//------------------------------// // Chapter 10: The Expendable Mare // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// Moondancer was led through the ship by a pair of human guards dressed in red uniforms. They carried weapons, but Moondancer’s own analysis of the devices indicated that the magic they contained was exceedingly primitive by Equestrian standards. Regardless, she did not want to be phased, and as such had covertly disconnected the power supplies from the internal components using her own magic. The humans, being beings with tiny and probably color-blind eyes, had not noticed. She had re-clothed herself. While it was not uncommon for ponies to go about their daily activities in the nude, Moondancer had never been a great fan of wandering around naked. Even during her university days, she had worn a sweatshirt constantly. The same sweatshirt, without having washed it. When she emigrated to the Lunar colonies, it was replaced with something heavier to deal with the perpetual chill. The moon was an inhospitable place; a harsh mistress, one might say. Her flight suit had been badly damaged during her prototype’s failure, and any amounts of it that had not been burned or torn had been cut away from her as she was stripped for surgery and possible probing. The replacement was dark armor, with leathery plates held together with more flexible components. It was a legitimate uniform, but one uncommon for the standard Lunar Guard. Which made sense, considering her position. She was not one of them. She existed outside formal rank, in a category with only one member. In any event, Moondancer was not about to walk around in an alien spacecraft without some form of protection in case everything went south. It did not seem to be a pleasant or inviting place. What surprised her most, though, was the sheer scale of the ship surrounding her. A ship capable of traveling at the same speed as hers, but hundreds of thousands of times the mass, complete with doors and hallways tall enough for the gangly bipeds that inhabited it. It seemed to go on forever as she was lead through it. When the last door on her path opened, she did her best not to become spooked. That was another part that intrigued her, but that she very much hated. The hissing doors were surprising and unnecessary. Through that door, numerous of the bipeds were at work. One was passing quickly, reading aloud from a datapad to one of his assistants. When he saw a small pony stepping through his door, he pushed the pad to the assistant and waved him onto whatever task it was the engineering staff tended to do aboard a starship. The human quickly approached Moondancer, extending his hand. “Been taking your time, have you? Montgomerry Scott, chief engineer aboard this fine vessel.” Moondancer stared at his outstretched hand, then looked up at him. “Are you trying to grab my horn? If you do, I’ll liberate your skeleton from your meats.” The human frowned, but then laughed. “Why, if you haven’t had your skeleton pulled out at least twice you don’t even deserve to be promoted to transporter chief, let alone allowed to open the repair panels on it.” Moondancer frowned. “That accent...are you Dundaxian?” Mr. Scott looked even more confused. “No, lass, I’m from Scotland. And, to be honest, I’ve never understood why more aliens don’t have Scottish accents. You sound like you’re from midwestern America, like the rest of the aliens do.” “Because I assimilated your language from your doctor. I grew up in Canterlot, in my own language I have a Canterlot accent.” “Canterlot...” Mr. Scott tilted his head. “Lass, is that meant to be a horse pun?” “It is not a pun in the correct language, just in yours.” Moondancer gestured to the guards. “Do these need to be here?” “Yes,” said one of the nameless guards, firmly. “Aye, sure, with your damn resonance crystals unplugged, a great lot of good you’ll both do!” The guards looked down, inspecting their firearms, and their eyes widened. “But how--” “Because the focusing coils make a high-pitched whine when they’re connected, you bleeding dullards, and if you aren’t even listening for it you shouldn’t even have gotten permission to have those things, let alone in engineering where we have the flammables.” He waved them off. “Go on! Can’t a man have a conversation with a tiny horse in private?” They looked at each other, but stepped back, fumbling to reconnect the components of their phasers. Mr. Scott sighed. “Stunning example of human intelligence for your first day here. My apologies, lass. Also for the handshake. You seem to have a lack of the proper appendages.” “I don’t lack anything. I just can’t wrap tiny sausages around objects.” Mr. Scott nodded knowingly. “Do ye have a name, little pony?” “Moondancer.” Mr. Scott stifled a laugh, but not well. This did not go unnoticed, although it did go unappreciated. “Is something about my name funny to you?” “No, no, not at all, lass, it’s a fine name--” “Considering that you are a Scotsman named ‘Scott’. With a first name of Montgomery.” Scotty’s expression fell. He had apparently never realized this. “Aye...that...that be true, lass...” “And you reek of maple-smoked ham.” Scotty frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?” “I don't really care what it means. I’m here to help oversee the joint salvage operation of my ship.” Mr. Scott’s expression lit up. “Aye, lass. I’ve already dispatched the tows. We can go directly to the shuttle bay as soon as you’re ready.” “It’s my ship, and it’s in pieces. When would I not be ready? I’m not even going to be able to sleep until I at least know what I’m going to need to do to fix it.” Mr. Scott smiled. “Well then what are waiting for, lass? It’s not about to