//------------------------------// // Learning The Ropes // Story: [Forlorn Ascension]|[Rites of Dominion] // by Desrium //------------------------------// And so, Phineas walked beside Gaali, who was leading him through the ship's many hallways. The yellow glow from the intricate network of alien workings ran across both their forms; with Phineas' suit gleaming and Gaali's warping the glow around her in a mystifying way. After their initial encounter, things had died down between them. An awkward silence fell as the two equines walked down the passageways. Observing the fine details of the paneling and the various terminals and screens he passed only kept Phineas occupied for so long. He cleared his throat, the sound turned gruff by the helmet. It made Gaali look over to him suddenly, head cocked. "Are you alright?" she asked. "Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. Well... a bit curious, if being curious is enough to make somepony not alright," Phineas replied. "Like, what is this ship? Who are you really, and what do you do?" "The ship is called the Desolus, after a Shu'badi legend." "Legend wasn't about any space creatures, right?" Phineas asked offhoofedly. He really wanted to see her underneath her own mask. It was hard to converse with the Seapony when he couldn't see her reactions to the things he said. "... No." she replied after a pause, most likely her contemplating Phineas' motives for asking her such a thing. "Why?" "No particular reason," Phineas lied. "Hmm. Well, as you probably guessed, the ship's primary business is transport and commerce. We - that is myself and the others - cover a sector of fringe worlds which we act as liaisons to. We deliver whatever they may need whenever they need it." "Which is where you picked up your knowledge of Earth?" the silver stallion asked. Gaali confirmed this with a nod and said: "I truly am sorry... I can't imagine what grief you must have felt." "Don't... worry about it. It must've happened long before you were born." "Actually, the Shu'badi have lifespans measuring in centuries to millennia, depending on what standard of time you base your judgement on." Gaali corrected Phineas tactfully. "... Holy shit," he thought. "So... you were alive when Earth...?" "Alive, yes. But as I told you already, the region of space your people explored was one sparse of interests for the other space faring races and rife with dangers for those who ventured into it. It was only after the fall of your world did your people's plight become known to us." "I see..." said Phineas. Apparently, things like the Star Terrors were well known elsewhere in the galaxy. Earth happened to be in a cosmic hotspot full of them and who know what other dangers. "So you are... how old?" he went on to ask. "478 years old." "Ah ha..." Phineas mused. "So you would have been... one hundred when the Iopteryx went on its voyage... wow. What is your role on this ship? The Desolus?" "Whatever it is that I am needed to do at any given time," Gaali replied simply. "Really? There aren't any designations? No assigned ranks or anything on board?" Phineas inquired, cocking his head. What a strange system! "I am aware such a thing might be a strange concept to you, if what I have gathered on old Federation practices have any merit. Aboard the Desolus, however, there are only five of us currently. We cannot rigidly assign duties and carry them out. Tsubar needs to be able to pilot when the captain is not available and the captain needs to be able to make repairs when repairs are needed," Gaali explained to the silver stallion. "Absolutely fascinating!" Phineas replied. "You mean there could be a chance of me flying this ship in somepony else's place?" Gaali made a strange noise. It sounded similar to a chuckle with that aquatic edge to it. "One thing at a time, Startrot." "Right, right. So you all share responsibilities... but you still have usual parts to play. For example, Tsubar is your mechanic. And you said one of you is the regular captain..." Phineas replied, beginning to piece things together. "Tsubar is our mechanic, Romaz is our captain, Uolix is our cook, Javic is our self-defense technician and I monitor our scanners for things that might be of worth...or might want to blow us up." Phineas ran what he was told through his head. After a moment of thought he said: "So, if I want to be the sixth to your band of five, I've got a lot of things to learn, huh?" Gaali nodded. "I'm sure everyone will be more than willing to show you the ropes once I break the news to them!" "I can only hope so..." Phineas replied. "Until then," Gaali said, reaching out with her tentacles to tap away at a wall panel. After typing in a command a nearby door opened with a short hum, splitting down a diagonal which ran across it. "Tsubar will be your teacher." She floated through the doorway with Phineas in tow. *** The engineering deck of the Desolus had a distinct red glow