She watches out the windshield as her passenger shuttle approaches the microstation. As it had turned out, her onboard crew had most decidedly not taken the transformation as well as she did. While the variation- some had wings, like Lieutenant Commander Sta’leen, her exec; some had horns, like Chief Ta’leer; and one that she’d seen had neither. If she remembers right, he was one of the low-level operations crew.
Not one had both, like herself. Not one had, after even half an hour, been fully recovered from the shock of the transformation. Sta’leen had been close; she’d been able to teach him the hold-things-with-the-hoof trick, which he’d quickly christened ‘hoofgrip’, before she left. When she had mentioned the vetting trip, he had requested to stay behind.
“I know I should probably go with you to help,” he had stated, “but I don’t think I’m personally ready for that kind of exposure just yet- besides, our onboard crew need someone to help them adjust.”
She had approved his request, and left him behind. Meaning, of course, she’s alone on this shuttle.
It’s not one of the shuttles her crew had used when they first came aboard; no, she doesn’t know how to fly those. Rather, this is one of the ones Athena had been pre-equipped with. So, Athena is flying it, on “autopilot”.
She chuckles to herself as she punches a couple keys for a size comparison between the microstation and her shuttle.
The microstation is a fairly standard military microstation, designed for last-minute security checks before letting people aboard a ship. Some kind of scan with an acronym she doesn’t know is revealing its floor plan; one main room, for the vetting, with a closet filled with movable, plastic walls to put into that room- and beams, and everything else required to impose order upon such a large space filled with people. A smaller departure hall, that the lone docking port she’s headed to reaches; three small security chambers connecting the two, for the actual vetting to take place, before sending them to her shuttle. There are interconnecting doors between the three chambers, and a separate exit from each- vertical, to the plane of the station- to return refused people to their shuttles without passing back through the main room.
A little equipment closet off the main room, housing the solitary atmospheric scrubbing plant, a large battery, and a couple tanks; a single bathroom closet right next to it. No sewage processing, no food; a supply ship must regularly stop by to supply fresh water and oxygen and dispose of the wastewater and unwanted atmospheric components. Maximum independent life support capacity of a hundred; there’s usually a supply ship connected when it’s in use, contributing its life support facilities to allow the usual four or five hundred occupants, during normal use. It seems to have been set up for her.
Then, her shuttle. Unarmored, civilian passenger craft. Three whole decks; the top two contain fifteen hundred seats between them, the bottom one reserved for ship systems. Gravity equipped, maximum five gees; three complete, independent atmospheric processors, each with their own molecular reconstitutors, to convert the unwanted compounds into the desired ones; enough hydroponics capacity to support two thousand people; onboard sewage processing plants, with full recycling capability; onboard manufacturing plant; onboard fusion power plant, with enough hydrogen stowage to maintain maximum power for a full year; full solar capability with plenty of reserves.
Oh, and don’t forget the reactionless ‘gravity drive’ it’s using to align itself to dock with the station that it outmasses by at least ten times.
Or the sleek, aerodynamic profile, designed for smooth flight in atmospheres as light as a tenth of an atmosphere or as dense as a thousand atmospheres.
Or the atmospheric life support capacity of almost six thousand.
She lets out a snort of laughter as the docking clamps engage, transmitting only the tiniest of vibrations through the station, thanks to the already perfect alignment. Unlike the space station it’s docking to, her shuttle is capable of independently carrying two thousand people non-stop for at least a year, probably more, depending on solar exposure… and if they find a source of ice, it is equipped to produce additional fuel out of that, though it is restricted only to hydrogen. It’d be more than a little cramped, but within the equipment capacities. She trots out of the sealed, triple-pilot cockpit and across the spacious passenger compartment to the nearest of the three equidistant airlocks on this side- the one that’s locked to the station. The inner door snaps closed moments before the outer cycles open. She steps out of it, glancing around the empty departure hall.
Her right ear flicks slightly. “Did I get the right station?” she asks.
“Affirmative,” Athena states, through the earpiece she’d gotten from the manufacturing plant in her shuttle a minute ago. “Space Lord Matthews is entering the Entry Bay now; Crew flight is initiating final approach to station ports.”
She smiles. “Thank you.” Then she trots forwards, to the center of the three security chambers, glancing up at the closed hatch. “Uh, can you open these doors, or…?”
“Affirmative.”