salvage itself!” The shuttle bay was vast, far larger than any room Moondancer would ever even have considered for use in a spacecraft. From her understanding, the Enterprise was a bizarrely shaped and spindly craft where most of the engineering aspects were kept in the lower part, away from the crew housing in the saucer. She had yet to comprehend what the nacelles were for, because she had no idea how this ship’s engine worked exactly—and as interesting an academic exercise learning about that might prove, her first priority was recovering her ship. The rear of the bay had been opened, producing a vast doorway to space itself. The atmosphere was apparently kept within the ship through the use of a spell of unknown nature, producing a magic membrane that allowed solid objects but not gas to pass through. As she watched, a pair of boxy, ugly human ships were in the process of pulling the forward spike of her own craft through the gateway. As soon as they maneuvered it into position, beams projected from a machine overhead took control, manipulating it into position with the other parts. They had already been pulled in and assembled on special jigs to keep them standing. “Darn it,” swore Moondancer. “Look how many pieces it’s in.” “Lass, you dropped out of warp with a failed forward deflector sheild. It’s a damn miracle you’re still in one piece and the ship isn’t space particulates.” He checked a datapad. “It’s an even greater miracle your warp core didn’t rupture. I’ve taken a look over Mr. Chekov’s calculations, and the boy’s admittedly a genius, but not a practical mind to him in the slightest. If his readings were right, your ship shouldn’t even fly.” “It did,” snapped Moondancer, descending the stairs to where the forward command section of her ship had just been placed on its jig. “And it was almost faster than yours.” Mr. Scott nearly dropped his datapad. “I was ordered to be civil, but don’t start a fight you can’t win, lassie.” “I have enough telekinetic power to bend you without even trying. What do you have?” “I’m a Scotsman.” “Irrelevant.” "Aye, you'd think, wouldn't you?" Moondancer ignored him and passed the edge of her ship, inspecting the damage. The material did not exactly have a single color, but generally rendered as a sort of dark indigo to violet in the shuttle bay’s light, sometimes changing to a near-blue depending on the angle and a gray at others. The edges of it were badly carbonized where it had been torn apart. She could see the inside of the cockpit, and the marks on her chair of where her magic had torn apart the cloth. Mr. Scott followed, putting his hand on the ship as he passed. He pulled it back, a confused look on his face. “Is this...wood?” “Of course it’s wood. It’s the only thing sturdy enough to make the carapace.” “But...wood.” Scotty stepped back, admiring the long point of the ship and the way it gently curved in a distinctly organic shape. “You made a starship out of...wood?” “It is a type of tree that grows on the moon’s surface. The hull was grown in a single piece around a mithril skeleton using extensive biomancy. Which took two years of continuous effort and over ninety percent our planet’s supply of mithril for a ten kilogram skeleton.” She winced, putting her hoof to her head, which was suddenly throbbing. “The pieces can’t be reattached. I’m going to have to grow another one.” “The hull of the Enterprise is made of duranium plates.” “Metal would interfere with field concordance. How the heck am I supposed to interact with the mass-shift field if I can’t feel it?” “Feel it...” Mr. Scott’s eyes widened. “Lass, you’re saying you can interface with the warp field directly, that would be absolute madness--” An alarm sounded, and Scotty grasped Moondancer by the tail, pulling her out of the way of the next fragment of her ship. Moondancer was about to complain about this harsh treatment until she looked up and saw what was being brought in. It was the rear portion of the ship, still partially attached to the machine held within. The connections for the cables and wires had been severed, and the relay banks were exposed and badly melted, but the core had remained intact. A vast cylinder of stabilized metal, surrounded by control apertures forged from single crystals that acted as primary field lines into the central assembly. The center of the drive core was marked with the insignia of its creator: a six-pointed violet star, surrounded by five small white ones. Moondancer felt herself grimacing when she saw it. She hated that symbol, and had done her best not to look at it when she had been assembling the craft. The core was set down carefully, wobbling slightly on its jig. Moondancer cast her own magic, stabilizing it. “You could at least try to be careful with it. I can build another ship. I can’t build another one of these.” Mr. Scott, intrigued, approached. The device was about double his height, but substantially wider. “This is your warp core, then?” “If that is what you want to call it, sure. It’s the part that generates the spatial distortion field and reduces the effective mass of the ship to near-zero, so yes. Why not.” Moondancer approached it, and to her horror found that the internal unit was slightly charred. Some pieces of the central metal had burned and melted, and some of the critical sealed internal fragments had blown apart from a system overload. “It’s damaged. That’s impossible.” “Lass, as I said, it’s a miracle it even stayed intact at all--” “You don’t understand.” Moondancer trotted back to the front part of her ship, the piloting area. “This is wrong. This is all wrong.” She jumped up through the open hole in the back of the ship, barely avoiding the shards of mithril and carbonized