“Good morning Twilight!” Screeched a high pitched and unexpected voice. “This is your personalised wake up call from your one and only communications officer, Pinkie Pie!”
Twilight lifted her head up from her pillow, leveled a glare that could slay stars at the image of Pinkie that now adorned her wall and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “die in a fire.”
“Oh you silly-willy!” Pinkie giggled. “Why would I want to dye a fire? Fire is already a pretty colour, all those reds and oranges and other fiery colours! That’s what you sciency-wiency ponies do!" Pinkie gasped. "Unless you're saying you want me to help with your sciency stuff, then I would love to! We can be science buddies! Doctor Starburst—that was out last science officer—never let me help, and even tried to throw me out, but I'm sure that was just a misunderstanding, after all, I was helping him—I broke five test tubes, just like he did, and then he started going all red with excitement, like a balloon, even though his fur was a dark blue, which made him look really funny like a clown and so I told him he looked like a clown and then he tried to get me a cupcake from the cafeteria but I think he got confused because he kept trying to force me into the airlock and I was like nuh-huh, the cupcakes are that way, I can smell them, and he said that there were better cupcakes in space, but I couldn't smell them because you can't smell anything in space but we're always in space and I can smell just fine—"
"Pinkie, why?" Twilight buried her head in her pillow and groaned as the stream of words battered against her head, hung over and sore from last night's slightly-illicit alcohol.
"Because I have a cute little nosey-woesy! Hey, Twilight, did you know you can cutify almost any word! Pickle barrel lickle warrel! Twily-wily! Bungalow wungalow!"
"No, Pinkie," Twilight said, lifting her head up once more. "Why are you giving me a wake up call?"
"Oh, silly, thats simple—I give everyone a wake up call! It's one of my duties as communications officer!"
"Wait, you give a wake up call to everyone on the ship? How? There's nearly two hundred of us!"
"I pre-record all my wake up calls in advance! Just like this one!"
Twilight looked up with a start. "Wait—this is pre-recorded? As in not live?"
Pinkie practically vibrated with excitement. "Yeperenye! I haven't even met you yet! Isn't that cool? Anyway, got to go! I need to get started on the rest of your wake up calls! See you later!"
The video cut off, leaving a very confused pony behind. Twilight looked over to Spike to see his reaction to the pink pony's madness, but he had apparently slept through the whole thing.
Twilight groaned and slammed her head into the pillow again. A second later, her carefully set alarm went off, it's shrill cries sounding weak and pathetic next to Pinkie's wake up call.
---
"Howdy, Twilight," Applejack's voice called out. "You okay Sugarcube? You look like you're about to murder somepony."
"I am about to murder somepony," Twilight growled, stomping down the corridor, before adding a half hearted, "Commander."
"This wouldn't be about Pinkie's wake up call, would it?" Applejack asked, a wary look in her eyes. "Because she meant no harm by it, and it did get you out of bed in time for your shift. Speaking of which, you’d better head on up to the bridge.”
“Yeah, Twilight,” Spike said from her back. “You don’t want be tardy on your first day, now, do you?”
Twilight paused mid step, her eyes growing wide. She spun on the spot, preparing a teleport. It was only at the last moment that she remembered that the only teleport pad on the ship was not only on the agrideck, but was also broken. Teleporting under these conditions would be fatal. Instead she ended the spell with a shake of her head and ran off as fast as she could, knocking Spike to the floor and leaving Applejack wondering where the purple blur came from.
“What... What in tarnation was that about?” Applejack asked.
Spike just smiled ruefully and followed in Twilight’s wake.
---
Twilight burst onto the bridge, panting heavily and drawing the eye of everypony on the bridge.
"Are you alright, dear?" Rarity asked.
"I'm not tardy!" Twilight all but screeched into her face.
"Uh, no, you're not," Rarity said, stepping back and sharing a concerned look with the rest of the bridge crew. "You're actually five minutes early. Which is more than can be said for our captain."
