The maid cowered, shaking.
“But—but we have—we have tasty cupcakes!” She held up a platter with numerous colorful pastries, their frosting expertly decorated but the whole of the tray shaking from her fright.
M’Ress stared at her, annoyed, and did her best to retain her composure.
“Yes. I see that. I cannot eat those. They have sugar.”
“But the sugar—it is so sweet--”
“I will literally die. Feed me MEAT. Do you not have meat? Is there not somewhere I can get it?”
“We—we don’t—we can’t—that isn’t something—” Her eyes widened, and she squealed, dropping the tray. The cupcakes scattered to the floor. The maid proceeded to flee. “DON’T EAT MEEEEE!!”
“I was not going to...” M’Ress groaned. Although the environment had been relatively pleasant to sleep in, the beds were designed for small horses, not a Caitian, and she had awoken hungry only to find that the entirety of their society was herbivorous and had no concept of meat outside of the meat that they themselves were constructed of. Therefore, she was tired, hungry, and annoyed. The only consolation was that the numerous maids were unexpectedly good at brushing things, and M’Ress was consequently at her silkiest.
Spock emerged from wherever it was that Vulcans tended to hide. The shadows, M’Ress assumed, at least based on historical stereotypes. Spock was notoriously difficult to detect. While purblood humans smelled strongly—not unpleasant, in M’Ress’s opinion, but strongly nonetheless—Vulcans and even half-Vulcans were disturbingly odorless. Especially in an environment that reeked of baked goods and sweet-scented small horses.
“Ingesting our hosts will not be beneficial to our diplomatic situation,” he said, as passively as ever.
“Do you take me for a Kzint? I would not lower myself to eating sentient meat.”
“Vulcans in general consider eating any manner of meat unnecessary.”
“Yes. And Vulcans have biosynthesis pathways that allow for a vegetarian diet. I do not.”
“Nor, did I at any point, say or imply that you possessed such biochemical pathways. I was simply stating a fact about the nature of Vulcan culture.”
M’Ress gritted her teeth. “I am doing my best to be civil considering your rank. However, I have not been fed and am greatly displeased.”
“I do not know what my rank would be an impediment of, unless you were intending to eat me.”
“At this point, I may very well be considering it.”
Spock raised an eyebrow but otherwise seemed unperturbed. He shouldered his tricorder and began walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk. This castle is surrounded by what appears to be a peaceful and well-constructed city, and I intend to view the alien architecture and take ground-level scientific readings.”
“But we have a party to attend later in the day.”
“Yes. You and the Captain do. However, it would not be logical for me to attend such a function when my time and effort would be better directed toward scientifically productive activities.”
“So you will be avoiding the party? How very...Vulcan.”
“A minor insult based on an outdated racial stereotype is both inappropriate as well as pointless. But yes. I will be avoiding this function.”
“No, Spock, you most certainly will not!”
Kirk emerged into the common area. He was not alone. A pony was held under his arm. A minty-green xenobiologist.
“Captain,” said Spock, raising an eyebrow. “Where have you acquired that pony?”
“I found her staring at me while I was sleeping.”
“Captain, that would be impossible. If you were sleeping, then you would not have seen her. You would instead have seen her upon waking.”
“I told him the same thing,” said Lyra, wrapping her front legs around Kirk’s leg. “And it wasn’t weird or anything, even if I was naked, I was taking notes. I was doing it for SCIENCE. Also I stroked your hair and may have tried on your uniform...I was not naked during that part...”
Kirk set her down. The pony immediately produced a sack. A sack that was dripping a foul fluid. A fluid that smelled to M’Ress delicious.
“What is that?”
“That isn’t from me, is it?” asked Kirk.
“No, of course not, I haven’t figured out which parts hoomins grow back yet,” said Lyra, opening the sack and producing a meaty sphere. “I had an understanding that hoomins either eat or yeet meat, the translation was variable, so I made some.”
“Made..some?”
M’Ress grabbed one of the globules and, before Kirk could stop her, bit into it.
“Oh yes,” she said. “It tastes like bacon!”
“It is made of pig,” said Lyra. “So I would expect that.”
“So you slaughter pigs here?” asked Spock. “Despite being vegetarians?”
“Oh no, of course not. Ponies never kill any creature, ever, under any circumstances. They’re special pigs. Their bodies are all covered in tumors that swell up and fall off sometimes. Until you got here, I was sure they were the closest relative of hoomins, and from the look of you, I’m guessing you did, in fact, evolve from a piggy ancestor.”