wood, and sat down in the seat. She lit her horn and energized part of the internal systems, the indicator lights flashing on. “You’ll have to forgive me if I’m somewhat lost, lass. I’m still stuck on the fact you made it out of wood.” “I built a failsafe into the core support feed. Because I thought something like this might happen. If the core is in danger, it’s designed to cast a shield spell around itself. A pure spatial distortion. It functionally ejects itself from this universe for eight elevenths of a second—it could survive a direct impact from a suprenova.” Mr. Scott looked at the wreckage. “Well, the rest of the ship certainly suffered.” “It was never designed to preserve the rest of the ship. The field loses strength to the fifth power dependent on circumference, it would be ineffective any farther than its own surface. And just doing that puts the power crystals into in inversion state. They’re mounted directly below the piloting area. They’re meant to explode to provide the power. This piece? It should have been vaporized.” Scotty stared at it, a grim expression crossing his face. “And you with it. Why would you design it to do such a thing?” “I can be replaced. The survival of the prototype is more important.” “That’s a right terrible way to think about it.” Moondancer glared at him. “I don’t bother to maintain the illusion that I’m not expendable, Mr. Scott. Nobody is waiting for me. Not on the Moon, not in Equestria.” “That’s not what your last transmission seems to have indicated.” Moondancer’s icy gaze did not change in the slightest. “Because if my prototype failed, I needed to have memorable last words that were culturally appropriate. So they won’t be afraid to build another. Besides. At the distance I transmitted? It would be decades before they even heard it. No one I ever knew would still be alive.” She turned back to the controls. “And that isn’t really my concern right now. Or ever. My job is to built this ship, and fly it. And now I need to find out why the core didn’t draw power like it should, and why the field was too large. Why I survived and the core got damaged.” “Well, did you design it to record that on the ship’s computer?” Moondancer laughed. “Computer? Maybe on this gigantic beast, but there’s no way I could ever have the space or power supply necessary to power the vacuum tubes. Just fitting the tubes for the radio in took me six months of design work, there’s no way I could ever fit a computer on a starship.” This seemed to both perturb and intrigue Mr. Scott. “Lass, do you mean to tell me your ship has no computer? None at all?” “Of course not.” She cycled part of the system, revealing the mechanical controls visible through the holes in the hull. “The control scheme is mechanical and electromechanical. All controlled telekinetically.” “But you can’t fly a warp ship without a computer! The field calculations alone, let alone the thrust vectors, the power maintenance to the inertial dampeners--!” It was Moodancer’s turn to look surprised. “You mean you...don’t?” “Don’t what?” “Do those yourself.” “Lass, that’s absolute madness, no human being could possibly--” “I am not a human. I am a pony. Specifically, a unicorn. I do all those calculations myself. In real-time. While operating the controls and using my own field to direct the primary drive force. This isn’t a space-plane or a moon rocket. Contrary to what Rainbow Dash will tell you, only a level seven-unicorn or greater can even begin to operate an FTL ship.” “Well when you have to be a damn mentat just to turn it on, of course you do!” “Well then how do you do it?” “With computers!” “I told you, computers are a system of tubes--” “We haven’t used a vacuum tube in nigh on three hundred years! How do you have warp speed technology but not even semiconductors, let alone a material to make a ship other than wood?!” Moondancer frowned. “What do you use if you don’t have tubes?” “Duotronic chipsets.” “I don’t know what that is. What is the size ratio?” Mr. Scott chuckled. “Lass, a processor head less than a centimeter long can hold over three hundred thousand Boolean gate equivalents.” Moondancer’s already large eyes opened to their full widest. “That—if I had that, then I could—if you break down the Boolean into arithmetic, I could—that’s a lot of gates!” “Aye, lass.” Moondancer nodded, and then reached back into her ship with her magic and pulled out a single glowing tetrahedral crystal. “This is the closest I have,” she said. “I can go over this to analyze what I think went wrong, but first, I think we need to call a meeting and have a discussion.” “Aye, lass. I think this is a rare case where our technologies evolved in completely different directions. A transfer of knowledge would do us good. And more than that, I don’t want my men laying a finger on anything you own without knowing what it does—or doesn’t—have in it.” “Agreed.” She looked to the core. “This ship is unbelievably precious to me, and to my planet. Your arm-sausages probably have a lot of uses, but I want to be one-hundred percent sure they don’t get stuck in any critical holes.” Mr. Scott nodded, but Moondaner was already relatively confident in his abilities at lest. She was actually stalling. Until she had time to read the crystal and try to get some idea of what was going on. It made no sense to her, and that made her feel strange. An emotion she did not fully know as fear. When she had been in the burning cockpit, even when she cast the shield spell she knew would surely break, she was not really afraid. Even then, she knew exactly what was happening. That was no longer the case. Something was not right. And with the humans’ help, Moondancer intended to find exactly what it was.