AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 269
ARES III SOL 266
The crew stepped into Airlock 3, suits sealed, ready for a trip to the cave followed by a momentous day of work. Over the previous two afternoons they’d carefully gone over the top of the Rover 1 chassis and then the underside of Amicitas, removing all but a handful of the brackets and hardware. They’d then dug a pit deep enough to allow Mark to crawl under Rover 1, so that the fasteners could be reinstalled.
Today the step in between would take place- the placing of Amicitas, or what was left of it, on top of Rover 1, or what was left of it. All it would take was three fresh mana batteries, one skilled unicorn, and a couple of bipeds who could nudge the hull into place while the unicorn took away most of the weight and inertia. Then, with the ship placed, Mark could go to work with the wrench, and by the end of Sol 267 at latest, the final connections would be made, and the Whinnybago trailer would be ready to hitch and connect to the power and life support of Rover 2.
Of course, this was only the beginning. The life support modifications inside Amicitas hadn’t been completed- only the installation of the connection points into the bulkhead of what had been the habitat section. Once the life support was fully installed, most of the Hab’s solar farm would begin migrating from its place north of the Hab to hard mounts on top of Amicitas. And then there would be the rebuilding of the internal power systems, a third round of gutting the interior to eliminate weight, and other issues. And then, once all that was done, they would begin modifying Rover 2.
In short, weeks of work remained in the future… but today marked a change, the day when Amicitas completed its transition from dead ship to live caravan. As such, the crew had a bit of extra energy this day. And as they discussed the death of Thorin and the nature of war, they each thought of their parts in the day’s work ahead.
Cherry Berry, last one out of the Hab, closed the airlock door behind her and keyed in the command to begin depressurizing the airlock. “But why didn’t Thorin just make peace in the first place?” she asked. “If friends are more important than gold when he’s dying, aren’t they more important when he’s alive, too?”
“One of the themes of the book is greed and generosity,” Mark said. “All the bad guys are selfish in one way or another. Thorin got greedy, and he suffered the consequences.”
“That’s kind of simplistic,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Thorin didn’t die because of greed, he died because he plowed into the middle of an army of goblins with only twelve other dwarves.”
“At least they were finally good for something,” Fireball rumbled. “Ten lived. Good fighters against so many.”
“But Beorn,” Spitfire said, not bothering with English. “To the rescue at the last second? Really? Nobody does that in real life but Rainbow-“
The air in the airlock was already pretty thin, as the pumps pushed it back into the Hab, but it could still carry sound. The soft pop caught everyone’s attention, followed by a shrill phweeeeeeeee. Instantly everyone looked down at their suits, checking to see which of them had just failed.
“Oh, buck.” Starlight Glimmer’s voice shook as she added in English, “My suit life support just scrammed.”
Mark lunged over the ponies to the inner door controls, slamming the emergency override button, then keying in the repressurization code. “Stay calm,” he said. “Don’t move. Where’s the hole?”
“In the patch,” Starlight said. “Upper arm.” As Mark looked, he saw flecks of hard black gunk, the impromptu patch spat on the suit by Dragonfly almost half a year before, cracking apart and falling to the airlock floor.
“O… kay. Yeah, this is bad,” Mark said. “But it happened here in the airlock before full depress, and not out on the surface. We can work around this.”
In another minute the airlock finished repressurizing, and the crew returned to the Hab interior, shedding space suits as soon as they stepped through the airlock door. Spitfire and Cherry Berry escorted Starlight to a bunk, while Mark examined her suit. The dried changeling goo, which had always been hard and stiff, had become brittle. Each time he touched the patch, more flaked off. Underneath ran the old tear caused by the Hab breach, each of the space suit’s five layers exposed in a ragged rip about five inches long.
“So?” Fireball asked. “Can you fix it?”
“Maybe,” Mark said. He took a moment to examine the layers. There was something like rubber in the middle- more bug-pony gunk, he remembered being told at one time. There was also a thin layer of something metallic looking, a broader wire mesh, and thick canvas inside and out. “I could use some of the pop-tent Hab canvas and some resin, slap a patch on this- inside and out, to protect Starlight and the rip both. But that rip would work its way longer the more she used the suit, until it breached the patch. It’s not something I want to risk.”
