//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 (Rewritten) 
// Story: Just Like Magic of Old 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Short Flight only barely managed to keep herself conscious through the entirety of the burn- and when the automatic main engine shutdown occurred, she breathed a sigh of relief.  It was no longer plowing her against her seat- and torturing her entire body in the process.  She reached forwards, and pulled the throttle down to zero.
Finally, she went through the motions of locking out the controls before she allowed herself to relax, and drift towards the inviting clutches of unconsciousness.  It’d be close to two hours before her ship would be far enough from the planet to light off the gravity drive- and according to her computer, almost two full days after that before she would reenter the danger zone on a ballistic trajectory.
Then, just as suddenly as it had come, her chest pain went away, and she suddenly found herself so full of energy she couldn’t possibly go to sleep.  As a matter of fact, it reminded her of her early youth, before she’d grown up enough to care about other ponies.
But her body pain, and the same in her hooves, hadn’t gone away yet, so she only sighed and relaxed in place, waiting for the gravity drive activation point.





Short Flight took a very deep breath, and started off the final burn of the journey.  It had been about a forty hour trip- and, fortunately, the pain in her hooves and body had gone down to more manageable levels when she’d slept through much of the acceleration and deceleration phases; she’d stretched the journey out just right to give her those extended naps by setting the gravity drive to only eighty gees, or so.
And now, she was finally done.  Rather fortunately, her computers were more than willing to anticipate orbits- so setting herself up to rendezvous with the fleet had been easy.  Well…  maybe not easy, but definitely simple.  She’d really only had to set herself up with a circular orbit out where her Gravity Drive would have maximal effect, then pick the right time to decelerate such that she’d be able to decelerate into the same orbit as the Fleet right about the time they were in the same spot.  Well…  mostly the same orbit; she’d stopped just outside their orbit…  though close enough for her to use only small little puffs on her maneuvering thrusters to get back into line with the rest.
And now, this final burn of the journey wasn’t even technically part of the journey.  No- she’d already opened the cargo bay, and maneuvered her parents’ cargo module into a lock-to-lock meeting with their space station- and now, while they busy themselves with transferring to the surface-to-space shuttle that’s docked at another point on the station, she’d released the docking clamps in her cargo bay, and was accelerating away from the module.  Not much, of course- only a meter per second or so.  But enough to put space between her ship and her parents’ mess.
Once clear of the station, she closed her hangar doors, made a few more puffs on her maneuvering thrusters to get herself into a steady orbital position, signaled done with engines, and locked out the engines.  She didn’t leave the control panel, though; instead, she logged into the planetary command net and issued the nightshift traffic controller his first official warning for skimping on his work.  And called a few dayshift controllers until she found one that was willing to come in six hours early.
She made a little tick mark on that employee record; that was the…  She counted the marks.  That was the thirteenth time that young Shooting Star had covered for an absent overnight controller in the three months since she’d hired him straight out of college- even though he was not actually a controller.  No, he was an Emergency Engineer- the engineering corps she’d hired to help reduce the number of explode-o-ships in orbit.
Which she needed because she seemed to be the only non-commercial spacecraft pilot to be willing to actually read the instruction manual; her awareness campaign the year before had had no effect near Earth, and even less here.  So, since her parents gave her Orbital Control after her efforts to reduce absenteeism had reduced ship-to-ship collisions by almost thirty percent, she’d followed Earth’s example and hired a force of engineers.  As a result, so long as she was present to keep the night crew on task, midspace accidents only happened about once a month here- which was better than the almost daily occurrence in Earth orbit.  Sure, Earth dealt with about three times as many ships- but that hadn’t stopped her.  Her goal was to reduce ship-to-ship collisions to an annual issue…  or even rarer, if she could.
Regardless, Star definitely deserved a commendation.  And…  She checked his date of hire against her shipboard clock, which she’d already synchronized with the local clocks.  Yes, the day before had finished off his third month of employment- which means he was finally eligible for commendations.  She’d have to see about descending to the surface tomorrow- the pain throughout her entire body had been fading a little at the end of her journey- to deliver his commendation in person.
She then sighed to herself.  She really hoped it wouldn’t go to his head, and that he kept it up.  If he does, at six months, she’ll be able to promote him- and start working more directly with him, find out if she can trust him with something a little more…  She pulled up the complete Distortion Drive blueprint on her database display again.  Maybe, in a year, she might be able to build the thing.  And then give him credit for the discovery, because she’d get the stagefright something fierce.  It was bad enough she was a princess that had been known around a few small circles to help move cargo between ships; she didn’t think she could handle going down in history as the one to have worked out the Distortion Drive.
She glanced down the staff list again…  Looked like one of her dayshift engineers quit while she was out.  Again.  Said in his exit interview that he studied to design and build, not to talk to spacers.
