“Wow… Princess, do you know just how close you came to becoming a fireball in the sky?”
Princess Short Flight looks at the blast marks Night Skies is looking at, on one of the interior walls. The wall opposite was torn to shreds, and the wall behind that is the exterior wall that was breached. “I think so,” she mutters, looking back at her. “I mean, the predemolition alarm did go off for a few seconds.
Skies snorts. “Not surprised. Princess, on the other side of this wall- of which more than half has been burned away by reentry forces- is your reactor core. Had whatever save you pulled off been just a half a second later, that thing would’ve turned you into an instant fireball.”
She blinks. “... Oh.”
It’s the evening after she landed safely; Skies is aboard because she’d volunteered to help with the refit during her off duty hours. Star volunteered too- but he’s on duty right now, so he hasn’t had a chance to look over the ship yet. Even Coils had volunteered, when she realized what they were volunteering for, before taking a taxi to wherever her mother is. She’s pretty sure the little pegasus doesn’t know she’s a princess.
Just like neither Skies nor Star know she’s growing wings; she’s wearing her dress again. Fortunately, her quarters aboard ship hadn’t been damaged at all- so she spent the night in it, while her parents had to go find some hotel or another.
She’d looked up Coils’ qualifications last night. The filly isn’t native to Equineothame, so she hadn’t had nearly the access she had to Skies’ records- but from what she’d found in the public records back on Earth, the filly made Dean’s List at a small but famous engineering school. She didn’t graduate from it but, judging by the number of appearances she’s made on the dean’s list, she has to be in her senior year… at the best power systems engineering school in the entire system.
It still feels wrong to her, to have somepony graduate one of the finest higher education institutions there are before they even turn ten- but with average life expectancy at about forty years, it’s the mark of somepony preparing for a successful future.
She scowls at the burned wall. She might not have gone to school like that- her parents insist upon not exposing her to ‘those unruly crowds’ until she’s ten- but she’s pretty sure nuclear reactors don’t fireball… at all.
“Wait… reactors explode?”
“Mm? Oh, right. The reactor would have gone into meltdown- and even assuming the rest of the airframe held together long enough, the resulting corium- especially when mixed with the contents of your fuel hoppers- would’ve melted right through your ship. And with this being the core of your ship…” She trots a couple meters down the passage, and points at a colored stripe. “This is the front of your emergency fuel tank. You can probably guess what happens when the wind lobs several hundred kilos of radioactive lava right into the middle of it.”
She looks at the walls, then at the floor; there’s a few meters of unblocked wall, and she knows the fuel tanks aren’t right up next to the reactors explicitly because the reactors can get mighty hot. “Wouldn’t it go down?”
“Straight into the ammo bunker for your dorsal weapons.” Shrug. “Well okay, through about half a meter of ventilation and service runs first, but still. Drop several hundred kilos of radioactive lava on a pile of possibly-nuclear missiles…”
“What-!?” The weapons are untouched- she checked yesterday. She shouldn’t have any way of knowing the ship’s armed! “How- How do you know-!?”
“That it’s armed?” Skies smiles. “I won’t tell anyone, Princess- but a little tip? There’s more to a weapons system than just the hardpoints.” She trots over to the gash in the wall once again, and points at a somewhat rectangular hole near the floor, at the back of it. “Any guess what this is?”
She takes a peek into it- and spies the bright red warning stripes of the atmospheric blast doors, used to contain escaping atmosphere. The rails along the inside of the hole seem fairly undamaged, further down. “Some kind of accessway? Not for ponies, though…” She scowls. What solid materials would be transferred here?
“This is a missile transfer tube, between the upper and lower bunkers. Looks like one that would be rated for nuclear munitions, too- which means there’s almost certainly four of them. This one, one on the other side of your fuel hopper here, and two more further forwards.” She taps a hoof on the carved wall. “Possibly more, depending on just how big your bunkers- and weapons- are.”
She scowls, looking up at the matching hole up above. “Why would there be bunkerage here, though? There aren’t any guns in the middle of the ship!”
“That’s an easy one. It’s a combat vessel. And do you know what combat vessels do?”
“Uhh… blow stuff up? Sure got the pirates good.”
Skies snorts. “Well, that too. But combat vessels often take damage in the course of battle. Each gun has an on-mount bunker for just this reason- in case the transfer tubes, of which there are probably redundancies, are breached. But that on-mount bunker is small, just in case the weapon itself is destroyed- the amount of ammunition lost is then kept to a minimum.
