//------------------------------// // 03: A Pony in Motion Stays in Motion // Story: Eclipse Phase: Dreamcatcher // by Pyrite //------------------------------// Eclipse Phase: Dreamcatcher By Pyrite. 03: A Pony in Motion Stays in Motion In the vast emptiness of interplanetary space, speed seemed to lose its edge. No matter how fast a pony hurtled through the void, once she get out there, she may as well just be floating along. Even the fastest ships took days to get from The Moon to Mars, and weeks or months to get anywhere in the outer system. With no wind to blow through your mane and no landscape to blur past beneath you, it was too easy to forget that you were probably going many times the speed of sound. The exhilaration just wasn't there. That was why Rainbow Dash loved comet racing. Sure, a more practical pony might look at the fuel expenditure and risks involved in setting the finish line of an impromptu race on a mountain of ice and trailing gasses. Dash had a word for that kind of pony: Boring. After all, what was the point of custom designing one of the most efficient, most maneuverable, most versatile shuttles in the system if you didn't push it to its limits every chance you got? She felt a tingle in her pinfeathers as the prow of the Firefly made contact with the trailing edge of the comet's long, beautiful tail, as the magic in her body responded to the alien wind battering the hull. It made her feel vibrant and alive. If growing up meant learning to compromise and giving up this kind of feeling, Dash was glad she never had. It was what she lived for. This far out of the inner system, a comet with a tail this long was an oddity. Her muse had explained that this meant it had a particularly large number of volatiles, which make it particularly valuable to any habitat. Dash was just glad that it made the race more interesting. It was too easy for a course through empty space to look like an equation, and she hated math. Her opponent's shuttle was still too far off to see, but that didn't stop her from glancing in the direction the Firefly's telemetry pointed her. They had each noticed the other angling toward the prize as it first loomed over the trail of asteroids following Saturn, and it quickly became clear that neither of them was ready to give up the chase just because of a little competition. The distance through open space, and the lack of friction or gravity, lent and odd dynamic to a race. A shuttle could keep accelerating as long as it had fuel to burn, but it would need just as much fuel to decelerate again after, or risk slamming straight into its destination with enough force to leave a crater. They'd been anonymous to each other throughout that long dance, each daring to use a little more thrust, put on a little more unnecessary speed, wait a little longer before decelerating swoop in behind the comet. Each tested the other, figuring out what they were willing to risk. She'd developed a short list of suspects just from the way they handled the craft, but really, it could have been anypony out there. Whoever they were, they were good. As they both swung around from their intercept course to chase the comet directly the other shuttle had actually slipped into the lead through a hard, precisely timed rocket burn. It had also finally slipped into sight ahead of her, and well within the dozen or so kilometers that most mesh transponders could reach out to. Now, finally, she could pull up the mesh profile it was broadcasting and see who she was dealing with. The shuttle was called 'Dagger', and the name certainly fit. It was clearly designed to put as much raw rocket thrust behind it as possible, and had the frame to absorb the pressure, focusing it into a long, pointed prow. A pair of spars extended from its aft, just in front of the main drive, each holding a set of small maneuvering thrusters that allowed it to make course corrections quickly. The single massive thruster dwarfed any one of Dash's four rockets, ejecting a visible stream of plasma and radiation as it pushed further forward. [Hey Caliban!] she called over. [Haven't seen you in a while, old goat. Maybe that's just because you always end up behind me.] She snickered at her own joke, while video from his cockpit popped up in her view. Caliban had taken on a roguish pirate look, a black eyepatch standing out over his white fur, and his beard trimmed in a swarthy cut. He bleated a challenge to her in goat, which her muse quickly translated for her. [We'll see about that, Rainbow Dash.] With a thought she turned on her own camera, just so he could see her apple-eating grin. "I guess we will. It looks like you took the Saber back to the drawing board. Think this one stands a chance?" He glared defiantly back at her, bleating back his response. [I have more