//------------------------------// // Chapter Two - Aphelion // Story: The Termination Shock // by NoeCarrier //------------------------------// Chapter Two aphelion Every ship in Rainbow Dash's hastily assembled fleet had been disabled by whatever awesome cosmic forces Twilight had unleashed. It was only through some remarkable jury-rigging on behalf of the engineer Neutron Flux that she'd been able to re-establish contact with anyone at all. They'd resorted to manually signalling nearby vessels with the mercifully still functional running lights and Morse code. As the Victoryful was a tremendously large ship even by fleet standards, it gave them a lot of room to work with. However, even with the entire areas around the gaping maws of the assault cruiser docking bays flashing brightly like Hearth's Warming Eve decorations, it had taken too much time for the rest of the formation to catch on. Dash could only watch as several Rapid Response Auxiliaries that had hung back from the main control groups vanished in abrupt flashes of blue and white brilliance. She mentally tallied the losses. Sweet Succour and Safe Sanctuary were only small ships, but it added up to nearly three hundred ponies all in. Stupid, pointless deaths. Surely Twilight would have known the great length of the Spire would break. She had taken a rash, unconsidered action out of ancient sentimentality. Her earlier new-found reverence for the purple monarch was now tinged with uncertainty once more. It was only then that Dash recalled that the Faithful Student was likely disabled in the same way as everyone else. They, however, had been accelerating through almost 25g at the point when the sensor feeds cut out. The deep space scout would now be careening toward the sun, its vector bent by gravity to send it rapidly out of system again. She tried not to think about what might have happened if the engines had held out longer than the inertial dampeners. Even the engineered genetics of that special crew couldn't take unprotected acceleration of such intensity without being converted into a fine multicoloured mist. Dash compartmentalised that thought and set it aside. They would need to get power and communications back before any kind of rescue could be considered. Neutron Flux arrived on the command deck to no particular fanfare. Every hoof was now engaged in various activities at his behest, and with Sabre Rattle currently dosed up to the withers on various sedatives following her perplexing nervous breakdown, Dash was only too happy to delegate general command to the chief engineer. It was a big technical problem, after all. They only had about another ten minutes before the deadly rain of carbon shards encountered the fleet proper. None of the crew batted an eyelid at this, adding to the growing concern as to the competency of her flagship's captain. “Ma'am, I think I've got a solution for you,” Flux said, his dark blue fur and mane covered in black lubricant gel. Several ugly cuts scored the area around his simple triple star cutie mark. He'd obviously been hard at work inside one of the big ship's many complex parts. Dash still couldn't place him. The nagging feeling of familiarity just wouldn't go away. “I think we can save most of the fleet.” “Yes? What do you suggest?” “Most of the interior non-crewed spaces are kept at a vacuum to help with integrity, right? But that still leaves a whole mess of pressurised atmospheric areas. If we open all the pressure doors from C to Z deck, along with the port side docking bays that link to them, we've got ourselves a pretty mean, if short lived propulsion system.” “Are you kidding? This boat is huge. It'd never move in time.” “That's the other part of the plan. I want to do an EVA out to the port side and put holes in the propellant tanks for the emergency jink systems. Just little ones mind. There's enough there in the way of gas to move the old mare in combination with the atmosphere dump.” “What about the other ships in the fleet? The ones without the emergency gear?” “They can do exactly the same thing but with their RCS tanks, or even the hydrogen fuel cells. We need to get the fleet up to speed as soon as possible. Do I have permission to proceed?” Dash thought for a moment, staring into his muted green eyes. “Aright. Send the word out,” she said, finally. “Make this happen. I don't want any more casualties.” Neutron Flux was already halfway out of the door, but then Dash suddenly remembered why she remembered him. “Wait a minute,” she called, grinning. Flux turned confused. “I do know you. You're screwing one of my great-great-great-grand foals.” He laughed and nodded, giving Dash the slightest of winks. “Ball Lightning is hardly a foal any more, Ma'am.” With