//------------------------------// // Erotic Ship Afts // Story: Pony Class Starship // by Viking Hoof //------------------------------// Aurora trotted onto the balcony, scanning the horizon. It would be another hour until her probes finished the survey, but now was as good a time as any to begin reviewing the preliminary results. New probes wouldn't make themselves. She had to get mining fast. But that raised another question. How on Midgard did her machine shop work in this sort of circumstance. Was it her guts? or was it distributed across her body in the form of cellular replication? Aurora set aside the questioning. There was only really one way to find out. Aurora spent a hot minute filing the reports and requisitions, and then replying to them. A patrol fleet ship was a stingy place. Being months from a resupply at a time required careful rationing and resource allocation. A generous supply officer was a danger in such situations. Every paperwork was designed to remind them of that. Aurora felt a churning as she interfaced herself and activated the atomic printer and forge. Something was happening inside her midship, her "stomach" to describe it as the Eqestrians did. It slowly grew, going from a soft rumbling to a machine pitch. Production run completed. Huh. The movement in her midship had stopped. The forge and printer reporting the small mining drill ready for use... So where was it? A quick review of her inventories said it was in the local storage for her machining shop. Did she even have her cargo rooms when she was like this? An even quicker review of the reports she received in orbit indicated clearly that they worked just fine in orbit. Aurora moved forward with the experiment, sending an autonomous bot to pick up the drill and deliver it to her aft dorsal super structure cargo bay. If she remembered correctly, that had become her mouth. It was a good thing none of the horses were around. Would be problematic if she was remembering wrong. Remembering her biological waste episode with Cadance caused an uptick in the plasma conduit pressure in her "cheeks." She felt something rising up her dorsal superstructure. Still weird to think there was just one of those now. She followed the drone's reports carefully. Listening dutifully as it set down on the powered lift pad, which should have been approximated into a tongue, if the pattern so far was any indication. The Equestrians hadn't mentioned anything about her mouth one way or another, but it was pretty safe to assume they would have indicated had something been off about it. Aurora caught it with the tactile end of her leg just as it slipped out of the cargo bay. It was small, smaller than a toothpick. Utterly useless. Unless... she could minimize the shrinking somehow, but that was a risk, and she used up almost too much of her dimensional ballast just trying to preserve her sensors and guns. No, she'd have to go to the horses for help. Aurora, experimentally, attempted to eject water over the balcony, in frustration with her own impotence in this issue. It had a decent arc, if she wasn't any judge. About the best one could hope for with hydraulic fluid. She turned bodily towards the doorway to the balcony. gingerly maneuvering over the prone stallion as he lay snoring, sprawled over the table. Despite his reservations about her age, he'd been quite eager once they'd got going. Shame his endurance was terrible. He was out in less than an hour. Left her to clean up the mess. The hardest part was the stains. What carpet wasn't stain resistant?! She did a quick scan of the castle. looking for the royal horse, she'd be the best chance to find the resources she needed. She did another round of the math. Estimating out the total weight of the materials she would need for three probes. 160 kilos at least. Could she even shift that much in her current state? She'd just have to try. Hers was not to ask why, hers was to simply do and die, as the creed went. She'd just have to hope that she wouldn't fulfill that last part just trying to lift materials into orbit. Aurora trotted out into the hall, making for the stairs. Her sensors reported that the Cadance's FTL wake was below her by around two stories. Out of the corner of her camera's lens she spotted two extremely nervous guards trying to look inconspicuous, but failing miserably. She didn't bother with a salute. Salutes were for dignitaries or actual military personnel. If what she got from Shining and her own experience was any indication, you could barely call them a folkgarda*. From what she saw before her, they seemed to be poor at being a ceremonial guard. Marine Hirdsman Jacques would have had such a poor stance and even poorer alertness flogged upon sight. Which left her wondering what the hell a bunch of fit males were doing running around in gold and silver and ridiculous spears. The armor wasn't very enticing, and Shinning seemed energetic enough that Cadance wouldn't need a whole troop of soldiers to keep her entertained. If Shining was any indication, it seemed that most of these horses were rather prudish. Seemed unlikely that she would need that many, as hard as she had