//------------------------------// // 2 - The Currents of the Aether // Story: Heavenly View // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Landpony-seapony relations had been steadily increasing for decades, thanks to advances in science and magic that had made it easier and easier for each to coexist in the other’s environment, but it was during the Space Age that they truly began to thrive. Training in zero gravity often had lots of problems for landponies. They simply weren’t used to being able to travel freely along all three dimensions and kept forgetting to go up or down at the right times. Pegasi fared better, naturally, but it was still a common sight for pegasus trainees to enter zero-G for the first time, instinctively start flapping their wings to stop themselves from “falling”, and faceplant into the bulkhead. And then there were the little habits ingrained from living in an environment with gravity. In particular, putting down things. You put an object down on Equus, it stayed down. You put an object down in space, it might drift away in a few seconds if your acceleration and its weren’t the same. Easily the most difficult part of training a landpony aethernaut was drilling into their heads that, in space, down does not exist. Seaponies, on the other hoof, simply scratched their heads and wondered why this was even a problem. That was pretty darn close to how it worked underwater, after all. Under the sea, seaponies could go up and down with no problem without worrying about falling. They couldn’t set aside tools without worrying about getting them swept away by currents. They simply lacked a downwards way of thinking; the sole reason “down” held any meaning to them was because that was where the bottom of the sea was. Before space travel or gravity-canceling spells were cheap, landpony aethernauts trained for zero-G underwater. But some small-time employee at the Royal Aethernautics Administration soon realized that seaponies did that literally all the time. A few invented life support systems, a few quick adjustments to already-existing ones, and within the year, Hippocampus Fuscus was up in space, working like the best of them in spite of much less training. So Mesonox wasn’t particularly surprised by the seapony floating in mid-air in the nav center. Seapony spacemares — aethernauts or mechanics or whatever else involved working in space — while not particularly common, weren’t a rare sight. Littora was their engineer and reactor technician and could drift around the engine bay with a staggering degree of precision, not even mentioning her mechanical and electrical skills. When it came to life support, she wasn’t that different from a landpony. All she really needed was a charm to ignore the gravity spells and a specialized bunk to keep her moist when required, both of which were decently cheap (relatively speaking), and another charm to increase the viscosity of the air around her to help her “swim” better, which was really cheap (absolutely speaking). The nav center was larger than it looked. Five ponies were clustered around the holotable, yet they all had plenty of room. Space-expansion magic wasn’t supposed to be used on aetherships, so Mesonox wondered if ship designers were just really good at packing infrastructure in tight spaces. “Alright,” said Glen, bringing up a hologram of the ship. “This is our target, HMAS Solar Wind. She’s an-” “Hold up,” Stella said, raising a hoof. “Hate to put you on the spot, rookie, but…” She waved at the hologram. “What class of ship is this?” Huh? All the other questions weren’t enough? Well, okay. “Sure,” Mesonox said, “I can do that.” She examined the ship’s profile and immediately knew she couldn’t do that; the ship was strange, unfamiliar to her. She recognized some parts, but it was like bits and pieces of several other ships had been cobbled together to form her. She couldn’t tell what this thing was. But as her confidence slipped away and several awkwardly quiet moments passed, Mesonox knew she’d have to say something. “Um, w-well, I… I actually don’t know, to be honest. The bridge is- It’s obviously based on the classic Celestia design, because, um, why fix what isn’t broke?” She laughed nervously. “If that’s the remains of the communications array, then it’s a derivative of the Dragonfire comm satellites. And the engine block is clearly based on the Firefly shuttles’ assembly, only immensely scaled up.” Oh, quit stalling. “But…” She swallowed. “What specific make she is, I, I don’t know.” She almost grinned, then folded her ears back. To her surprise, Stella grinned slightly at her and nodded, just a little. “Well, Pawn?” Stella asked. “What is her class?” “Experimental.” Mesonox’s ears went right back up. “…Come again?” “Experimental,” repeated Glen. “Solar Wind was an experimental ship, the only one in her class. The first prototype, to be precise. Most of the information on her — including what she was a prototype