she followed it up with “I mean, I could have raised some brat to do it and be done so much quicker but if you are going to do something, might as well as enjoy yourself.” She laughed before tapping Spliced’s side with the gun barrel. “Now get along; while I’ve waited to this point patiently enough, you are on a timetable now. Go get the item, come back and everyone will live.”

Frowning, Spliced began to climb into the tunnel and died. Gritting her teeth as she came back to life, she forced her way down the tunnel, dying every five seconds as the room’s energies scraped over every last nerve she had. Even though she had become mostly accustomed to pain, what this tunnel was doing to her was altogether different from anything she had felt in the past. It transcended biological and targeted on what she only could feel was a spiritual level, something scraping against her soul. Eventually, she reached the end of the blinding white tunnel and found herself on a small platform that seemed to be spherical in nature. On it stood a podium that appeared to be directly in front of her no matter which way she turned her head and on that was a black pole with a point at the end of it. Reaching out with her hoof, she grabbed it and began to make her way back out of the tunnel, the pain and deaths getting worse as she got closer to the exit as if something did not want her to do this and Spliced could believe that this was exactly the case.

With a grunt, she pulled herself out of the tunnel and back into normal reality, leaning against the door hatch.

“Good girl,” the mare smirked, pointing the gun square at her head with one hoof the control panel of this station’s mega weapon. “Now give it to me and everyone will live.”

Spliced glared at her and reluctantly handed the item over to her, with the mare smiling widely now as she examined the item. “Good,” she said flicking her eyes over to Spliced. “Now to prove I am a mare of my word, Spliced, I will give you my gift.” She pulled the trigger, saying “Goodbye.”

Spliced felt a wave of shock and pain course through her body, her ears ringing. Looking down, she saw that there was a smoking hole in her chest and blood spilling out from the hole. Shaking, she looked up at the mare.

“You won’t be coming back from this one,” Subtle said as she began to walk away. “Look at it this way, Spliced Genome, I’ve given you what you always wanted, the ability to die and stay dead.” She turned her head back around to taunt Spliced one last time. “By the way, if you had wanted to die all this time, all you needed to do was piss off another Power like yourself enough that they’d kill you or find someone like me to do it, as you almost did with Celestia all those years ago. I’d say it’s been a pleasure but that’s a l-” Subtle Dancer suddenly spluttered, spitting blood out of her mouth. Shaking, she looked down at Spliced Genome who pulled her horn from the hole the alicorn had created by shoving it through the other mare’s chin and into her brain. With the horn removed, Subtle Dancer fell over onto the ground, body still twitching as she died with the object rolling away into a corner.

Spliced stared at the body before snorting, the wound in her chest painful beyond imagining but it wasn’t actually hurting her. Her ears flicked as she heard the base announcing self destruct protocols had been activated.

For some reason, even though it didn’t matter, Spliced drew her power to herself for one last teleportation spell, uncertain and uncaring where she would end up and placing her faith that she would end up where she was meant to be. Opening her eyes after the spell had been cast, she saw a door in front of her that she had not seen for over five thousand years. But at the same moment, she knew without a doubt that this was meant to be, that this would be where it all would end.

Feeling the tremors in the ground from the explosion of the station racing outwards, Spliced Genome ignored them and pushed open the ancient station’s door as if Death itself had foreseen her end and bid time to halt for her.

And Death had bid Time to halt for her.

Walking through the station, she saw it as she once had all those years ago, barren and empty. The stations and workplaces that been installed when they had been creating cures for the horrors she had made were long since gone. The tickers were also absent but the glass roof was still there and, looking up, she could see the same coastline she had once observed, the protective forcefield keeping in the toxic gases that had ruined it long gone and the landscape now vibrant and alive. Turning her eyes away from the ceiling, she moved down the hallway with the doors opening up for her without issue and put one hoof in front another, leaving a trail of blood behind her from the still gushing gunshot wound in her chest.

She stepped into the community room, her eyes moving from the terminal desk to the main table and over to the pantry. She wondered if there was any dehydrated spaghetti still in there but it was unimportant. Her eyes focused on the only other doorway and walked towards it with the doors opening for her once again. As she walked down the hallway, she stumbled into the wall and for a moment, everything began to swim before her eyes.

But she was not finished and forced herself upright, walking to the doors at the end of the hallway and into the one on the right.

In front of her was a bed.

She stared at the bed for an impossibly long moment before the mare from the moon let out a chuckle with an honest smile appearing on her face. “Finally,” she spoke her final words. “The name is true.”

She then climbed into the bed, pulled the blanket over herself, closed her eyes and knew no more.

