• Published 23rd Mar 2012
  • 9,017 Views, 696 Comments

The Parliament of Dreams - Wheller



In a world where no one gets cutie marks anymore, what happens when a young unicorn gets one?

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Chapter 30

Chapter 30

It was safe to say that Ana Kelso had never been more nervous in her entire life then at this point. Here she was, about to break into FutureTec’s Whitetail Industrial Complex, and steal proprietary information on the Discovery One space craft. If she was caught, she’d go to gaol for a very, very long time. Industrial Espionage was something that the courts system took very seriously, particularly when it was against FutureTec.

FutureTec had been integral to the founding of the Equestrian Republic, without it, Twilight Sparkle’s government would have been able to get the economic centres of Manehattan and Fillydelphia under Republican control. FutureTec was the driving force behind Equestria’s industrialisation, and it was still the most powerful corporate entity in all of Equestria, and here she was, pulling up to the gate that closed off the Whitetail Industrial Complex from the rest of Ponyville. She rolled down the window of her car and waved the MIP her client had given her over the access panel. Kelso held her breath, as she waited for the scanner to read.

It blinked green, and the gate began to roll to the side to allow her entry. Kelso let out a sigh of relief as she headed inside and found a parking space far away from everyone else. She wasn’t about to take someone’s parking space and blow her cover.

She found a space and headed up towards the door. Opening up the door to the lobby, she could feel a blast of cold air from the air conditioning blow across her face, causing her to shudder slightly as she stepped inside. It may have been the end of august, but seriously, did they need to keep it below freezing? Kelso thought to herself stepped inside and continued to shudder.

‘I know? It’s freezing right?’ said a mare’s voice from the eastern side of the room. Kelso looked over to discover that an earth pony mare was sitting behind a receptionist’s desk, typing away at a holographic keyboard.

‘Heh, no kidding’, Kelso said with a smirk. ‘Are they going to turn the temperature up?’

‘Ha! I wish! This place is an icebox all day long’, the receptionist said with a small laugh.

‘You know, you have to wonder how much money the company pays for electricity for the air conditioning’, Kelso said, wondering aloud to herself.

‘Don’t know, but considering that most of the complex is underground, it’s probably not as much as we think’, the receptionist said with a shrug.

Kelso merely offered her a shrug back. ‘We’ll I’ll let you get back to work’, she said, offering her a small smile and a polite nod.

The receptionist smiled back at her and waved her off with a hoof. ‘Have a nice shift!’ she said, before going back to her typing.

‘Oh, I will’, Kelso said, considering she would be spending the day stealing some of FutureTec’s secrets. ‘Same to you’, she said. Finished with the conversation, she headed over to the lift and swiped her MIP over the security panel. The lift control beeped and allowed her entry.

Her contact was certainly very well connected! Kelso stepped inside the lift and headed down deeper into the complex. She pulled up a map of the complex on her MIP and scrolled through it looking for exactly where she needed to go, it was to the bottom floor, the main server housing. She waited a few moments until the lift reached the bottom floor. The door opened up and Kelso took a step out.

...

Sparky watched out the window from her buckled seat in the zero gravity section of the Leninov as the ship moved in to position to dock with Discovery One. The ship was much longer then the Leninov by at least a hundred metres. Towards the aft of the ship were large wing like structures that held the ship’s engines. The interior of these held radiators to radiate heat away from the centre axis of the ship. Also mounted on the aft end of the ship was a large parabolic antenna for communications back to ground control at FutureTec’s Whitetail Industrial Complex. A few dozen metres fore of the antenna was a large ring that spun around the axis of the ship. That was the crew quarters, and much like the Leninov, where the rotating section spun around the centre axis for gravity. At the fore of the ship were the bridge, and the hanger deck for the three extra vehicular activity pods that were used to assist with maintenance on the exterior hull. The forward section was shaped like a large brick that protruded out of the front, and would have zero gravity.

Sparky swallowed nervously as she thought about the crew compartment of the Discovery One, like the Leninov, the ship’s rotating section was a centrifuge, the further away from the centre of rotation that you were, the more the artificial gravity pulled on you. Unlike the Leninov the rotating section was one open room, instead of being in two halves. As the entire crew cabin was a ring spinning around the centre axis of the ship, you would be able to look up and see the other end of the room, something that was definitely going to be disorienting.

As Sparky looked out towards the Discovery One, and she noticed something peculiar about the ship itself. ‘Look at the airlock! It’s not damaged!’ she said.

‘Is that significant?’ Dizzy asked as she turned around in her seat at the computer console that she was sitting at.

‘It most definitely is!’ Sparky cried out. ‘The report about Discovery One said that the crew was killed when an EVA pod had a thruster malfunction, and hit the ship at the time when Anatoliy Leninov was outside working, the damaged airlock was said to have vented the crew out into space... but if the airlock isn’t damaged...’

‘Everyone get ready!’ DC Hopely interrupted. ‘We have to cut rotation in order to dock with Discovery One’.

A few moments later, Sparky felt the Leninov shudder as it latched into Discovery One. The Leninov’s airlock door opened up to reveal a short hallway leading over to the other ship. ‘So?’ Sparky asked as she unbuckled her seat allowing herself to float up. ‘Who wants to go first?’

...

Kelso wasn’t quite sure how she had gotten this far, it was almost the start of the work day, and everyone was rushing about to and fro to get to their work stations in the myriad of different departments in the Whitetail Industrial Complex. It seemed that having the MIP that her client had given her was enough to make her invisible inside a crowd.

Certainly, someone would eventually notice that the security certificates that were being logged by her MIP were fakes, though it might take them awhile to figure it out, considering that almost every single door had a security panel attached to it that required swiping an MIP. It felt as if she couldn’t go five metres before running into a door that she needed to swipe her MIP at to get in.

This was problematic, because if she was discovered, Security would lock out her MIP, and she’d be trapped behind hundreds of steel doors.

Kelso stopped, she’d just reached the server housing. This was where it was going to get tricky. She swiped her MIP, and the room allowed her entry, but if she was going to start looking at the files, someone was going to notice that.

Someone noticing that would likely end in security being called and security for FutureTec wasn’t like other companies. Security for FutureTec meant assault rifles, and assault rifles meant her poor little flank would be setting off every metal detector from here to her grave site.

Kelso locked the door behind her, and headed over to one of the terminals; she pulled up the holographic keyboard and began to type. Her client had provided her with login information that she’d be able to use to get the files.

Something was odd though, as Kelso entered into the server and began to sift through the files, she noticed as if something knew she wasn’t supposed to be in here, and was routing her everywhere but where she needed to be. Pulling up information on Discovery One, would pull up information on an airship called the Madame La Salle instead. Pulling up information on Virtual Intelligence brought up a paper on unicorn telekinesis.

Kelso frowned at the terminal. This was getting ridiculous. What if... no, there was no way that was ever going to work.

But then, Kelso figured that she didn’t have any better ideas. She entered a request for information on the Madame La Salle and to her own shock; it finally brought up the design documents for Discovery One. ‘Ha! Not so smart now are you!?’ Kelso said with a triumphant smirk.

From behind her, she heard a small electronic beep, and an oddly cheerful voice. ‘You should probably not be looking at that!’