than a chance. The new frame cuts mass and withstands more thrust than those flimsy pods of yours ever could. Just don't disappoint me by holding back, it would ruin my data.] She rolled her eyes. Caliban tried to maintain that pirate image, but he was a rocket nerd at heart. Among some circles, designing the shuttle that could take her on in a fair race was a holy grail. "I thought you knew me better than that, C! I never hold back!" Rainbow Dash pulled her rear legs and wings in tighter, and as the smart harness she was strapped into adjusted itself to her new position, the Firefly mimicked her movement perfectly, each rocket aligning on its own articulated pod to emulate her position. It was a unique setup of hers; she'd always been more comfortable maneuvering her own body than using some esoteric interface. She dialed the thrust up as far as the rockets could handle, and the Firefly pressed forward hard. It was obvious Caliban was giving it everything he had to keep his lead, but meter by meter she proved that it just wasn't enough. The kilometers between them disappeared, and for a moment they found themselves side by side as they flew into the thick of the comet's tail. Dash's focus was a laser beam, spotting ice and detritus in her path and evading each piece with a tight maneuver. A slight pressure on her hooves and wingtips kept her aware of the thrust from each rocket pod behind her, and the starry black void pitched and spun across her view with every twitch of her legs. She charged ahead, waiting for the last possible moment to cut the feed to her rockets. Her focus drifted to a view from the Firefly's rear cameras. The Dagger was following close behind her, twisting into a series of nimble corkscrews, managing to keep pace just a few hundred meters back. If this was the saber I'd be long past him now. He really does stand a chance she thought, her eyes wild with the scent of a real challenge. This is going to be so awesome! [Eyes on the prize, kid. Don't let him distract you,] her Muse's phlegmatic voice echoed inside her head. She pulled her focus back front to find herself staring down a huge slab of ice, filling her view as it fell back toward her. The harness squealed as she snapped her rear hooves and wings toward the floor. The Firefly danced back out of the comet's tail, emissions from her rockets turning the edge of the ice wall into vapor as she passed over it. A moment to catch her breath, and through the haze of high-speed mist she saw the Dagger still in there, slamming prow-first right through, shattering the obstacle into a dozen pieces around it. When the shuttle emerged, it was careening badly off-course, but the bold move had put Caliban back in the lead. He took his shuttle through a wobbling, wide spin, and had to adjust his course on the fly for the fact that two of his spars had been sheared off, but managed to regain control of his course, cutting his engines to let momentum carry him to victory. Dash was getting further away from the comet, and only had a moment to respond, but she hadn't become a national icon by hesitating. She'd done it by stepping up to the impossible and showing it what she was made of. She snapped the rocket pods behind her in a maneuver sure to shorten the lifespan of the Firefly's joints, and pushed as far as her shuttle would let her, straining the ability of the pods to contain the inferno. Diving back into the swirling gasses of the tail, she came up hard behind Caliban as he finally deployed his forward thrusters to bring his speed back into line with the Comet's. She followed his example, cutting thrust for just long enough to bring her rockets between her and the comet, firing all four in a desperate race against her own inertia. As they both passed the last chance to pull out, time seemed to stretch. Everything was on the table. They were each slowing down as much as they could, and if anything went wrong, one or both of them could easily find themselves decorating a new crater in the ball of ice. A hundred meters away, Dash tapped her hooves together, and a pair of long manipulator arms snapped down from Firefly's lower hull, quickly orienting themselves between her and the comet. At the last moment she cut her rockets and braced herself for impact. The arm joints yielded as they made contact, but not quickly enough to prevent the entire shuttle from shuddering with the blow. The smart harness kept Dash from slamming into anything, but even she felt the hard Gs from the sudden stop. But at the end of it, her hull was pressed into the comet, and her shuttle was intact. She'd barely come to accept it when a second impact slammed through the mountain she'd latched onto, as the Dagger took a very close second place, embedding it prow deep in the celestial object. A moment