“Jump Complete,” a mare announced over the ship’s communication’s system, “all craft are cleared for undock and system travel. Enjoy your stay on Canis.”

“About damn time,” Squelch muttered under her breath as she leaned forward in her piloting couch and began to flip a series of switches that would detach the Galloway from its mooring on the JumpShip. Slipshod’s ears perked at the telltale metallic clunks reverberating through the ship as the docking clamps released, followed shortly thereafter by the deck suddenly lurching forward as the main engines ignited. The mare at the helm laid her hooves on the control yokes and deftly maneuvered them away from their ride, guiding them onto a course deeper into the system.

Val similarly straightened up at her own station as she began to look over the readouts from their sensors. “Traffic is pretty heavy at the moment,” she noted. Slipshod looked over and could clearly see that her displays were dotted with a healthy number of signatures.

“House Glimmer is making a push into Kirin territory now that their attention is on Canopy,” Squelch said as an afterthought, not taking her eyes off of her own screens as she steered their ship to avoid colliding with any of the other ships detaching from the jump tender that they’d rode in on, “Canis is a perfect staging system for their vanguard operations.”

“Looks like we won’t have to go far to pick up our next job,” the stallion mused.

The commander frowned, “we’re not exactly specked for frontline combat, Slip.”

“Any advance force needs scouts,” he pointed out, then nodded in Valkyrie’s direction, “and you’d have to look far and wide to find anypony who can pick out signatures like our little wundermare here.”

Squelch gave a noncommittal grunt as she resumed focusing on piloting. She wasn’t wrong though: their little operation was not suited for the kind of heavy-hitting action that would be featured in a genuine conquest campaign like the one Blueblood was embarking on. Mercenary companies that were equipped for such operations would doubtless have their own recon elements anyway. At best, they could hope to snag a contract later on if any of those merc companies found themselves needing to subcontract for lighter units if they lost too many of their own.

Although, if some of those outfits had need of an experienced pilot, Slipshod couldn’t say that he wouldn’t be tempted. He liked the Galloway and its crew, to be sure, but it wasn’t like he was married to the ship. Anymore…

“Uh oh…”

All eyes went to the pegasus mare at the sensors. Squelch narrowed her eyes. “What ‘uh oh’?”

“TimberWolf’s Dragoons,” she said, looking over at the others with a worried expression.

Slipshod felt his gut tense up as well. “What are the chances that Dominus Blueblood’s rescinded that ‘shoot on sight’ order he issued to them?”

The mare piloting the ship rubbed her brow as though she felt a headache coming on. “You slept...with his wife…”

“I thought it was his daughter!”

“Wouldn’t have made it better.” Fair point. Squelch let out an exasperated sigh and looked over at their sensor operator. “How bad is it?”

“Just one ship,” that was good, “but it’s heading this way,” that was bad.

“They’d have to be blind not to see us on our way in,” Squelch sighed as she began tapping at her controls, “so it looks like we’re going to be taking the scenic route.” She rubbed her chin as she studied her screens for a few seconds. Then she took hold of her control yokes once more and Slipshod felt the ship lurch as their course shifted suddenly. “I’m going to head for the gas giant. Plenty of moons there to hide behind until the JumpShip has left the system.”

“Sounds good to me,” the stallion said, “I wasn’t in a hurry to get paid anyway.” He stood up from his seat and trotted for the door leading from the bridge. “I’ll be in my bunk if anypony needs me.”

That was actually something of a white lie. It was the first Monday of the month, which meant that―

“Howdy, stranger,” a mare cooed at him as he rounded the last turn on his way to the DropShip’s portside crew quarters. The thestral with jade eyes and a dusk-purple mane tied back in a long braid was waiting for him, propped up against the open doorway leading into her shared quarters. “You’re late,” the tone was accusatory, but her expression was not.

Slipshod merely grinned, “sorry, Rigs. Past caught up with me on the bridge. Squelch’ll be breaking the bad news about our delay in making orbit in the next hour or two, I bet. Silver lining: looks like I’ll be free next week after all!”

The mare’s eyes narrowed at him. The singular talon on the joint of her leathery wing reached out and caught the earth pony roughly by the collar of his jumpsuit, dragging his head closer to hers. “We’re going to be stuck on this ship for an extra week, and it’s your fault?” this time there was a―slight―genuine edge in her tone.

The golden stallion forced the best apologetic smile that he could, “...I’ll make it up to you?”

“You’d better. Now get in here and get out of those clothes,” she tugged him none-to-gently through the hatch and followed him inside.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Coffee?”

Squelch stifled a yawn as she glanced back in the direction of the bridge door that had just opened. “You’re timing’s impeccable,” she murmured with a wry smile as she saw Slipshod stepping in with a tray and a couple of steaming mugs of coffee balanced on his back. She reached out with her magic, wrapping her telekinesis around one of the cups to bring it to her lips, giving it a small test sip before taking a more generous gulp of the bitter fluid. It was no surprise that he’d made it to her exacting specifications.

The stallion shuffled the tray off onto a nearby console that wasn’t being used for anything and took up his own mug in his hooves. “Hour fourteen is usually when you need a pick-me-up,” he remarked simply before taking a sip of his own drink. “Truffle rolls are in the warmer if you ever decide to make it down to the galley.”

“Thanks.” Squelch swallowed another generous mouthful of her coffee and set the mug down on the armrest of her piloting couch, letting her gaze drift over to Slipshod as he made himself comfortable at the sensor station and looked over the readouts. He wasn’t anywhere near the wizard that Valkyrie was, but he could tell if there was something dangerous nearby easily enough.

With her fatigued state, it took hardly any time at all before little fragments of nostalgia began to tug at her. She quickly turned away and focused her attention ahead of her out of the main viewport before the stallion noticed. The last thing she wanted to do was give him any indication that she was interested in anything. Not again.

It wasn’t that he was a bad pony. On the contrary, he’d been the consummate coltfriend, and a model husband: attentive, thoughtful, considerate; he was everything that a mare could want from a stallion. That hadn’t been the problem. She’d even been able to tolerate his impulsive flirting. He was a rake. It was just the kind of pony that Slipshod was. For months, it hadn’t ever gone beyond flirting either. Then she’d come back to their quarters to find him in their bed with another mare.

