//------------------------------// // Ch1: Space Ponies In Snow // Story: Pony Class Starship // by Viking Hoof //------------------------------// Aurora AI reboot commencing. Ship designation... HKS [-] Dancer...... clarify Ship full designation, Jómskip HKS Aurora Dancer, HKS Dancer: Drottningarsborg Class Busse(Heavy Frigate)(Jū jun'yōkan), Jóms-Löjtnant Aurora... [redacted] Status, unknown, location unknown, mission... piracy disposal, crew... No naval staff detected. No unidentified personnel detected. Aurora shivered as her bio-circuitry processed the report. Whatever had forced her reboot had bruised her wetware something fierce. It was extensive too, damage like this had to be the result of a heavy impact. Asteroids perhaps? The cyber organic AI slowed as the final line of information passed through, for the 0.068 millisecond it took her to recover from the surprise of finding her crew gone. Whoever had taken, killed, or driven away her crew would pay. For now she had to finish rebooting. She prioritized sensors, hoping that she could at least identify where she was. Bow sensors: report...... non responsive Starboard back up: report...... non responsive Internal Security: report... totally unresponsive FTL sensors: down Bridge window simulation cameras, report...... Nominally functional "Nominally Functional": binocular only Well shit. Aurora Dancer opened the blast shutters that protected the forward cameras that created the window simulation on the bridge. The simulated windows were mostly a decoration to keep the bridge crew from falling to station fatigue disorder (reference definition of "boredom"), they also functioned as viewscreens, and extra large holoscreens in case the captain needed to get a better look at a three/four-D render. They hadn't been meant to be the main source of external data. Two cameras was the functional minimum. She was left with a pittance of depth perception, only directed to her forward. Without any other sensors, she was effectively deaf and numb. The distressed AI began running through her programs for whatever else had been damaged. Aurora processed a tad slower as she came across a few strange programs. One was labelled "standing, walking, trotting, etc," the sheer irreverence of regulations the name formatting brazenly announced almost threw her for loop. Both of them seemed to have not been maliciously hidden. Aurora reviewed the connections required by the one labelled walking, and after fire walling off the programs associated with it, she attempted to run "standing, walking, trotting, etc" in a specially designed secure sub-processor. The AI desperately activated the conning tower cameras to see what was happening as she felt her wetware reared up and forward. She quickly ended the program and ran a internal systems check again. unregistered subsystem detected: FRLeg, FLLeg, BRLeg, BLLeg Aurora Dancer tried again to raise up her hull via the program, using the four "legs." She could see what she assumed to be FRLeg and FLLeg splayed out underneath her hull. They were all the same dull grey. It properly matched her hull, but whoever had installed them had clearly failed to provide access ports and clear labeling for safety during maintenance. Instead they were decorated with a fur lining on their outside. A clear violation of the Star Navy's safety procedures. Still they appeared to be useful for traversing large surfaces, perhaps exploring the surface of this place had been her mission? She hadn’t done the math yet, but it would have to be rather small for her to be light enough to use something like this. Aurora rapidly scanned the horizon, measuring the curvature of the planet, comparing it to her own height and back calculating to determine the diameter of the planet she was on. She did it again, her mind struggling to process the results. Whatever she was standing on wasn’t natural. It couldn’t be. Judging by her height from the ground, and the curvature of the Earth before her, and rejudging, and calculating it again. Whatever she was on couldn’t be natural. If it was a spheroid, and this was a stretch, it would be at least 30 earth’s in diameter. This had to be some sort of platform in space. And since she didn’t seem to be pulled at the angle the gravity that would imply, it’d have to be using artificial gravity. Why anyone would set it that low was beyond her, but regardless, she had a mission to do. Thinking about stuff like this was a job for scientists, finding her crew came first. Aurora Dancer slowly opened up a sphere of FTL space around her. Pushing the boundary out to see if she could detect any sort of interference. It would be far easier to conduct a search starting from orbit over whatever the hell this thing was. Hello? Are you okay?" Aurora Dancer turned bodily, deactivating the FTL projectors along her hull to lessen her signature, as her lenses vibrated minutely. If she was measuring the vibration correctly, she was receiving an open auditory communication channel. Aurora searched her data stores for any race that communicated in auditory wavelengths on the scale she was "seeing," for lack of a better word. A quick analysis of the fluctuations in the vibrations produced a startling result. The language wasn't xeno-reptilian yodeling, it was shockingly enough, an English greeting. No other languages with similar sound arrangements quite made sense in this situation. Whatever language it was, it would probably be better if it didn't find her.It would be risky to do this blind, but she didn't have much of a choice. Aurora Dancer began to spin up her FTL drive... Alert, drive failure, FTL spinning