Twilight paused and looked around the room, to see everypony except Rainbow Dash and Applejack present and staring at her. The large view screen at the front was currently showing an ever shrinking image of Canterlot Space Station. Twilight blushed and made her way to her desk, where she found a cupcake and a note.
Twilight looked up again and saw Pinkie give an over exaggerated wink in her direction.
She read the note, which was printed on pink paper. You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!
Twilight felt a small giggle bubble to her lips, but she fought it down, not wanting to look like a bigger fool. That, and she still hadn’t completely forgiven Pinkie for the wake up call yet. She quickly wolfed down the cupcake, however, and grinned in delight.
It was even better than palace food.
A few minutes later Applejack strolled in, Pinkie giving a belated "XO on deck. Chief Rarity is relieved."
Rarity quickly departed, grateful to be relieved, along with Big Macintosh, leaving Twilight, Applejack and Pinkie on the bridge.
"Morning, Officers," Applejack said to the pair.
"Morning, Commander," Twilight and Pinkie said in unison.
"And call me Pinkie," Pinkie added.
Applejack rolled her eyes and gave a hearty laugh, before turning to Twilight. "I sent Spike down to help in the labs, that okay?”
“Oh, um, thanks, Commander,” Twilight replied, blushing. “I’d almost forgotten about him.”
“You alright Sugarcube? You seem a mite distracted."
"Um... Yes, Commander, I'm fine," Twilight said. "Just a little overwhelmed I guess. My first day's work on a spaceship, and it's as an Officer. It’s kind of a big thing."
"Don't worry, you’ll be fine. Derpy should be waking up soon, and she's been doing this long enough that she can probably fly the ship herself. You do know your way around your station, right?"
"Oh, yes, that's fine. I've had extensive practice back on Canterlot—wow, that sounds weird to say."
Applejack chuckled. "I bet it does."
Twilight frowned and looked back at her monitor, tapping a few buttons. "Never used one this out of date before. I mean really, Stable '73? You can't even get tech support for this OS any more."
"Yeah, we've needed a systems upgrade for a while now, but the science division never got round to it, they’re all too busy on account of being short staffed. Heck, the entire ship is short staffed. We don’t even have a proper helmspony, and our bridge crew is half the size it should be. We rely on Derpy a lot to make up the slack."
Twilight sighed. “It’s the same everywhere, too many ships, not enough trained ponies. I’ll look into the OS’s later.”
“Don’t forget the Teleportarium,” Applejack added.
“Oh, and Carrot Top wants to speak to you later about the agrilabs!” Pinkie said. “And Doctor Whooves wants your opinion on some AI thingy he’s working on, and Lyra needs help setting up the geological surveying equipment, Bon Bon has some experiments she wants you to look over and Trixie has already issued twenty one requests for your resignation.”
Twilight groaned and faceplanted her station. “Please tell me this is just hazing.”
“Nah,” Applejack said with a smile. “The hazing comes later. And Lieutenant, deny all of those resignation requests, would you? And let Trixie know I want a word with her. Again.”
“Okey-dokey! And call me Pinkie!”
The doors slid open as a rather disheveled rainbow maned pegasus wandered in.
“Captain on deck, XO Applejack standing down,” Pinkie said
“Morning Captain,” Applejack said, a little too cheerfully. Rainbow only grunted in response, before slouching in her chair. Applejack sat in the commander's chair just to her left, leaving Pinkie at the communications desk at the front and Twilight at the science desk at the back.
“How long until we’re at the jump point?” Dash asked after a moment. Applejack shot a look at Twilight, who quickly scrambled at her monitor.
“About half an hour,” she replied. "Since we're using the gallop engine, we can jump within the gravity well of Equis-2, but there are a few satilites we have to move past first."
“Good, start calculating the jump coordinates. Is Derpy awake yet?”
