Penny nodded and closed her eyes to consider everyone’s opinions. After a long internal debate, she nodded. “Pan, set a course for… Sananda.”
Pan saluted with one hoof. “Yes, ma’am!” With a wince, the pony switched his cybernetic hooves mode, deploying them as hands to begin working the Dawn’s computer. He was almost not terrified of it, but it was still the most efficient way. Pressing two buttons at once with hooves simply didn't work, and using his magic to peck at buttons one at a time was simply too slow.
Rainbow smiled half from joy, half from anticipation. “Ah, yeah! Pirate base here we come!”
Jo hummed and turned to face Penny, her systems abuzz with calculations. “Captain, a word, if I may.”
Penny gave the android a nod. “There’s four of us, comrade. Say what you want when you want to say it.”
Jo stepped closer to the captain’s chair. “With all due respect, neither this vessel nor your personal armory possess the required armaments to assault a base of any kind. Nor is Rainbow ready for a clandestine operation. Tyhi would have been optimal as it presented the best chance of finding a pirate vessel the Dawn could capture, or successfully board.”
“Da,” Penny said with a slow nod. “But we need credits. This gives us more. Also, where there is a colony, there is vodka.”
Rainbow frowned and turned to look up at Penny. “Uh, don’t we have enough of that?”
Jo smiled slowly as her probability analisis finished. “I get it! She means we can try to grab one of the pirates from a bar in the colony. Do some interrogation.”
Penny nodded once and smiled while she looked out through the Dawn’s bridge window. “Da. So! Jo, you said you wanted to help fix the Dawn up, da?”
“Yes.”
Penny stood up and waved for Jo to follow her. “Follow me. I’ll show you where the drive field generators are. See if you can shorten our flight time. Pan, don’t start the jump till I tell you do. Rainbow, meet me in my room. I need to show you what my kit is so you can fetch the right things for me.”
Rainbow Dash - 21st of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
749,567.59 A.H.
Dawn of Destiny, Core Mining Corps HQ - Sananda, Noctae Sector
Four days later, the Dawn emerged in the Iota Capuli System, shuddering slightly as she settled back into subluminal speeds. Jo’s quick detailing of each of the field generators had done wonders for the poor ship. She had been more than three centuries overdue for that particular maintenance, and permanent damage had been done.
Of course being a bit faster than she was yesterday outweighed the fact she would never be as fast as she once was.
Everyone had gathered on the Dawn’s bridge just before the jump. It would be easiest to do the paperwork with the whole crew in one place after all.
The window shutters hummed as they retracted, providing a view of the planet far below. Rainbow’s face went from bored and disinterested to stunned disbelief in half a heartbeat as Sananda came into view.
She sputtered, her wings flaring as she looked at the shear impossibility unfolding before her. “Holy bucking— How in— What— Luna’s— But physics!”
Sananda hung in space, not as a ball of rock, but as a collection of pieces. It had once been a large, rusty red colored world covered mostly by sand, with a few pockets of green and blue hiding in the deepest recesses of the world. A typical Class-K planet, unsuitable for habitation without massive life support systems and dome cities, even in the spots where native life had found a nitch to hold on to.
The key word being once.
Each continental shelf had been separated from the others and moved away from the planetary core. A lattice of carbon-nanotube beams kept the world in one piece, supporting the crust in place of the molten core, which was of course completely exposed.
A shimmering green forcefield between the gaps in the continental plates kept the air from moving more than a few kilometers below the surface. An important thing to focus on, given the vacuum between the core and crust.
Several truly massive space stations orbited the world, each one in geosynchronous orbit over a crack. They resembled massive jellyfish with several hundred small mechanical tendrils extending down into the exposed core, sucking the heat out of the molten metal to make electricity which would be sold off world, or plucking solidifying bits of metal out of the core and moving them up to the refineries.
Penny raised an eyebrow at Rainbow’s near-panic reaction, watching the mare squirm uncomfortably in her seat with just a little disapproval. “What’s matter? Never seen a shell world in progress before?”
Jo turned to her captain with a deadpan stare. “Captain… How exactly would she have seen one?”
Pan looked up from the communications panel for the first time since the jump finished. “Seen whaaaa…” The stallions’ ears stood straight up in alarm. “Uhhh… How? Just, how?”
Penny coughed into her hand to try and hide her embarrassed blush at forgetting her friend’s primitive homeworld. “Well, you crack the crust at the fault lines. Plant the support systems, turn them on so they push everything apart, and a force field if you want to keep the local air, then you take out the core, mine out all useful minerals, fill the core with something cheap and dense, pull the crust back together, and you have a habatat you can sell.”