about it opposed to the yellow of the hallway. Piping and instrumentation panels were abound, as if Phineas were following Gaali through a maintenance tunnel on the Iopteryx. Instead of small passages though, this part of the ship was expansive. Advanced and alien contraptions were built into the walls, screens and holograms streaming vast amounts of data in the form of alien symbols and numerals. At a huge workstation at the center of the chamber, a single Seapony toiled away. There was a loud crackling, a tentacle acting as a welding torch upon some futuristic gizmo that Phineas could only guess its function. It appeared to be some kind of large capsule made from some foreign alloy. "Tsubar!" Gaali called out and the other Seapony shut off the searing white-blue beam. The crackling fell quiet and the dancing light disappeared, the redness of the chamber becoming absolute. "What is it?" the mechanic replied, his voice far deeper than Gaali's but shared the echoing trait which Phineas found so odd about the aliens. "You already know of our guest, but what you don't know is that he has volunteered to become part of our crew!" Tsubar turned his visor from Gaali to Phineas then back to Gaali. "Are you sure he's ready?" "He wishes to prove himself. I am willing to give him the opportunity to do so." Tsubar grunted. "So why bring him to me?" he asked. Gesturing to Phineas with a tentacle, Gaali answered with: "Because he was the Chief Engineer of his vessel before whatever misfortune brought about its end. He wants to take up a similar job here, but to do that he needs to learn about our technology and how everything on this ship works. Who of us is more qualified to educate Startrot than you?" Meanwhile, Phineas stood there awkwardly looking in between the two aliens as Gaali made her case for him. He felt very odd that he wasn't the one making the proposal, but he trusted Gaali would have had a better way to ask for Tsubar's tutelage. Tsubar stared long and hard at Phineas. Or, rather it appeared that he was doing that. It was fully possible that he was looking at anything but the pony in the spacesuit. "What's in the cases?" the mechanic asked. "My equipment," Phineas replied. He took off his toolboxes and laid them down on the floor. He opened them to reveal the wide array of tools all stored neatly in sets upon tiers. Tsubar started laughing, which sounded like he was gurgling. "Oh you poor, unfortunate creature," he said, splaying his tentacles apart. In an instant the mechanic's own collection of tools were revealed amidst a flurry of moving metal. So different was their design that Phineas couldn't even guess which tools did what, except for the ones which were explicitly fitted with focusing lenses and coils. He was able to divine that they were some kind of laser tool... if not weapons entirely. "It looks like I'll have to upgrade your arsenal there. Say, would you have a problem with getting a set of arms for yourself?" "I think I'd be more comfortable with just four legs..." Phineas replied, adding shortly afterwards in a joking way: "Maybe once I'm settled in a bit more!" "Eh, I could never understand how anything gets done without Manipulators," Tsubar said, waving a grasper in the way Phineas would wave a hoof. He floated across the room with one tentacle outstretched. Three metallic claws extended from around the lens, pointing outwards. Tsubar pressed the tentacle against a panel, which - to Phineas' great surprise - morphed around it, forming some kind of lock. Where the claws pressed, they slid inwards. This created a circular indentation in the wall which measured a few inches in depth. Tsubar turned it and pulled the tentacle back. A seam appeared on the wall, interlocking like a zipper, then the wall pulled itself apart with a whole shelf of various alien tools folding outwards. If Phineas didn't have his helmet on, his jaw would have dropped. This kicked the ever-loving shit out of his room at the academy and on the Iopteryx. Tsubar looked back at him and said: "If you're going to do anything to this ship, you need the proper tools for the job. Go ahead and dump your sticks and stones on the table there. I'm sure I can smelt them down into useful scrap." Phineas frowned slightly. His tools were some of the few things he still had of the past, of the time he remembered. "Come on, Startrot," he chided himself. "They're just tools. Besides, some things are better left behind and forgotten. That's gotten you through hard times before and it'll keep on doing so; you just have to keep it in mind." With a nod to Tsubar, Phineas picked up the toolboxes and walked over to the large black table. He undid the fastenings and spilled the contents of the kits onto the table, the metal clattering into a sizable pile. "I see you're saying goodbye to your 'best friends'," Gaali commented. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," Phineas deadpanned, only half joking. He retrieved the crowbar from the pile and returned it to one of the toolboxes. If there was anything he would keep, it was the crowbar which proved invaluable for his salvation. It hadn't aged at all over almost four centuries. "Ah good," Tsubar called out to him. "Now get over here, it's time to get you familiar with your requisitions." "You keep ordering me around and I'll get you familiar with my hoof, alien or not." Phineas thought. He put his mostly empty toolboxes back on and trotted over to the arsenal of equipment Tsubar had stowed away. Satisfied with how things were going, Gaali floated out of the mechanic's chamber. *** Phineas' training began immediately after he was given his tools, a wide variety of strangely shaped equipment with prongs and such sticking out from them. Even simple wrenches and hammers were converted into the strange devices, which Phineas was told used Spell-matrixes to channel magical energy. Tsubar described some long winded technical explanation for how they worked. Phineas' simplified explanation was as follows. "It's like using a unicorn's horn for the smallest task... can't blame the Shu'badi though. They don't have... limbs to do stuff with..." Currently, Phineas was tasked with creating some simple machinery using the tools he was given, just to get a feel for how they worked. He was doing his task on the huge table across from Tsubar, who was working on making the PDA compatible with the Desolus' interfaces. Gaali had been right about him being more inclined to take the device apart and put it back together again. His tools hummed and whirred as they assembled various components -most of which were not apart of the device originally. Phineas on the other hoof carefully grasped the alien tool in his hoof, adjusting its dial frequently to configure the intensity of the magic. It was a small thing, but the smouldering pieces of metal he cast aside were testament to how powerful it really was. Electrical arcs ran down the end with four prongs, tiny purple sparks leaping off of them. The silver stallion's concentration could not be shaken, not even the loudest crackle and pop of Tsubar's laser could disturb him as he put prong to metal. On contact the energy hissed and flashed, binding small pieces together into a cubic frame around a glowing blue core that served as a power source. After a few decisive prods with the tool, he raised his creation up. He activated the device and with a low hum it created an orange sphere of flickering light. The projector had no data to display, but the fact Phineas managed to make something functional out of completely alien materials and components was extraordinary. "Whoa. That was fast," Tsubar commented. "I'm still trying to update this hunk of junk. No offense, it must've been top of the line stuff when you were up and about," "I was always a fast learner... but this is nothing really. What I really want to start learning about is how this whole ship works! Back on the Iopteryx I spent hours disassembling machines and terminals so I could improve the spell converters and power management systems!" Phineas replied. He managed to stop himself from gushing on about how the technology worked. He figured even the more advanced aspects of the Iopteryx would have been Shu'badi foal's play. "Impressive. The ponies we met on the fringe worlds would've tried to eat that tool if I were to let them hold it for longer than a few minutes," Tsubar said. "Er... what?" Phineas asked flatly. "Yeah, most of them aren't too mechanically inclined. Or... anything inclined really. Except for a few of them, they usually are the ones keeping the refuges working and everything." "Again... what?" Phineas replied, unable to accept this. Education could not have declined so rapidly. Ponykind and their fellow creatures made it to space! Even with the destruction of Earth they could not have possibly degraded so... could they? Tsubar bobbed a bit higher at the edge of the table, as if he had been startled. "Oh, right. Sorry... that was a bit out of turn." "Explain," Phineas said flatly. "Right now, explain." "Hey, don't take it personally or anything. I didn't mean that ponies are... well... dumb[/i ]... inherently. It's just on a few fringe worlds... they aren't the most efficient Magi-flux Harmonizers in a set of Arcane-Manipulators, so to speak." Phineas was at a loss for words. There were remnants of Equestria...but the spirit of the great age of exploration was gone. What had happened to the pursuit of knowledge that spurred the great ascension to the heavens in the first place...? "Hey... Startrot? Are you still conscious?" Tsubar joked with a bit of worry evident in his voice. "Yeah... just... surprised, is all. Maybe I was thinking the ponies of the future would have continued from where they had left off on Earth. I didn't think they'd..." Phineas trailed off and got back to practicing with his equipment.