Space is vast. It’s so vast that most ponies can’t wrap their heads around it. Not when rapid trans-dimensional teleportation drives mean that a system hop only takes a few weeks. You can stand on a viewing platform, with dark voids in every direction, and not understand how truly large real emptiness is. Not from the safety of our ships.

I’ve been on spacewalks before, standard procedure for repair and maintenance on some of the larger vessels. I’ve looked down from the hull of a of a starliner and seen how tiny a planet looks from orbit, how vulnerable it is. 

But I still didn’t know. I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not until I watched the thruster lights of the Cosmic Ray vanish into infinity. 

The two other ships, visible only as curtains of black against the starscape, each made their ponderous turns to follow the Ray and vanished after it. I grinned smugly. They wouldn’t catch her. Even damaged, she was a fast ship. Modified propulsion engines would barley be good enough to keep her on the scope for a few days. 

But that was more time than I had.

Reaching up I tapped the side of my helmet and the HUD flickered to purple life. A female voice immediately started screaming into my ear. “-et you do that Skylander! Even if-- What happened to the ship, Chrome?” 

I grinned. “They got away.”

“What?” said the voice. My HUD flickered again and a translucent purple pony stood in front of me, just out of hoof’s reach. “You actually did it? Then why are we out here?”

“Stupid mistake. One of the emitters must’ve been damaged when they hit us. The shield didn’t cover us and we slid right off when they went to warp.” 

“Oh.” she said, the pony on my HUD folding her ears back and looking away. “So, they don’t even know we’re back here.”

“Probably not.” I said. I resisted the urge to scratch at my left leg, reminding myself that if I couldn’t feel a micro meteoroid through it I wouldn’t feel a scratch. “Doesn’t really matter through. They don’t have the time to backtrack with Kirin on their tail.”

“Are you okay?”

I glanced down at my left leg. “Physically, sure. For now. I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that infection though.”

“I’ll try tuning the air scrubbers. I think I can get a few more hours out of them. If we’re lucky the Ray can shake the Kirin and make their way back.”

I shook my head, “Don’t bother. The drive’s operating at less than fifty percent power. They’ll never get here in time.”

“Then I’ll turn on the beacon. Somepony will see it and-”

“Spark.”

“If we reduce your temperature and oxygen we can try to approximate hypersleep for-”

“That’s not why I brought you back online.”

“There’s still a chance for rescue. You can’t give up!”

“Spark,” I said, “You know the odds. No one’s coming”

“But,” she said, her image looking side to side before focusing on my face, “if I can’t help with life support, and there’s no one coming, then- then how can I be of service?”

I stared past her into the void, out at where the ship’s lights had disappeared. My HUD zoomed in on the area. In it I could see the remains of a supernova spreading out into the cosmos thousands of years in the past. “Spark,” I said, reaching out to touch the nothingness around me, “have you ever thought about how small we really are?”