Rainbow stammered for several seconds then shook her head. “Wait, but, if you’re going to live on it, why not just… leave it alone?”
The weather pattern disruptions that has to cause are… Oh man, I don’t want to think about what it would take to keep a farm town watered with those huge cracks, and a slowly diminishing magnetosphere!
Jo stepped over to rainbow, bent down and pointed at the core. “Because that is one sextillion, eight hundred quintillion tons of iron alone.”
Rainbow looked up at Jo. “Okay, and in Equish that’s, what?”
The android thought for a quick moment about the best reply, and settled on educating her girlfriend as best as she was able. “That planet contains enough metal to make six hundred billion habitats, which can house approximately one hundred eighty quadrillion people, while the natural planet’s population limit is merely a few dozen billion.
“Once finished, the shell world will be indistinguishable from a natural planet, and can be sold as luxury housing, while all of the materials which would be unused can go into ensuring that everyone in the galaxy has a home. Or at least, an atmosphere and gravity.”
Rainbow shivered as she pictured the same process being used on Equus. “Is… Is this done to every planet?”
Penny laughed. “Nyet! There’s no need too. Companies like this one turn empty star systems into residential systems. In, oh, fifty years, there will be a few hundred trillion people living here.”
Pan managed to pull his eyes away from the window as the comms panel lit up and chirped, alerting him to an incoming transmission. “Uh, we’re getting a call from,” Pan squinted at the panel in front of him, not quite able to read the tiny text. “Uh… Core Mining Corps.”
Penny quickly tapped a few commands into her mobility frame, tweaking her hardlight outfit to be a more professional-looking yellow and red jumpsuit with a pattern meant to match her armor. Jo had been given the same holo-program, and had taken to wearing her uniform most of the time since she no longer had to worry about not finding an outlet to recharge from.
Once Penny was happy with the way her new outfit looked, she adjusted her glasses and nodded to Pan. “Put them on a screen.”
Pan flipped a switch and the Dawn’s projectors erected a large 2d-holographic screen in front of the window. The screen flickered for a moment before displaying the image of a very tired looking Ilaashan man sitting at a simple metal desk in a small office.
He was a typical example of his species. Tall, wiry, extra thin, hairless, vaguely frog-like, with speckled turquoise, cyan, and navy blue skin forming an elaborate fractal pattern across his body. His eyes made Rainbow wince as she looked into them, the white pupil, red iris, and black sclera was just a bit too freaky to look at.
Eeep! It’s like when— I uh… I’ll just look at his nose. Rainbow decided.
The Ilaashan was clad in a dark burgundy business suit which rustled as he raised a hand in greeting. “Hello, welcome to Sananda. My name is Bob, I represent the Core Mining Corps. I am afraid this system is currently not available for immigration, but we do have a hotel you can stay at for a short while and can perform any minor repairs you may need. We also sell fuel and basic supplies. How may I help you today?”
Penny stood up from her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m Captain Penny Hawking, Xeno Hunter Number XH-4589S291. I’m responding to your request for assistance… We accepted the job four days ago, we should be in your system.”
Bob blinked slowly, then put his face into his hands and groaned. “Oh, heavens… I’m sorry, whatever problem we’re having has cut us off from the main office on Plate Three. We have separate ODIN lines for the stations and the ground bases. We’re not on the same network for security reasons.”
Penny raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me you can authorise our landing… I don’t want to have wasted the fuel to come out here only to be denied a job because of bureaucracy.”
Bon shook his head with the exhaustion of a minimum wage worker on the last five minutes of his shift who had just been told he had to stay another four hours. “No, no. I’ll get your landing set up as best I can. It’s just… You have no idea how happy I am that corporate finally sprang for a professional! We’ve been stalled on the crust work for five weeks now, and because it’s the main office there’s been zero coordination between the space and ground forces, it’s just— We’ve been flying data drives back and forth to transfer data because apparently making some simple laser relays is just too expen— ugh!”
Pan cleared his throat and flashed the alien a sympathetic smile. “I worked at a Neigh Mart for six years. I get it. Captain? We should let him do his job.”
Penny nodded slowly. “Yeah… If you can send us a flight plan and give me a brief overview of the problem, I would vastly appreciate it.”
Bob shook his head. “All I can do is your flight plan. Just a moment.”