M’Ress, upon realizing what she was eating, nearly ejected it from her stomach as if it were an especially virulent furball. Instead, though, she kept it down. She had eaten worse in the Academy. She had before tasted the vilest of flavors, the accursed human fruit known as the olive. Mutant tumor was far superior in flavor.
“Um, no,” said Kirk. “The cupcakes were very good, though. They also brought me fruit. It was...strangely similar to Earth fruit.”
“Why would fruit be any different?” asked Lyra. “Fruits is fruits.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a xenobiologist?”
“Yes. Specializing in anthropology. I’m not some kind of fruit-doctor.” She paused. “Unless you’d like to feed me grapes and turn me into one. One at a time. Or...or...” She began to salivate. “A banana. Peel it. PEEL IT NOW.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” said Kirk.
The door opened suddenly, and an especially haggard McCoy nearly fell into the room.
“Bones!” cried Kirk, moving to his side. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What makes you think I even have any idea the answer to that question?! That ungrateful little—that tiny horse—she teleported me here! Scattered my atoms across god knows where, put me on this living hell of a planet! Now I’m stuck here!”
“Bones, what are you talking about? This planet is actually really nice.”
“We have edible cysts,” said Lyra, holding up the bag. When she saw McCoy more closely, though, her face flushed. “Oh my...now that's a hoomin...I want you to peel MY banana...”
“See? This is what I’m talking about! I spent half the night giving examinations to over thirty separate ponies that had absolutely nothing wrong with them other than Munchhausen's syndrome, and then when I finally got into a bed, I woke up an hour later with half the castle’s population of maids squeezing me to death! One of them sat on my face and I almost suffocated!”
“I had a cat that did that once…”
“Jim, I’m not in the mood for your story about the Caitian twins again, not in the slightest!”
“Well, what do you expect?” asked a slightly raspy female voice.
The occupants of the room—other than Spock, who had already seen her—jumped. McCoy had been accompanied by Rainbow Dash, who was wearing her standard white armor with a white shawl or cloak wrapped around her back against the chilly morning.
“What do you mean what do I expect? I expect to not have horses in my bed when I’m trying to sleep, and not get teleported by magic ones either! I’m a doctor, not a stablehand!”
“One, super offensive, but it’s funny so I’ll let it pass. Second, what do you expect? Mares outnumber stallions seven to one and probably eighty percent of stallions aren’t into mares. If you know what I mean. Being a hetero mare is hard work. Right, Lyra? You have a husband, right?”
“I have an ex-wife.”
“Oh...well, um....same thing?"
"She didn't believe my theories...I wonder if she'll come back now that I'm right?"
Rainbow Dash winced. "Sure. Let's go with that."
A beep interrupted the awkwardness of the conversation and Kirk, much relieved, opened his communicator.
“Kirk here.”
“Preparing to beam down the package, Captain.”
“Acknowledged. Send it.”
Kirk stepped back, and the air before him shimmered. In less than a second, a container had appeared before him. Lyra stared at it, gasping.
“What was—what was that?!”
“A transporter,” said Kirk, opening the trunk. He removed a small bag of cubed meat and tossed it to M’Ress, and a medical tricorder that he handed to McCoy.
“Wait...Jim, why do I need this?”
“Because you’re part of the landing party now.”
“But you can’t be serious--”
“I am. You’re here, you might as well make the best of it. Think of it like a vacation. You’re singlehandledly absorbing half the ship’s coffee ration with your insomnia every night you're up there. If you get a few good night's sleep down here, maybe there'll be some left for the rest of us.”
“We do have a replicator,” added Spock. “I can see that neither of you have acquired the level of proficiency necessary to operate it. Perhaps you should speak with Mr. Scott. Although I recommend against mentioning anything concerning the quality of the alcohol substitutes it can prepare with him.”
Kirk ignored him, instead addressing Lyra. “We use the transporter to move things between two positions. Don’t you have something similar?”
“A machine? For teleportation? Because you...don’t have magic...” A look of awe came over her face.
“We teleport,” sighed Rainbow Dash, interrupting Lyra’s stupor. “Sort of. Only unicorns can do it. Not all of them, though. Just the really powerful ones. But even Celestia can't. I think Luna can, sometimes, and maybe five or six wizards on the planet? I never really counted.”
“You can just...do that?”
“Damn right they can,” grumbled McCoy. “That’s how that horsey vixen got me down here.”