“No suit, no EVA,” Fireball rumbled.
“I know,” Mark said. “Weren’t you the EVA expert? What do you know about repairing space suits?”
“That you don’t,” Fireball said flatly. “Suit breach is mission scrubbed. You come back home right now if suit even look like it might breach. Inspect before every EVA.”
Mark blinked. “I haven’t seen you inspecting any suits for…” He couldn’t think of how long it had been since he’d seen anyone besides Dragonfly giving the pony space suits a thorough looking-over.
Fireball shook his head. “All our suits fail inspection,” he said. “All our suits. What we supposed to do about it?”
What indeed? “Well,” Mark said, “this day came sooner than I expected, but I guess it’s time to see how it works.”
“How what works?”
Mark ignored Fireball’s question, leaving Starlight’s suit on a worktable and walking over to the bunk where Starlight sat, human-style, using her forelegs to keep herself sitting up on the edge of the bunk. “Are you up for another EVA?” he asked.
“Um, sure,” Starlight said. “I just had a little scare.” She shuddered and added, “Okay, a really big scare. But I guess you’d know, right?” Her eyes rolled a little, not a human eyeroll but the facial tic of an equine dealing with overwhelming fear. “Know how it feels to feel air rushing across your skin to the breach, to feel the suit sagging on your skin, to hear the alarms and know you’re totally bucked.”
“Um… no,” Mark said weakly. “The antenna that punctured my suit also impaled me and knocked me off my feet. Between the impact and sudden loss of pressure, I passed out almost instantly. I don’t really remember it. I just remember waking up when my suit was up over ninety percent oxygen from blood-letting- that is, releasing bad air and pumping in new air when my CO2 filters filled up.”
“Oh.” Starlight shifted on her bunk a little, then added, “Tell me more about that, please.”
“Well,” Mark said, “I woke up to about three different alarms. My nitrogen tank was empty and my oxygen tank was down to critical levels, and my eyes were raw from the high oxygen concentration in the suit. My own blood had re-sealed the suit breach around the antenna stub. I was a bit loopy, but I realized pretty quick that if I didn’t get back to the Hab at once I was dead.
“But our suits come with emergency patches, complete with a sort of valve. I yanked the antenna out- and you better believe it fucking hurt- and then I slapped the emergency patch over the breach. It was a little hole, so it was easy to cover. Then I closed the valve to stop the leak, staggered back to the Hab, got inside, and enjoyed some proper air again.”
Mark had gone into a squat to look Starlight in the eyes as he told his story; now he stood up, pulling his ratty suit underclothes out of the way to reveal a small but ugly scar in the upper part of his left hip. “After that I had to doctor myself,” he said. “We’re all trained in first aid in case something happens to the crew doctor. Disinfectant, four staples- I think those hurt worse than the antenna. At least, I remember them.” He grinned, readjusting his clothes, and said, “After that I was tired and sore, glad to be alive, not expecting to live much longer, and bummed as hell that the MAV was gone without me.” He grinned wider and added, “And that’s when you all met me.”
Starlight looked at her foreleg, the one which had spent weeks in an inflatable cast. “I can’t imagine that,” she said. “To be hurt like that, to almost die, and then to be totally alone like that. It sounds…” She shuddered again at the thought.
“Fortunately I didn’t end up alone,” Mark said. “Now… feeling a bit better?”
“Maybe,” Starlight said. “What are we going to do?”
The contingency plan had always been to use Johanssen’s suit, it being the smallest and the closest to the ponies’ size. But now that the time had come, Starlight couldn’t fit into it; her barrel was substantially larger than Johannsen’s torso.
In the end they used the largest of the abandoned Ares III suits, Vogel’s. The limbs, of course, were far too long, which was just as well because the gross anatomical differences between anthropoid and equinoid limbs meant Starlight couldn’t walk in the suit anyway. Her torso was a little smaller than Vogel’s in diameter, but much shorter- which was another good thing, because without the extra slack the helmet assembly would never have fit over Starlight’s horn.
The suit sealed and pressurized with Starlight Glimmer inside it. On that ground, it was a success.
On that ground, and on no other grounds whatever.
“This is ridiculous,” Starlight grumbled. “You’re going to have to carry me like a sack. I can barely see out. I can’t work outside like this!”