He tapped away at a keyboard hidden in his desk for several moments then sighed in relief. “Oh good. There’s a clear route right now. Ground has been flying a lot of drones lately, you get clouds of them… Head on down by this route, don’t deviate or you might get hit by something, or worse, mined. Ground may be a bit worried by your landing, but if you broadcast your ID on open channels it should be fine. Good luck, and please solve this within twenty two hours.”
Penny frowned and tilted her head, wishing she could wrestle more information out of the alien. “What’s the timer for, comrade?”
Bob coughed and tapped his fingers against his desk. “I have tomorrow off but work the day after that.”
Rainbow couldn’t help but smile. Heh! I guess some things are actually universal.
Penny laughed and sat back down in her seat. “I’ll see what I can do! No promises. Pan, do you have the course?”
Pan nodded. “Yes.”
“Send her to navigation. We’re going down. Oh, and cut transmission.”
The Dawn flew downwards, following the path provided for it. The ancient ship’s course took it through the forest of mining tendrils beneath one of the stations. The forest of metallic tubes reminded rainbow of flying through the woods in the middle of winter. A slight pang of sadness welled up in her heart as she couldn't help but wish she could fly the ship.
The trip through the mining tendrils lasted for but a moment, then the much longer process of navigating through the millions of mining drones began. The cloud of drones was made up of robots of all shapes and sizes, each of which was carrying one of ten types of containers up to the stations.
Flying through the paths left by the drones reminded Rainbow of the time she’d gone surfing and wound up inside the part of the wave that her instructor had called the pipeline. Only instead of water, this wave was made of robots. Robots which Jo kept pointing to and whispering things like, “Dash, check out the servos on her! We should get her serial and see if she’s awake.”
Fortunately for Jo, Rainbow mistook genuine attractions for jokes.
Half an hour later, the Dawn finally reached the edge of Sananda’s atmosphere, and entered a parking orbit just above it. Jo and Pan were left onboard to adjust orbit as needed, and to serve as a communications hub. After all, Pan’s real job was about to begin.
Penny and Rainbow had spent the trip to Sananda loading up the new shuttle with Penny’s kit, and Penny had spent the flight down suiting up for work, allowing them to head down in the shuttle seconds after the Dawn entered its new orbit.
Penny hadn’t named the new shuttle yet. That made Rainbow just a little nervous. There was an old pony saying about unnamed ships that set sail. “Venture without name, never seen again.”
On the other hoof, the Argas seemed like a very good shuttle. The opposite of Penny’s old metal box on four boosters.
It had a nice sleek profile, with a small centralized cockpit with a canopy instead of a windshield. The body was mostly rectangular, with some more rounded sections, no hard corners, no visible fins or winglets, and a large round cylindrical section in the middle where the shuttle’s quad-coil gun turret was mounted. Furthermore, unlike the Hoatzin, the cargo ramp was the entire floor of the cargo bay, which simply lowered to the ground in one piece.
The shuttle also had much better shields, nearly equal to a Star League interceptor’s, a gravity drive that allowed it to hover without the need for rotating engine housings, and most importantly in Rainbow’s opinion, inertial dampeners which made flying in it nice and buttery smooth.
Rainbow smiled as the shuttle slid smoothly to a stop in the air above a large landing pad and began to descend without any major bumps or jostling. Rainbow glanced at one of the many holoscreens linked to the external sensors array which served as windows. The mining colony below them looked to be about the same size as Ponyville, only instead of each building being uniquely designed and decorated, everything was the same simple modular half-cylinders.
At least everything is painted nice, Rainbow thought as she went back to checking her armor.
The Armor Penny had gotten for Rainbow was one of the simplest the galaxy ahd to offer, but it still blew her away. The base was a yellow flight suit, meant for space, which meant the suit had a full environmental containment system built into it. In this armor she could survive for a few hours in space, or basically forever on any alien world.
The fabric sections were fur-tight, but not uncomfortable, not even where the duraplast plates were connected to it. The cobalt blue plates covered about half of Rainbow's body, protecting her vital areas. The plates were very light, almost unnoticeable to Rainbow despite her heightened awareness of her body.
The plates covered her flanks, back, rib cage, upper legs, knees, shins, and hooves. They did not offer much protection from attacks, instead they were meant to help Rainbow survive a crash. The suit’s protective features came in the form of a small shield projector which wrapped the pegasus mare in a surprisingly cozy and snug layer of transparent hardlight which moved seamlessly with her body.