Kirk seemed greatly surprised by this, but Spock seemed even more intrigued.
“Can you do this?” he asked Lyra.
Lyra, snapped out of her stupor, turned to him. “Huh? Me? Oh no, I can’t. Not without one of the big amplifiers. But those make me really, really queasy. Also they only go to the moon. Or back, I guess. And I don’t want to go to the moon, they’re a bunch of weirdos up there.”
Rainbow Dash frowned. “My uncle lives on the moon.”
“Then your uncle is a weirdo. Sorry, I’m a xenobiologist, I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”
Kirk produced one of the dress uniforms, one belonging to Spock, and passed it to the reluctant Vulcan. Then he gave M’Ress hers, and took his.
“Be sure to review Uhura’s suggested protocols. We want this to go as smoothly as possible.” He looked at McCoy. “Bones.”
“What?”
“You can stay here. With Lyra.”
Lyra released a high-pitched squee.
“Jim, you can’t be--”
“Or you can go to the party. I can have the yeoman prepare your uniform. Celestia has a sister I think you would like.”
“Giant blue and black pony with wings and a horn, and cat eyes?”
Kirk looked perplexed. “Um...yes?”
“I met her. I almost got hung.”
“Almost?”
“Clearly not, Jim.”
“No. Did you seduce her?”
McCoy looked disgusted. “Jim, she’s a pony.”
Kirk shrugged and smirked slightly. “Ms. Dash, are you attending the gala?”
“It’s obligatory. I’m a national hero.”
“Then have Bones check out your wing before you go. Maybe he can do something about the pain.”
McCoy appeared confused. “Wing?”
Rainbow Dash, her expression fallen, sighed and removed the cloak covering her back. Her cybernetic wing emerged, perfectly symmetrical with her organic one but clearly causing her great discomfort to move.
“What in the name of—why the heck were you the only one NOT asking for me to check?”
“Because I don’t need your help.”
McCoy knelt down, producing his newly-acquired medical tricorder and examining the appendage. “This is...this is cybernetic. It’s linked directly to your spine, how I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Do you not have this technology on your planet?”
“Well, no, not anymore, cybernetics is something of a dead science.”
“Dead? Why?”
“Why? Because with modern stem-cell reconfiguration, we usually just undergo treatments to grow most things back, not outright replace them like this.”
Rainbow Dash jumped back. “Wait, what? You can—you can grow things back?”
“Well, in theory, sure, it’s not very complicated. Eyes and hearts, those are hard, but limbs are usually pretty straightforward.”
“You can grow my wing back?” Rainbow Dash looked to Kirk. “Can your alien magic do that?”
Kirk looked to McCoy. “Bones?”
McCoy stood up. “From what I saw with the other one? Frankly, Jim, I have no idea. Their cell structure is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Their blood is rhenium-based, at least for the unicorns, and their bones use titanium like ours use calcium. The unicorns have neural density above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen, with a brain pattern unlike any in the galaxy. I’m pretty sure they’re not even mammals. They’re some kind of fungus. The only thing that’s even close to anything at all is the epidermis.”
“Bones, that doesn’t answer the question.”
McCoy pointed. “If you lost an arm, I wouldn’t even be able to do it. Not with what I have here, it’s a very complicated procedure. Maybe on a big starbase, or on Earth, and that’s just for a human. The Enterprise just doesn’t have the equipment.”
“But we could share the procedures, couldn’t we?”
“Well, sure, I suppose we could, if they have computers.”
“Don’t we have something self-contained?”
McCoy thought for a moment, then his eyes lit up. “Captain. I think we do. The emergency medical hologram unit.”
“That is a test prototype from Starfleet,” stated Spock, his wording as strong as it reasonably could be. “We were assigned a duty to test it in the field for use replacing doctors due to incapacitate or emergency--”
“Spock, is your tiny Vulcan heart really that shriveled and dried up? This isn’t some special strategically important power cell or intake manifold or whatever, this is basic medical science. They deserve—no, they outright NEED—that hologram. Denying it to them would be a heinous crime.” He turned to Kirk. “I suggest you beam it down at once. As soon as possible. As in, right now.”
“Um...sure, Bones. We can do that. After the gala.” Kirk straightened his uniform. “After all, that’s the first order of business, to establish peaceful diplomatic relations. That’s it. A nice, easy task. And we get to do it at a party. Isn’t that nice?”
The others looked at him. Whether or not they agreed with his enthusiasm remained unclear.