“You won’t need to,” Mark said. “There’s a perfectly good suit at the cave farm that nobody’s using. It’ll be a little baggy on you, but at least it’s made for your shape.”
“Dragonfly’s suit?” Cherry protested. “But what will she use when she gets out?”
“She’ll repair this one,” Mark said, walking over to the damaged suit and its crumbling patch. “And we need her to do it soon. Because you guys,” he said, pointing to the discarded suits near Airlock 3, “are going to need your patches and booties and everything else updated soon. Before they start crumbling like this.” He pinched the broken patch on Starlight’s suit and snapped off a piece with a loud crackle. “I don’t think they’ll be far behind this one.”
TRANSCRIPT – RADIO TELEGRAPH BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS AND NASA DEEP SPACE ARRAY
(note: the same message was sent with minor changes via water telegraph to ESA Baltimare.)
AMICITAS: Friendship calling Houston. Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow. Repeating, Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow. Repeating, Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow.
Report begins. Starlight Glimmer’s suit breached in the airlock today. Long-term repair not possible without Dragonfly. We are using Vogel’s spare suit to get Starlight to the cave. Starlight will use Dragonfly’s suit after that. Spare suits proved not workable for pony anatomy.
We are staying the night in the cave in an attempt to saturate Dragonfly’s cocoon with magic. We will use all, and I mean all, the existing batteries to power one magic field projector for as long as it will run. We estimate fourteen hours. We hope this will be enough to revive Dragonfly so that work can begin on repairing space suits.
All Sirius work is suspended until Dragonfly is revived.
We will contact by radio or by Pathfinder if data transfer is complete no later than 1400 hours Hab time Sol 267. Repeat, will resume contact 1400 hours Hab time.
Friendship out.
...Well buck/fuck. At least it went out at the best possible time. Was pretty bad, but could have been a LOT worse.
Of course, that phrase kinda sums up the entire story so far. 'Was bad, could have been worse.'
Still loving the story, and lamenting the fact the upvote button only works once for the story, and not individual chapters.
I went back in and couldnt find my comment. Somehow a new chapter came out and interupted me.
#HugABug
Wack! Wack! Wack! "Wake up you lazy bug!"
Mark looked at the rest of the crew, who were looking back with various expressions of shock at the way he was holding the thin piece of tubing next to Dragonfly's cocoon. "What? You said it was worth a try."
"Yeah," grumbled Fireball. "We just thought we would get the first swing."
Why lug Starlight to the cave in what is, for her, a mishappen balloon to get the suit? Couldn't they drive there, get it, then bring it to her?
8968501 "Debilitating" is the wrong word. A dark-magic-using pony will be physically fine right up to the point they start rambling about cryssssstals and ssssslaves.
Dark magic eats at a pony's soul- or, rather, at the positive aspects of a soul. They get consumed by the magic, leaving only the negative traits of pony personality that fuel the magic. Those the dark magic builds up and reinforces, because above all else dark magic wants to get cast, again and again.
How much of this "wants to get cast" is actual will of the inanimate, and how much is perception bias on the part of the ponies, is hard to say. You could also say that a rock in the air wants to fall down or that the air in a balloon wants to get out, but obviously in our world there's no actual thought, emotion or willpower involved in either case. That's human perception bias at work. But in the pony world, it's not impossible for dark magic to have a will- when we know harmonic magic has not just will but at least one incarnation.
"Inspiration Manifestation" is THE episode that demonstrates how all this works, at least for my headcanon.
I'm just waiting for Dragonfly to wake up and emerge from her cocoon, greeted by the sight of the rest of the gang waiting for her, only for her first comment to be something along the lines of "Damn it! I told you all to leave me!"
Probably in a mystically significant sense if it matters. Also, on the The Nature of War, the incomparable GhostOfHeraclitus has a fun chapter of the same name in their anthology.
Team love. It's what's going to get them all through. Forget eros, philia is where it's at most of the time.
8969095
Make it one trip not four.
8969095
They need to get her to the cave anyway. Why take the extra EVA time on anyone else, which means wear and tear on their suits which are also failing, when they can get there in one go?
Oh the tension is killing me. I relistened to the audiobook of The Martian after I binged this. I am really hoping for miracles right about now for our wonderful crew.