Rainbow had been assured that the hardlight shield would last for several sustained shots from an X-Laser canon. She had no idea what that was, but it sounded dangerous.
A holo screen next to Rainbow flashed red as the shuttle touched down. Rainbow glanced at it, and was immediately grateful she let the auto-doc install a text translation module in her head.
“Okay, don’t want to choke to death,” Rainbow murmured to herself as she slipped her armor’s helmet out of her new duffle bag.
The helmet was pretty simple. The only colored parts fit over her muzzle, everything else was made from transparent alloy, making it look as if she only had a respirator on. The helmet’s neckseals hissed as it sealed to her flight suit.
A second later and a holographic hud flicked into existence, giving Rainbow easy readings on her current location via a simple map, a compass, and little information about her armor’s power levels. I’ll bet I could get some really good altitude with this suit! Too bad this planet’s air is so thin. I don't think I can fly in this.
Rainbow stood up and waited for Penny to enter the cargo bay. It didn’t take long for the impossibly loud thud of T-34 footsteps to shake the shuttle, and within a minute Penny entered the cargo bay with a sad look in her eyes.
Rainbow pointed to the display with a wingtip. “It says there’s metallic particles in the atmosphere. Like, in super tiny dust form. You’ll want to put your hood on.”
Penny nodded gratefully and sealed her armor with a quick thought. The clang of alloy on alloy echoed almost painfully in the small cargo bay as Penny hit the switch to lower the floor. “Man I hate this thing,” she muttered half to herself.
Rainbow frowned and looked up at the yellow armored colossus, her tail raising in surprise. “What, why? It’s great!”
Penny frowned behind her hood. “It’s boring to fly. Nothing broke, no bumps, basically just pushed a button…” Peny sighed and waved a hand. “Ey, blin… You wouldn't understand.”
Rainbow shook he rhead. “No I get it. You’re saying it has no soul, right?”
“Da!” Penny sent a quick command to her armor, which deployed three camera drones.
The drones were quad purpose. All of her work had to be logged in case of insurance or legal problems, Penny herself liked to know what was behind her when stalking dangerous predators, and of course, her fans enjoyed watching the stream.
Penny faced one of the drones and gave it a thumbs up. “Hello, Comrades! See this little poni? This is Blue, she’s my new squire. The two of us are way out in the Noctae Sector on a shell-world-in-progress called Sananda.
“There’s not much known about this planet, if anyone can put some good data in the chat, my boyfriend Pan will send it my way. There’s a two hundred credit reward for anyone who can find me information on the local flora and fauna.
“All I can tell you right now, comrades… Well, the air is full of little metal razor blades, one breach of our suits and we’ll die a horrible lung pureeing death! Also, this is one of those planets where life only had smol places to grow in. Usually makes for tough plant eaters who don’t like other things in their territory, and blin… The predators on these worlds… Ah, but you know how those are. Let’s not scare Blue.”
Penny wille done of her drones to float down to Rainbow’s eye level. “Say hello to everyone, Blue!”
Rainbow gave Penny a mock glare. “Hi, everyone. My name is Rainbow Dash.”
Not that Rainbow knew it, but the stream’s chat descended into complete chaos at the sight of what very well may have been the most adorable species ever.
“Da. Blue Fast. I know,” Penny teased back. “So this mission is a bit of a mystery. Something big is messing with the mine here badly enough to stop a whole sector from getting their jobs done. If anyone wants to bet on what we’ve got to fight off today, Pan will be keeping the books for betting pool!
“I have no idea what we will find today so, come. Let’s find out!”
Penny sent a mental command ot her shuttle and commanded the cargo “ramp” to lower. The floor jolted slightly as its maglocks released and the cargo bay began to slide down on hydraulic supports, bringing a group of three silver-suited humanoids into view.
Each suit was made from a very reflective alloy-woven material which reflected heat, and featured housework and a pack which indicated they were long-term use environmental suits. Their suits were identical save for the number of red stripes on their sleeves. The one at the fornt had six, the other two had one each.
The three figures faces couldn’t be seen behind the gold-tinted visors of their globular helmets, leaving their species a total mystery.
A slight static hiss brought Pans’ voice into Rainbow’s ear. “Dash, you gotta check this out! Penny puts audio in her streams.”
Dash nodded. “Uh, okay?”
With a few keystrokes, Pan linked Rainbow’s comms to Penny’s streams, letting her watch the stream on a small video window in her HUD.