that he was really gone, chuckling to himself as he made his way back toward engineering. “Colts these days!” she muttered, and went back to watching the star-scape through the curved observation port. * The Equestrian sky had shifted. It was glaringly obvious to someone like Twin Parallax, who had spent the better part of forty years secreted away inside an observatory. None of his hundred metre telescopes were reporting in any more. They were all parked at lagrange points or on the surface of the moon, or were otherwise in orbit somewhere. He was now standing out on the big empty field of loose black boulders and other rubble that was home to the Marena Kia Multi-Spectrum Facility, trying to get an idea as to what was going on with that most ancient of tools; the Mark 1 Pony Eyeball. It took him awhile to get it, and he kicked himself when he did. The star field corresponded to the other hemisphere, but it was distorted further somehow. Stars occupied positions they weren't due to be in for tens of thousands of years. Other stars seemed to have regressed back along their orbits around the Galactic barycentre, defying the natural progression of linear time and gravity. Only a few of the familiar southern asterisms were left. Even they were crooked and bent out of shape. Parallax wasn't much for theoretical physics, but even as he applied some of the more blue sky ideas to the situation at hand, none made sense. His eyes were telling him causality had been violated. A lifetime of work told him that couldn't possibly be the case. Parallax began to fish around in his brown mock leather saddlebags for his migraine pills. He could feel a fierce one coming on. How ponykind hadn't managed to solve the trifling problem of chronic headaches when they could now make a pony live forever was something that perpetually eluded him. They could visit those distant points of light in the sky he'd spent his days researching, but couldn't fix a simple skull ache. He ate four of the little blue pills and quickly replaced the plastic bottle. As he did he noticed the tethering device for his glasses was reporting a total loss of signal to both the planetary internet and national repeater feeds. That was seriously unusual. Nobody was ever out of range of the internet, especially not up here where the high-bandwidth nature of their endeavours meant heavy duty connectivity at all times. He trotted back inside intending to find out what had gone on with the internet. Instead he found his unicorn colleagues, High Metallicity and Doppler Pulse, magically shifting an old optical telescope out of the basement storage area. It was a curious looking thing, and was at least two hundred years old judging by the fact it wasn't mounted on an ion rocket. Nopony used ground-side equipment any more. There were so many legacy orbitals that pretty much anypony could freely request time on them without hampering serious scientific research. “Parallax, give us a hoof here would you?” Metallicity said, wincing at the effort of the telekinetic motion. “This thing weighs a ton.” “You think it still works?” Parallax asked, adding his impulse to that of the two ponies. Their expressions softened considerably. “Of course it does. They built this one to last. The optics are tough as hell.” “If you say so.” “My dad built it,” Pulse added. “I guarantee it'll give us a decent view. And it's got no electronics integral to the design either, so it won't have been affected by whatever this disruption is.” “Speaking of which, have either of you got any idea what's going on? I wasn't looking at the live news feeds.” “I was watching the weather show,” Metallicity said. “It cut to an emergency report. There was a big bright light above the castle at Canterlot. The news ponies were all swarming the place trying to get a good look. Some kind of magic thing. Nopony knew what they were up to but it had to have been the Last Princess with the level of power it was putting out.” “You've seen the sky right? I've just been outside. It's all messed up.” “What do you think we're getting this thing out for? We have to get eyes on. If we manage to get communications back the world will be clamouring for info, and we're best placed to provide that.” Parallax nodded. The MKMSF had the largest scientific x-band array on the planet, and the third most powerful net switch. The entire population of twelve and a half billion ponies could tune in and watch a high definition feed in as close to real time as the speed of light allowed and still they wouldn't lack for bandwidth. There was no room inside the observatory itself to set up the old scope, so they took it outside and began to assemble its cradle on a relatively flat and regolith-free