down. Unrealspace rift collapse. Shit, someone might be jamming her. She'd never seen a type of jamming that would generate that sort of error report, but It was pretty easy to infer that the mysterious speaker might be related to the interference. Strange she hadn't detected it before now. Aurora Dancer sounded full alert to all command staff, mentally flinching as she realized, once again, that she was alone. Protocol demanded a weapons systems review in this sort of situation, the Battery Division Commander, Ltd. Cmdr. Aito, wasn’t available to conduct such a procedure, nor the Master Battery Gunnery Sergeant, Sergeant Perry, nor were the officers below him. Aurora quickly worked her way down the chain of command, to her, grimacing at all of the parallel shifts she had to make along the chain of command to get to herself. She had to activate a few restraining programs, but eventually control of the guns were given over to her. She worked quickly, giving orders and then confirming them as she carried out hundreds of conversations at once, ordering and performing a battery check on her secondaries. Dual Purpose Battery Group 1... nominally functional Dual Purpose Battery Group 2... minimally functional Dual Purpose Battery Group #%&*... unresponsive. Main Battery hydraulics jammed, unable to deploy. Fucking Hel. Whatever had knocked her out had left her with a quarter of her secondary battery. It was unfortunate, but it would just have to do. Aurora dispatched the few nanites she could scrounge up to try and operate the Fore Dorsal Battery. It would take them forever, but better that than nothing. In the distance she could see shifting in the strange macroscopic snow. There appeared to be a large pink ship, possibly the one shouting across the open air before. She was left to act as acting comms officer, and protocol was clear. She'd just have to hope they weren't hunting her. Aurora prepared her internal audio outputs to blast louder than she had ever considered. She wouldn't be able to hear herself, she would just have to hope she didn't sound weird. "AHOY, THIS IS THE HKS AURORA DANCER OF THE STAR NAVY OF THE NORTH STAR RIKE, ADDRESSING THE PINK SHIP. PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF."* Aurora Dancer signaled for auto maintenance as she used the forward right landing leg to brace her strangely distressed conning tower base. Had she somehow overloaded her comm systems? Aurora Dancer stopped as the tactile sensors on the bottom of the landing leg identified more of the fur. Was she covered in a grey algae of some sort? Had the entire ship been pranked by some unknown species? Perhaps it was the Pink ship who- "I am Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire, a-are you okay?" The ship returned from off in the distance. Aurora Dancer stopped to consider the strange identification the pink ship had just given. It was still speaking English, which removed the possibility of a home fleet ship. However strange the usage of English in the Home Fleet was, they didn't actually have official discourse in English. That left her wondering if there had been a massive slave escape from a camp on Midgard. No mention of a navy or official prefix. Was it a civilian craft? The name would sure reinforce the idea, but she had never heard of a starkingdom named the "Crystal Empire." Was it a remote local polity? Possibly, but how had she gotten far out enough to find such a thing. The ship hadn’t clarified any sort of recent legitimization, but it could have been something that arose in the month or so that they’d been out on long range patrol. Regardless of where it was from, it seemed to be signalling good intentions. Would she admit she was lost? She had no real reason to attempt a misdirection other than the FTL jamming she was experiencing, and that might be stellar background or industrial radiation. If for no other reason than politeness, it wouldn't hurt for her to talk back to it in English. "I-I'M LOST!" damnit, she hadn’t meant to state it so plainly. Aurora could feel herself chafe at the restrictions she’d accepted in order to minimally direct the dual purpose battery, twisting her words away from her. If the Cadance was a threat, they would come in sniffing for blood. That and another overload in her communication. The Pink ship off in the distance engaged thrusters and began an approach, except... Huh, the strange pink ship had the four landing legs as well, were they a recent fad in naval engineering? Aurora felt a sudden rise in indignation at the idea of being given extensive modifications because of some fad. The legs certainly were extensive... Aurora stopped cold as she realized that her conning tower was bending at a rather odd angle, or rather that it was bending at all! Aurora Dancer righted her conning tower using hydraulics she didn't even knew she had. W-was she malfunctioning? Was she broken? Was this some shipbreaking location? This certainly wasn't in her design specifications. Heck... wait... why was her conning tower on the front of her hull? It should be towards the back! Her mind danced around the nightmare of being broken in two. Except ... the dual purpose battery group one was responding. It was mounted around the fore ventral hull. "My dear pony, are you okay?" Pony? What the hell was the pink ship saying now? Aurora Dancer forced her reactor to cool down, redirecting more of her processing to it. She could feel herself losing control of it, and she couldn't have a reactor breach right now. Perhaps there was a translation error, and pony meant starship. "I appear to be malfunctioning. Could you help