One of Penny’s camera drones had flown out of the ship the moment there had been room, and provided a view of Rainbow, Penny, and the three people on the dock below. The three of them visibly flinched as Penny’s T-34 came into view, a fact which worried Rainbow, and amused Penny enough to add her people’s national anthem to the stream as background audio while she was slowly lowered to the ground.
“Heh heh… What’s the matter, Comrades? Afraid of a little Chernin engineering?” Penny asked as she stepped off the platform.
Rainbow bent her head down to mutter into her comm. “Pan, I don’t get why the music is funny.”
Before the stallion could reply, the most-stripped of the three humanoids took a step forward and spoke in a low guttural voice. “To be fair, we weren't expecting you to be in a light mech, Captain.”
Penny pointed to herself. “What, this? A mech? Nyet! Is heavy power armor. You have a problem with something big enough to shut down your mine, I brought proper equipment.”
The team leader tilted his head slightly. “Excuse me?”
“I’m here to take care of your xeno problem. Did you got my broadcast?”
“We did,” he said slowly. “It’s just I didn’t expect you to want to get to work the second you got dirtside.”
Rainbow ruffled her wings. “Actually, she always dresses like that.”
The team leader was silent for several long moments. “You Chernin are… A fascinating people. I am Zaen Garin, the Overseer of Sector 892. I’m glad corporate approved a Hunter. Please, excuse my surprise, I’ve never seen one of you before.”
Penny walked forward and squatted down to get on Zaen’s eye level. Dash trotted forward as well, remaining next to Penny’s left side. “So, what is problem? All I know is something big and dangerous means you can’t dig. What is so big and bad on this rock that mining drones can’t take it on?”
The Overseer shook his head, a gesture visible only thanks to his suit shifting slightly at the shoulders. “I’m sorry. I thought corporate wouldn’t publish the job posting as I wrote it. Are you up for a slightly long explanation?”
Penny leaned forward to nod as best her suit could. “Da, and don’t leave anything out! Blin, I’ve had enough of your company’s mud-clear instructions.”
Zaen reached up to scratch at the back of his helmet. “Yeah… Sector 892 is a manual mining zone. We have drones, but they are only for transporting ore. Our prospector drones found a quite rare material in astonishingly large quantities below us. We tried mining it out with drones first, but the process was far too slow. It’s not in regular chunks, it’s randomly screwed about a complex series of caverns, and is very sensitive.
“We don't exactly have the best equipment, and the girls in accounting weren't liking the profit margins and loss ratios we had with drones, so we switched to organic mining in this sector.”
Rainbow nodded slowly. “Okay, and that’s why you don’t have robots to fight this thing?”
Zaen held up his hands defensively. “Oh no! We don't have robots to fight this thing because any robots we send into its den go berserk, and can’t exactly detect it… In short, our mining drones are able to deal with small critters that they can see. They can’t see this thing.
“In fact, we have no video footage of it at all… It— Well, it might be invisible, or have very good camouflage.”
Penny nodded, taking notes. “Da, da… So, what happened? Your miners upset some big subterranean predator?”
“Something like that… FIve weeks ago our crews reported finding a proper vein of—” Zaen stopped mid sentence and sighed in relief. “Oh good! Command just messaged me .Your contract says you can’t sell information on our operation.”
Penny laughed. “Is this classified? Hold on. Pan, cut the feed for five minutes and set up a censor filter.”
Zaen stood stock still. “You’re recording this!?”
“Da. I am legally required too. Don’t worry, I’ll scrub out all classified info. My comms officer is already standing by.”
Zaen let out a deep breath. “Oh thank god! There’s a pirate base somewhere in this system and— Well… We’ve found approximately forty two million metric tons of Terranite.”
Penny took a half step back, wanting to immediately board her shuttle and leave. “Blyt! You’re mining that with hand tools?! You'll kill us all!”
Zean waved his hands frantically. “No! No! You don’t understand, it’s stable!”
“Stable?” Penny frowned behind her helmet. “You have stable… You broke into a First Race ruin, didn’t you!”
Zaen sighed and turned to look out across the horizon at the rolling rust red hills. “No. We think we found one of the places they mined it from.”
Rainbow raised a hoof. “Hi, sorry, I’m kinda new here. What’s Terranite?”
Zaen turned around and looked Penny in her hood. “Your squire doesn't know—”
“Is not her fault, she’s from a primitive world.”
