The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet


Sol 364

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 370
ARES III SOL 364

Starlight Glimmer poured magical energy in a by now familiar pattern into the fabric of the crystal cube in front of her. Of course, it had been months since she used this particular pattern- not since, come to think of it, shortly before the engine test and its consequences. That had been… five months? Five whole months lost to one emergency after another?

Well, it wasn’t five months absolutely wasted. Dragonfly had been revived and put on a gradual road to recovery. The fifteen jumbo batteries had been made, although they’d been repurposed since. And, of course, there had been other issues as well.

But it was still five months with no increase in their magic generation capacity, and only three months remained until they left the cave. And the nineteen (well, eighteen and a half) batteries they had on hoof might not produce or retain enough magic to last the hundred days between departure and Escape Day. She wanted twenty-seven full batteries, fully charged- almost two tons, one whole cubic meter of mana batteries- for the trip. That meant she needed at least nine more, and then she needed spares on top of those so that last-minute magic usage wouldn’t leave them short when it came time to go.

So here she was; three batteries powering a field projection, three more batteries for her personal use, and six blank batteries with salvaged casings ready to go. In two weeks she’d make six more. Two weeks after that, the final six. Thirty-six batteries- nine (and a half) above the required minimum. Those nine batteries ought to be sufficient power for their last month in Acidalia.

With one last quick surge of power, she completed the enchantment on the second battery of the day. She switched off the battery under her hooves, conserving the residual power, and shifted over to the next battery.

“Excuse me?” Cherry Berry had been standing behind her; Starlight hadn’t noticed. (Well, she had, but she’d assumed it was Dragonfly, who always stayed within a couple of ponylengths of a battery in field-projector mode.) “I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were concentrating, but something weird’s happening with one of your bins of crystals.”

Starlight’s ears picked up. “Really?” she asked. “What kind of weird?”

“Water’s trickling down the sides of it.”

“Yeeeeesss!!” Starlight left the batteries, left the field projector- with three batteries backing it, it could run for over an hour- and galloped over to the trays of cut crystals she’d been using for her rainbow crystal enchantment experiments. Unlike the others, which were trays now filled with the standard randomly-enchanted crystals, the crystals in the bin on the end had a single straight, unchanging blue stripe underlying the rippling colors of the surface. And there, on one facet of the six-sided quartz shafts, the stripe broke through the surface and made a large, deep blue spot.

By design the crystals had been arranged to overlap the edges of the box. And yes, yes, tiny trickles of water were running down those overlapping crystals and down the sides of the tray. “It works! It works!” Starlight cheered, dancing up and down on her hooves with excitement.

“What works?” Cherry Berry asked.

“My enchantment overlay for pumping water back upslope to the top of the farm!” Starlight said. “Look, it’s very simple.” She scooped up one of the crystals in her hoof and held it under Cherry’s nose. “The blue stripe is the enchantment- a conduit that passes water, and only water, and passes it in only one direction. Water comes out the blue dot. If it drips onto a crystal enchanted like this one, it gets sucked up and pushed up the line to the next crystal!”

“Okay,” Cherry nodded. “But it’ll be a lot of work making all of these and planting them in rows-“

“No, no, that’s the genius of it!” Starlight grinned. “This is an overlay on the rainbow crystal enchantment! It self-propagates!” She glanced down at the pile of crystals, with most of the blue dots facing more or less up. “And it self-propagates pointed in the right direction! All I have to do is plant these every so often along each side of the farm area, and the rest of the water lines will build themselves!”

“Okay, that is good,” Cherry agreed. “But you don’t want every crystal to be one of these, or else you’ll end up with constant rain in the cave.”

“That’s easy,” Starlight said. “The rainbow crystals can’t pass their enchantment on to a crystal that already has an enchantment. So all I have to do is enchant a continuous row of crystals along the upper and lower bounds of where I want the water lines to go, and the rainbow enchantment can’t cross the line!”

“I see,” Cherry said. “I guess you had this planned out.”

“Well, yes,” Starlight agreed. “It’s a simpler variation on the enchantment we use for life support. It has to be- overlaying it on top of the rainbow crystal spell weakens it a lot. But with enough crystals, we should be able to recycle water from the cistern up to the airlock- in fact, if the enchantment reaches below the surface, it could tap the subsurface water that drains there from the back of the cave! We establish a magic-powered water cycle that requires no pony intervention!”

“We hope.”

Cherry’s skepticism took some of the wind out of Starlight’s sails. “Well, yes,” she said. “But this is what I can do with the time and resources we have remaining. We don’t have a pump or water lines to do this mechanically. And if we don’t do it, within a month or two of our departure, every plant in the cave will dehydrate and die.”

“I know, I know,” Cherry said. “But… we’re never going to see this in full operation, are we? I mean, long term. We don’t know what will change after we leave.”

“All we can do is give the farm a fighting chance,” Starlight said. “We’ve got light and water handled. We’ll know before long if we’ve got heat. I just wish I could think of something for pollination.” She looked at the crystal a moment longer before setting it back in the tray with its siblings. “Unfortunately, the rainbow enchantment doesn’t work at a size small enough for a quartz chip to levitate itself.”

“I’m not sure I like the idea of tiny bits of flying glass anyway,” Cherry said. “Well, good luck. Let us know how we can help set this up.”

“I will,” Starlight said. “But I need to finish the batteries now, and then I have to make the boosters for the test launch. And then there’s all sorts of other things I need to do.”

“Actually, about that,” Cherry Berry said. “Could you… um, could you make me a set of crystal dice like yours? I’m tired of the way the computer dice program keeps finding ways to dump me in Harry King’s dunny wagon.”

“Why exactly did you pick the Assassin character from the pre-gens Mark made, anyway?” Starlight asked.

“He wouldn’t let any of us play wizards or witches,” Cherry said. “Roof-jumping was as close as I could get to flying. But I don’t understand why the computer dice keep failing me on that skill, and ONLY that skill.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Starlight said. “You could fall into the River Ankh instead.”

“Ugh. Go make your batteries.”

Starlight, still feeling pleased with herself and her genius, went back to do just that.