area a few hundred yards from the squat cluster of spherical buildings that made up the facility. It was certainly a comprehensive design, Parallax admitted. The functions usually performed by programmed plastic strands and mechanical actuators were here done by gears and cogs, their workings made out of tungsten annealed with brass and copper. Alignment arrows and knobs were made of gold or silver, and each bearing had a tiny ring of ruby or sapphire to mark it out. It was clearly more a labour of art and love than a truly practical telescope, though it seemed to work in that respect too. Once they'd constructed its base and mounted the tubular body into it, Parallax gazed down the eyepiece and tried to locate some guide stars to calibrate the machine. Pulse and Metallicity had been right. The optical properties were perfect even after two hundred years. It was just that the sky was so out of order that meant Parallax couldn't find a single recognisable star. * Parallax left his technical subordinates to continue their efforts and headed down the gentle incline toward the administration blocks and the more public areas of the facility. He passed through several big security gates bridging the gaps in the circular barbed wire fences and had to heft their solid mechanisms open with his magic. He began to pant and wheeze from the effort after the third one. It occurred to him how little he used his magical birthright for anything more than paperwork and making coffee. The administration block itself resembled a fungal growth of plastic and steel composites bulging out of the side of the massive museum annex that sat between the observatory and the access way for the long-dead volcanic caldera. Night staff were spilling out of it carrying emergency torches, looking like worried fireflies buzzing around a fantastical magic nest. The museum held far more than the usual astronomical display pieces and fallen impactors. It was here, almost five hundred years ago now, that the Celestial Sisters had founded their Eternal Celebration of the Six, the immortal saviours of ponykind and still-living figureheads for the harmonious elements they represented. Most ponies couldn't name them, or speak in anything other than vague terms as to what they had done that deserved such praise. Science and technology had robbed them of the mythological wonderment previous generations felt on seeing the magic of friendship in action. Parallax had thought his way carefully around this conclusion. Regardless of how clearly magical theory could poke at the underpinnings of it all, he would never forget his heritage and their legacy. He trotted in through the front entrance of the Eternal Celebration, carefully avoiding any of the panicked ponies outside. He had no meaningful explanations for them, and they likely had none for him, given the still silent nature of external communications. The central hall that greeted him was dark, but emergency biolight cubes built into the walls and ceilings had begun to shine a soft blue light over the six primary exhibits. They cast an unsettling ambience on the whole show, with the darkness barely recessed into the deep shadows of the huge hall. He'd never seen it like this before. The thirty metre high ceilings seemed to press down in a far more unpleasant manner than usual. Parallax passed Fluttershy's Cottage, uprooted and held in a fine mesh of supportive wires and surrounded by non-functional holographic displays that would usually be showing scenes from her early life, the formative years and so on. The big mound of plastic-sealed dirt felt far less lively than it was supposed to. Holographic rabbits and tiny birds would swarm around it in mellifluous stature, expanding about the exhibition space controlled by simple AI to amuse and enlighten visitors. Now that they weren't, it was as though the building had fallen into a deep coma. Beyond the cottage there was a break in the Eternal Celebration where the other wings joined on to the main hall. Parallax headed down the right fork and into the mess of offices and workshop spaces hidden just behind the gift shop and café. An enormous amount of work, both pony-derived and automated, went into keeping the many ancient artefacts in good condition. He wandered past quiet ranks of vaguely oblong robots, their many tentacles of programmable plastic silent and packed away. From there it was only a short walk to the big vault-shaped garage buried just below the volcanic substrate of the caldera. It was packed with dozens of six-wheeled all terrain vehicles. With Celestia's Grace surely hanging over him, he discovered the simple electric engines they ran on worked just fine. He hopped in and ran his magical influence