“Oh! Well.” The overseer knelt down to get on Rainbow’s eye level. “Terranite is a large blue crystal that produces a lot of energy when you bombard it with a gamma ray laser. The crystal dissolves, releasing almost as much energy as a matter-antimatter reaction, only it’s much safer, and you can make the reaction happen in an instant or very slowly, depending on the strength of the laser.
“It’s one of the best power sources in the galaxy, and we’re standing on enough of it to power every ship in the Orion arm for a few decades, if they were in flight constantly.”
Rainbow's ears drooped back. “And uh, it explodes?”
“Most of it will explode, yes. This deposit is stable, it doesn't seem to have been used at all. Which is why we think this used to be a First Race mine. Especially given how well, the dense part we found seems to fill the tunnel network, as if the Terranite once filled up the entire mass. Perhaps it naturally forms in, well, organic-like vein shapes.” Zaen stood back up and looked at Penny, clearing his throat. “Can you ensure that you blur out any crystals you find, and censor the name when you mention it?”
“Da,” Penny sent a quick text message to Pan, which included instructions on how to filter everything out.
A few moments later she gave the overseer a thumbs up as the filter was created. “It’s done. Resuming recording, sorry, legal department requires it.”
Zaen sighed. “Trust me, I understand… You can roll again.”
Penny resumed the stream and looked up at one of her drones. “Sorry, Comrades. Is only business,” she returned her gaze to the overseer. “So! You dug deep and found a big deposit of Terranite—”
Rainbow yelped as the word was bleeped out by a high pitched squeal in the feed which her comm was still playing back. “OW! Why is that the censor noise?!”
Pan groaned into Rainbow’s comm. “It was like somepony shoved their hoof up a cat’s butt… I’m going to adjust the volume mixer!”
Zane smield behind his helmet. “Well, at least now I know it was censored. To continue your briefing… Out here… On the landing pad… Some of our miniers tried to dig around a larger patch of the deposit to start cutting it off and get it processed for transport to the surface. They breached a sealed chamber and all of their life-signs flatlined.
“Comms are a little spotty under that much rock. We thought we lost their signals. I sent down some more men to check on them. We lost their signals. That’s when I knew there was a problem. I went down to check things myself. I took a full scanner system to see if something had gotten in the air, or maybe they set off a crystal and fried themselves.”
Zaen trailed off, and visibly shivered at the memory. “I— Have… Have you ever eaten salsa?”
Penny winced. “They had been shredded?”
“Or smashed to actual pulp…”
Rainbow gulped. “Woah, uh… Penny? I’m in light armor here!”
“Da. But you pass me guns, not fight,” Penny reminded. “So, you broke a hole in some xeno’s living room wall and it’s pissed? No problem! I’ll put it back in its hole.”
“You mean kill it, right?”
“Da, if I have too… I probably do that if it’s going to kill anything it sees and not eat it. That’s a sign of madness in most species. Oh! Did it eat any of the bodies?”
The overseer slowly shook his head. “No… It took their equipment.”
Penny blinked. “Ey?!”
“It left all of their...remains, but we didn’t find a shred of their equipment. I thought the gore piles might be from random creatures, but no! It is their remains. We did DNA tests. It’s killing people, then picking anything inorganic out of the pile and taking that, for some reason. Maybe it eats metals?
“The beast also comes to the surface at night. It leaves a weird trail, it’s got to be insectoid innature as it has at least ten legs and they are very much just spikes.”
Penny looked at the overseer for several long moments. “It’s coming up to hunt, and steals equipment?”
He nodded. “Yes. It’s taken equipment form up here, and we know it’s not being stolen because well… You can watch the stuff get dragged back into the mineshaft, but you cant see the creature itself. Do you have a comm’s frequency I can send video too?”
Penny nodded. “Da. Pan, open Channel 459.2 to the Stream,” Penny waited a moment for pan to comply then gestured to Zean. “Send it.”
Rainbow turned her attention to the video display on her comm screen. The feed flickered as it switched from playing the drone’s video feed to a recording from a security camera. The camera showed a view of a large well-cut mineshaft heading into the side of a sand-covered hill, as well as a pile of mechanical and electronic equipment.
The pile moved, almost as if a giant broom was sweeping ten-meter long sections towards the mineshaft in long, slow strokes. The invisible strokes went from left to right, pushing barrels, broken drones, piles of metal shards, and bits of vehicles into the mineshaft a few meters at a time.
Rainbow shivered. “That… That’s not okay.”
Penny nodded. “Da. I hate fighting critters with camo that good. Do you have any sensor data other than visual?”