She let out a deep sigh, and punched the shortcut to update the job posting.  Once upon a time, she’d tried hiring the average pony and teaching them about the job, as they do on Earth- but she doesn’t have the programs they have, so that had exploded in her face.  Almost quite literally- she’d had to fire one mare because she’d gotten it into her head that any heat was bad, even living temperatures!  A few spacers had been subject to minor cases of frostbite, and many more had been lucky that ponies had fur coats, but she’d caught it before it became irreparable.
For that reason, while one of her Emergency Engineers- the one that had been around the longest, but wasn’t all that great at showing up on time- used to be an Emergency Engineer at Earth, all the rest had engineering degrees.
Employee retention had suffered for it, though.  Thanks to Orbital Control being on her parents’ finances (and their being happy with how she’s created the safest place in space), she paid them as well as any other engineering outfit might pay them- but they lasted, on average, about two months…  and always complained that they didn’t get to turn wrenches.  Which was in the job description, so they shouldn’t have been surprised.
She tilted her head at the computer screen.  Yes, Star was probably going to last a lot longer; after all, through his first month- and probationary period- working for her, he’d studied up on the controller’s jobs while he waited for either his panel or a controller to indicate something for him to do.  Which certainly suggested he planned on keeping the job for the long run.
She then spent about twenty minutes sorting through all her email, before switching over to check what applications she’d received since she left.
Almost immediately, she let out a derisive snort.  She’d had two applications for the overnight controller job- and one of them, Broken Orbit, was fired from the same not two weeks ago, for failing to show up for his scheduled shifts.  She declined that application out of hoof, before looking at the other.
If she was sure of one thing about Night Skies, it was that the filly made extensive use of various career services available at the Pony State University, where she double-majored in Engineering and Law.  She raised an unsurprised eyebrow, idly wondering what the filly thought was going to happen and how it differed from what had happened, and scanned down the rest.  No work history; this must be her first job.  However, she was quite active at college; she had apparently been part of no less than six clubs, and even president of one of them, despite never graduating.
She shrugged.  Why not?  Night shift had been chronically understaffed, and even then only by ponies that couldn’t be bothered to show up at all, let alone on time.  Besides, with a name like Night Skies, the evidently ambitious filly very well could be partially nocturnal already.
She was about to flag it for more attention tomorrow- it was right about midnight, local time- when she noticed the note that Night Skies put in the ‘additional info’ box.  Apparently, the best time to contact the girl was at night.
She shrugged, glanced at the phone number, and turned to tap it into her communications panel.
It rang three times before somepony answered.
“What?”  She sounded depressed.
She flinched.  Hopefully, it was just a passing hardship that had her in a temporary bad mood; she’d hate to have to interview somepony who’d given up on life and was only applying because she was supposed to.  She’d done that before.  She took a deep breath, before launching into her standard spiel for first contact with new applicants.  “Hello, this is Princess Short Flight.  May I speak to Night Skies?”
The gasp was- as always- audible.  Most ponies assumed she had a hiring manager to do it for her- but when she’d tried that, the understaffing problems had been even worse.  So everypony was always surprised when she called them herself.  “Um-  Yes Princess, that’d be me?”  There was also an edge of worry in Skies’ voice.  She was, after all, the Princess.
Good thing she knew how to defuse that pretty quickly.  “Hi, I was calling in reference to your application to Orbital Control?”  The sigh of relief was usually audible, but not this time.  “Specifically, I wanted to see about scheduling an interview for the position of Overnight Controller, if you’re interested.”
“Y-Yes, I’m interested.”  She raised her eyebrow again; it sounded formulaic, practiced.  The filly had definitely made extensive use of Pony State’s career services.  Had she been job-hunting unsuccessfully for a long duration, or otherwise expected difficulty in landing a job?  “I will be available to interview at your earliest convenience.”
The first and the last parts of the filly’s statement- ‘yes’ and ‘your earliest convenience’- were the only truly important parts at the moment, and she grinned at the panel.  Time to find out how literal that ‘earliest convenience’ was.
“How’s…  Tomorrow, two PM, at the control tower?”  That’d give her plenty of time to mete out the coachings due two of the dayshift controllers before the interview; she was pretty sure they were stallion and wife, and they were both regularly late.  She’d give Shooting Star his commendation after the interview; that’d be a good note to end her day on- and Star’s, for that matter.
“Ah…  Yep, that works for me.  Tomorrow, two PM, at the control tower.”
She smiled- Skies would fit right in.  “Readback is correct, I’ll see you then.”
“R-Roger.”
She hung up, and let out a breath.  The coming interview could easily go either way- the filly sounded depressed, but there had been a noticeable difference from the moment she’d mentioned why she was calling.  It could well have been clinical depression…  or it could also have been brought about by difficulties finding a job.  Most ponies didn’t hire for the middle of the night- and those that did, were usually in the space industry…  which was very hard to get into without a college degree or two.  With only one exception:  Night shift at Orbital Control.
No new applications had come in for her standing Emergency Engineer openings, though, so she finally logged off, climbed out of her seat, and walked back to her kitchen.  She still had no clue how she was doing that in zero gravity.