been avoiding comparisons to real life horses, a herd being the social norm wasn't entirely impossible. She rounded the corner of the hall, the stairs down lay straight ahead now. Out of pure habit, she felt herself making micro-adjustments to her heading, optimizing the angle of impact of her forward armor against the most likely source of threats. Not that she sensed any danger. She did that every second of every day. It just kind of stood out now in the silence as she cruised down the hall. Aurora smiled as she detected the Cadance moving towards a flight of stairs, estimating down her projected energy use to account for one less floor of travel, and plotting a new course accordingly. It was a shame that her shuttles were missing, hopefully wherever the crew was. Sending them in her stead would be a more efficient, if difficult, task. She'd remote piloted a shuttle before, but not within a gravity well. Yet, surely it wasn't that different? It was just more math and more upward thrust. The floor she stepped onto as she exited the stairway was pretty much like the one she came from, but for slightly wider corridors and slightly wider windows. Nearly all of the windows in the palace were one way, allowing you to see out but not in. From the outside the palace almost seemed windowless, but for a balcony on each side, and three large windows much higher up the spire. Aurora redirected her heading again, the Cadance was now heading in her general direction. Better and better. Aurora attempted to manipulate her forward loading bay into a smile as she came around the corner and entered line of sight with the Cadance. The pink horse was flanked by two of the usual crystalline guards, similar but distinct from the ones outside her door. "Ah, Aurora, just the ma-errr... ship? I was looking for." Hmm? not too surprising given the horse's heading. "Have you seen Shining Armor? I can't find him anywhere. I think he was headed to talk with you if I remember correctly." The pink horse smiled in return, not appearing put off by what she saw. Aurora filed this 'facial' arrangement away for later use. "He spent the whole night in my quarters, but can that wait? I've got a request. It'll help me on my quest to secure my crew." The Cadance looked puzzled, though more puzzled than the question would seem to inspire. "How can I help?" Aurora wracked her dictionaries and thesauruses on the English language. Trying to find the right words for the materials she wished to requisition. The best she could find were a few Anglo-Frankish 15th century revivalists who had attempted to use latin as a base for an English set of names for scientific processes. A bit strange they hadn't stuck with the Norse words, but it seemed they were trying to be more separated from Nordic linguistically. They operated out of the English province of Island of France, near Paris. traffic update Hmm? Oh, it seemed that Shining Armor had woken up, and was heading downstairs. Round about the same route she had taken down. "I require, aluminium, copper, gold, silver, ceramic, steel, and small amounts of titanium. I wish to replace some of the probes I'm using to organize the search for my crew. I've estimated that the time spent making the probes should be less than the time saved by having a proper GPS and sensor net to assist me, and if I'm really lucky, perhaps some sort of ionization or radiative energies might point me directly to where they are." Aurora hoped that the horse understood what she said. If it did, it would rather be the nail in the coffin that the horses were speaking was a specific form of English designed to use exclusively english only words. "It will take a while, but I believe we can. Now, you said Shining was in you-" The aforementioned horse exited the stairs, and was headed straight towards Aurora, a sort of panicked look in his eyes. "Aurora! W-we didn't... did we?!" Definetly panicked. For reasons Aurora was not quite certain, his panick doubled as Cadance finally entered his field of view around the corner of the intersection of the halls she and Aurora were in. "Did what?" Cadance asked, a cross between confusion and anger entering her voice. She might be in a totally airmanaged environment, but even Aurora could feel the temperature drop as Shining Stuttered and went an even paler shade of white. Best to extract herself from whatever it was that was going on between us. "Yeah, we did. And I have to say I was disappointed. I thought for sure that you would last longer than that!" Aurora paused in confusion as the tension seemed to spiral out of control, not sure what... what... ohhhh, monogamy! Then the guards... and Cadance... "By Odin's beard, I swear I've seen milk drinkers hold their ale better than you. I can't believe you passed out in less than an hour into our competition!" She followed up, hoping that decoupled the tension. "Oh, thank Celestia." Aurora stepped out of the way as the stallion blinked once, twice, and was immediately out cold, falling into a pile of limbs on the floor right where she had been. "For prudes, you horses rather jump to the idea of sex rather quickly... So about those materials?"