“Roger that. Please do.”
The door immediately slides open, and she hops gently into the air to pass through the hatch. On a station with no gravity, it isn’t exactly flat against any floors. Her wings suffice to guide her smoothly through the following room and the opposing hatch, which also slid quickly open for her. Both of them close behind her, while she searches the room for her father, fluttering gently to rise above all the lane-control bars that had been set up before it had been dragged out here.
She spots him giving in to his engineering background, poking around in the equipment closet and mumbling. One ear turns a little- and she picks out his mumbling… Eh. He doesn’t seem impressed that they decided to use the smallest microstation available, despite needing to process enough people to keep one of the biggest ones busy for days.
The difference? Her shuttle doesn’t outmass the biggest ones… much. Only a couple tons. The increased space is mostly used for a larger entry bay and more security chambers; the big ones, she knows, have as many as twenty such chambers- with three-stage vetting, making it twenty chains of three chambers each.
Not that she’d be able to use them all right now; she doesn’t even have sixty crewmembers on her ship, let alone fully transformed and ready to help with her vetting! For that matter, she doesn’t even have the three it would take to run this one to capacity.
Meh.
She flaps her wings gently, zipping across the room to get behind her mother, who is holding tight to one of the guide rails while she watches her husband examine the hardware. She smiles; as much as her father has a long history in space, this is probably the second time her mother has ever been in space. The first time, if she recalls correctly, had not been an enjoyable experience for her or anyone around.
She lands gently on the wall behind her mother, walking up next to her… Above her? Zero gee is confusing.
“I wonder how much of that he’ll be doing on the Athena,” she states aloud.
Her mother looks up at her. “What the-?”
Then her father looks over, pulling himself out of the maintenance closet. “What-? Huh. You’re smaller than I expected.”
She blinks. “Oh come on, dad. What were you expecting? A horse?” She snorts.
He blinks. “Uh, yes, kinda.”
“Even though you saw me in a video call just four hours ago?”
“Uh… Yes, actually.”
She sighs. “We’ve got just a few seconds before the crew starts coming into here, though. Right Athena?”
Both her parents look at her weird. Her father a little, and her mother a lot; it would seem he didn’t inform her mom of her transformation.
“First new crewmember will be boarding the station in thirty-eight seconds,” Athena answers, through her earpiece. “Mark.”
“Ah, yes, thirty-five seconds or so,” she states. “Anyways- Oh?” She flicks her ear, looking off to the side a little.
Athena had given her a chime. “Message from Lieutenant Commander Sta’leen,” she states.
Then er Exec’s voice comes on. “Hey, Skip- thought I’d let you know. It seems only the pegasi can do the whole walk-on-walls thing, but we’ve all got the hoofgrip.”
“Good to know,” she states, before looking back up at her parents. “So then.”
Thirty seconds is not much time. However, when you’re capable of carrying a human passenger through subsonic, high-gee maneuvers without bothering them, thirty seconds is plenty. As a matter of fact, ten is more than enough. By the time the crew starts wandering in, her mother has already voted for the transformation- and is waiting in the departure bay, unwilling to board the shuttle alone. Her father is “leaning” against the wall next to the open door into the center security room, holding himself with the wall rail; she’s floating in the air just off the wall on the other side of it. Most of the new crewmembers are, upon entering the station, letting out groans before they gather into the path to the security chambers, propelling themselves along with clumsy grabs at the bars.
She winces; these are most certainly not the experienced spacers she had expected. Even her father lets out a sigh of disappointment.
A good six hours later, the last of the shuttles heads back for the surface while she drifts through the center security chamber once again, back to the departure chamber, her father right behind her. She propels herself quickly to the ground, landing gently and trotting forwards, out of her father’s path. She glances around the departure bay. Only three people had both passed her evaluation and chosen so come aboard; all three of them, plus her mother, are waiting here. She had only refused a few; the rest had been their decisions.
“That’s it,” she states, looking around the room. “Everyone else has turned back. Everyone here good?”
Everyone nods.
Except her mother, who gingerly raises her hand.
She looks at her mother, raising her eyebrow. “Deciding not to?” she asks.
Her mother shakes her head. “No! I… I wanted to ask. How long will it take?”
She looks at the closed airlock to her shuttle. “Um… Sixteen, eighteen hours? Or so?”
“Um… Any way to, uh, accelerate it?”
