“Bay open, standing by to release clamps,” Short Flight stated calmly into her comms. It had been a while since she went to the surface- almost a full month, in fact. She’d returned to space with pain building in her horn again, and spent another three days in bed. The burn didn’t fill her entire body that time, so the sheets didn’t hurt. She’d known it was ending when something stabbed her chest with searing pain again… then it had gone away.
The week after that had the pain localized on her sides, rather than her horn.
And the two weeks since, her sides have gotten itchy a few times, but she’d otherwise had no unexplained pain. So she got back to work last week, moving stuff around the fleet- and by Equus did they need her help. This was the thirtieth container she’s moved in a mere eight days- vastly different from the normal two or three containers every couple days. She glanced at her display, her ship floating just outside the massive superdreadnought’s cargo bay, and waited patiently for their suited midshipponies to get in position to transfer the container. Rather unfortunately, neither ship was equipped with cargo moving equipment.
But that was no biggie- this was how all of her deliveries went, as none of the Fleet was equipped with cargo equipment. She giggled to herself as their method of transferring containers before she started doing this comes to mind: One ship would shift orbits to the other, and point the cargo bay involved at the other’s cargo bay… then, with large numbers of midshipponies wearing Sustained Use Thruster Packs, they’d slowly shepherd the container through space between the ships. The two ships could almost never get anywhere near as close as she can, as that’d violate the safety zones on their thrusters, and someone would have bills to pay and explanations to make.
Whereas her ship, by her design, had multiple sizes of maneuvering thrusters- and a mass far lower than most the rest of the fleet, allowing her to snuggle it up close enough that the cargo bays nearly touch. That was plenty close enough for the midshipponies to use tethered SUT packs- so, no risk of losing anypony… and of course, they could use the tethers to pull the container back to the ship at a very controlled rate. That way, there was also no danger of repeating many of the major accidents that had happened during what they liked to call ‘space ball’- when somepony’s SUT pack ran out on the deceleration phase, and they couldn’t get a fresh one out in time to keep it from crashing into the back of the cargo bay.
Her comms panel chirped suddenly- intercom, from Cargo Seven, the bay she used for all the transfers… and the one her parents’ module had been in during her trip to Earth. The one she had outfitted with massive cargo clamps a couple years ago. It was one of the midshipponies. “Alright, all locked and ready.”
She smiled. “Alright. Releasing now.” She tapped the key to retract the clamps. This was always an easy stage, for her- pickup and dropoff. It was all up to the ponies in her cargo bay to move the container- she simply parked her ship and locked or unlocked the clamps and door. The transit stage was the one that took more of her attention- the one where she was positioning her ship so precisely against the other ship, or maneuvering through the midst of the fleet.
She let out a sigh, briefly climbing out of her seat to stretch herself out on the floor, before turning to her other panels to check up on Orbital Control. It had gotten even harder to find nightshift controllers, ever since it got out that she hired a thestral. On the other hoof, even before Night Skies finished her training and started her Controller duties as well, nighttime violations went down by over ninety percent- because nopony seemed to want to arrive or depart at a time when a thestral would be guiding them. The filly went about her duties with a certain skill and energy that, in her opinion, exemplified why ponies should not discriminate.
And, while she hadn’t had to call Star in for the night nearly as often as before, she had noticed a sudden upwards jump in his still slow but steadily climbing efficiency… which coincided rather nicely with the commendation. Must be the nervousness that’s slowing him down. Does he not like ponies or something?
The comms chirped again. “All clear. Good evening, Princess.”
“Good evening to you too,” she smiled, tapping the key to close the cargo doors while also thrusting directly away from the superdreadnought.
Two months after her trip to the surface. Her sides had bled- only little bits- twice, and she was pretty sure her sides weren’t supposed to feel like that. They didn’t hurt, though, so she hadn’t really considered going to the doctor. Her parents didn’t like it when she racked up unnecessary medical bills- and besides, her medical computer said “Normal” every time she got nervous and scanned herself in the infirmary.
It had taken her almost two full weeks to catch up with the Fleet’s cargo-moving needs- and once she did, she was once again spending long hours in space, often studying something or another.