for — still isn’t publicly available, since she had yet to run her first tests when the cascade hit. What I do know is that disgruntled technicians sometimes called her Celestia’s Farts.” Mesonox’s next question made her wonder if she’d been watching too many conspiracy thrillers while on Crown. “We’re not going to be breaking any laws and hunted down by the Court to keep us quiet, are we?” “Hardly. She wasn’t classified, the info just never got into public channels. I mean…” Glen tapped a few times at his control panel. The hologram faded out and the surface of the table lit up with a small article from a science news netsite about the upcoming launch of a new prototype aethercraft called Solar Wind. Mesonox glanced at the date. Almost seven years ago. “This took maybe thirty seconds of searching,” said Glen, waving his hoof over it. “Hardly top secret. I put in an FOIA request with the Court, but that’ll still take a moon or so.” He flicked the article away and brought the schematics back up. “Unfortunately, we don’t know much about her. We have a vague estimation of post-cascade mass and size, but that’s it. Still, based on the official values, View can easily handle the edge cases and still have lots of power to spare.” Stella leaned in a little to examine the ship more thoroughly. “These are blueprints, right? Or do we know what the ship looks like now?” “Blueprints,” said Glen. “She’s in a very eccentric orbit — details already sent to Queen — so Starfall thinks she might’ve been docked, taken the brunt of the cascade during the early days, and gotten pushed into her current orbit by brute force.” He shrugged. “But we’re still unsure, although preliminary scans indicate she’s largely in one piece.” “Hmm.” Stella batted at the hologram, slowly spinning it around. “Kind of a strange hull shape, but we can make do. We’re all set on the technical side, Knight?” “Di reacta ah fine an ave whole heap fuel,” said Littora. “Di teda dem a gud, too, nice an strong.” Mesonox didn’t want to sound tribalist, but she had trouble deciphering Littora’s speech at times. Language had never been a strong suit of hers and she’d only barely passed first-year Zebran years ago. She hoped actually working now would give her some more experience. This sentence, at least, was easy to decipher: The reactor is fine and has lots of fuel. The tethers are good, too, nice and strong. Stella nodded. “Good. Good. Queen, what’s our ETA if we leave thirty minutes from now?” “Just under three hours from launch,” said Gimbal. “We can get it down to two if we burn fuel, but I’m assuming you don’t want to.” “I’d rather not. We’re a bit low on funds and I don’t want to dip any more than we have to.” “Gotcha. Regular burn only, three hours.” “Any other questions?” Everypony murmured in the negative. “Then let’s get going.” Gimbal saluted and trotted to the cockpit. Littora “swam” towards the back of the ship. Stella and Glen simply took seats in the nav center, Glen moving his chair up to the holotable. Mesonox settled into her own chair, her left wing twitching. And now came the waiting. Glen pulled out a canister of pretzel sticks from somewhere beneath the holotable. “Why do we always get granola for snacks?” he asked. “It’s too crunchy.” He grabbed a pretzel with his mouth and held it there like a cigar. “And pretzels aren’t?” asked Stella. “Pretzels are large and not smooth,” said Glen. “With granola, I feel like I’m eating sandstone pebbles. It’s weird.” He chewed on the end of the pretzel. “If you care so much, you can get your own dang snacks.” “And I do!” Glen waved the tin at Stella. “But it’s annoying to have to keep picking them up.” Mesonox couldn’t help herself. “Wuss. It’s granola. Who couldn’t love oats, nuts, and honey?” “Me.” Glen faux-scowled at Stella and chewed on the pretzel some more. The intercom crackled. “We’ve got clearance to fly already, everypony,” said Gimbal.“Lucky break in traffic. I know it’s sudden, but wanna leave now, King? It’ll cut our ETA down to two hours.” “Do it,” said Stella. “Anything to save time.” “Yes, ma’am. Thought you might say that. Airlock sealed… Crew conduit retracted… Dust mags up… Detaching from Crown in 3… 2… 1…” Mesonox jumped a little at the slight tug of acceleration as View disengaged from Crown. She quickly hooked her front hooves around the legrests in case things went sour, but nothing happened. Stella and Glen didn’t look concerned, either, even as they leaned into the acceleration. Mesonox coughed. “Um, Stella?” she asked quietly. “Are… the ID fields-” “Oh! Sorry,” said Stella. “Forgot to mention: Gimbal doesn’t like full inertial dampening. There’s nothing wrong with the ship.” “Ah.” Mesonox let go of her chair. No, the acceleration wasn’t bad at all. But, still… “What’s she got against it? Doesn’t she want a smooth ride? I mean-” Stella held up a hoof to stop Mesonox and bumped a button on the intercom. “Gimbal, go on your inertial dampening rant.” The intercom