Star Shot sighed inwardly as she stared at the small view screen on her desk as the Luna institute’s logo spun in one place. She had studied every inch of that symbol during her studies, as it had been plastered everywhere in the institutes building. With the triple beep of the comm system, the screen lit up to reveal the light green face of an angry unicorn; Admiral Nova Shine. He was an older stallion, but had only ever been to space twice, the first time was to open the space station and the other was to see the ‘Twilight’ off. He always used to tell Star that space travel would make a pony’s mane go grey prematurely, but despite that, he hair was almost completely colourless, except for a dark blue streak going down the side of his head.
“So Star… What in Celestia’s name happened?” he growled, grinding his yellow, cigarette stained teeth.
“Whatever do you mean sir?” she asked, hoping that her smile was convincing enough.
“Don’t bother lying to me captain, the ambassador contacted me and told me all about your altercation with the Taurians.”
“Ah… Well allow me to explain-“
“Oh please do,” Nova said sarcastically, putting his head in his hooves.
“My comm officer Primprose intercepted a distress signal from a Pinto terraforming vessel and as we were in the process of rescuing them, the Taurians showed up and we were forced to engage them,” she explained, watching as Nova continued to stare at her with his sharp green eyes. Normally Nova had a cheerful disposition, but ever since the Pinto’s had started to complain about Star’s posting on the Twilight and he had begun to deal with them even more, he had become an irritable pony.
“Nevertheless, the Pinto’s are rather displeased that there was a skirmish on their borders and I am copping so much grief because of it,” he told her, spitting out the word ‘Pinto.’
“My apologies sir, it was not my intention to cause you any-“ started Star, before being interrupted with a growl.
“Don’t suck up captain! I’m in no mood for it. Look Star, you know I like you, I was friends with your father for a long time, but you must understand that this is beyond my control,” he told her, sighing as he slid a file over to himself and opened it. “By order of the Pinto High command, you are to report to the science directorate to explain your actions and to receive judgement for provoking Taurians inside Pinto space.”
“What! I was only defending myself after I SAVED their people!” exclaimed Star, outraged.
“Yeah, well like I said; there’s not much I can do about it now. But don’t let it interfere with your mission. Just take the ambassador back to Aquestria and head to the Pinto home world when you can. I’ll… see if I can take some of the pressure off you,” said Nova, his voice going soft for a moment. Star gave him a nod and the admiral cancelled the connection, leaving Star alone in silence.
***
The high pitched scream pierced the recirculated air in the Twilight, ringing down the halls of the ship. From the bridge, Star, Swift and Time Turner were shocked out of their mid-shift trance and rushed to the source of the commotion, which turned out to be the med-bay.
When they arrived, they found Heartstrings cowering in a corner, with Doctor Neuron giggling like a school colt and stroking a caterpillar that was the size of a housecat.
“What’s going on here?” Time Turner asked, as Swift rushed to comfort his wife. Doctor Neuron gave her a wide smile and placed the caterpillar in a large, plexi-glass enclosure.
“I’m very sorry about that captain. I was unaware of our dear Heartstrings had a phobia of caterpillars,” he explained, pushing the enclosure under of one of the counters and closing a curtain.
“Okay, but why is there a caterpillar that big on my ship?” asked Star, keeping her eyes trained on Heartstrings as she was lead out of the med-bay.
“Oh, well that’s simple; how do you expect me to make all of the medicines and stuff without ingredients?” he smiled and Star gave him a quizzical look.
“Wait, so instead of stocking up on actual medicines, you filled the med-bay with insects?”
“Of course not! We are fully stocked with meds for at least eight months, barring any kind of plague, but after that, I’m going to have to make my own meds. And it’s not just insects. I have lizards, mammals, birds and sea life, all of which have some kind of healing properties in their bodies or secretions,” explained the doctor cheerfully. Gesturing to Star, Doctor Neuron led her over to a curtained off section of the med-bay, pulling back the curtain to reveal a menagerie of strange creatures in cages and enclosures.
“Wow, this seems very inappropriate,” Star said, stunned. Beside her, a cloudsdale thunder beaver squeaked, causing a tiny arc of electricity of branch out between the bars of its cage. She took a step back, bumping into Time Turner, who, much to her surprise, was looking at the miniature zoo with a look of awe on his face.
“Are you kidding? This is fantastic!” he exclaimed, pushing past her and staring at all of the various animals with a look of sheer elation on his face.
“Thank you very much Time Turner, these guys here are the pride of my collection. Like little Boom the thunder beaver over here,” said Doctor Neuron, as he started making cutsie faces to the beaver.
“And what kind of medicinal properties does he have?” Star interjected, trying to change the subject before the boys got too weird.
“Ah! Now that is the interesting part. This little guy has two functions that I can use. Firstly, the secretions from his pancreas can help fight malignant tumours, and secondly; if for whatever reason we run out of power, I can run the entire med-bay off his bio-electricity for about a week if nothing super bad happens.”
“Okay, that is fairly awesome,” Star admitted, genuinely impressed. “Look, I’m going to go check out how Heartstrings is doing, but seriously, keep this kind of stuff in check, especially the caterpillar apparently.”
