//------------------------------// // The Sensation of Falling // Story: Extra-Vehicular Activity // by alamais //------------------------------// It's always strange, those first few moments. It was ignorable when your boots were stuck to the floor, but you know that now, technically, you are falling. It feels like falling. Your pegasus instincts scream at you to flap, push upwards, save yourself from splattering onto the ground…but what’s upwards, anyway? There is no ground, not in any close, meaningful sense. You hold yourself stiff, stifling those instincts, until training kicks in, and the moment passes. You sigh harshly, and relax a little, looking around. The fiber line unspools neatly behind you with no resistance, using some tiny internal magic. Your aim was true, and you are coasting directly towards the small ship at a leisurely rate. You squint at it, and find yourself asking, "Hey, Twi?" "What's up, Rainbow?" "Well…I know you're pretty sure there isn't anyone alive over there, but what if you're wrong? Wouldn't we be stealing parts from them?" Twilight sighs. "Well, I mean technically, I guess. But obviously they weren't able to save themselves, so if we can get a beacon working, the rescue can pick them up too! Seems win-win to me." "S-sure." You chew your lip. "What if getting the parts we need kills them?" There's a shocked silence, then, "I…I don't know. We'll have to talk it over, try to find alternatives. It's…triage at that point, I guess." She falls silent for a moment, then adds, "Sorry, just not really the sort of question I expect from you, Rainbow." "Yeah, I dunno." You look up at the planet, and ponder. She's right, but… "I guess EVAs have always make me sort of maudlin and thinky. Nothing to do but coast and be gloomy. Our situation, the dead planet, and that creepy ring don't help." Twilight gives you a weak laugh. "Just try to stay optimistic, then. No point lingering on bad what-ifs." You shrug. "Eh, you know me. I'll be fine once I get to work." You lazily wave your wings, and the spatial grips give you traction in the void. It's strange, another thing that needs lots of training to overcome instinct: a feeling like waving your wings underwater, but water that disappears once you stop flapping. Your actions turn your body, and you get a good look at what's left of the Fennel Frond. At least a third of the ship is just…gone. There are fewer holes than in the alien ship, a testament to the strength and stability of Equestrian engineering, but the same sort of oddly smooth, flat, shearing damage, like the sharpest knife in the universe had just lopped off whole regions. The ship normally looked a bit like a mushroom, with a thick, hundred-meter wide domed cap of over a hundred tons of ice to the fore, originally for absorbing incoming debris strikes when the ship was cruising around between asteroids. The rest of the ship spread out under that protection, sensors and comm arrays peeking out around the cap, crew quarters, the harmonic reactor, and other essentials squarely in the middle. Now, it's missing entire sections—most of them storage, but also the emergency beacon, all of the projecting thrust assemblies, and most of the ice cap and void drive. Your mind…wants to pull some sort of sense out of it, see a shape that had been cut away, but Pinkie had already tried to explain that it was some rotated hyper…thingy. Whatever. You understand now why Twilight doubted the poor Frond could ever be made spaceworthy again. You ask, "How are Flutters and Pinkie doing?" "Pinkie is fine. Fluttershy is still just acclimating to the suit. You know you pegasi and your claustrophobia." "Yeaaah. I'm a little surprised she agreed to play catcher with Pinkie." "Well, she's the best choice for it. As long as Pinkie's in a suit, Fluttershy isn't needed to coordinate life support." "Sure, but you didn't see her the first time I tried to get her to go for a little walk on the outside of Serenity Station. I swear the only reason she didn't lose her lunch was that she was too busy doing that frozen-in-terror thing she does. Didn't stop mumbling about the 'vasty deeps' for a few days afterwards." Twilight chuckled weakly. "I, uh, wasn't much better the few times I've tried. But you know Fluttershy—she comes through when things really matter." "Yeah." You look back up at the alien ship, only 100 meters away now. Up close, it looks almost dangerous. It's long—far longer than in either other dimension. Half of its engines have been sheared off, along with an unknowable amount of ship on what you arbitrarily decide is the underside, the side you are approaching. The front appears to be mostly intact, and is covered in a bunch of projecting spars, some of which you're sure have to have been weapons. The body of the ship appears to have been torqued by its violent ejection into normal space, as the entire thing seems a little warped. This probably contributed to the multiple fractures and ruptures that are visible on the side facing away from the ring. It's really kind of amazing that there are still pressurized sections. You're within a hundred meters now, and you can see a stencil of some sort on the forward side…probably the ship's name. A slight static hiss is your forewarning, before Twilight speaks again. "Rainbow, can you see any good entry points?" "Hmm…" You eye the side of the ship. "I dunno, Twi. Those breaches on the side look kinda sketchy, like I'd just end up in crawl spaces or tangled in structural braces. I think I'll aim for the underside. Looks like a whole bunch of it got cut away, so there should be an internal door, elevator shaft, something like that." You gently flap your wings to redirect your course. "Sounds good. Remember, let me know before you go through any doors, so we can see how the radio holds up." "Yup." You're getting a clearer view of the underside now. There are the remains of what might have been some kind of large equipment or cargo bay, with big crane things, and storage compartments along the side. Unfortunately, they're all empty—probably blown away when the bay decompressed. Towards the aft of the ship, you can see a large tunnel heading up. An elevator shaft? You angle yourself towards it, and see the underside of the elevator itself—a large one, probably for cargo, it could fit a couple dozen ponies if they really crammed in. Thankfully, the elevator is one floor up, leaving a single pressure door available to you. As you approach, your suit chimes, and a faint outline appears around the edges of the door, with a text callout: 'Warning: outgassing detected. Pressurized area beyond.' "Alright, found an elevator door with air beyond." You look around the area, and it just takes a minute to find a small, well-secured bar of metal in the crawl space below the door—it looks like it was once part of a larger structure, but now it's thin enough for you to clip another carabiner on. You detach the spool from your suit, and hook it onto the carabiner, then tap one end three times—the magic pulses red, and the line is pulled tight by an auto-tensioner. "Dive line secure on this end. Checking out the door." You land on the door, and activate your hoof grips, as well as the suit's vibration sensors. You then pound a hoof on the door, and wait. The spectrogram shows echoes of the noise you made, and then…nothing. "Nobody home." You examine the door, and find a lever surrounded by various symbols. It's a challenge getting a grip on it: beyond it obviously not being designed for hooves, there are a couple of quirky safety mechanisms protecting it. After a couple minutes of fiddling, you manage to get a grip with a pry bar out of your toolkit, and with a shrug, give it a yank. The door shudders as hidden vents blow a gale of air out laterally, protecting you from the worst of it. You still feel the pressure trying to suck you away from the door as you crouch low to the surface, still clinging to the lever. You idly notice that your suit talismans are managing to extract oxygen and a small amount of argon from the air. Lots of useless nitrogen, though. After a minute or so, the torrent ceases, and you stand up. A quick pry gets the door to slide open enough for you to get your hooves on it, and before too long, you've got a half-meter gap to shine your light through. It's a hallway, of course. Not even emergency lighting on. You can see doors along it still hissing air out—not pressure doors, but they're trying. Otherwise, it appears to be empty. You clear your throat. "Twilight?" "How's it going, Rainbow?" "I've got the door open. Going to go in, check out the rooms off the hall." "Alright, go for it." You brace your back against the door frame, and push the door open a little more, then head inside.