“Just about, Captain,” the grey pegasus replied, her holographic body materializing on the deck. “Hey, muffin buddy! You had any good muffins lately?”
“Uh... No, I haven’t,” Twilight said nervously.
“Well, you should, muffins are great!”
“Derpy, can it would you? I have a killer headache,” Dash snapped, silencing the AI.
“And this is why we don’t drink, Captain,” Applejack admonished. Rainbow weakly waved a hoof in response.
The bridge fell to silence at that, Twilight busy with her jump calculations. After a while, Derpy joined her and looked over her shoulder.
“You forgot to carry the two,” she said.
Twilight looked in confusion. “What two?”
“That one there,” Derpy said, pointing, her hoof passing through Twilight.
“Derpy, that’s the time.”
“Oh yeah. My bad.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Please tell me—”
“Still not the hazing,” Applejack cut in with a smile, causing Rainbow to snort with laughter.
Twilight groaned and faceplanted the desk once more, to the chuckles of the rest of the bridge crew.
A beeping from her console caused her to look up. “Captain, we’ve reached the jump point.”
“Good,” Dash replied. “Are the calculations done?”
“Done, checked, double checked and triple checked.”
“Uh, you know you only had to check them the once, right?” Applejack said.
“Can’t be too careful with jumps,” Twilight replied. “Besides, maths is fun.”
Dash snorted and muttered something that sounded like “eggheads” under her breath.
“Prepare to jump,” Applejack commanded.
A moment later, Pinkie voice came over the intercom. “All hooves, prepare to jump.”
“Derpy, you got the calculations?” Dash asked. The AI nodded once in response. “Then jump.”
The entire ship lurched forwards as they quickly accelerated well beyond the speed of light, causing Twilight to stagger in place, before coming to what felt like a stop. The ship vibrated gently, almost as if something was tugging it along, pulling it onwards into the deepness of space.
“You alright, Twilight?” Applejack asked.
“Just... just a little queasy,” Twilight replied, looking a bit green. “I’d heard stories, but I’ve never experienced a jump before. And the amount of magic streaming from the engines...” Twilight turned her head and stared at one wall, towards where the engines were placed. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, almost reverently.
Rainbow glanced at Applejack, before speaking. “I’m assuming that’s an unicorn thing?”
“Hm?” Twilight said, still distracted. “Oh, yes Captain. I can see the magic flows from the engines. There... there are no words to describe it.”
“Well, don’t let it distract you,” Applejack said. “We still have a job to do. Speaking of which, how are the engines faring?”
“Yes Commander. The engines are at... 120% efficiency? That’s not right... Oh, I see, it’s still calibrated for the old ‘Trot’ engines, not the new ‘Gallop’ engines.”
“You’re saying our new engines are 20% better than our old ones?” Rainbow Dash said. “Awesome.”
“Uh, not exactly, Captain. I still need to recalibrate the sensors—”
Rainbow waved a dismissive hoof. “Yeah, yeah, cool. So how long until we get to... Where are we going again?”
“Alpha-418-X,” Twilight replied. “An unexplored star system 10 light years to the ascend-south-east of Equis-2. Estimated time of arrival is six weeks. Oh, wait, that’s the old engines again. Why hasn’t anypony updated this yet? You’d think that on a shakedown cruise of a brand new engine model they’d calibrate the systems. Corrected time of arrival is... ugh, this is so slow... four weeks.”
“Four weeks in jump space? That’s not too bad,” Dash said. “Good, bridge crew dismissed, Derpy and I can handle the rest of the shift.”
“I’m going to check on engineering,” Applejack said, heading for the door. “Mainly to see why Twilight’s computer isn’t synced to the new engines yet.”
“I suppose I’d better go see what Carrot Top wants,” Twilight said, reaching the door first. It slid open, she stepped outside and a bucket of water dropped on her head.
“Now there’s the hazing,” Rainbow laughed.