Something about this nagged at my mind. I know that you're a super stickler for detail, so I went back to the book to double check.
In the book, Mark gives himself an anesthetic, irrigates the wound, and nine stitches (the staples were likely just done in the movie for speed so as to get back to the plot). He also doesn't disinfect the wound (possibly because of the same reason he could use the night soil; he already had everyone's little microbes in his system), but does add some antibiotics to his daily regimen for several weeks afterward.
8968971
I see...maybe that's where The Expanse got the name for their hyperdrive. They never mention if the guy who invented it was Jewish descent though...
"by Pathfinder if date transfer is complete"
"by Pathfinder if data transfer is complete"?
#wakeupyoulazybug
ok it is defiantly time for a lazy bug to be up and about.
They all need Dead Space EVA suits. Those things can take a beating repeatedly and maintain hard-vacuum seals.
8969125
They all want to see Dragonfly emerge from her cocoon, they want/need to see her. To them, it's worth the risk.
8969246
Just without the Necromorphs. They don't have plasma cutters.
Well, buck. Wakey-wakey, cuddlebug, your friends need your magic loogies.
... That sounded a lot less wrong in my head.
than
8969337
Watch Molt Down. MLP Dragons start to shed scales one by one, and the skin underneath is REALLY tender.
8969339
You made me think of this: i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/078/609/954.png
8969274
To be somewhat fair, necromorphs exert both extreme blunt force trauma and almost uniformly have the ability to cut and tear.
8969384 And yet they can survive a belly flop into magma from over a hundred feet up... which would scramble their innards if they were that tender... not to mention their digestive tracts somehow manage to resist a gazillion razor-sharp gem fragments on a daily basis.
And then there's the Greed Growth... how does a regular dragon ever get back to normal when they experience it, given they don't really love anything? What happens if they just remain that way? How have the dragons not out-evolved the immensely negative effects of the Molt given even basic selection pressures?
The dragons are just a huge pile of walking contradictions!
Not if you're watching the Rankin Bass version.
8969445
As dragons live in a world that runs on MAGIC, things are affected by stories and tropes. Things that molt are vulnerable during and immediately after molting; therefore, a dragon is vulnerable during and immediately after a molt, with its secondary superpowers shut down.
I mean, we ARE dealing with a world where orbital mechanics are so badly broken that the sun needs to be forced to orbit the planet, except it's in turn not actually clear the moon and sun NEED to be moved at all...
I admit, it sure SEEMS contradictory to us, but maybe it makes sense if you actually know the laws of magic-
Twilight: "I used to think that, and then I tried to study Pinkie Pie again. Now excuse me while I spend 15 minutes hugging myself on a rocking chair..."
8969246
I mean, they clearly have some incredible regenerative properties, considering you can get stabbed and still walk in a vacuum just fine.
What is a "facial tic of an equine dealing with overwhelming fear" if not a "human eyeroll"? Ponies on the show roll their eyes "human style" all the time.
8969503
I prefer the idea that Celestia uses magic to "grab onto" the sun like an anchor or grabbing a metal signpole, and spins the planet around relative to the sun. Or something like that. I can't remember exactly how it was worded in the story I read... I think it was Pandemic. Like, she gives the planet a little push to keep spinning, but without her it would slow down and stop rotating as it orbits. I think that's what the author said in that story.
But you forgot the stick that you need to smack the bug piñata with!
Bug to the rescue!
Something something about perchlorates and silicon dioxide and fractional distilation and heat and pressure and condensation polymerisation reactions.
Sorry, its been 30 years since I last did degree chemistry and selectable silicone products production and handling. I suspect Dragonfly used a carbon based patch for speed, due to plants, and the suits core are made of silicone based materials, due to Equestrian gems.
That and I seem to reember Engineering polythene can take the stresses as long as the surface remains coherent even as the UV damages it. Pity the suits wernt spun sapphire weave, that stuff lasts a lot longer against quartz, being far harder? then again, if you can have cheap mass spun sapphire, you can have it CVD diamond coated as well. That stuff is decades old already.
“But Beorn,” Spitfire said.
You must be mistaken. You mean Tom Bombadil.
8969373 That line's not in this chapter.
EDIT: In fact, it's not in this story at all. It's in the latest chapter of "The Sunset Shimmer Butchers a Bunch of Aliens Who Totally Deserved It Show." ... I mean Ranger.