Zean sighed and cycled the footage through the entire EM spectrum. Nothing showed up. “We don’t have short range radar. It may show up on that.”
Rainbow turned to Penny and looked up, tapping on her left arm for her attention. “Uh, Penny?”
Penny turned to look down at Rainbow. “What?”
“It’s not the invisibility that’s bothering me,” Rainbow said slowly. “Its.. Well, back home we have these things called snakes. They can be big enough to eat a small dragon or a pony, but most are very small… Imagine a mouth on a super long tail that’ all muscle.”
Penny nodded again. “Okay, I’m picturing it. Do they sweep treasure into piles like that?”
“No, but that’s exactly how they dig. I remember because Fluttershy had me help her take care of a burrowing cobra. They found its tracks, and it has bug hooves. It’s a thing that can sweep piles that are about ten meters long, and it’s got a bunch of bug legs. I think we’re fighting a giant invisible centipede that can burrow like a snake, and likes to hoard shiny things… Like the armor we are in.”
Penny hummed. “I wish I had gotten zoology data from your homeworld… What’s a centipede?”
Rainbow tapped her hoof to her chin as she tried to think of how she could describe one of those living nightmares. “So, imagine a bug, but it’s just that middle bit that’s tiny with legs, like a hundred of those stuck together in one long tube. Now give it a small head with huge mandibles that look like they are meant to rip and tear flesh and bone at the same time, then a mouth that looks like it’s made to eat your soul.”
Penny closed her eyes and pictured the first thing that Rainbow’s description brought to mind. Then she pictured one large enough to move that much junk at once, and shivered. Her armor creaked and groaned as it responded to her distress. “Okay! Blue, we’ll need the Firedrake package.”
Rainbow bit her lips a she struggled to remember which of the nine different equipment packages they had packed was Firedrake. “Uh…” Her wings twitched. “Was that the micro-missile launchers, electro-caster, tower shield, and the millimeter-radar module?”
“Da, that’s the one!”
Zean held up his hands waving them “Woah! Woah! Easy there, you can’t fire high explosives down there! You could set off the— Why do you think we haven’t just cracked the crust and pulled it out with a starship?!”
Penny held up her left hand in the stop gesture. “Relax, Overseer. No explosives, just armor piercing seekers. I don’t want to vaporize myself either. Besides…” Penny leaned down to loom over Zean. “You said there were berserk robots down there. I’ll need to fight through them if we run into any.”
“Oh, right…” Zean sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry. I forgot to mention how that happened. We’re not entirely sure, but we are missing a drone control module. We suspect its’ damaged and just… down there. Sending bots random instructions and scrambling their behavior settings. There’s not too many, only a few dozen, and there are miles and miles of tunnels.”
Penny nodded one more time and turned to look out at the horizon where Zean had been looking a moment before. “Da… Is it over there?”
“Yes. I’ll send you map data on the same frequency.”
Rainbow gulped and turned to look at the overseer. “Can you give me a minute? I’m not used to controlling stuff yet.”
The overseer frowned behind his helmet, then nodded. Rainbow sighed in relief and closed her eyes. She’d agreed to getting her neural implant reluctantly. Very reluctantly. The turning point had been when she learned it would let her speak to Jo directly in addition to operate modern technology.
Rainbow reached out through the neural link, searching for the cargo sled’s signal. Okay. Cargo sled Firedrake. Move it to us. You can do it… Firedrake sled…
Thousands of technological signals became visible to Rainbow as she searched. The back of her head itched as she struggled to sift through everything and her implant irritated her freshly healed skin. By the time her mind grabbed onto the sled, the coin sized patch of skin on the back of her skull itched like mad.
Rainbow grit her teeth and with extreme concentration forced the cargosled to lift off the cargo deck with a slight lurch and drift toward her. She could see hear and feel with the seld’s own sensors, as if the hovering platform were another body. It felt… Unsettling. But it was efficient.
Penny smiled behind her hood as she watched Rainbow’s first time successfully getting the right thing on the first try. “Good job, Blue! Don’t worry, it will get easier after a few months. So, Overseer. Where are we going?”
The Overseer shrugged. “You’re the Hunter. What’s best for you?”
“I need the location of the mine shaft entrance, the deposit, and the location of the beast’s den.”
Zaen closed his eyes and sent the information to Rainbow and Penny. Rainbow winced as she felt the information arrive via her implant, disrupting her concentration for a moment. The Cargosled drifted forward, smacking Rainbow quite painfully on the plot. “Ow!”
