//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4:  Transformed 
// Story: The Equine Starliner 
// by computerneek 
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When Kayla came to, she was lying on the deck next to her shuttle.
“Ow,” she muttered, while she rose to her hands and knees…  which, exactly as she expected, was a normal standing stance now, since she had been transformed.  There were so many new sensations, from her ears to her tail to the way her new body moved, that she elected to ignore them for the time being.  She checked the chrono she’d had strapped lightly to her wrist; it was now somewhat uncomfortably tight, as her forelegs were rather thicker than her wrists had been.
She raised an eyebrow.  She had only been unconscious for five minutes.
So she looked around at herself.  Her uniform- one of her least-favorite ones, since she had known there was a chance it would be destroyed- was completely ruined.  The sleeves had exploded outwards, and the upper few buttons ripped off to make way for her larger neck.  Her trousers didn’t show as much damage, but they had their own set of tears- and as she moved her legs, they tore some more.
As expected.
So she stripped the remaining fabric off of herself and swept on the bathrobe she’d brought out with her for just this situation.  She did her best to ignore the wings she spied on her sides during the operation, and slowly walked her way back into the shuttle.
It only took her a couple of minutes to activate the robo-helper that had been sent with her, and to strap the control panel to her foreleg, where she could reach it easily with the other hoof.  Exactly as Commissioner West’s report had suggested, she found it fairly easy to grip and manipulate objects as if she still had hands, even though she no longer had multiple fingers with which to operate the touch screen interface.
Then, she guided the robohelper out into the passage the bay was attached to…  and looked both ways down it.
She didn’t have a map.
However, on the wall opposite, there were a couple of color-coded signs.  One glance at the floor informed her that these signs coincided with colored stripes on the carpet.  The red one, whose sign pointed both ways and read “Bays 4951-5000”, formed a T where she stood, with the branch stopping at the door back into the bay.  There was an orange one that pointed left and read “Engineering- 2mi”, and a blue one that pointed right and read “Passenger Quarters- 7mi”.  There was no indication for the bridge.
The green one, which read “Lifts”, also pointed right.
So she turned right, and followed the green stripe.  The carpet was oddly comfortable against her bare hooves, but she could only imagine the amount of work required to keep it clean.
It didn’t take long to reach the lifts.  The green line forked to the left before any of the other lines bent- and when she looked at the wall to her right, it was with the same arrows and everything- except that the “Lifts” sign was pointing up.
Looking to the left revealed a bank of five large lifts, all five doors sealed shut.
She shrugged.  She might as well find out what kind of lift system she had to work with.
As she approached the lifts, the door in the middle- which was also the one closest to her- emitted a soft chime and slid open, revealing a large, roomy lift car…  that was also carpeted.  It looked large enough for a few dozen people- or even to qualify as a cargo elevator.  As a matter of fact, when she stepped inside with her robohelper, it looked almost like it was a remodeled cargo elevator.
The touchscreen control panels arrayed around the lift were certainly new.  Even on the newest ships, they still used hard buttons- even on the three-dimensional lifts.  It was more reliable- and, in a zero-gravity environment, it was easier to both use and prevent accidental presses.  However, this wasn’t a zero-gravity environment.
She stepped closer to the nearest such panel to inspect it.  A wire frame of the entire ship was displayed at the top, with a little dot to indicate its current location- along with a location code across the bottom of the frame.
Towards the bottom, she could see a full, digital keyboard, with letters, numbers, and a few extra keys with entire words or sector codes on them.  Overlaid over the keyboard, however, was a prompt- the computer had apparently guessed her destination.
Select Destination:  Captain’s Quarters?
She shrugged, and tapped the ‘yes’ key.  The prompt went away, the doors closed, and…  She didn’t feel any motion, but the display up top indicated that the lift was moving, mostly horizontally- and fast.
As it moved, she had to wonder how it had guessed where she was going.  Had that prompt been left by Commissioner West, or was there some kind of AI system in the ship, capable of guessing where she wanted to go?
Finally, when she stepped out of the lift, there was a small blue banner above the arrow signs that read Crew Quarters.  The very first sign was also blue, pointing left, and read “Captain’s Quarters”.
So she turned left and followed the blue stripe.  As she walked, she wondered what other AI systems might be present.
She’d have to ask her Electronics officer- assuming she had one, of course- to look into it.





“United Star Navy, Personnel Department,” Admiral East said tiredly, answering her comms.
A sky blue ‘pony’ with a bright sunlight yellow mane looked out of it.  Her features were a lot softer than Commissioner West’s had been- she was very definitely a mare rather than a stallion.  She was wearing a bathrobe and her ‘badge necklace’, a necklace they’d crafted to hang around a pony’s neck to display name and rank, until and unless proper uniform requirements could be decided upon for a pony…  and even then, for before the pony’s measurements could be taken.  The name was hanging just low enough to be out of the frame.
“This is Captain Kayla Matthews of the Starship Athena,” the pony greeted.
The Admiral nodded, her expectations confirmed.  “I take it you’re ready?”
She nodded.  “Yes, I’m ready for the first wave.  Just, uh…”  She glanced to the side.  “Warn them to wear their bathrobes and badge necklaces for getting out of the shuttle; the transformation is basically immediate, and, uh…  their uniforms won’t fit afterwards.”





When her call to Personnel ended, Kayla let out a sigh, then turned in her seat to take another look at her day cabin.
It was enormous.  It had to be at least fifty feet on a side!
She left the desk chair, with its enormous, decorated desk and almost painfully easy-to-use comms system, and trotted across the room to take a peek through some of the other doors out of the room.
Her bed chamber was also huge.  This wasn’t just space that didn’t normally exist on a warship- this was space that didn’t normally exist on a passenger liner…  or even on the surface, for that matter.  The designer of this ship must’ve just had a truly ridiculous amount of space to use up, and nothing better to fill it with.
The second door from her day cabin held…
“I have my own swimming pool!?”