over the controls. They were physical manipulators, built for the mostly-unicorn staff of the facility and used to negotiate the steep path down into the little support industry town thirty kilometres below the rim of the caldera. Parallax eased the big rover out of the garage, up a steep volcanic glass ramp and headed out into the night. * Nitrogen Fixer had been nearly deafened by the sound of the strike. It was only sheer luck that he hadn't ended up like half the town's other residents, crowding the little hospital as a shouting mass of walking wounded. He and a bunch of the other stallions and gryphons were now picking their way through the fields and forests around Mistime, heading toward the pillar of unpleasant black smoke roiling up from the northern horizon. As they got closer, the green and yellow vegetation became more abused, trees set on fire or simply vaporised by the radiative heat of whatever had come down. Swarms of squidbirds were fleeing the scene, making their strange trilling alarm warble and grouping into little knots in the air for safety. And all the time the smell of flash-fried wood hung heavy in the air, its particular content throwing up a sickly sweet honeyed note. It took them half an hour to find the point of first impact. A thirty metre wide furrow had been gouged in the landscape, throwing great chunks of the loam and topsoil aside. It had obviously been going at a great clip as it had bounced shortly after encountering the ground. They followed it in silence, some member of the group occasionally kicking at a carbonised stump or looking for debris that might suggest what had fallen. It was conspicuously absent. Even with modern starships and their tough construction, only the crew capsule was designed to survive an accident intact, with the rest of the ship acting as a form of ablative armor. It couldn't have been a natural rock either. All settled worlds were equipped with orbital radar facilities and early warning stations capable of tracking stuff down to half a metre. Those sorts of systems were part of standard colony kits by law. They were guaranteed a twenty-four hour warning at least. Not to mention the thing had been a sort of muddy purple, sparkling brightly all the way in as though covered in glitter. Fixer was no expert on these matters, but he was fairly sure meteors weren't supposed to be purple. Progressive furrows guided them through the woodland, getting longer with each one. With the ponyoak trees far behind them now, the undamaged plants around them were beginning to change from the deep black boughs of the tiapine to the marbled white of verpine, and the striking yellow of the far rarer squidbird tree. These were the homes of the birds themselves, though how separate the two species actually were was a matter of constant debate locally. Squidbirds would grow out of the tree itself, becoming more and more independent as they matured. In this fashion they could almost be thought of as hyper mobile fruiting bodies with sharp beaks and a penchant for insects. It was Fixer who spotted it first. It was glowing a lambent pink and sat in a particularly deep part of a furrow. Hardly believing his stinging eyes he could pick out the shape of a tiara. Foggy memories of official ceremonies he'd witnessed as a foal stirred. An aspect of royalty. It was clearly incredibly hot. He felt his skin start to prickle and singe, and the group near simultaneously stopped. “A crown?” Branko the gryphon said, incredulously. Fixer had met him a few times. He ran a café in town. “What in Tartarus happened here?” “It's a tiara,” Fixer corrected. “And I think I know who it belongs to.” * I can't believe you actually did that. Twilight had been hearing the voice ever since she'd landed. It sounded like Celestia. But it didn't seem like her. The crater she'd come to rest in was some way behind her now. She was weaving her way without much purpose through the undergrowth, dazed from the forces she had unleashed. The pain was getting easier to manage too. Twilight was trying to ignore it along with the voice. Her Magical Nature was busy knitting blackened flesh and skin back together. You could have killed a whole planet. Over two ponies. I mean, this was always my backup plan. A big power hit. But like this? “I wasn't ready for any of this!” Twilight shouted. Talking to guilty hallucinations. I must've hit my head harder than I thought. Might as well humour myself until I can get my bearings. And I don't blame you, faithful student. Luna leaving in such a misguided way was unexpected even by me. I thought I had taught her better. “She went looking for you.” I know. She won't find me. That version of me died utterly. “I don't understand. What