crackled. “Okay, first of all, it’s not inertial DAMPENING, it’s inertial NEGATION.” Stella grinned in a “sorry” sort of way and stuffed her hooves into her ears. “Second, complete inertial negation takes half the fun out of flying an aethership like View. Without inertial negation, you might as well just be sitting at home. SOME of it’s good, even necessary — we’d all be dead from strokes in a few minutes without it — but I like to feel how View responds to everything. It’s a kind of feedback you can’t get from sensors. And, well, it’s more fun. You get to feel-” Gimbal kept going on, her voice very slowly getting louder. Mesonox resisted the urge to plug her own ears; she already knew that Gimbal was one of those ponies with regards to inertial dampening — inertial negation — but after she’d personally asked Gimbal about it, simply shutting her out would be rude and horrifically insensitive. “-takes skill to bank a ship in a superfluid like the aether, so why not let the passengers feel it? I’m not going to give anybody whiplash because-” Against her own will, Mesonox began tuning Gimbal out. She tried to listen, she really did, but this simply didn’t interest her. She was an aethernaut, not a pilot, and (she expected that) inertia only concerned her when she had to stop herself from slamming into aethership hulls or spinning out into space. And as Gimbal began slipping into more technical terms, like “thaumatic Hays decoupling”, it was that much harder to care. Mesonox finally perked up when Gimbal said, “In short: with complete ID, you’re flying to get from point A to point B. With lessened ID, you’re flying to FLY.” “I see,” said Mesonox, who didn’t. After a second, Gimbal chuckled. “…You stopped listening a few seconds in, didn’t you?” Mesonox’s face turned bright red, which was impressive, considering her dark gray coat. “No! I-” Gimbal laughed again. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a niche interest, I know, and nerd rage just isn’t as fun if you don’t know what the nerd is talking about.” “Hem. Sorry.” In spite of the lack of video screens, Mesonox turned away from the intercom, rubbing her neck. “Apology accepted, and you’re forgiven. Out.” The second the intercom went silent, Glen leaned back in his chair. “So. Two hours to contact. Who wants to play a game of Mao?” Mesonox’s ears twitched forward. “What’s Mao?” “It’s not that fun with only three people is what it is,” said Stella. “Pass.” Glen wrinkled his nose at her, then turned back to Mesonox. “Then how about quarto?” “What’s quarto?” “Don’t worry, it’s easy to learn.” Glen tapped some buttons, and a board and several game pieces flickered into existence on the holotable. “There are sixteen pieces…” Mesonox looked between the quarto board and the available pieces. She couldn’t pick a tall piece, Glen could put it there… She couldn’t pick a round piece, Glen could put it there or there… So of the short square pieces, which ones would screw Glen over more? She needed to destroy him, after the way he’d won the last few games. As she thought, she asked, “Hey, Glen? If you don’t mind me asking, how does a pony who can teleport end up as a salvage trawler?” Stella’s ear twitched towards them, but she didn’t say anything or look up from her ereader. Glen just shrugged. “I’m a prodigy who’s not prodigious enough to be the type of prodigy he wants to be.” Mesonox blinked and turned that sentence over in her head. After a moment of thought, she tried, “You’re smart, but not smart enough to…” What would be peak intelligence? “…go into cutting-edge research.” Stella grinned slightly as Glen nodded. “Close enough. I’m good with old, well-trodden spells like teleportation, even if they’re advanced. Less so with new, untested magic. I like reading from a dozen different sources before I try it, and that’s hard to do when something’s so new there’s only two or three sources for it on all of Equus.” Mesonox nodded. She knew the feeling of being not quite good enough to follow through on her dreams. Piloting an aethership would’ve been so freaking cool… But she’d seen the results of her driver’s tests, and being given control of something even bigger and heavier… wasn’t the best idea. Being a trawler was a close second, though, so she was still happy. “Picked up a bachelor’s in physics in college, but my plans to follow through on that washed out,” continued Glen. “Wandered through a job fair at college, noticed a booth for debris trawling, thought it sounded interesting and useful, and you probably know the rest. It’s really not much of a story. I just didn’t take the expected path in life.” “But you still keep up-to-date with the cutting edge, right?” asked Mesonox. “Subscriptions to Scientific Equestrian and Popular Arcanics and all that?” “Heh. You think I stop at reading ezines? I tinker in my spare-” “You call what you do tinkering?” piped up Stella. “You could probably be our reactor technician if Littora ever