He’d been apologetic. He’d placed the blame squarely on his own shoulders, citing his personal weakness. He’d even been the one to offer to give her a divorce. She’d actually balked at first, ready―Celestia knows why―to give him a second chance if he promised never to let it happen again. However, much to her surprise, he’d admitted that wasn’t a promise he could guarantee that he’d be able to keep.

So...they’d parted matrimonial ways, while still remaining coworkers. It wasn’t something that she’d have thought that they’d be able to make work, long term, and she’d been ready to see him jump ship and take on a contract with another outfit in short order. He hadn’t though. He’d stayed onboard. It was anypony’s guess why. Any other stallion would surely have bolted the moment they could. Though, Squelch had long known that Slipshod wasn’t like ‘other stallions’.

He had this...uncanny ability to get along with ponies. To a degree that should have been impossible. Ponies that, the unicorn had to admit with some chagrin, included herself, despite everything.

She’d hated him for his betrayal, but that was as far as her animosity went. He’d remained kind to her, and bore her well-deserved scorn without complaint or retaliation. Eventually, most of her ire abated and they were able to get back to being ‘just shipmates’, but the unicorn would be lying if she said that she still didn’t see the same qualities in the stallion that had attracted her to him in the first place. They’d relapsed a time or two since then, waking up together after an evening of too much ‘celebrating’ at the end of a lucrative contract.

Then she’d find him walking out of another pony’s quarters the next evening and any thoughts of ‘trying again’ would wither and die on the vine.

Again, she wanted to hate him for that, but she just couldn’t seem to bring herself to. While Slipshod certainly didn’t try and hide his promiscuity, he didn’t go out of his way to rub it in her face either. Spending an evening in the cabin of one of the Galloway’s crew was just...how he spent his evenings.

Honestly, the part that baffled her the most was that those other members of the crew seemed to be perfectly fine with the arrangement too! Squelch had even seen the stallion and his most recent nighttime companion coming out of their quarters and strike up a conversation with a pony that the unicorn knew he’d been with just the previous night, all three of them chatting amicably as though there was nothing the least bit awkward about it.

Had Slipshod been a unicorn, Squelch would have sworn that there was magic in play. The idea certainly made her feel better about how little she despised him despite his adultery―

“If you’re out of Autumn Twilight, Val has some, just so you know,” the stallion said, not looking up from his console.

Squelch jerked in her seat, her head whipping in the stallion’s direction. “What?”

“You haven’t used any in a week. Figured you were out. Val has a bottle, and I’m sure she’d lend you some. Heck, I bet she’d just give it to you. She’s a Rainbow Falls No. 9 kind of mare anyway.”

The helmsmare looked over at the stallion with a critical expression. “You do realize it’s none of your business what perfume I wear or when I decide to wear it, right?” she said in a dour tone, all the while trying hard not to let her surprise show at how he’d accurately deduced one of her own private qualms about their delay in making Canis orbit. She hadn’t said a word to a soul on the ship about it, so how he could possibly have known...

“Never said it was my business,” he replied without a shift in his detached tone, nor meeting her gaze, “but you always put a dab under your chin every couple of days, and you haven’t for a while. You love that scent because it was your grandmother’s, so I know you didn’t stop wearing it because you changed your tastes. Ergo: you’re out.

“You’re also not the kind of pony to bring it up, so there’s no reason why you’d have asked Valkyrie about it, and―like I said―she happens to have some she’ll probably just give to you because she doesn’t wear it at all.” He finally looked towards her, and she could clearly see the sincerity in his expression. “I mean, it’ll be another three days before the Jump Ship leaves with that Dragoon courier, so we won’t be going shopping any time soon.”

Squelch relaxed slightly, “...Thanks.” She looked forward once more. “Yeah, I’m out.” She was quiet for nearly a minute before her curiosity got the better of her. “How did you know? I use, like, literally a drop, and the two of us spend approximately no time together off the bridge.”

“True,” the stallion nodded with a small smile, “but that’s because you spend approximately no time off the bridge at all.” He wasn’t wrong. On more than one occasion, Squelch had considered setting up a cot off to the corner and just abandoning the pretense that she required private quarters at all. “Which is how I knew. This whole place usually has a hint of Autumn Twilight to it. Now it doesn’t.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a moment before another thought struck her. “And how exactly do you know that Val has a bottle if she doesn’t wear it?”

“Because I bought it for her.” He looked over and saw Squelch’s surprised expression, giving her a little shrug. “What can I say? The scent grew on me. I figured if things ever went anywhere with her, I wouldn’t mind sleeping in another bed that smelled like it.” He saw the mare’s eyes narrow critically and waved a dismissive hoof at her. “Relax, she shot me down. And has done so repeatedly,” he chuckled, “you trained her well. She should still have the bottle though. I can’t imagine she’d just throw it away.”

“...I’ll keep that in mind,” the unicorn mare finally said, letting herself relax a little, grateful to have the reminder of why ending their romantic relationship had been a good idea. She took another sip of her coffee, then a shrill beep from Slipshod’s station caught her ear. The stallion seemed to have been just as surprised by the sound as she was. “What’s going on?”

“Power reading,” the earth pony said in stark surprise as he began to tap at the console.

“Approaching ship?” Squelch mentally frowned at the worried note in her voice. It was unlikely that the Dragoon courier vessel had spotted them before they’d reached the moons of the gas giant, but it wasn’t impossible. Still, a ship like that wasn’t exactly capable of doing anything to the Galloway even if they found them, were they? How heavily did the Dragoons arm their couriers?

“It’s not coming from a ship,” Slipshod announced, “at least, not one in space...it’s coming from the surface.”

The green unicorn mare’s frown deepened into a sneer. “Pirates.” Just their luck to slip into orbit around a moon that was hiding some sort of raider stronghold. It’d have to be something along those lines, as a legitimate operation would have been squawking all sorts of transponders and beacons and the like in order to help transport ships find their way to landing pads. Only an organization that didn’t want to be found would be running as quietly as possible, and those organizations tended to be up to little that was legal.

“I don’t think that’s it either. The reading’s really small. I don’t think it would have been detectable by most ships in an orbit like ours, except that Val’s done quite a bit of tinkering with our sensor systems. This power signature is, like, EVA suit small.”