are you now?” A backup. It was supposed to initiate if anything truly unpleasant ever happened to me. But the way I died, it must have prevented a proper transference event. “Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell Luna?” My mistake again, faithful student. “No. It was mine. But I blamed Rainbow for it.” It was neither. It was my decision to use Jupiter Red. It was my decision to take it to the Perpetual Darkness home world. And it was my decision to try and negotiate. I placed myself in that position. You are not my keeper, Twilight Sparkle. She thought about this as best as she could, sitting down beside a large yellow tree. Her mane had been burned away almost entirely. That was something the Magical Nature would take far longer to fix, unless prompted. Recalling the past at all hurt more than any wound or loss of hair. The thought that the voice in her head might actually be some remnant of the dead Princess shone like a beacon in a nest of sorrows. I'm not a remnant. I am that I am, faithful student. Besides a few lost memories and a body, everything that I was I am yet. “But how can you be here? What did you do?” In reply, a burst of mathematical formula appeared in her mind. It was ferociously complex. The intellectual footprint felt like a physical weight. It eluded her understanding, too. That is as best as I can describe it. The action itself is just something I do. I don't pretend to know any of your notation, though. It is your mind alone that presents that. You are interpreting it. True comprehension will come soon. But I was meant to reform at the icon of the Summer Sun celebration. It is the most ancient magical thing of which I know, and so best placed to weave a copy of myself into. Twilight sighed deeply and stared up into the canopy overhead. A soft, near-amber light was streaming in through strangely calm leaves. It dappled her newly-minted skin and fur, calming her somewhat. Old style biospheres always did. Creases appeared across her brow. Where on Equestria was she, anyway? The light spectra was all wrong, and she recognised none of the plants around her. Diamond shaped yellow fronds cushioned her, coming up right to the base of the tree, where their stems and roots seemed to blend seamlessly into the bark. Maybe it was one of those experimental horticulture areas they used to test new bioforming concepts. That would explain the different lighting. She peered back toward the direction she thought she'd come down from, looking for a tell-tale hole in the hexagonal roof structure. Nothing was forthcoming. She couldn't see well enough. With that kind of energy applied to a wormhole, do you really think you're still on Equestria? “Oh yeah? So where am I?” This would be the ultimate test. If the thing in her head could supply her with information she couldn't possibly know, but could also later verify, it wasn't an hallucination. I just did. All those numbers and symbols. Whatever those are. But okay, as you see fit. We're on planet Esterházy. continent of Sumner. The tree is a dead give away. Nothing like a squidbird apple turnover. “Squidbirds?” she repeated, suddenly unsure of the looming yellow tree behind her. She stood up and looked over her shoulder. Tiny flecks of mustard coloured powder coated her fur. “I hate squid.” That's good, because they're more like mushrooms. They actually taste like a kind of earthy coconut. Very little eating to a bird. Lots of fussy beaks and claws. You have to get them just right. Apple Bombay knows how. That's why I keep the poor colt around. “How do you know about this world, then? I've never even heard of it.” I keep track of all my subjects, no matter how far they roam. Or what delightful local plants and pseudoanimals they might sell back to the royal kitchen. This is a sixth ring outer world. Something like eighteen hundred light years from Equestria. I think that might be a record. Certainly beats my attempt. You did recall that when I tried this, I misplaced several satellites of Saturn? They never turned up again. I hope the same fate has not befallen our beloved home. “Eighteen hundred light years?” she half-whispered, rising to a distinctly unregal squeak. “Misplaced?!” I guess the lesson you learned today was, 'if a drunk demi-God tells you about this really cool thing she did once involving the ineffable forces of the living Universe, you shouldn't do that thing, not ever'. Twilight swore she could feel the presence smirking. She kicked at the plants half-heartedly, thinking of taking a bite. It felt like it had been days since she'd last eaten anything. As much as the idea of a squid-thing anywhere near food was disgusting, the concept of it was what counted. She countenanced a quick