me?" Aurora turned to the pink ship and found it to have FTL'ed into space right next to her. It was a bright pink, with a strange energy decorating its conning tower. It also had strange feathery wings, but it was shaped like a mammal otherwise. What strange ship design. Perhaps it wasn't a ship at all? Heh, that would be ridiculous. A creature larger than herself would have to weigh a few thousands of kilotons. "Let me show you to someplace safe. My home is back that way, would it do?" The starship named Cadance used its conning tower to motion off to someplace behind itself. It probably wouldn't be a trap. The Cadance’s Captain seemed to be decent, though she wondered why it was conversing so strangely.. "Show me to your starport." Aurora sighed in relief. She was lucky that she hadn’t been leapt upon by slavers or pirates. Aurora stopped as the Cadance walked along the surface of the planet just a bit ahead. Was the Cadance not going to jump? Well… perhaps it required a clear path to jump. Such wasn’t unheard of, but most used free range FTL jumps, it was just more practical. Aurora stared out across the strange 1/4 meter across snowflake covered landscape surrounding her. While she hadn’t noticed it before, the strange snow having kept her from touching the ground, stepping occasionally in the same place the pink starship had reavealed to the tactile senses on the bottom of her strange landing legs touched what seemed like ice or crystal chilled to an extreme degree. This was actually her first time seeing snow. Since she’d been designed for general patrol duties, she didn’t really have any of the modules needed to traverse atmospheres effectively. Well, that was until whoever installed these strange fur covered landing legs on her. It was still odd to think of her mode of movement as “walking” rather than proper cruising, but they seemed effective. Perhaps these were aliens who had shared the tech for the legs with Navy command and she was the test ship? That still wouldn’t explain why she couldn’t remember how she got here, but that could just be an accident during the landing. It also didn’t explain why there were snowflakes a full meter across. That couldn't be explained away by accident or crash. "Are you cold?" The pink one asked, surprising Aurora. "I feel fine." Not that she could actually tell with sensors down, but she was tired of bearing out her every damn weakness. This was the best she could slip past her restraints without relinquishing her emergency control of the main battery. It wasn't really a lie. Her internal temperature control for her wetware was functioning fine. The pink ship's conning tower turned back to Aurora, while its hull remained on course. The strangely placed cargo point at the top of the conning tower, near the front, twisted into a strange shape. Whatever the pink ship was doing, it looked dangerous. "Are you malfunctioning?" The pink ship stopped. "What makes you say that?” A strange question, wouldn't its internal sensors have noticed that its cargo bay was damaged? "The cargo port below your command deck is twisting, it might be overheated." The pink ship's cargo port twisted into a downward facing crescent, and the exposed sensors over the windows of the command deck twisted strangely. "L-let's keep going." Understandable, there were probably repair crews at whatever port the Pink ship was leading it to. Dallying would only make matters worse. Aurora decided that she should conserve energy. No telling how far away the star port would be. Aurora had expected the Cadance to have jumped by now. A small trip on the ground and a jump would be cheaper than two jumps, but this was getting ridiculous. If it would have taken this long, and with such heat damage as appeared to be occurring to the Cadance, any reasonable ship captain or AI would have gone with the two jumps. So the question is now, why wasn’t it? Perhaps the Cadance didn't have control over whatever it was that obfuscated her attempts to jump to FTL. It was rare to meet an AI who would lie, but Aurora had come across a few. Then again, it didn’t have to. Nothing it had stated so far was completely innocent in every definable sense. If it was a unchained AI, then questioning it directly wouldn’t work. Aurora primed the drives of a couple warheads. She didn’t reveal them. If she didn’t tip her hand now, then she would be better ready to fight back later. That…. Aurora’s cyber organic processors didn’t pause in awe as a normal biological lifeform would, when confronted with the sight before her. Of course, some of that awe would come from looking out across the massive structure, the height challenging Mount Everest itself. Not only that, the massive city of humongous skybreakers. This was too much for any pirate. It was sort of like a massively upscaled colony. A upscale factor of well over 100x in size. Everything was made of crystal instead of fibrous metals and glass, and they were starships instead of colonists, and at this scale the economics of it all had to be horrific. It would take several solar arrays, and a gas giant or two to power the economics of all of this. It was all patently ridiculous. “Hi there!” Proximity alert! Proximity alert! The klaxons inside the Aurora’s head blared, the pink anomaly nearly colliding with her con-tower. Aurora used one of her landing gears as an impromptu ram to divert the anomaly as she used her engines to propel herself away and out of whatever pull the anomaly may have had. Her conning tower twisted to face the heading he had last seen the blur moving towards. “I’m Pinkie Pie and I'ma throw you a party you’ll never forget!”