PORT HAVEN, NEW EVERFREE – 15:38 Local Time
[Six hours after Incident]

Director Tarmac Pith lounged in his office chair as he watched the local news feed playing on his monitor.

The weather team had been in just the right place and time to record one of his hundred-tonne freighters tearing through the clouds.

It was a Loggerhead model, essentially a reinforced box with a cockpit poking out at the front, a pair of gyroscopic thrusters on either side, and a short tail with stabilisers at the back. Not much in the way of aerodynamics and terribly inefficient for long-distance flight in atmosphere, but decent enough for space transport and the occasional cargo drop planetside—and in this particular instance, having sufficient durability to survive an uncontrolled re-entry long enough for the pilots to slow down before ruining somepony’s day on the ground.

The freighter busted through several layers of clouds in quick succession, trailing orange flames and white smoke from its engines. The camera panned down to follow its descent, and its operator yelped when the shockwave of displaced air dispersed the cloud beneath his hooves and sent him tumbling through the sky. The roar of the falling freighter then drowned out the rest of the weather team’s alarmed cries and shouts as the camera caught a quick series of bright flashes coming from its thrusters, followed by a wobbly shift in is trajectory as the pilots finally converted its freefall into a swoop to gradually bleed off speed.

“This shocking footage was caught just this morning when—”

The door creaked open, and Tarmac tuned out the reporter’s voice when he saw the reluctant star of the show trot into his office.

“Heya, boss!”

Captain Ebony Dew had a way of bringing sunshine into any space, regardless of the local weather. Part of it might have been due to her colours, having a coat as yellow as butter cake and a mane consisting of short, peachy bangs with streaks of cranberry-red running through them; which had a tendency to prevent most from noticing that she was a batpony despite her very obvious fangs, webbed wings and tufted ears. Lovely green eyes, too, with slit pupils. She also looked like she could break out a winning smile at any moment to make even a tax-collector forget about ruining somepony’s day for a change. Another part of it was probably the stuffed toy she carried around all the time, which was a batpony with more traditional shades of greys, blues and purples, all dressed up in ancient Night Guard armour.

The grey uniform she wore could only do so much to moderate that kind of whimsy. She looked like somepony had brought their adorable biscuit of a filly to work, except that she was already a grown mare and one of his employees.

Tarmac already felt like his office had gained a couple of degrees and a dozen lumens, despite the grey sheets of drizzling rain washing across the valley outside the window.

Honestly, it was a wonder that her parents hadn’t named her Golden Blaze instead. The only part of her that remotely fit her namesake was the unusually dark keratin of her hooves. Well, those, and the dark, almost glossy scabs on her jawline, just barely hidden by the uneven growth of coat around them—but everypony knew better than to draw attention to those.

“Good afternoon.” He cleared his throat and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat, Ebony. I assume the docs have mandated some leave for you?”

She shuffled forward a little and grinned sheepishly. “Well…”

“Because if they haven’t, I will,” he said.

Her gaze drifted over to his monitor as she sat down, taking a moment to shift the stuffed toy from an underwing grip to her lap where she could hug it absentmindedly, and her ears drooped as the news feed showed the freighter shearing treetops off the mountainside vegetation before it clipped a corner off an accommodations unit on its way to crash-landing in the adjacent orchard.

Ebony winced. “That could’ve gone better.”

“It’s just one house.”

“It’s the governor’s cousin’s house.”

Tarmac snorted. “That’s a bonus in my book. I keep telling Easy Breezy that it was a bad idea to build so close to the spaceport, and this might finally change his mind. At least nobody was injured.”

“—sources tell us that the crash was due to a failed hijacking attempt, but authorities have neither confirmed it nor released any information on the perpetrator so far,” the reporter continued.

The camera panned across the long trench Ebony’s freighter had gouged into the earth, revealing the splintered remains of uprooted and pulverised apple trees on either side, before stopping at the wreckage presently being swarmed by technicians.