nibble. It tasted unusual, like honeysuckle and mint leaves crushed together and set on fire, burning slightly on the way down. Twilight took a proper mouthful of it. As the remarkably agreeable taste hit her tongue again, she began to hear voices calling her name, and they weren't even in her head. She began to trot toward them. I wonder how they know your name? The purple princess frowned. That was odd. If this was really some distant backwater, her face wouldn't even be on the money. Outer worlds had their own electronic currencies. It was only first and second ring worlds that found any value in cash you couldn't spend beyond Equestria. Oh, I see. You lost your tiara. Must've come off during re-entry. “Re-entry?” she gasped. Not knowing anything was becoming annoying, but she couldn't help the surprised outbursts. “Oh for pony's sake!” Relax, faithful student. I saw what you didn't. The same sensation of memories flooding into her mind came on again, almost sending her hoof-first into the ground. Suddenly she recalled the brightest of lights, like a nuclear explosion, then an uncountable moment of nothing followed by the appearance of a ruddy brown planet. The twitch of a hypnic jerk as her emergency forcefield came on. A flash frame landscape of yellow and black fields, meeting the horizon in a line of azure mountains. Landing. Bouncing. The memory transfer ended. “Princess Twilight Sparkle!” a voice yelled, filled with bemusement. She turned to see an evergreen earth pony ahead of a lumbering, sombre gryphon. He practically bounded across the remaining brush only to grind to a halt at a respectful distance, as inevitably everyone did on meeting royalty. “Are you okay?” Someone's got a fan. The smirking again. She nodded politely, smiling. Even though she had taken a backseat role in the actual day-to-day statesmare duties, she'd been well schooled in how to behave formally. “Yes, I'm fine,” she said, in a manner to suggest that any further discussion of the topic would be moot. “Could you please tell me where I am?” “Yes, of course, your Highness. You're on Esterházy.” A strange electric chill rose up Twilight's spine. She was absolutely sure she'd never so much as heard the name. So now do you believe me? “Yes.” “Excuse me ma'am?” the green pony asked, puzzled. “Oh, nothing. Could you tell me your name?” “Nitrogen Fixer, ma'am.” “Pleased to meet you, Nitrogen Fixer.” she extended a hoof, which he shook rather nervously. The gryphon had paused somewhat further back, and was looking her up and down with smart yellow eyes. She returned the gaze. “And who might you be?” “Branko.” he replied, firmly. There was an awkward moment, and a glance from Fixer at the gryphon that was filled with desperation. After an all-too-long few seconds, he bowed his feathered head down until it was level with his body. “I am told it is an honour.” The appearance of a crowd within ear shot broke the tension. As a whole rainbow of colours and interested, wary faces emerged, the now-confirmed Celestia said quite sincerely I'm glad you recall your etiquette. * Freundschaft Uber Alles was the first of the larger ships in the formation to die. Dash was easily able to make out her diamond shape transiting in front of the sun through her suit's polarised visor. Not so easily the object that struck her amidships and near enough gutted her. Fusion plasma spiralled out of the exit wound, flaring brightly before the loss of containment returned the fuel to a lambent gas. Communication via the running lights had broken down a few minutes beforehoof. Apparently they'd been trying to launch the lifeboats instead of following the plan handed to them. For what was the tenth time that day, Dash ruminated on how violently and how quickly one could die in space. The edges of the diamond began to break up, and then there was nothing more to see even on maximum zoom. Dash had put on one of the bulky exosuits and joined her comrades outside simply because of how alone and isolated, so utterly useless she felt floating about in an empty command deck. At least the suits and their integral radios were working. Apparently the fleet wide systems failures were a result of a problem with digital command authority. All of their primary gear, power generation, long range travel, weapons and communications had been designed with the possibility of enemy subversion in mind. They would return to a hard lock down if the central command core, and with it central authority, was destroyed. Usually the commanding officer of any ship would never place themselves in such obvious danger, let alone top brass, but that was one of the perks of the job. Her stare alone had quieted Neutron Flux's protests. Now they were quietly