8969125
Okay... except like I said, they can accomplish the same goal without the risk. So why not do it the safe way?
8969460
They’re not. They were sent the book.
8969698
No Bombadil in either the original or revised version of The Hobbit.
8969503 You're still operating on the flawed rationale that in Equestia, magical beings moving tiny magical suns is NOT the norm.
We have plenty of evidence that Equestria's Sun is not a huge ball of fusion. Thus, it would never have the gravity to bind planets into an orbit in the first place.
What I ask of a magical world is that it define its own internal rules where they are important to the plot and then stick to them without randomly rewriting them. That's how you arrive at proper internal continuity without creating plot holes.
8969831 The batteries are Starlight's job. The others can make the magic projection rig work without her, but she needs to be on-site if something goes wrong. And since the round trip from the Hab to the cave is a bit more than an hour, going to fetch the suit loses a large chunk of available daily EVA time.
8969728 My high school chemistry teacher brought in a roughly 3 x 3 inch block of uranium to class when we were studying the chapter on radiation.
I questioned it back then, and to this day I still wonder where and how the hell she got ahold of that, and if she was aware it was probably highly illegal even back in 1994.
8969837
Isn't that what I said? :P
Oh boy. If they can't get Dragonfly out, then they are pretty much doomed. And even so, recharging the batteries will eat up a lot of time, to say nothing of how the environment might react to fourteen continuous hours of a high magical field. This is mission critical, to say nothing of psychologically needed, but it couod go wrong in so many ways...
8969859 ... no, it's a response to counter what you said.
8969839
oh, you made me think of the "Gilbert Atomic energy lab" TOY, mentioned in this video:
8969391
alright that pic of chryssi is pretty cute... I would let her in and snuggle in bed with her all night...
8969561
While it's possible she's spinning the planet, no matter how you look at it that spell is pretty crazy in canon, as the sun appears to absolutely zip around the horizon when Twilight does it.
And since even "move the planet" is a LOT of energy, and unicorns used to perform that spell in groups...well, either everypony is holding back when doing just about anything else (to the point where we can ask why unicorn foals don't blow up mountains when they sneeze), or that particular spell is abnormally efficient.
MLP's magic laws are weird no matter how you look at it.
8969822
Doh!
8969216
"GET UP, YOU LAZY BUG! BECAUSE CHRYSALIS LOVES YOU!"
8969274
They have a GlimGlam.
8969561
Equines in Real Life show the whites of their eyes when frightened. Given that MLP has made a point of including equine mannerisms in the show, it is easy enough to believe that the ponies would roll their eyes when under duress.
8969839
Unrefined uranium ore is perfectly legal to own, and relatively inexpensive to obtain. It's also mostly atomically inert: enough to set off a Geiger counter or play with a cloud chamber but otherwise useless until refined. A 3x3 inch block of the stuff would be basically harmless unless you started spending days on end around it.
8969835
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil
My mistake.
I remember that the ropes of the Amicitas' parachute system seemed to have been made of a similar substance; described as a rubber like black substance with flecks of green, it's definitely Changeling "tech"
My concern is that these ropes will at some point fail as well; while clearly designed to survive the strain of deployment and slowing down a landing spacecraft (it'd be pretty stupid if they couldn't), the fact that it appears to be an organic polymer means it would be susceptible to the same brittleness that the pony suit patches are made of, and that if they use these ropes on the journey to the crater, having them fail at a critical junction would spell disaster (or, just another Tuesday for Watney and Co.)
8969445
It's an extreme R-Selection, which actually makes sense with territorial near-immortals. Molting dragons bait away any predators that could go for the young ones who are breeding but small enough to be vulnerable, while the ones which survive the molt are the tough and ingenious ones. Of course that all got screwed up once they became intelligent and formed a society with empathy and junk, but evolution is like that.
As for Greed Growth, I figure it burns out on it's own eventually and leaves a hell of a hangover. It's a magical adaptation to keep other dragons from ganging up on one that manages to snatch a good hoard. They'll get a temporary power boost that lets them protect a new set of treasures long enough to hide it or get to a defensible location.
8969887
It's the best kind of plot, where the inevitable complications follow from neccessity!