of silent concentration passed as Dash angled her rockets and fired a few bursts to alter the comet's slow spin, reorienting them around to the opposite side from Saturn and the boulders dragged behind it. Caliban started his thruster again in a slow burn, gradually diverting the comet's path into the field of asteroids stretching out beneath them, visible only as spots of shadow against the backdrop of distant stars. Rainbow was still on top of a mountain of adrenaline, her excitement leaking into her voice. "Good race, dude! That's the closest anyone's been in a while, at least if you don't count that unicorn with the antimatter rocket." Caliban looked disappointed, but forced himself into a daring smirk. [I underestimated how crazy you were willing to be, Dash. I thought I was insane for blowing through that debris, but trying to catch yourself like that...] He shook his head. Dash grinned sheepishly in return, changing the subject. "So, we going by the usual deal for this sort of thing?" [The victor chooses who gets the spoils? I suppose. What habitat did you have in mind?] She took a moment to think it over, but it didn't take long. "Paradise Gardens always needs water, and I'm sure they could use the other stuff in there too. Let's bring it there." The goat let out a braying chuckle. [And the fact that you practically built the Gardens has nothing to do with it, I'm sure.] He held up a placating cloven hoof before she could protest. [Ah, but it's your choice, and I'm sure the uplifts have many needs.] The two settled in for the long journey back, where they would have to move the rock into place as efficiently as possible to make up for their earlier excess. Pulling it out of its millennia-old Celestial orbit and slowing it down in range of the Habitat would take most of their remaining fuel as it was. Dash left her muse to do the complex and tedious course-corrections over the day it would take to reel the comet in, and pulled herself free of the harness. She took a moment to stretch a few cramps out of her wings, and took to the air. The cabin was a little cramped by her standards, but that didn't really pose a problem to her hovering about. The interior of the Firefly was a spartan affair, just how she preferred it. No clutter to get in her way, or to throw itself across the cabin when she made a hairpin turn or three. Without passengers or cargo to fill it, the shell was pretty empty. There was just the harness, a few places across the floor for ponies to strap themselves down, and some display screens. Just about the only exception was the corner Tank, her pet tortoise and companion, had nestled himself into. His legs stuck out of the shell, pressing the grip pads on his tortoise claws against the floor. He'd apparently pulled his head in when the flying had gotten serious, and just held on. She flapped over to him and tapped softly on the top of his shell with her hoof. "Hey, you OK in there?" The venerable tortoise hesitantly poked his face out to see his pony smiling down at him, then reached his long neck fully out of his armored shell to press his forehead against the top of her muzzle, letting out a croaking murr. Dash giggled girlishly, wrapping a hoof around him and pulling into her chest in a gentle hug. "Don't worry buddy, we're both still here. I got your back, you got mine," she repeated their old oath. Tank wrapped his neck around hers, and for a long moment, they just held each other, surrounded by the distant roar of the rockets moving the sky outside. I am getting old, she thought to herself. I never used to get this mushy. She pulled him in just a little tighter, then let him go. Looking up, she found herself before the one wall she'd bothered to decorate, her own personal wall of fame. There were a lot of awards for contests and races, which she had stuck to the wall in her own haphazard way. Most of her actual trophies were probably melted into the ground back in Equestria, but she didn't really need a physical object to remind her how awesome she'd been. And then there were the newspaper clippings, of all the times she'd caught everypony's attention. Most of the highest points, and some of the scariest moments in her life, all laid out in a rough timeline down the curve of the wall. A headline of The Cloudsdale Chronicle read ‘This Year’s Best Young Flier Performs Legendary Sonic Rainboom.’ Below it was a distant photograph of the chromatic shockwave and the rainbow contrail leading toward her falling friends. She'd agonized over that trick for weeks, but she'd only been able to pull it off when her friend and her idols were in danger, and it was suddenly the last thing on her mind. Another headline, from The Canterlot Times, covered the award ceremony after her and her friends’ first encounter with Discord: ‘Princess Celestia Recognizes Six Ponies and Baby Dragon for Service to Equestria During Day of Chaos.’ Celestia had never been clear to the public exactly what their roles had been in the world-shaking event, likely concluding that their lives would become too complicated if everypony knew they had effectively saved the world. Twice. Another article, from the sports page of the Chronicle a few years later, read ‘Wonderbolts Accept Youngest Member: Rainbow Dash!’ with a picture of her, smiling a nervous but proud smile in her new uniform, standing between Spitfire being casually cool and Soarin grinning like an idiot with a leg around her shoulders. She rolled her eyes at herself. I wish I could forget being that much of a rookie. Just under that was a collage of photographs of all her greatest stunts and routines, both solo and in groups. Some were thin screens displaying a few seconds of moving video, the stunts they depicted not as impressive without full motion. There were also photos of her with other Wonderbolts, the new friends she’d made, the times she’d had with them. At the center of the collage was a poster of her, more years down the line, in her captains uniform, her smile now brazen and self-assured. In those days, she had been invincible. She grew tense as her eyes kept moving right, but once she'd started this flight down memory lane, she couldn't stop galloping forward. The Manehatten Times front page. “Rainbow Dash, first pegasus on the moon.” Below was a still picture of her in a primitive, clunky space suit, a transparent dome over her head, trotting merrily over a pocked, white rocky surface. A blue and green orb, the planet Earth, hung in the black sky between the stars like the moon’s own moon. That picture, that little blue marble hanging against the black, had changed the way ponies saw themselves, how they saw Equestria. Below that, a caption was formed out of a pair of quotes: 'Hey, now I know what Luna must have felt like all that time.'—Captain Dash 'No. She does not.'—Princess Luna. She wished she could stop right there, but Dash’s eyes betrayed her, drifting further right. ‘Space Shuttle Galloway Crashes on Re-entry’ with a sub-line ‘Captain Dash in Critical Condition, Unlikely to Recover.’ This picture showed a long crater from above, tearing a rent through the Everfree Forest, the landing pod scattered to pieces as it had rolled to its final resting place. She kept that one there to remind her of two things: that she wasn’t invincible, and that she’d be nowhere without her friends. Specifically, in this case, Twilight Sparkle, the unicorn who had been with her through her darkest moments. Moments that were never far enough away anymore. Her eyes slipped closed, and she was in that darkness again. Only not even darkness, just... nothing. She hadn't known how long it had been. She hadn't known where she was or what was happening. She couldn't feel her legs or her wings. She was back there again. Coiling in on herself, in her own thoughts, running and running her mind without getting anywhere. She couldn't sleep. There was nopony to talk to and nothing to do. She couldn't even yell, or cry, or kick at the walls. It was just her own mind, and nothing else. [Rainbow Dash?] She wanted to believe that the voice was real, but it hadn't been the first time she'd heard voices. She didn't want to scream out again only to be bowled over in a wave of disappointment. She was sure it would fade away like the others had. [Rainbow, please, can you hear me? Please tell me you're in there.] Now it was stronger, and it didn't feel the same as before. She dared to hope, and tried to move her muzzle, lips, and tongue to respond. But she couldn't find them. [I'm getting something, can you try to speak? The interface should be drawing on patterns running through what would be the speech center of your brain, so just try to concentrate on saying something.] Dash had never been so happy to hear something she couldn't understand. This had to be real, it had to be. If she'd imagined Twilight saying something like that, it wouldn't have made that kind of sense. [Twilight, is that really you?] she voiced in her head. Her own voice seemed to reverberate outside of her, as if coming from somewhere just behind her ears. [Oh thank Celestia, you're still in there! It worked!] Twilight's voice was a desperate sort of happy. Dash imagined her jumping up and clapping her hooves together in excitement, but didn't hear it. [What worked? What happened? Where am I?] Dash barely kept herself from screaming the words. She wanted to be happy too, but everything still felt wrong. The voice didn't come back for a moment too long, and then she started panicking, yelling into the darkness that seemed like it would consume her words before anypony