She blinks. “Uh… I don’t know. Athena?” She looks off to the side, twitching her ear.
Athena’s response is instant. “Transformation rate appears to vary by Unknown Energy One density; rest periods vary accordingly. Simulations suggest you are capable of creating densities sufficient for near-instant transformation.”
She looks back up. “Well, yes. It’s all about energy densities- and supposedly, I can create the necessary density.”
“Could you, um… do that? I’m, um… curious.”
“How you’ll turn out? Um… Sure, gimme a sec.” She closes her eyes and concentrates.
She can feel the energy, behind that airlock door. She can feel the traces of it that have seeped through the alloy, into the station. She tries giving them a push with her mind… and they go right back into the shuttle. Interesting.
She can also feel an enormous amount of that same energy in herself. Only when she thinks about it, of course; that’s… interesting. “Alright, here goes,” she states, and pushes some of it out, surrounding her mother with it. She senses motion immediately, through that energy, and opens her eyes.
At the same moment, her father and all three new crewmembers gasp- and her mother lets out a yelp of surprise.
Her dark-blue-furred, golden-maned, unicorn mother, who is now drifting away from the wall. She smiles, propelling the energy she’d used into her shuttle, and jumps into the air, flapping gently to meet her microgravity-phobic mother. “Congratulations,” she states. “You’re a unicorn.” She uses her wings to gently propel herself, with her mother, back to the wall.
“A… Unicorn,” her mother states. “That means I’m helpless in microgravity, doesn’t it?”
She shakes her head. “No, not helpless. But yes, it does mean you won’t be able to move around as freely in microgravity.” She shrugs. “Oh well- the Athena has a gravity generator, so that doesn’t really matter anyways. Besides, you’ll still be able to grab those bars.” She gestures at the bar her mother had been holding onto.
The unicorn seizes the bar once again, clamping her hooves around it. “... Right, got it.”
“Right then,” she states, dropping back to the decking as she turns to the rest of the room. “Who wants to go next?”
The three crewmembers are still busy staring at her mother, so her father raises his hand. “After that,” he states, “I can hardly wait to get hooves.”
She glances up at him, grinning suddenly. “Oh, that’ll be three ninety-nine.”
He blinks. “What? You’re going to charge me for it?”
She lets out a snort of laughter. “No, of course not.” She tries the energy thing again- and this time, she finds, she doesn’t need to close her eyes. As a result, she doesn’t miss the golden glow that surrounds him for the transformation- or how that glow matches the one on her forehead. Huh, she’d never noticed it before.
He prepares himself for it- so he doesn’t end up propelling himself away from the wall during the transformation. Not that it would have mattered all that much anyways, she considers; he’s now a deep blue pegasus with a black mane and tail. He reaches out with one forehoof, almost casually grasping the handbar once again, as he looks himself over.
“Not bad,” he states. “Pegasus, too. Unless-?” He touches his forehead with his hoof. “Nope. Oh well. Um…” He repositions himself, placing his hooves against the wall- then simply walks down it. “Yep, that works,” he states.
“No fair,” her mother states, from across the room.
He shrugs- then repeats, with his wings. “Oh well,” he states. “Life isn’t fair.”
“Besides,” she says, hopping into the air between the two, an idea in her head. “I bet he can’t do this.” She concentrates on her desired result.
Moments later, with a mild crack of thunder, she’s on the other side of the room.
Her mother blinks. “Wait. I can teleport?”
“Uh, yes,” she states, trotting back over. “Probably. And levitate things, and… whatever else ‘direct manipulation’ of the energy can do.” She sighs. “Never know, with me being… Well, different.” She flares her wings.
“Magic,” her mother states. “It’s gotta be magic.”
“Alright. That works, for now at least. Um, you three, then. You still want in or no?”
The three crewmembers stare for about three seconds, before all three of them simultaneously offer her the thumbs up. “Yes Ma’am!”
She blinks. “Uh… We are aware of a third kind of pony that can’t do any of that… You sure?”
The middle one shrugs. “Well, what can it do?”
“We don’t know yet.”
The three glance at each other. “Meh.”
“So, you’re still all for it?”
“Yep.”
“Yep.”
“Aaand, yep.”
“Alrighty,” she shrugs. “Here goes.”
Two seconds later, three green pegasi are blinking and looking down at themselves, differing only in mane/tail color.