If the stallion sounded impressed that such a tiny source of energy had been picked up by the Galloway’s sensor suite, he was right to be. A transport like theirs had no business detecting something so small from hundreds of kilometers away. “Is it pulsing a rescue beacon? We should have picked it up on comms long before the suit’s power core pinged our sensors.” And that should have been true no matter how much Valkyrie modified their systems.

“No beacon,” Slipshod said with a shake of his head, “and I’m not convinced that it really is a suit. It’s just about the size of one.” He squinted down at the screen for a few seconds before straightening back up in surprise. “We should get Val up here to double-check, but I think there’s a crashed ship down there.”

“So, a crashed ship, something that might be an EVA suit, and no beacon?” Squelch quirked a brow at the stallion, who could only shrug helplessly. She sighed and rubbed her hoof against her temple. The simple solution here was to either completely ignore it or just find another moon to orbit in case anypony came looking for whoever was down there.

Admittedly, that thought didn’t sit well with Squelch. She’d known ponies who were in situations like that. Not all of them survived. Sometimes they didn’t survive because a passing ship had the attitude of: ‘not my problem’ and just flew on by. The Galloway wasn’t going to be one of those ships. Not while she helmed it.

“Val, to the bridge; we found something,” the unicorn said, punching up the ship’s internal comm. “Mig, Tig, prep the Bronco and an APC. We’re going to investigate a ship crash. ETA: thirty minutes.” She glanced back at the stallion and jabbed a hoof towards the door. “Go get suited up.”

Slipshod’s lips spread in a smile and he nodded before trotting off the bridge.

“Gallop One to Ops: cresting the final rise now. Two thousand meters out from the Nav Point. Should have eyes on the crash site in the next few seconds,” Slipshod announced over his headset. He glanced at a few of his displays, making sure that he wasn’t getting too far ahead of the APC trailing him. His towering BattleSteed let him effortlessly trot up the side of the mountain, while the wheeled vehicle behind him was forced to take a significantly more circumspect path along more even terrain.

“Roger that, Gallop One. Keep us advised of what you find,” Squelch’s voice came back over the comm. The stallion nodded wordlessly and directed his gaze back out the armored glass panes of his cockpit. His hind hooves eased back on the steering pedals, slowing his ‘Steed down so that he came to a stop just short of the rise, allowing him to peek over the crest without exposing any more of his ‘Steed than was absolutely necessary. Not that he was expecting any sort of trouble, but he still wanted to get an idea of what he was getting himself into with this wreck.

The mountain ridge dropped away beneath him and Slipshod finally found himself peering down into the valley below, and the gnarled husk of a large transport ship. Right away the stallion could tell that it was far larger than the Galloway. Maybe not Friendship-class DropShip big, but still a pretty hardy size. “Woah.”

“What do you see, Gallop One?”

“I see the ship,” Slipshod replied, “it’s not going to be getting off the ground ever again.” That much was fairly obvious even to somepony not mechanically inclined like himself, not with damage like that. Not all of it looked like it was due exclusively to a crash, either. “They were shot down,” he frowned, “I’m having trouble pinning down the class. It’s nothing I recognize. Patching in a feed for you. See if you have any ideas.” He reached over and manipulated some controls to begin streaming a video feed to the Galloway’s bridge.

“Receiving…” There was silence for several long seconds, then, “...I think...I think that’s a Strongheart!”

“The fuck’s a ‘strongheart’?”

“A Celestia League Era DropShip,” Squelch replied, still sounding in awe, “five hundred years ago they were the mainstay of transport ships. Today they basically only exist in scrapyards.”

“So this is an old wreck then?”

“Probably a very old one,” she agreed. “It’s been centuries since these things were flying around.”

“No chance of survivors then,” Slipshod reasoned. “Still, it might be worth seeing if there’s anything salvageable. If it’s a DropShip, might mean there're some ‘Steed parts. Centuries old or not, Mig and Tig will be able to make something of them.”

“Sounds good,” the unicorn mare replied, “head on inside.”

“Roger.” Slipshod put his hooves back onto the control yokes and throttled forward once again. As he got closer though, something about the wreck stood out to him. “Ops, you seeing this? That’s some pretty serious scoring on the hull there. Way bigger than a PPC or larger laser array could cause.”

“I see it...yeah, that’s pretty big alright...it looks like it runs all the way across the width of the ship...” There were several seconds of silence. “I think that was all caused by just one shot.”

“That can’t be right,” the stallion said with a deep frown as he surveyed the extent of the damage. It was like some great talon had torn a ragged gash through the top of the ship, opening it up like a tin can. He saw little evidence of the sort of scoring that would have indicated a laser or particle weapon had done the deed. It wouldn’t have been the result of a missile either. It had to have been a kinetic impact of some sort, but no autocannon shell he knew of was that big. “It must have been hit by a meteor or something,” he insisted. No ship had weapons big enough to have sliced so cleanly through a DropShip like this. They just didn’t exist.

“If we’re talking about a centuries-old crash, then it’s not impossible that this ship was shot down by a WarShip,” Squelch insisted. “They fired rounds about the size of a medium ‘Steed, give or take.”

Slipshod looked at the size of the tear. “Yeah...that looks about right,” he admitted, then suppressed a shudder at the thought of having something the size of his own Wild Bronco hurtling towards him at supersonic speeds.

He deftly maneuvered his ‘Steed closer to the rupture and peered through the opening, using his floodlights to illuminate the interior. “Mostly clear inside,” he announced, frowning a little. “Don’t think they were hauling all that much when they went down―hold on.”

“What? What do you see?”

“This was a Disciple ship,” Slipshod announced grimly.

“Disciple? Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah,” the stallion said, his eyes focused on the painted symbol on the far wall of the ship’s interior. A crossed deer antler and goat horn, the easily recognized symbol of the Disciples of Discord, a notorious terrorist organization reviled throughout the Harmony Sphere. They were honestly rarely seen these days in civilized space. Occasionally they’d pop up for a bit of mischief on some backwater world close to the Periphery, but they never stuck around long. They were more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat these days, though ComSpark had a standing bounty posted that paid out for any confirmed kills on Disciple units. It was pretty easy money if you could find them, because they never had much hardware that posed a risk to a BattleSteed. The hardest part was finding them, honestly. They struck suddenly, out of nowhere, and were gone within the week. There was rarely enough time for an out-of-system force to respond to the attack before they vanished.