drifting along the sun-facing side of the Victoryful to where the jink system fuel tanks were, moving in twos, following a line of magnetic emergency beacons stuck to the hull. All she could hear was her own breathing, and the occasional muffled burst of distant com traffic from other teams on other ships doing the exact same thing. The distance was too great for the suit radios to be much use without high powered repeaters to throw their signals further, but the garbled sounds gave her a big confidence boost. She swivelled her head around, trying to get eyes on them visually. Not much could be seen. Besides the Freundschaft and her sister ship, who sat as permanent fleet tenders to the Victoryful, their last known fleet positions meant the flagship was in the way. Neutron Flux had insisted on partnering up with Dash. The stallion had four hundred hours logged extra-vehicular, and she'd been more than glad for that. Her own time was a paltry twelve, just enough to make the EV rating. As easy as she found it moving around in microgravity within the confines of a starship, out in the blackness things worked differently. It wasn't possible to use her wings properly. The suit translated small lateral motions of them into big puffs of reaction gas. She had to focus constantly, more so than she’d ever had to do in recent times. “All right,” Flux said, turning round to face her. His voice was tinny and filled with static. “This is as far as the rope goes. Unclip yourself.” Dash had been dreading this moment. There was only four hundred metres of secure cable, and two thousand metres along the hull to traverse. “After this, it's medals all round,” she replied, unfastening the carabiner grimly. “Then we kill Twilight Sparkle.” “Ma'am!” Flux said, feigning horror. He laughed. “Haven't you heard of lese majeste?” “Bah. She can court martial me when she turns up with Equestria again. Then I won't care.” “What happened down there anyway?” “That's need to know information.” “Call it professional curiosity, ma'am. Was it one of those new Transit drives the internet is alive with rumours about?” “Nope. Something eldritch involving too much magic for anypony's own good. I don't understand it. Maybe she'll tell us all about it before I see just how immortal she actually is.” They came up to a section of the hull that rose away from the main body at a steep angle. It was covered in serrated parallel slats, made of a material that put the black of space to shame. Light seemed to encounter it as a young filly encounters a burly gentlecolt in a back alleyway after too much cider. Dash had trouble focusing clearly on any one section for too long. Flux caught her gaze. “It's part of the anti-emissions system,” he said, as they began to float gently past it, keeping a metre or two clear. “But mainly it’s designed to protect crew and vital systems, plus their interlinks.” “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I didn't realise they were this big.” “This is a minor array. It's five hundred metres long, comes to an apex half way. We've got twelve of them alongside six of the major versions. Those are a kilometre.” “You really get a feel for the size of this thing when you’re all alone out here in the black.” “I take it you don’t have too much of an EV rating, ma’am?” “Is it that obvious?” “Usually it’s only newbies who grouse as much, ma’am.” “Who’re you calling newbie? What are you, twenty five years old?” “Twenty seven ma’am.” “Yeah, well, I’m so old when I was a filly you could fly all the way from Canterlot to Ponyville and not once lack for green below you.” “I’m sure you could ma’am.” Dash responded by way of a mirthless chuckle, shaking her head. “You'd think they'd have put more exterior airlocks on this thing.” “Exterior airlocks are a structural weakness, ma'am.” “This boat berths fifteen corvettes, five frigates and two destroyers in comfort. I think we can afford the addition.” “Engineering concurs,” he smiled. “But usually we send the robots outside, not ponies.” Ahead of them the first pair in line had just cleared the apex and fallen out of visual range. They could still be seen in the visor enhanced reality mode as little ephemeral blue dots, trailing range and pony data. As much as she and Flux were making jokes, Dash knew that at any moment they might lose another ship, or suffer the same fate themselves. Everyone who died wouldn’t even know it, but she would. A thousand straight years of exposure and bondage to the Elements meant she had a Magical Nature not so far removed from that of an alicorn. Even though the suit was heated and thoroughly insulated, Dash felt a chill run up her spine. Spending her eternity lost in the void was something too awful to comprehend.