Epilogue

It had been several universal standard months since everything had happened and only now were Scratched, Aerostorm and Zaat able to breathe. The Hesturland navy along with the other governmental navies had been busy tracking down any remaining survivors of Clear Vision’s faction to bring them to justice, and dealing with the aftermath of the blast that had left a deep gouge in the moon, trying to intercept any debris sent flying as a result before it crashed into the planet.

During that time the Excelsior had been given extensive outer hull repairs, but the leaders of Hesturland had ordered that the inner ship was to be left untouched and unentered by anyone they did not want inside. And for the moment, it was the best thing for them as they had no real place to go next or plans of what to do now that they had won. Though one thing that could be counted on was Scratched looking into the room of the missing member of the group.

With a nuzzle from her girlfriend, the two of them entered the small, spartan room and looked around the four walls again with a sense of guilt so obvious that anyone could see it. Zaat leaned on the door frame and was about to say something when there was a banging on the hull. Grumbling at this intrusion, Zaat walked out of the room and into the hallway.

After he’d left, Aerostorm wrapped Scratched with both of her wings. “Hey,” she said softly. “How you doing, love?”

“Poor,” Scratched eventually said. “It should have been me going down there. If I had just done more-”

“Scratched, don’t do this to yourself, please,” Aerostorm said, rubbing her beak against her wife’s face, the bed shifting in its frame as the two sat down on it. “She made her own choice and there is still a ch-”

“Guys?” Zaat said, leaning into the doorway. ‘“We kinda have an important guest here.”

“Who are you talk-” Scratched began before she and Aerostorm shared a gasp and immediately stood to bow before the pony in front of them. Though she had no authority over them and they had never seen her personally, the couple knew who this beautiful alicorn princess was.

“Please my little ponies, don’t bow for me,” the mare said before lightly groaning at herself and shaking her head. “And come on, you can remember that these aren’t your ponies.”

“You’re Princess Twilight Sparkle,” Scratched said, still not believing her eyes. “How - why are you here?”

Twilight smiled at her. “I was given special dispensation to come here in person, after everything that’s happened recently,” she said. “When they told me Spliced had resurfaced after all this time…” Her smile turned sad. “She was my friend and it was devastating to find that she had passed away before I could speak with her again.”

“She’s immortal, your highness,” Scratched protested with Aerostorm gripping her side. “She hasn’t been found yet and could-”

“No.” The word was simple yet devastating. Princess Twilight’s face was resolute and her tone firm. “I have spoken with someone of significant capability to determine that she is indeed dead.” She seemed to deflate at this announcement. “I was also told you three were the last to really know her, so I must ask how was she in the end.”

Scratched shared a look with Aerostorm for reassurance before she turned back to the princess. “She was really depressed in the end, your highness,” she said softly. “She seemed to be sad nearly all the time. I tried to be helpful but I don’t know how much good I actually did for her.”

“I see.” Princess Twilight’s posture didn’t change at that, staring intently at the two of them before her eyes went around the room. “Am I correct to assume that this was her room?”

“Yes your majest-” Aerostorm started only for Princess Twilight to raise a wing to her lips.

“Please, my little griffon, call me Twilight, I really dislike the whole distance that my title brings,” she said with a soft smile before she frowned and tapped her own forehead. “Come on Twilight, you just said you have to remember that these aren’t your ponies and you say that.”

Chuckling at her antics, Scratched watched her walk towards the screen before cringing as the alicorn knocked loose a floor panel that hadn’t been properly secured.

“I’m sorry about that; we’ve been meaning to fix that for a while-”

“What’s this?” the princess asked as she peered down into the access. Scratched walked towards her and peered into the hole to see a data crystal at the bottom of it.

“A message left behind?” Scratched said as the princess levitated it out and placed it into the data scanner, causing the screen to flick on. On it was Spliced Genome looking very nervous with Princess Twilight gasping.

“Spliced,” she whispered to herself.

“Scratched Wrench, if you are watching this then something has happened… no Spliced, come on,” the mare paced back and forth, vanishing from view as she walked out of the camera’s range. “You can do better than that.” With a sigh, the mare turned to face the camera again. “Scratched, there is something I need to tell you about yourself… fuck come on Spliced you can do this.” Her wings bunched up in anger as she repeated those last four words over and over again before she let out a tired sounding sigh and sat down on the bed. “Okay Spliced, you can edit this later.” She took several deep breaths to calm herself.

“Scratched Wrench, I want to tell you a very important story,” she said a voice that was clearly struggling to remain calm. “This is a story about this very, wicked evil mare who lived a long time ago.”