could hear them. [Twilight, I don't know how long I've been here and I don't know if you're really there, but please talk to me! Don't go away!] [I-I'm here. I'm just so, so sorry.] [Sorry for what? Stop scaring me and just tell me!] [There was an accident with the landing module. The chutes didn't deploy right.] [Am I hurt bad? I mean, I've been awake all this time, but I can't really feel anything.] Another silence. Damnit, didn't Twilight understand how much she needed her to be real right now? [Come on Twilight! I've been in crashes before, I can take it. I knew the risks. Remember that time I broke my wing, or that time I caught fire doing the new Buccaneer Blaze?] [This is a little worse than that, Rainbow.] She sounded a little exasperated. [I figured it was. This is really weird. But I'm still alive, aren't I?] The voice that came back was almost a whisper. [Not... not exactly.] She paused for a moment, but continued before Dash ran out of patience with her, with a bit more strength folded into her voice. [I don't know how to say this-] [Then just say it!] Dash screamed in her head. She was frustrated, and afraid, and wanted a solid idea of what had happened so she could stop imagining what could have happened. [You didn't make it, Rainbow. You died after the crash. About a week ago.] [What?] She was dumbstruck. That didn't make any sense. [How are we talking if I... died?] [I'm still not entirely certain. I was losing you. I knew I was losing you and nothing was working. Then I... I built something. I guess it's a computer, technically. I've still been trying to figure out how it works, exactly, and I don't know what to call it yet, but when I was done I had you in there! We couldn't save your body, but you're still here, Rainbow!] [Wait, but... my body?! What am I going to do without a body?] [I've had some ideas about that, but I haven't had any time since it happened. We've been working full time making sure we wouldn't lose you and hacking in this communication link. I must have used some of the uplift research at some point, it's all kind of a blur now, but it works and now we should be ready to move on to phase 2. I need to go talk to some of the genetic engineering ponies...] Rainbow's panic spiked again. [No! Don't go! Please don't go!] She tried to collect herself after the outburst. She wished she was breathing harder, it would have given her something to focus on. She still felt shaky when she continued. [Can you just... stay here? You're the only thing that's real in here. I know you've gotta do important stuff but I don't know if I can handle this.] [Of... of course. I didn't realize you must have been alone in here this entire time. I called the others down again, they should be here soon, but I'll... I'll stay here with you, at least that long.] Dash tore her eyes away rather than go on down the line. Remembering the crash, and waking up in that computer of Twilight's had stabbed a knife of melancholy into her gut, and she hated that feeling. Instead, she took a few steps to the side, examining herself in the mirror-finish of one of the display screens. The body that had been built for her, Transequinity's first 'morph', was awesome. It was the product of a crash project put together by Equestria’s finest minds in physiology and gene-engineering. She only needed 5 hours of sleep a day, and burned food into energy almost instantly. Her lungs could handle sudden pressure drops, and she could survive in vacuum as long as she had an air supply. Her eyes were as sharp as an eagle’s, and the muscles in her legs and wings were re-designed to be stronger than they had ever been. She could pull over 20 wingpower, and if she ever actually lost a wing somehow, it would regrow. And it still looked mostly like the old her, if a bit thicker in the limbs and sleeker in the barrel, finished with her trademark naturally-growing rainbow tail and mane. She smirked, and thought of her old nickname. Her body had been the prototype for a lot of the enhancements that nearly everypony used now. In some ways, that crash had changed the world more than anything else she’d done. It had almost been worth spending months in that data-box. Almost. [Great performance out there, kid! Good technique, but next time don’t be so eager you forget to look where you’re goin’.] It was the voice of her muse again. He rose out of the corner of the mirror as a baggy eyed old gray stallion with a cap on his head and a whistle around his neck. His sudden appearance didn’t startle her at all. Dash rolled her eyes, but winced a little at the memory of her mistake. [Coach, there's got to be some kinda limit to how long you get to call me 'kid'.] [Sure there is. The limit is when you stop acting like one, and just judgin' by the last fifty years, I don't