quits.” “Hey, Rockhoof-class reactors are no more advanced than they need to be and I’ve read the manual header to footer five times.” “And that’s full readthroughs,” Stella added to Mesonox. “He’s not counting when he skims back to read the chapters he likes.” “Most of those, I don’t like,” Glen said. He stated it plainly, without a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “I need to study them, just in case.” “Only most, though.” “Right. Some I do like. So if you ever need some mechanics tips, I’m available.” “Thanks.” Couldn’t hurt. Mesonox knew her orthodox techniques forward and backward every which way along all six degrees of freedom, but knowing some unorthodox ones was always useful. Still her turn in quarto, though. Which piece to pick. Which piece- The intercom crackled. “Coming into visual range on Wind in a few minutes. If you want to take a look before suiting up, feel free to come to the cockpit.” Already? Or had they been playing for that long? Either way, Mesonox scurried to the cockpit almost immediately, sparing only a “gimmeasec” for Glen. Cheesy and not-so-cheesy sci-fi movies always had aetherships with big windows, which were naturally a structural risk in the real world. But trying to view space solely through instruments was a bit of a downer, so for the moment, cockpits still had windows with a good view. Luckily, the cockpit wasn’t all that cramped, in spite of a lot of the space being taken up by Gimbal’s chair and control console. Or at least, Mesonox could get a good view in spite of those. She leaned around Gimbal’s shoulder. Gimbal, in turn, leaned aside to give her a little more space. It was easy for her; where Stella was lean for an earth pony, Gimbal was slim to the point that a unicorn might tell her to put on some muscle. “Hey, rookie.” Once upon a time, Mesonox would’ve felt a tiny twinge of reflexive annoyance at not being addressed by her name. After hearing it from Stella more times than she could count, it barely registered anymore. She was slightly surprised at it being used before they actually got to the wreckage, but only slightly. “Hey, Gimbal. Are Stella and Glen not interested?” “Oh, I’m sure they were, once upon a time,” said Gimbal, “but somehow, they’ve managed to allow themselves to be bored by space.” “That’s more impossible than Discord.” Gimbal chuckled and turned back to the viewport. “We should be coming up on Wind in a few minutes.” When she looked out, Mesonox couldn’t see anything but the starfield, the moon above them, and Equus below them. She wasn’t surprised at the lack of ships; in space, if you could see another ship and you weren’t trying to dock with it, something was seriously wrong. Mesonox squinted out at the stars, trying to find Solar Wind. One of them was twinkling a little, distrac- They were outside the atmosphere. Starlight didn’t twinkle up here. Mesonox turned her full attention to the “twinkling” star. It was definitely flickering oh-so-slightly in a way other stars weren’t. Then another star started twinkling, then the first one stopped… “Over there,” said Mesonox, pointing. “See?” “That’d match our approach vector,” Gimbal said as she turned, “but I’ll be darned if I can see anything. Then again, earth pony, pegasus, yeah.” She shrugged. “If you can see her, I’ll buy you dinner once we get back.” Another star started flickering. “It might just be a debris field around her,” said Mesonox. “I can’t make out any shapes yet.” “Well, you shouldn’t’ve said that. If it’s not Wind, I won’t owe you dinner.” “Hey, I could still be right.” “We’ll see.” One hundred and thirteen seconds later, Mesonox was smugly moseying back to the hold with an IOU folded neatly in her pocket. Queen grinned a little as the rookie sidled away. Oh, the vigor of youth, may it cling to her forever. Especially with those eyes. She’d heard that pegasi had good eyesight, but still. Dang. If the rookie kept that sort of perception up, it’d practically be a waste to keep her on trawling. But if trawling was what she wanted to do, Queen wouldn’t stop her. Queen ran another scan, just to fill up the time, and her view of Solar Wind came into slightly sharper focus. It was a doozy, alright. There was a positively huge hole punched right through the hull, one so big Queen had never seen the likes of it before. Most of the remaining damage, all the smaller holes and impact scarring and missing bits and bobs, was to be expected, though. Honestly, Wind looked surprisingly intact. With some tinkering , she might still be flyable, if only technically. With most of her attention already flipping between her instruments and the windscreen, Queen devoted what little remaining attention she dared to her scans. Slight rotational velocity, nothing too major. With the right equipment, the rookie could handle that on her own, if she needed to. The impact craters were more prevalent on one side of Wind than on the other. So if she got hit while traveling