“We do, however, have eyewitness accounts of only one uniformed pilot and an unidentified individual emerging from the wreckage before they were escorted away by the Breezy Estate’s security. Which begs the question: was it actually a hijacking attempt, or had the pilot been taking a civilian on a joyride? This type of freighter requires two qualified pilots to operate, so the Breezy Estate may have grounds to press charges if this extreme unprofessionalism was—”

Tarmac killed the news feed and groaned. “Guess it was too much to hope that they’d lay off the speculations for once…”

“To be fair, we did look kind of shady when we crawled out the airlock…” said Ebony as she shifted her weight around on the chair. She then bit her lip and continued, “How much trouble are we in? Is my friend facing jail time?”

Tarmac frowned and glanced at the somewhat singed stuffed toy between her legs. “Considering the fact that he assaulted both of you, that’s really going to depend on how much you’re willing to stick your neck out for him. The governor likes to think he runs this sector as tight and straight as the Core Worlds, but everypony and their grandma knows that’s not how we work in the Periphery. I’d yell at you for giving him an unauthorised free ride, but that would just make me a hypocrite...”

Ebony grinned. “Aww, if it makes you feel better, I think your son’s a good pony for ferrying people around even when they can’t afford it.”

“Yeah, and a big headache for Daddy when he has to hide his bleeding heart from the Board,” he growled back with a snort. “And you’re a good sweet-talker, is what you are. Don’t think I can’t see what you’re trying to do.”

Her grin widened as she leaned forward in her seat. “So let me talk to him. I think we can work something out. The last thing you want is a Core rep hounding your flank when the embassy finds out we have one of their citizens in a cell, right?”

“Yeah, that’s a good point.” He nodded. “The sooner he’s out of our manes, the better.”

“Great. I’ll go see him!” Ebony rose out of her seat, then blinked and slowly parked her rump back down. “Oh, and about those speculations that I was flying solo and breaking the rules…”

Tarmac waved a hoof dismissively. “We have the proper paperwork. No serious injuries, the payload’s mostly intact, and your ship just needs a bit of hot work to get back in flying shape. I’ll deal with the Board and the press; you’re safe, even though some people won’t understand that there were two of you flying the ship.”

His gaze then drifted down to her stuffed toy. “You’ve been awfully quiet this whole time.”

The stuffed batpony, which had been staring blankly at nothing with a confident, stitched-on smirk, glowed softly with a green aura and turned its head to face him. A similar glow came from underneath Ebony’s prominent forelock, and Tarmac heard the rapid clicking of keys being pressed on the text-to-speech device of the omni-tool bracer on her foreleg.

A second later, the synthetic voice of a young male said, “He shot me and nearly got us all killed. I literally have nothing to add to this conversation, unless you’re changing your mind about keeping ol’ Chubby Tubby in that cell.”

“Chubby… Tubby?” He cocked an eyebrow. “He looked fit enough to me.”

“Eh heh... old nickname from when we were kids.” Ebony then snapped her gaze to the stuffed toy and said, “Tickles, we talked about this. Kiln’s not a bad pony. He’s just… confused and out of the loop. It was just an accident.”

“Your judgment is impaired,” the synthetic voice droned. “Badly.”

Tarmac tilted his head and peered at Ebony. “Captain, this friend of yours… he wouldn’t happen to be handsome, would he?”

Ebony’s shade went from butter to strawberry cake in a heartbeat, from the bottom of her chin right up to the tips of her ears, and she suddenly seemed very interested in deciphering the secrets of a particular coffee stain on his table. “Umm, maybe?”

Tarmac smiled. “Your first officer is being possessive, I see.”

The stuffed batpony jabbed a hoof at him. “With all due respect, Director, stay out of this. I am not being possessive. I am trying to make sure she doesn’t do something we’ll all regret. She’s got goo-goo eyes for him when he’s hiding things from her, I can taste it.”

Ebony leapt onto all fours and snatched Tickles up under a wing as she made for the door. Just before exiting, she gave Tarmac an apologetic smile and said, “We’ll work on resolving the situation. See you later, boss!”

Tarmac listened to their muffled voices bickering as she trotted away, until he could hear them no more. Once he was alone with his thoughts, he shook his head, reached into his private cabinet and poured himself a ration of hard cider.

It was going to be a long day.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2 Estimated time remaining: 37 Minutes