Not today, though. Yesterday, like she did every day, she downloaded a full list of new applications submitted. Broken Orbit had submitted another application; he’d done that every day for the last two months. One other pony had applied to an evening controller position, which she wasn’t hiring for, so she’d checked it for red flags- it passed- and dropped it in the database with a timestamp, in case she needed one later.
And no less than six ponies had applied for overnight controller positions. It was not uncommon for her to get a lot of applications, and throw them all out with red flags, though- so she’d examined them. Two of them were circus clowns; the one time she’d hired a clown, she’d had six accidents in one day and fired the stallion, so she’d had to decline those two. The third had put ‘accomplished thief’ in his employment history. She’d laughed at that, idly wondering who he thought would hire him. She’d even written him a custom refusal letter, rather than letting it send the default one, and advised him that it might be a little easier to find legal employment if he doesn’t put theft on his resume.
The last three, though, had looked good. With names like Moon Wing, Dark Lands, and Shadow Flight, combined with a total lack of education or employment history, plus notes of being best contacted at night, she rather suspected the three of them were thestrals. So she’d called all three, and set up interviews. Unlike Night Skies’ interview, though, they won’t be in person. They’ll be remote- and since all three had asked for early morning interview times today, with Skies on duty last night and Star one of five today, they should even be able to interview from the control room- and let her make use of the video system without interfering with anypony’s job!
Her panel chirped suddenly, and she glanced up at it. It looked like Shadow Flight just went through the automated check-in by the front desk. She glanced at the clock… Yes, that was about right. She had five minutes to her scheduled interview time- and the front desk attendant won’t go on duty for another hour or so. A sudden shift on the staff list then caught her attention- Oh, it looked like Star just entered the building, too. Five minutes early, as she’d come to expect from him… She checked the clock again. Dayshift didn’t start for another hour.
A couple taps answer her question instantly- he’d taken a ‘voluntary extra time’ hour at the start of his shift, to help cover the morning rush… and smooth over the transition from nightshift to dayshift. She tapped in a command to the computer.
She had only to wait a couple minutes before it signaled ready- and she touched the key to open the channel. “Good morning from space,” she began, mood inflating instantly. She was right- the filly was a thestral. Skies must have spread the word.
“H-Hi,” Shadow greeted her. “It’s nice to, um, see you.” Her ears were flat to her head, and she looked worried, but she was powering through it.
She smiled softly… then paused when she noticed a vibration in her ship. “Nice to meet you too,” she muttered, before tapping a different screen. “Sorry, thought I felt something…” She tilted her head. Nopony should be docking, but it was showing that someone just docked on one of her main side-mounted docking ports.
“Uh…” Shadow muttered, looking distinctly uncertain.
She checked down the lists… Yes, all the airlock doors were sealed.
Then, very suddenly, that airlock entered lockdown and blew the lock ring, which the other ship should have locked onto; one of the security lines inside that door had been cut.
Pirates.
She sucked in a breath. “Ahh…” She looked over at Shadow. “I’m going to have to call you back later.”
Then the intruder alert went off, sounding throughout the entire ship. That’d be when the second security line was broken, indicating that blowing the lock ring wasn’t enough to get them away.
One tap cut the interview call short, and she unlocked her engine controls. She felt the familiar vibration of the gyroscope calibration- and immediately got a readout of the estimated mass of the attached vessel. It was… that could only be an inter-ship shuttle. No interplanetary range, no surface capability. They had another ship around.
She tapped on the main engines, put her hoof on the throttle, and looked out her windshield. “Let’s see how you like seven gees, suckers.” She thrust it to maximum power, pivoting slightly around their ship to give her open space to fly into. Then she slams the gyro into maximum roll as she goes, spinning on her central axis- and giving them an apparent force away from her airlock, as high as two gees, given the location of the lock.
After a minute, a sudden buzzer informs her she was unsuccessful- so she abandoned the control panel. She had a little time before they finished cutting through that door- then even more time before they made it through the interior door of the same airlock, and she had an escape pod. And unlike her parents’ military, it was one of the more expensive but surface-capable escape pods, one that would be capable of getting her to Orbital Control from her ship’s current trajectory.
She ran for it.