honestly thing that's liable to happen anytime soon.] The training AI had been her constant companion since the technology had first been developed, when the Wonderbolts were the first to use AI muses to keep ponies up with their intensive training regimen. Despite her talent, Dash had needed significant work to force her to actually reach out for her potential, rather than lazing away and coasting by on her considerable ability. She’d hated him for the first year of the program, but by the second she didn’t know how she had ever gotten by without him always there to lend an encouraging word when she needed one, or to challenge her to push just a little harder than the minimum she could get away with. And it was only natural that she took him along with her when she was selected to pioneer Equestria’s space program. [Now I didn’t want to interrupt that star performance, but you’ve got a message from Pinkie Pie waiting for you.] He gestured with a hoof, producing a tiny window-shaped card, with Pinkie's face visible inside it. [Go ahead and put her on.] The stallion tossed the card up in front of her, and it expanded fill the display. Then, with a moment of glitching around the edges, it expanded again, curving around and filling Rainbow’s view completely. “Dashie!” The pink pony was suddenly in front of her, reaching out of the window, arms thrown wide as if waiting for a hug. Rainbow Dash groaned. “Jeeze, Pinkie! What if I’d opened this mid flight just a bit ago? I could’ve run straight into that comet.” She was annoyed enough by Pinkie’s compulsive hacking to forget momentarily that she was probably talking to a recording. “Oh silly, I knew that grumpy old Coach of yours wouldn’t open a message from me if it’d put you in danger. He knows how distracting I can be,” Pinkie replied, apparently also forgetting that she was a recording. Dash and Coach shared a look while Dash shrank Pinkie’s screen to a more reasonable size with a thought. Then she did a double take back to Pinkie, who was now wearing an insufferably smug look. “Wait a second… Pinkie, are you nearby with a fork or something?” “Nope!” Pinkie answered, bouncing with her eyes closed in joy. “I just pause and wait for you to answer, and then I respond to what you’re going to say! It’s easy, especially with you. You’re so predictable.” Dash’s eyes went wide, then she closed them and shook her head. Only Pinkie… Pinkie Pie’s face suddenly became serious. Or perhaps it was a look mocking the look a serious pony might have. It was hard to tell. “Now Rainbow Dash, I’m calling because I need some help. Some good friends of mine need a fast shuttle to the other side of Saturn, and I might have told them that I happen to know the owner of the fastest shuttle in the system. Since that’s you, it would be really great if you came by and picked them up!" "Besides, meeting new ponies and flying off to new places has got to be better than pushing rocks around. Not that there’s anything wrong with pushing rocks around, but it’s not very exciting,” Pinkie rambled, leaning out the virtual window and waving a hoof for emphasis. Dash smirked, remembering the heart-pounding race she’d just participated in for the honor of pushing this rock around. “You’d be surprised." Pinkie scowled. “Well, maybe it’s exciting when you do it, Dashie. You make everything exciting.” Rainbow Dash wasn’t done being weirded out by Pinkie holding a conversation with her over recorded media, but decided to push past it. After all, she’d seen weirder from her pink friend, and predicting the future was nothing new, though usually it wasn’t this specific. No one really understood how an Async like her worked anyway. She thought about Pinkie Pie’s offer, her eyes narrowing. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, Pinks. What do these ponies need a fast shuttle so bad for, anyway?” Pinkie momentarily got a far-off look in her eyes. “To chase their dreams, Rainbow Dash. You should know something about that.” Dash blinked, then smirked. “Say no more, Pinks, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” “Great! I knew I could count on you, Dashie! Or at least I hope I can, or this is going to sound really silly.” Pinkie looked thoughtful for a moment, then was beaming again. “Surprise is docked at The Horseshoe. I’d invite you to the party, but I think my friends will want to get going right away, so you’ll have to settle for some cookies I just baked. See you soon!” [So…] Coach cut in as the window closed in on itself. [Want me to send a recording of your responses back to her?] Rainbow put a hoof to her chin, thinking it over for a moment, then shook her head. [Nah. If she knows me so well she can pull what she just did, then she knows I’m coming. And if she doesn’t, then she deserves to sweat a little.]