He’d certainly never heard of them having anything like this though! A full sized DropShip capable of hauling, what? A full company of ‘Steeds? That took resources that the Disciples just didn’t have. At least, not anymore. If this ship really was as old as Squelch suggested, then maybe things had been different for the Disciples a few centuries ago.

Slipshod looked around the opening and frowned again. He could have muscled his way through with his ‘Steed pretty easily. A centuries old ship husk wouldn’t do much to impede a Wild Bronco. However, there was no telling how much of the ship might collapse in on itself if he did. This was still primarily a salvage operation, so leaving as much of it intact for Mig and Tig to haul away was the priority. If he was going to do any further investigating, it wasn’t going to be in his ‘Steed.

“I’m heading in on hoof.”

“Understood. Stay safe.”

“I always do,” he said before he cut the channel and sealed his suit. This moon hadn’t seen any terraforming. Outside was little more than a frozen vacuum. His suit’s systems would keep him warm and alive for a few hours, long enough to poke around for a bit to get a lay of things while the APC caught up. The stallion glanced briefly at the displayed map and noted that the rest of the team would be there in a little under fifteen minutes. The twins would appreciate knowing what they were getting into; or if there was even anything worthwhile inside.

Slipshod checked his suit’s seals a second time before finally cycling out the cockpit’s atmosphere and popping the hatch. He grabbed his rifle on his way out, just in case. The moon’s gravity was about a third standard, and put a bit of a spring in his step. The stallion performed a few experimental hops on the head of his ‘Steed in order to get a grasp for how gingerly he’d have to step. Then, with a final look through the opening in the side of the ship, he leaped down from the top of his metal behemoth.

A few judicious firings of his suit’s thrusters ensured that the ‘Steed pilot saw a safe landing within the ship’s interior. He clicked on his helmet’s exterior lights and looked around. As he’d suspected, the DropShip’s hold was depressingly bare. Though it was not completely empty, he was delighted to find. There was a single ‘Steed in one of the bays. It was hard to get a clear look at what model it was, as it had been shaken loose from it’s carriage in the crash and was currently laying in a heap on its side. Still, a ‘Steed was a ‘Steed. Broken or not, as long as most of its pieces were present, the Galloway’s twin mechanics would be able to get it in working order again.

“Mig, Tig, there’s a ‘Steed in here for you two to play with,” he announced over his suit’s personal comm unit. “Looks to be at least a heavy, too.”

“Awesome! We’ll call up a salvage rig from the Galloway so we can haul it back.”

Slipshod nodded and closed the channel again, resuming his sweep of the interior. The ship’s bow was a lost cause, that much was obvious. The area around the crash site made it clear that its command crew had fought valiantly to save as much of it in the crash as possible, but in the end they’d smashed right into the side of a mountain, crumpling the forward decks. The mid section had been opened up like a ration tin by whatever stupendously powerful weapon had shot them out of the sky. The rear sections, however, actually looked fairly decent. With luck, they’d manage to recover some usable parts for the Galloway itself, which he was sure Squelch would appreciate.

He began making his way in that direction, as it also happened to be where that power reading that brought this place to their attention was coming from. He was very curious to learn what sort of power system could endure for several centuries like that. The stallion pranced across the bay’s low-gravity interior to the far side, slipping through an open hatch into the crew area beyond.

That was where he found the bodies.

The discovery honestly didn’t shock him all that much. If anything, he was surprised that he hadn’t seen any thus far. Though, if this ship really had been shot up while still in space, it was likely that any personnel who might have been in the main bay area had been blown out into space then and there. The bodies here were suited up just like he was. A few had cracked visors or torn suits, probably from the crash. As he passed a few crew cabins, he noticed suggestions that some of the ponies had met more...desperate ends. Suited ponies slumped over tables or cots with partially destroyed helmets on their heads and guns near their hooves. Frozen blood splattered against a wall.

Faced with the prospect of dying by suffocation...Slipshod wasn’t so certain that he’d have made a different choice himself. By all accounts, it was not a quick or pleasant death.

Ten minutes later, the stallion finally located the source of the power signature: the infirmary. Unlike most of the other rooms, this one’s door was closed. It was even locked, curiously enough. A pair of shots from Slipshod’s rifle proved sufficient to open it. There were bodies in here too. Unsuited ones. Several were laying on beds. Others were on the floor.

They were deep enough in the ship’s interior that Slipshod suspected this area could have retained an atmosphere. At least, prior to the crash itself. He could see some tears in a few of the bulkheads that were clearly the result of the craft’s hard landing. That had probably killed everypony in here who hadn’t been wearing a suit. Like the wounded.

The stallion could almost imagine what it had been like. Getting shot up in space. Losing a lot of the crew to the blow-out in the hangar. Anypony who had survived had been brought here to be treated. Taken out of their suits. The crash event might have been hours later. Maybe days, depending on where in the system the fight itself had actually happened. Obviously not everypony died when they hit the moon, but these poor sorry sods sure had. Would have been a hard day for whatever ship’s physician had been onboard, to lose all of their patients like that after working so hard to try and save them.

Terrorists or not, that was a shitty way to go.

Then Slipshod’s eyes finally landed on the source of the energy reading, and they instantly widened.

Perhaps he had spoken too soon. Slowly, he reached up and keyed in his suit’s comm device. “Ops...Tell Dee...we have a survivor.”

“Gallop One, say again,” came Squelch’s consternated response, “did you say: survivor?!”

“Yup,” was all the stunned reply that the stallion could give. He didn’t begrudge his boss her skepticism. He wouldn’t have believed it either. Not if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. But he was seeing it: a single bed nestled within a glowing energy field that was occupied, not with a vacuum-desiccated husk of a corpse, but a vibrantly-colored―living―purple mare. A purple mare with wings...and a horn. “And it’s an alicorn.”

“So how is she, Doc?” Squelch asked as the bone-white unicorn physician stepped into the conference room that was rarely utilized. Today though, it was being used by the crew’s command staff to bring everypony up to speed on what had decidedly become a much more interesting salvage operation than any of them could have ever predicted. For a number of reasons. Firstly though, was the topic of their inexplicable survivor.

“It’s a miracle that she’s alive at all.”