“Oh Spliced,” Twilight said in a quiet voice that brought Scratched’s attention back to her.

“This wicked mare did such horrible things that would forever damn her to hell and yet she never felt any guilt,” Spliced said with her eyes shut tight. “She never felt any responsibility for her actions, despite attempts to properly punish her for her horrible deeds.” Spliced’s head dipped lower but she didn’t stop speaking. “One day, she escaped her prison and found this magical world with the most amazing people I- she ever met.” Twilight gasped at this and reached for Scratched’s hoof. “They helped the wicked mare realize how wrong her actions were and then she returned to her prison as she deserved to be punished for eternity for what she did and began to try undo the harm she had done.” Spliced lifted her head with her hoof digging deep into the bed. “There she met the most wonderful, beautiful stallion. He was just perfect and for a while, we were happy.” A sad smile ghosted her face before it fell away. “But the universe knew that she didn’t deserve to be happy and they were careless as the wicked mare soon learned that she was pregnant.”

Twilight gasped loudly at this with Scratched, Aerostorm and Zaat sharing confused looks as this was never mentioned before to them. Uncaring, the recording of Spliced carried on. “She knew that those holding her would take away her child and their future would be forever tainted by me. So this wicked mare and perfect stallion’s friend came up with a solution to save the child’s life.” Her eyes began to scrunch up now with her voice being unsteady. “Their friend and the perfect stallion would get married and have their own child so they could pass off both as hers. It worked perfectly with the stallion she loved and her friend taking her foal away. A foal she never got to see again, a foal she never got to see grow up, a foal I never got to see or hold. I didn’t get to even see her after she was delivered,” Spliced was struggling to speak through her tears at this point. “Genetics are interesting; an unbroken line of maternal genetics can tell so much. Scratched Wrench, when you came into my bar, before we left… Thorn told me you had the same genetic markers I did. I’m sorry to tell you that you are my direct descendent but I thought you sho-”

“Spliced, is everything okay in there?” Scratched’s voice cut into the recording so suddenly that everyone jumped, including Spliced. “Who are you talking to?”

Spliced snapped her neck, erasing any sign of distress on her face. “Just a moment, Scratched,” she said stoically as she walked over to the data projector and turned it off, leaving everyone in complete silence.

Scratched was the first to speak. “She’s…” Her voice trailed off for a moment before Twilight stood up with her horn glowing. Before anyone could respond, Twilight had teleported them away twice.

As soon as their eyes cleared up from the magic trip, they gasped at where they were.

“This is Equestria,” Scratched stared in awe at the sight. It was just as wondrous as it had been described; a utopia of magic melded perfectly with technology. Everything was pleasantly placed, from the flowing green hills to the streets and buildings. Even the enormous crystal tree at one end of the town fit right in.

All except for this lone hill that stood out; everything of it was completely out of place with the wide world around them. It had ancient construction machines perched on it with craftsman tables off to the side and plans spread out across each of them. At the top of the hill was the start of a house with the foundation dug in.

Twilight stared at this for a long time before her horn glowed again and began to erase everything from the base of the hill up to the top. Everything faded away with the hole of what would have been the basement closing up and a tall tree growing upwards. It was a massive willow tree, its branches creating a shaded area at the base of its trunk. At the base, she created a small grave marker and stood before it with tears running down her face.

“This was to be her home,” she said through her tears. “She loved this place so we gave it to her. When they took her away, they wanted to take the steam shovels away and pack things up but I wouldn’t let them. I wanted her to see when she came back that we never forgot her and she had a place waiting for her.” She began to break down, leaning into Scratched’s side as she cried. “She would like this, Scratch. A simple grave, no flowers or announcements. Out of sight and yet in a place where she was happy.” Sobbing harder now, Twilight leaned into Scratched’s side with the pegasus rubbing her back. “I should have done more; why didn't I do more?” She continued to cry as the three of them did their best to comfort her.

Meanwhile, in the Place Between Realms, the Void Between Dimensions, a stallion walked forwards, out of a dimension, with a black object on a red pillow, the Gateway behind him shattering. Holding the pillow forward, the stallion presented it to the one he followed.

This being reached out and picked up the black object, the shaft of it extending outwards as the point of it became sharper than anything in existence.

Holding it above its head, the being said to the roaring crowd of its followers. “The Spear of Reclamation is mine.”

The sound of its faithfuls made was enough to make it smile, knowing that Subtle Dancer had not fallen in vain, her partner bringing the single most powerful weapon in existence back to them.

“Soon we will begin the next step that will start