Penny spun around a worried look on her face. “Are you okay? Suit intact?”
Rainbow nodded slowly, her HUD showed no breaches. “Yeah. Fine, just ran into myself.”
Rainbow took a look at the map information which was now overlaid on the world around her. Zean had given them three waypoints. A, B, and C.
“What am I looking at?” Penny asked.
Zaen cleared his throat. “A is the deposit, B is the shaft entrance, and C is the den.”
Rainbow retook control of the cargosled and climbed on top of it to prevent herself from having to focus on moving herself as well. “Sooo, what’s the plan?”
Penny looked across the horizon at the circular icon floating over the slightly distant hill. Something deep within her soul told her there was only one thing that any true blooded Chernin would do.
“Blue, we go to B.”
With that, Penny broke into a run, jumped off the edge of the landing platform, landed with a loud crash, and began to sprint across the sandy ground, leaving a trail of dust as she rushed towards the mineshaft.
Rainbow closed her eyes and willed the cargo sled to move, driving it after her friend as fast as it could go.
Pan’s voice crackled in Rainbow’s ear. “Hey, Dash? Uh… The chat is kind of laughing their plots off… Do you see a joke in the phrase “Rush B”?”
Rainbow blinked once. “Uh, no?”
Rainbow’s comm crackled again, this time letting Penny’s voice come through clearly. “Come on Blue! We need to get that kit attached to me so I can set up a sensor net around the mine shaft. I want to get data on this thing before we fight it.”
“Coming!” Rainbow called with an exasperated sigh. “This stupid sled is slower than an asthmatic foal!”
Rainbow reared up and balanced atop the cargosled as if it were a surfboard. It was the only way to make moving that slow while in the air look cool. I need to ask Jo to make these go faster…
Bliconal: Adorable blue pony wants to go fast but can't. This is not okay, Comrades!
Bytechrodu: 😢 Blue must go fast! #MakeBlueFastAgain
ConspiracyTeenz: Yes! #MakeBlueFastAgainManet donated 200 credits!
Manet: That cargosled had better have hyperjets on it next time! 😠
Editorksqu: Penny, Y U no let Blue fast? 😭
Feistyring: You know what?Timuri donated 400 credits.
Timuri: Get that mare a jetpack. Mare’s love jetpacks.
FourHappy: Look at smol poni, standing up on cargo sled wanting to go fast. She no want cargo sled, she want to sky surf. Half of us are engineering nerds, we can make her dream come true. Join me, comrades! ☭
FuzzyLittle: #MakeBlueFastAgain
GeniusAbout: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Globarkom: Hey 😄 Four’s right! Penny’s got that whole factory on the Dawn. I’m making a file share server. I’ll start on some grav units that will fit a surfboards form factor! UDDI://odin.alchamax.Globarkom.per/Blue/Fast1
FourHappy: Da! We make poni fly! I’ll make the neural control circuits. Beginner friendly ones of course 😁
RayneLuna: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Islandclic: You read Penny’s Blog, they are in the hole credits wise right now. They can't spare the parts.
Latestrepe: Screw that! Blue needs to fast! Shut up and take my creds!Latestrepe has donated 1,200 credits.
Lemonwara: I can design a magnet unit to keep her hooves on the board.
Maidericol has donated 188 credits.
Maidericol: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Mocanser: Nothing that cute shouldn’t get to go sky surfing.Mocanser has donated 55 credits.
Mortaxis: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Optickins: #MakeBlueFastAgainPenguinBunny has donated 3,001 credits
PrankXbox has donated a credit.
Ash19256: If you guys reserve the rear third of the board I can get a quantum ramjet in there.
Proteamet: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Railistr: What?! 🙄 Bullshit! No way you can do that.
Reportsig: I’ll work on a power plant for it! 😎
ShcamAnn: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Ash19256: I can too. I work for Valiant Drive Yards. Glory to the Children of Chern! ☭Siblighte has donated 923 credits.
djthomp: Hold tight, Blue. We’ll get you fasts soon! ☭
Spyderterc: #MakeBlueFastAgain
Pan watched the live comment feed slowly begin to fund and develop a hypersonic surfboard and shook his head. “Okay, yeah! Space internet is way weirder than Equus internet…”
Jo smiled. “You mean nicer?”
“That’s what’s weird.”
Jo snickered as a vivid image entered her mind via her imagination subroutines. “Wait till they see Dash fly on her own.”