“That bad, eh?” The unicorn said with a frown. She’d hoped that they’d be able to get some answers from the mare about what had happened to the ship, and how exactly it was that an alicorn had come to be on it.

“Hmm, what? Oh! Oh, no, nothing like that,” the ship’s doctor assured them. “I mean, yes, her injuries were life-threatening, but it’s nothing that can’t be easily rectified with a few hours of surgery. She’ll be back up and on her hooves in a few weeks, don’t worry about that. No, I was referring to the fact that she’s actually endured so long in stasis.

“Anypony else would have died centuries ago.”

Squelch scratched her chin with her hoof. “Yeah, I’ve been wanting to ask about that.” She glanced over at the twin kirin mares who were also sitting in on the meeting. “What the fuck was powering that thing that managed to keep the lights on for...how long?” Now she glanced at Valkyrie, who’d been charged with combing the computers that could be salvaged to recover what records were still intact.

“Five hundred and forty-ish years,” the pegasus supplied.

The green unicorn looked back at the mechanics. “Alright, so what kind of battery lasts over five hundred years on a charge?”

The pair of cyan and rose scaled equines exchanged glances and then shrugged in unison. “You got us, boss,” the blue Tig admitted.

The rosey Mig nodded her head. “We put that battery through every test we know.”

“It’s just a standard arcane power cell.”

“This ship uses hundreds just like it.”

“The design hasn’t even changed much.”

“We could plug that one into this ship no problem.”

“Especially since the one Slip recovered even still has a full charge!”

Everypony exchanged glances before looking back at the twins. “So it has been running for over five centuries and wasn’t even drained a little? How?” The pair of kirin could only shrug helplessly, looking almost mortified that they couldn’t provide an explanation for the seemingly impossible violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

The doctor cleared his throat. “Actually, I might have an answer to that.” The gathered ponies all looked to the physician, Mig and Tig with rapt attention, curious to learn how the ship’s chief medical pony had the answer to a technical anomaly that had completely stumped the pair of them. “Arcane cells use a form of energy that is almost identical to unicorn magic. Hypothetically, enough unicorns could recharge a cell all on their own.”

“Hypothetically, yeah,” Mig agreed somewhat reluctantly.

“But it’s highly impractical,” her sister added.

“Even a powerful unicorn would only be able to charge a cell a quarter of the way.”

“Before they suffered burnout and were useless for the rest of the week.”

“That’s why they’re charged using mana crystals.”

The doctor nodded in agreement. “Indeed. However, my point was that arcane cells and unicorn magic are essentially interchangeable...to include alicorn magic.”

Another round of dubious looks for the gathered ponies. “Look, I know that alicorns are supposed to be powerful,” Squelch said, “but there’s no way they’re ‘five hundred years of charging a battery’ powerful. Especially not when they’re unconscious!”

“Under normal circumstances, you’d be correct,” Doctor Dee conceded, “however, there was nothing normal about these circumstances.” Again the physician found himself the focus of the crew’s full attention. He cleared his throat. “Yes, the patient was unconscious; and yes, she was in stasis. However, I’m fairly certain that was what allowed this feat to be pulled off in the first place.

“You see, contrary to common belief: stasis fields don’t really ‘stop time’. That’s actually impossible. Time cannot be ‘stopped’. However, it can be looped back around on itself in a stable manner. That is what a stasis spell does: it loops the patient through time. The loop is a very small one―a fraction of a second―but it is a loop nonetheless.

“What it looks like happened was that the patient was placed into stasis to keep her from succumbing to her injuries, and then somepony else used their magic to connect the patient’s innate arcane leylines into the stasis spell’s power source.”

“For five hundred years?” Squelch asked dubiously.

“Not from the patient’s point of view,” the doctor pointed out. “Remember: time loop. For her, only a small burst of power was taken, and then she was flung through time. Her magic never drained, because she never sustained the spell for more than a second.”

Slipshod’s brow furrowed and he raised a cautious hoof. “Wait...I don’t think that makes any sense. If she’s constantly getting sent back in time...then shouldn’t that mean that she’d keep getting older? Because time is still passing for her as she goes back through every loop?” his head started to hurt.

“Stasis fields don’t loop a patient back in time,” the doctor corrected, “they send the patient forward in time to a point that simply hasn’t been determined yet. It’s a loop that starts at the future’s end.”

“Oh...wait, no, hold on,” the stallion began to rub his temples, “that...how does that even―? I mean, when―wait…” If there was any comfort to be had, it was that Slipshod wasn’t the only pony apparently having trouble trying to wrap their head around what was happening.

The doctor sighed and rubbed his chin. “It’s easiest to just think of the stasis field as a time portal. What we are seeing through it is the patient as they were when they were put inside. When we turn it off, they arrive in the present from the past, and were never really ‘in’ the stasis field for any of the time in between.

“That kind of answer on a test on stasis spells would get you kicked out of medical school for how abysmally reductive it is, but it’s as much as any of you need to understand about them.

“From the patient’s perspective, she has been in there only a moment, and so her magic has been powering it for only a moment. For us, it’s been five hundred and forty years, and so her magic has been powering the field for five hundred and forty years.” He grinned. “And thus concludes today’s lesson on subjective time!”

“My head hurts,” Squelch whined, then noticed a rattling sound near her head. She looked up to see Slipshod holding out a bottle of aspirin to her, already appearing to be chewing on a few tablets himself. She took the bottle and tapped out a couple of tablets for herself. The bottle then got passed on the Valkyrie.

All the while, Doctor Dee frowned at them. “If you really want to fry your brains, ask me to explain how that kind of time manipulation is affected by ships traveling at near-luminal velocities. Special relativity is the real kicker.”

“But she will live though?” Squelch asked pointedly, making it clear that she had no interest in sidetracking this meeting with a physcis lecture.

“Yes, she’ll be fine,” the white unicorn nodded, “I can’t guess when she’ll regain consciousness, but physically she is already on the mend. Fortunately it turns out that alicorns aren’t so different from us mortal ponies in that way.”

“So she is an alicorn? It wasn’t just some mare who got a bunch of cosmetic alterations?”

“I honestly can’t be certain either way at the moment,” the physician shrugged, “I’ve never encountered an alicorn before. No doctor that I know ever has. Except for the Court Physician on Equus, of course,” he added matter-of-factly.