along one vector (or facing along it), started tumbling, kept getting hit… Yeah, that would work. She took another look at the biggest hole. It seemed awfully close to the rear of Wind. Maybe close to the reactor? Queen didn’t know much about reactors. Maybe not. She didn’t remember where the reactor had been on the plans she’d received. Time to call in an expert. She keyed on the intercom. “Knight? How’re things down there?” «Everything’s criss. What do you need me for?» “Hypothetical question. Suppose a reactor got breached. What would happen?” Knight snorted. «If it’s bad enough to mash up a reactor, you’ve got bigger things to worry about. Staying on the reactor…» The sounds of her breathing came through as static. Maybe they did need to get the intercoms replaced. «It depends,» she said eventually. «Can you be more specific?» “Scans of Wind are looking pretty bad, and I’m just wondering if something happened to the reactor. Sending-” But Knight’s laugh cut her off. «If something happened to Wind’s reactor in the cascade, we wouldn’t be picking her up. You know the reaction behind an aether high, right?» “Sort of.” Not really. Queen didn’t like to think about that happening; aether highs always sounded like a terrible way to die. “The mana channels in the brain react with the aether and get inflamed, right?” She would’ve crossed her wings if she were a pegasus. «Close enough. If a ship’s reactor were breached, you’d see something similar as the aether interacted with the reactor. But on a much bigger scale.» There was a slight clicking sound; seaponies couldn’t whistle, so that was their equivalent. «Short version, Solar Wind wouldn’t be Solar Wind anymore, just dust in the… solar wind, pun not intended.» But if Wind had been resting in a spacedock- “Even with the reactor turned off?” Knight’s snort was even more staticy than her breathing had been. «Obviously. The aether’s reacting with the unbound magic in the fuel, and the fuel’s magic whether or not the reactor’s running.» “Mmhmm. Got it.” Queen took another look at the scan, rotated it around a little. Yeah, it wasn’t that hard to think that whatever had punctured the hull had managed to miss the reactor. The angle was about right. “While I’ve got you, is that last repair job holding up?” «Ooooooh, yeah.» Queen could practically hear Knight grinning. «Those GX-36 linkages for the engines are humming like a DREAM. Pure ASMR.» “You’ve got a princess’s approval on that dream thing?” «Considering two nights ago, I do, actually. Even besides that, they were incredibly easy to set up and connect, and none of the watchdog programs I’ve set up to monitor them have given me a peep. You could probably run the entire output of the Hoofer Dam through this and not get any temperature rise.» “Perfect.” That refurbishment had been both very needed and rather expensive. If View wasn’t in tip-top condition after that, well, Queen would have words with someone. (She didn’t know who, but she’d find out.) “Let me know if there’s anything else we need to pick up.” «Just ask Pawn.» “Ha ha.” «Seriously. He knows the rest of View better than me. You just listen to me more because I’m not as annoying.» “You only ask for thaumic linkages!” «Thaumic linkages are half my work. His half is bigger and has smaller pieces.» “Yours are more important.” «Not when you put it all together.» Queen briefly muted the mic to sigh. Not at Knight, at herself. View was still getting old, after all, and stinginess wouldn’t save money if something broke in exactly the wrong way and the repairs cost more than the parts. “I’ll think about it,” she said. «Suuuuuure you will, Queen Cheapskate.» Rolling her eyes, Queen cut the connection. She looked between View’s cockpit and her instruments one last time. Wind was close enough, so she began keying on the fine maneuvering systems. Simple logic said it was impossible, but Queen sometimes imagined she could feel the maneuvering systems come to life around her. Verneigher engines charging, reaction wheels warming up… It was like the entire craft was getting ready to spring into action. (Of course, reaction wheels “warming up” was proof enough that she wasn’t really feeling anything, since they started running before View even left Lunar Crown, but that was boring.) Electricity and thaumic energy hummed through their conductors around her, and with that energy, Queen would make a multi-dozen-thousand-ton array of composites and metal do a dance with a precision of inches. As you do. Every time you fly out. Because that was what pilots did. Queen wasn’t sure anypony truly appreciated what pilots did, but she didn’t care. Being able to do that was reward enough, and then some. Appreciation from her crewmates was a bonus. As she readied View for positioning and velocity matching, Queen keyed on the intercom again. “Alright, ponies, we’re on our final approach vector. Standard procedure for cleanup. Suit up and get ready to do some dusting.”