Doctor Neuron gave her a single nod and Star turned and walked out of the med-bay, sighing with relief when the doors had closed behind her. A cold shiver ran up her spine when the thought of all the insects on her ship.
***
Star found a crying Heartstrings being comforted by Swift in the mess hall. In front of her was a large bowl of her favourite mint ice cream covered in bon bons.
“Hey… how are you doing?” she asked, sitting down across from the couple. Heartstrings looked up and gave her a weak smile.
“I’m okay, just in a bit of shock,” she replied, nuzzling a bit closer to Swift.
“It’s okay sweetie, I’m sure Star talked to him,” said Swift, giving Star and expectant look.
“I did indeed, but as he explained, they hold too many potentially helpful qualities for me to condone getting rid of them, but he has promised to make it considerably easier on you,” Star told her and while both Swift and Heartstrings gave her a deadpan look, they eventually relented.
“Fine, but if I see it again I won’t hesitate to fire it out of an airlock,” Heartstrings warned, making Star chuckle.
“So how come you are so afraid of Caterpillars?” she asked as she tried to subtly slide the bowl of ice cream over to her. Heartstrings sighed and Star saw Swift smirk as though we was remembering something hilarious.
“Well my older brother got his cutie mark in studying bugs and so he always had them around the house. I didn’t really mind, but then I was practicing my mother’s antique lyre and got bitten by a rare poisonous species of caterpillar. I had to spend a week in hospital because of it, and lost all of the fur on my right foreleg, where I got bit. OH! And my remaining fur got turned fluorescent yellow. I’m just happy that my brother was able to help the doctors find and antidote, otherwise I may not be here right now. Since then, I just cannot be near any kind of caterpillar,” Heartstrings told Star, her cheeks turning red with embarrassment. Heartstrings suddenly noticed that her captain was trying to steal her ice cream and snatched it back.
“Fine. You know what, how about I talk to Neuron again and see if he can keep it in his quarters, might make the work environment a bit better?” Star suggested and Heartstrings agreed.
***
After the mess in the med-bay had been sorted out, Star, Swift and Time Turner returned to the bridge, only to find it completely empty, save for Tashin, Sweetie Belle, PrimProse and Rarity.
“What’s going on here?” Time Turner asked, taking a seat at his station. The four assembled ponies that were already on the bridge looked at each other awkwardly, as though they didn’t know who should talk first. Finally, it was Sweetie Belle that spoke up.
“Well… It’s bit hard to explain. But basically we have a multitude of problems at the moment,” she said, taking a step away from Star and pushing Rarity in front of her slightly. Star let out an annoyed sigh and slumped onto her chair.
“Let me guess, the warp reactor is about to explode,” she joked irritably.
“Uh, actually…” said Rarity.
“Wait, WHAT?”
“Yeah, apparently there was a defect in the dilithium casing, so we are leaking anti-matter at a steady rate,” she explained, lifting a tablet off the table next to her and passing it to Star. The image on the tablet showed where the reactor had developed a crack in the anti-matter dilithium casing, causing a potentiall disastrous leak. Since anti-matter destroys almost all matter, it wouldn’t be long before it cut through the hull of the Twilight, causing mass depressurisation.
“So, what are our options?”
“I managed to contain the leak somewhat, but at the rate its going, my makeshift repairs aren’t going to hold up. I’d suggest dropping back to warp two and finding somewhere I can get some dilithium repair kits,” Rarity told her, as the screen on the tablet changed to a list of parts she was going to need.
“Right, and what’s the nearest inhabited planet?”
“A… uh… A diamond dog merchant outpost,” replied Sweetie Belle. Star gave Time Turner a quick look, just in time to see him smack his face into his console.
“Celestia damn it. Plot a course, warp two. So who else had problems?” Star asked drily as she gave a hard look to both Tashin and PrimProse.
“I-I don’t know now. My news seems a bit unimportant in the light of the reactor issue,” said PrimProse quietly. Star raised an eyebrow and signed again, prompting her to continue. “I’ve been getting reports from all over the ship about altercations between a group of earth pony from the stellar cartography lab and some unicorns from the xeno-biology lab. Apparently some racial remarks have created issues.”
“Who started that?” Star enquired, slightly disgusted by the attitudes of her crew.
“One of my friends in the sanitation department told me that it was the unicorns that started calling them ‘mud ponies’ and ‘useless.’ But then I really don’t know,” Primprose told her and Star saw the looks of rage on the faces of the earth ponies Swift and Time Turner. She had thought that all of the crew had been screened for things like racism, and finding out that it had already started so early into their voyage simply made her mad.
“I’ll sort it out as soon as I can,” Star assured them, before turning to face Tashin, who was looking around the room in a curious manner. “And what about you Tashin, what did you need to see me about?”
“Oh nothing much captain, it’s just that two of our injured people just died and I’d like your permission to take and empty torpedo casing and fire them into the nearest star,” said Tashin in her typical flat tone. Suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, Star simply nodded her approval and Tashin immediately left the bridge.
“Okay… So one problem at a time then,” Star said to herself.