“It has to be cosmetics though, right?” Valkyrie asked. “I mean, there’s only the one alicorn: Queen Twilight Sparkle. There aren’t any others. We’d have heard about them if there were others, right?”

“I assume,” Slipshod said, frowning. He’d had some time to study their new patient while he’d waited in the infirmary for the APC to arrive and cart her back to the Galloway. The notion of cosmetic alterations had crossed his mind more than once then too. However, he hadn’t been able to identify which addition must have been the fake: the horn or the wings. He’d seen prosthetics before―even really good ones―and nothing on that mare looked fake. Still, the fact remained that the whole galaxy knew that there was only the one alicorn, and she was a good couple hundred lightyears away in the capital on Equus.

Exactly where she’d always been.

“All I can say for certain about our guest,” Doctor Dee said, “is that she is a mare...who has wings and a horn. They’re both natural. I could find no signs of surgical scarring or magical transmutation that suggests this was done unnaturally. At least, not through any means that I’ve ever encountered before.”

“Maybe she's just a genetic freak?” Valkyrie offered. “Some pegasus and unicorn genes fought for dominance and it ended in a tie?”

“It’d be the first case I ever heard about,” the doctor said, sounding mostly unconvinced, “but it’s a big galaxy, so maybe this could be one of those one in a billion things that is technically possible, but is so unlikely that nopony ever really thinks about it. Like a JumpShip landing inside a rogue planet.”

Their commander grunted, but she too seemed unconvinced. “Fine. Until we find some way to figure it out for sure, she’s not actually an alicorn. She’s going to live, so we’ll see what she says when she wakes up.” Squelch now directed her attention towards the kirin mechanics. “Now, onto the ‘Steed we pulled from the wreckage: what have we got?”

The cyan and rose equines exchanged giddy grins with one another before looking back at the pegasus mare. “It’s a Rainbow Dash!” They both excitedly announced in unison.

This produced raised eyebrows from Squelch, Slipshod, and Valkyrie, and a confused frown from Doctor Dee, who posed, “A what?”

“You’re sure?” Slipshod asked of the pair, who both nodded vigorously, still grinning like foals who’d gotten exactly what they’d asked for for Hearth’s Warming. The stallion looked over at the chief medical pony and answered his question. “A Rainbow Dash is an old Celestia League heavy BattleSteed. It’s honestly pretty awesome. Basically the Crystal Heart of ‘Steed design: tough as horseshoes, fast enough to keep up with some light ‘Steeds, and packs enough firepower to go hoof-to-hoof with a Big Mac and make a good show of itself, despite being out-massed by about thirty tons. As you can imagine, engineering like that was difficult to mass produce, so only a few were ever built, and I don’t know of a single outfit that actually operates with one. You’ll find pieces of them on the market from time to time, but never enough to actually put one back together again,” he looked at the twin mechanics, “this one’s in one piece?”

“It’s shot to shit,” Mig said with a grimace.

“It was fighting something pretty nasty,” Tig agreed.

“Probably a lot of somethings, honestly.”

“A lot of firing angles, yeah. They were surrounded.”

“But the internals are intact.”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly.”

“So you can fix it?” Slipshod asked.

The faces of both kirin lit up. “We get to fix it?!” both exclaimed in excitement.

The stallion looked over at Squelch. The unicorn mare was looking pensive at the prospect. Getting the parts and materials to fix up a heavy ‘Steed, especially one that was as rare as a Rainbow Dash, would carve pretty deep into their cash reserves. Fiscally, it really made more sense for them to just sell it off for the payday. A novelty like that would net them enough C-bits to buy a few medium ‘Steeds if they wanted. A rare ‘Steed like this would be quite a feather in their manes, yeah, but they really weren’t a ‘heavy ‘Steed’ sort of outfit. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday. Though, who was to say that that ‘someday’ couldn’t start with this ‘Steed ‘today’?

“Get me a list of parts,” Squelch finally said with a reluctant sigh, “I’ll have them picked up when we finally touch down on Canis.”

“Yay!” both kirin cheered as they leaped at each other and embraced one another in a fierce, excited, hug. They eventually parted and Mig dug out a stack of papers from a pouch on her tool harness and held it out to Squelch with her magic. “Here’s the list! We put it together already.”

Tig held out another―smaller―stack of papers. “And here’s the list of the usual stuff we need to keep the other two ‘Steeds running.”

“Great,” the pegasus mare took both stacks in her magic and folded them into the other papers on her clipboard, “so that just leaves the ship.” She glanced at Valkyrie, “do we know how The Disciples of Discord got their hooves on a Strongheart transport five hundred years ago?”

“The ship’s logs were lost in the crash,” the pegasus said, “that kind of stuff would have been with the bridge computers, and those hit that mountain pretty hard. All I had to look through were a bunch of personal records, which were exposed to vacuum on that dusty moon for half a millennia,” she continued by way of caveat to explain her lack of detailed information, “and not much of that survived.

“What I have found is really...confusing.”

“In what way?” the pegasus pilot pressed.

“They mentioned stuff like family back on Equus, some big fight that was happening against ‘The Enemy’, and how things weren’t going so well,” Val frowned as she relayed the information, reading from some notes that she’d taken from her record perusing.

“Could we be seeing the remnants of the first Disciples?” Slipshod offered, “maybe they started out on Equus and were forced to flee towards the outer rim worlds. ‘The Enemy’ could be the Celestia League, and, yeah, that fight didn’t go well for them.”

“Maybe,” Val conceded somewhat reluctantly, “though I saw the kind of equipment they had...that didn’t look like the kind of stuff that a bunch of terrorists should be able to get their hooves on.” She jabbed a hoof at the kirin mechanics, “heck, what about that ‘Steed? If a Rainbow Dash was so awesome and rare, how’d the Celestia League let one slip through their hooves?”

That was actually a pretty good question, Slipshod was forced to concede. The fact that the DropShip had actually been branded with their emblem suggested that this wasn’t just a transport that they managed to hijack at a port. This had been their ship for a long time. A ship designed to transport and refit ‘Steeds; a piece of equipment that Disciples didn’t have at their disposal that he’d ever heard. At least, that was how the Disciples were today.