“So most of your ammunition is stored here, at the heart of your ship- where the other critical systems that really can’t be lost are located. And of course, just in case it does get hit, you have two ammo bunkers- one above your reactors, one below. That way, even if most of your guns are wiped out, the last few still have access to all of your ammunition.” She takes a deep breath, peering out the massive hole in the wall. “And, considering we’re at the bottom of the gash, I’d wager to guess your upper bunker was automatically jettisoned. That would also explain the massive explosion we detected behind you on the way down.”
She blinks. “Explosion?”
Nod. “Yeah. You were moving at mach twenty-six, though, so you probably didn’t even notice it.”
“Then… Why would it have jettisoned? Isn’t that a huge waste of ammo?”
She laughs. “If it has been jettisoned, it was done because not jettisoning it would have exposed missiles to atmospheric stresses- and blown your ship to bits. And this ship looks like one of the ones designed to survive atmospheric reentry with a damaged hull- meaning, there was probably a blast door you could have closed over the airlock to prevent the entire disaster. And that a different reentry profile would have averted it as well.” A snort. “And that, since the computer probably knew where the damage was, it automatically transferred your munitions to the lower bunker.”
She blinks. “There wouldn’t be space. I never filled them, but I know my parents filled it over half full when they bought it.”
Skies looks at the floor. “Which means your lower bunker is probably chock full… of all of your biggest munitions, because it’s easier to throw smaller munitions to a safe distance.”
She nods slowly. “Ahh… Do they teach all the engineers like that, or…?”
Skies blinks. “O-Oh, sorry. No, I… I didn’t want to mention it for Orbital Control, but…” She takes a deep breath. “I specialize in weapons systems.” She even closes her eyes, as if waiting to be told off.
Flight sighs. Even here, inside her ship, isn’t as free as she wishes it was. Ponies think most thestrals are useless as anything other than trash collectors… and that any thestral with knowledge or interest in weapons needs to be hunted. Fortunately, hunting ponies- no matter the breed- is illegal in every nation in the entire star system, and nopony has bothered to add an exception to those laws.
“Hey,” she mutters. “Don’t be down about it. What do I care if you have bat wings and pointy teeth? You’re a pony that’s willing to show up on time on a regular basis! You’d be amazed how hard it is to find even one of those!” She takes a deep breath, and grins. “And, come to think of it… You might have noticed that thestral I was interviewing when the pirates attacked?”
Skies jolts, almost as if struck. “Th-th- You mean Shadow Flight?”
She nods. “Yeah, that’s her. She’s one of three potential new night controllers- and she actually has a military service record, if you dig deep enough. She’s Commodore Shadow Flight, of the Shadowfleet.” She shrugs. “I looked it up while I was drifting back towards the planet- it’s a shame they dissolved. And don’t tell her, but unless she gives me a red flag in her rescheduled interview tomorrow, I plan on hiring her. A flag officer’s skillset is exactly what I need in that position- and the fact that she’s a thestral simply means she’s more likely to actually show up.”
Flight stares at her.
“What? Just because my dad is a Unicorn supremacist doesn’t mean I participate in that discrimination at all.” She looks at the wall in front of her. “Besides, it’s the pegasi- and, to a lesser extent, thestrals- that are actually superior. I mean, you’ve got extra limbs, which are very useful in space. Even earth ponies are better off- all we unicorns have is an extra bone spear sticking out of our foreheads to run into things!”
“And Unicorn magic, whenever we build a working Distortion Drive and find Equestria.”
She cringes, getting a momentary flashback to reentry. Her horn had that aura around it- was that unicorn magic? Are unicorns actually superior to the other races?
Or is she even still a unicorn, with wings growing on her sides? And hooves strong enough to not just bend but effortlessly crumple the steel her regalia is made from?
She shudders. “Uh… Maybe? But unicorns aren’t the only ones missing magic, remember that.” She scowls. “And speaking of the Distortion Drive, if either you or Star happens to be good with engines and custom fabrication, I’ve got a little project for us to try.”
Skies blinks. “What-? You’ve been working on it?”
She nods. “Yeah. I think I’ve managed to design a few that won’t blow the ship to bits, but I’m not certain with that- and besides, I don’t even begin to have the skill to actually build the things.” A chime suddenly sounds from the control panel strapped to her foreleg, and she glances at it. “Oh, and it would seem Star has arrived, too.”