“Do we have any idea where they were trying to get to?”

“Clan territory, it sounded like,” the unicorn informed them, earning another round of surprised looks.

“I’ve never heard of the Disciples having Clan connections,” Squelch mused, “but that would explain why we never seem to find many of their bases, but they keep popping up every once in a while. Maybe they’re staged deep in Dragon Clan territory.”

“That’d be pretty surprising,” Slipshod said, “considering that the Dragons basically don’t interact with the Harmony Sphere at all. I know they don’t have any love for ponies, but they’ve never gone out of their way to antagonize us.

“You’d think that they’d be concerned that harboring terrorists might provoke us into performing a serious invasion.”

“Maybe that’s why the Disciples never really seem to hit anything particularly big?” Squelch offered, “they do just enough to be annoying, but never anything worth organizing a force to hunt them down over. They get to ‘stick it to the mare’ while not wearing out their welcome with the dragons.”

Slipshod grunted. It was possible, but he wasn’t sure that that kind of passive-aggressive stance really fit with the mentality needed to sustain a terrorist cult for half a millennium.

“So does that cover it? Pilot, ‘Steed, and ship; anypony have anything else we need to go over?”

“The JumpShip leaves with the Dragoon courier tomorrow. We can break orbit and head for Canis whenever you want; it’s too late for them to do anything about us without missing their ride,” Valkyrie said before casting a glance at the stallion sitting next to her, “and I doubt you pissed them off badly enough for that.”

“If you ask me, he’s overreacting as is,” Slipshod mumbled, crossing his hooves stubbornly over his chest.

“Alright,” their employer said, standing up from the table, “in that case, everypony get back to work. I’ll go and plot us a course for Canis and get us there as soon as possible. We could all use some shore time.” She picked up her recently thickened clipboard with her magic, “and we appear to have quite a bit of shopping to do.”

“We get to fix a Rainbow Dash! We get to fix a Rainbow Dash!” The pair of mechanic twins sing-songed as they pranced out the door towards the ‘Steed Bay.

“You two owe me big for this!” Squelch snapped at them as they left. “My quarters; tonight!” The door sealed automatically behind them and the mare grunted as she lifted the clipboard and flipped through the sheaves of paper on it, browsing the list of needed parts, performing a cursory mental tally. “Hope nopony wanted to get paid this month,” she groused.

She cast an accusing glare in Slipshod’s direction. “This whole thing was supposed to gain us C-bits, you know?”

The stallion threw up his hooves in surrender. “Hey, nopony said you had to agree to fix it. You could have sold it for enough to buy a new DropShip.”

“Yeah, but then I know all I’d have heard from you for the next three months was,” the mare dropped her register into what the stallion assumed was meant to intentionally sound like an exaggerated parody of himself, “‘you know? It would have been nice to pilot that Rainbow Dash just once; just to see what it felt like’, and I am not in the mood to listen to you whine about ‘Steeds.”

“You mean like how we shared a JumpShip with that Manticore DropShip that one time and you spent the next week complaining that it would take us four years at our current profit margins to be able to afford one and would it kill me to try for a few extra bounties on our contracts?” The stallion admonished in a playful tone, smiling at the mare. “For the record: it very nearly did.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” The mare sighed, shaking her head. “Fine, whatever,” then she jabbed her hoof at the stallion, “but when she wakes up, you get to explain to our guest that we’re keeping her ‘Steed.”

“You think it was hers?”

“Those ponies did everything in their power to make sure she survived. She either owned the ‘Steed, or the ship, or maybe was even one of their leaders. Either way, I bet she’ll have a lot to say about what happens to it.”

“Speaking of,” the stallion said thoughtfully, “what’s going to happen to her when she wakes up?”

“She’s a Disciple,” the unicorn replied simply, “the laws are pretty clear about what we’re supposed to do with Disciples.”

“Right.” The requirements put out by ComSpark were crystal clear on the matter of what was supposed to be done with Disciple captives: they were interrogated and executed at the earliest opportunity. It was a standing order from the Queen herself. “And how does Dee feel about having all his hard work being undone the moment we land?”

Squelch was silent for a brief moment. “She’s only his patient until she leaves the med bay. After that…” she shrugged, “it’s not like you and Val don’t make every effort to undo all his hard work every time he’s done patching you two up,” she reminded the stallion with a wry smirk. It melted away rather quickly though. “Dee knows the score. If she’s going to be tortured to death, at least he can help her to be in as little pain as possible going into it.”

“Yeah. I guess there’s that, at least,” the golden earth pony nodded. He sighed. “A real shame that. Never got to meet an alicorn before.”

He headed for the door and left.

“Most of my patients would be lucky to have family members that are half as attentive as you’ve been,” the white unicorn physician noted as he strode into the main ward of the infirmary from his connected office. It wasn’t particularly large, since they didn’t have a large crew of personnel, and it mostly only saw a few patients a day with minor illnesses. At the moment, it held only the one patient. Doctor Dee stepped up to the side of the bed opposite the pensive Slipshod and began to chart the readings on the various displays. “I haven’t seen you by a bed for this long since Squelch’s appendix burst.”

“Yeah, well, you know me: can’t stay away from a pretty mare,” the stallion said, flashing the physician a broad smile. He was only half-joking though. The truth was that the slumbering mare was genuinely quite attractive. He’d already thought of quite a few lines to feed her when she finally woke up, and may or may not have fantasized about a few fun things he could think of to try out in bed with a mare who had both wings and magic.

That sort of thing was for later though. Right now he had other thoughts on his mind. “Her injuries; what were they?”

Dee glanced down at the other stallion briefly before flipping back through his notes. “Contusions on the shoulders and hips, fractured skull, broken ribs, a broken femur, and burns to the face and back. All of which have been addressed, as you can see,” and Slipshod could. The mare was covered almost entirely in dressings and rigid casts.

“That bruising was consistent with a ‘Steed’s piloting harness, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” the medical pony acknowledged, “and all of her other injuries are also quite typical for somepony who’s BattleSteed was put through the ringer in a fight.”

The earth pony was nodding. “Mig found burned purple feathers in the cockpit. She was the pilot,” he gestured to the unconscious mare. “A damn good one too.” The kirin twins didn’t yet have the parts that they needed to fix the Rainbow Dash, but that hadn’t stopped them from getting it strung up in the stall so that they could start removing the damaged components that would need to be replaced. They and their team were crawling over it like a swarm of excited locusts at this very moment.

Slipshod had been present when they finally got the ‘Steed standing and had done his own appraisal. He agreed fully with Mig and Tig’s assessment that the Rainbow Dash had been in a fight with multiple opponents. Shots had struck it from both low and high angles, and the weapon types were far too varied for all the damage to have been done by just one ‘Steed. Yet, all the same, the damage had been spread out. Very spread out. It was almost like either the enemy had gone out of their way to shoot every single square inch of the ‘Steed’s armor, or...the pilot had worked tirelessly to make sure that a numerically superior enemy couldn’t focus their fire on any one specific area and cripple her.

That was hard, especially if a pilot was surrounded by smaller and more maneuverable enemies. Indeed, it was a preferred tactic of a lance fighting a single mech to circle the target and hold their fire until presented with a particular vulnerable location―usually the left or right barrel of a ‘Steed’s torso. It was nearly impossible for a single opponent to keep a given facing out of the line of fire like that. That this mare had managed it spoke volumes about her skill.

More than that, she’d clearly managed to get away from that fight as well. Either by defeating all of them or escaping to her DropShip. Slipshod wasn’t sure which was the more impressive feat, honestly.

His eyes wandered over her wings and horn. “Any luck on figuring out her alicorn-ness?”

Dee finished updating his notes and floated the chart back over to his office. “Nothing more than I said before: no signs that any of this was done surgically, and I don’t see any of the usual signs of magical transmutation. She’s either the genuine article or the unlikely natural combination of pegasus and unicorn genetics. Though, given the kind of magical resilience that she’d have needed for somepony to link her leylines to the stasis spell…” The doctor shook his head. “Something like that would have pretty much caused my horn to explode on the spot. So she’s obviously a very powerful magic-caster.”

“Do you have any theories?” Slipshod asked. “We’d have heard about another alicorn, right? That kind of thing should have been broadcasted all over the Harmony Sphere. Everypony in the galaxy would have known that there were two alicorns.”

“I’d have thought so,” the physician shrugged, then thought for a moment. “I wasn’t as attentive in my history classes as I could have been―honestly, who pays attention in their elective courses anyway? But I could swear that I remember one of my professors mentioning that pre-Sphere Equestria was ruled by two alicorns? Something about a war between them and one of them being cast out too.

“Maybe that’s how the Disciples started,” the doctor offered. “The two of them fought, one founded the Disciples, and was defeated and banished,” he scratched at his brow, frowning, “I think that’s how it went anyway.”

Slipshod looked at the ivory unicorn. “So, does that make her ‘Discord’ then?”

“Makes sense. Discord was the name of a villain that got banished by the ruler of Equestria. I remember that much pretty clearly. ‘Discord’ being banished and the alicorn sisters fighting was covered in the same lesson on ancient Equestria, so I think they’re the same event.”

“Should we be concerned then that we’re transporting an ancient enemy of Equestria and Queen Twilight?”

The doctor paused for a moment, considering. “I doubt that this could be the real Discord,” he finally stated with a measure of certainty. “All of that was supposed to predate the Celestia League. This mare is probably a look-alike or something. She’s way too young to have been around in the days before the Harmony Sphere.”

“Unless she really is an alicorn,” Slipshod pointed out, causing Dee to look pensive for another moment before continuing. “But, like you said: the other alicorn was cast out. She wouldn’t have been on some transport in a backwater system like Canis was five hundred years ago. I don’t even think this was a settled system back then.”

The ‘Steed pilot regarded the unconscious mare for a few more seconds and then glanced back at the doctor, who looked like he was still trying―unsuccessfully―to remember his history electives from over a decade ago. “What does Queen Twilight Sparkle look like?”

“Hmm? Oh, um...I think she’s blue...maybe? Green? I honestly don’t know,” the unicorn said with a dismissive shrug. “I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a picture of her. Not much really comes out of Equus that’s worth paying attention to these days. Every news outlet tends to focus on the infighting between the various Houses and coalitions,” the doctor looked at the unconscious mare for a few moments. “Maybe pink? My mind wants to think that ‘pink’ was in there somewhere for some reason…

“You attended Sandhoof Royal Military Academy, didn’t you? Back on Equus? Didn’t you get to see the Queen while you were there?”

Slipshod balked for a brief moment before managing to recompose himself. “Yeah, that’s right. No, I, uh, didn’t see the Queen while I was there.”

“Really? I thought she attended all of the graduations there...”

The golden stallion winced, having managed to forget that little fact. “She does,” he confirmed, “and I’m sure that she was at mine too. I just don’t remember seeing her though. I had...other things on my mind that day. I’d gotten a message from an old friend that my family had been executed the night before the graduation ceremony.”

“Oh! I’m...sorry to hear that. I didn’t realize,” the doctor said, looking a little abashed, “I mean, I knew your family had been killed, I just didn’t know you’d heard about it right before you were supposed to head back home.

“That had to have been rough for you.”

The earth pony’s lips were set in a grim line. “It wasn’t how I’d envisioned leaving Equus, no.” Silence rang through the clinic for several long seconds. Then the ‘Steed pilot finally turned towards the door and started heading out. “Pink sounds right though.” He paused in the doorway. “Call if she wakes up, alright?”

“Of course. I’ll let everypony know the moment she so much as twitches.”

“Right. Thanks.” And, with that, the earth pony stallion left the room. He had some groundwork to lay.

The Wild Bronco is a medium-tonnage BattleSteed designed and developed originally in 1027 AC (After Celestia) by Heel Caulk Construction, which used their largest model of industrial WorkSteeds as the frame for the WB0-1A. Initially fitted with a pair of autocannon type-fives in each shoulder, the Wild Bronco has seen a variety of loadouts emerge since then, thanks in large part to the modular design philosophy of the WorkSteed that served as the genesis for the series. The 3L variant saw a complete departure from ballistic weaponry in order to provide battlefield endurance for long campaigns where resupply could not be guaranteed; trading out the autocannons for magical energy weapons and a chest-mounted missile rack. While debatably underpowered compared to other BattleSteeds of its weight, the Wild Bronco boasts superior armor and maneuverability compared to its peers.

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!