//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: As the Sun Rises, So Do We 
// by totallynotabrony 
//------------------------------//

	Houston piped in a rousing brass band number for the morning wakeup call.  It sounded familiar, Rainbow thought.  Maybe it was the Canterlot Orchestra, although it had been many years since she’d heard them play.
Sleeping in microgravity was a new experience.  While it was easier to breathe and none of the astronauts seemed to snore, it was difficult to get comfortable while floating around in the sleeping bag.  Rainbow almost wished that she’d asked for something to help her sleep.
Breakfast was much the same fare as the meal the day before, complete with more Tang.  The water aboard the ISS was all recycled, and while it had been filtered to be non-toxic, it did not taste great by itself.
Rainbow and Twilight stayed at opposite ends of the module while they ate.  Both of them knew that it was only a matter of time until their friends noticed something wrong.
Sure enough, Applejack pulled Rainbow aside after breakfast.
The farm pony floated close, keeping her voice low.  “Is there somethin’ wrong?”
Dash shook her head, avoiding Applejack’s scrutinizing gaze.  “No, I’m fine.”
“Fluttershy’s been talkin’ to Twilight and she told me what Twi said.  There’s somethin’ happenin' between you two,” Applejack said, her voice rising slightly in annoyance.
Rainbow Dash waved a hoof dismissively.  “It’s just a little argument.  Don’t worry.”
“We’re all still friends, Rainbow,” Applejack pointed out, still as doggedly persistent as Dash remembered.  “You wouldn’t be stewin’ like this about a ‘little argument’ back in the day.”
Rainbow snorted.  With few exceptions, her friends ‘back in the day’ hadn’t ever undercut something that she was working hard for.  
“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, a lot of time has passed since then.  We’ve all changed,” said Rainbow.
“Not the way you think,” answered Applejack.  “Sure, we’ve all moved away from Ponyville and gotten lives of our own, but you’re still good ‘ol loyal Rainbow Dash.  Who you are hasn’t changed.  Who Twilight is hasn’t changed, either.  You’re friends, and friends don’t go sulk like little schoolfillies when they’ve had an argument.  They make up.”
Rainbow Dash bit her lip.  Her friend had a point.  Whether she was happy about the current situation or not, letting animosity stew between herself and Twilight was wrong, and she needed to make things better.  
Feeling humbled, Rainbow nodded.  “You’re right.  I’ll talk to her.”
Zimin and Twilight were inside the Rus getting things ready to transfer cargo.  Some of the packages had been stowed securely in the cabin of the spacecraft, but most were in a separate compartment that was not accessible from inside.  It would be detached from the capsule and the Canadarm would bring it over to another airlock to be unloaded.
Procedure dictated that while inside the Rus, pressure suits had to be worn.  It seemed like a silly thing to Rainbow, especially since the craft was docked to the ISS, but that was the rule.  
It was not too inconvenient.  Unlike the old Space Shuttle, the Rus wasn’t designed to spend a long time in orbit by itself.  The pressure suits would not have to be worn more than a few hours at a time while it traveled to and from the ISS.
The man and the pony who were transferring cargo had slipped into their suits temporarily for the job.  Rather than get into her own pressure suit to go in and talk to Twilight, Rainbow decided to wait until she came out.  They would have plenty of time then.
In the meantime, Rainbow helped the other ponies and astronauts with distributing the cargo once it came through the airlock.  Ponies without magic often used “claws,” so named because that’s what they looked like.  They were usually metal or plastic bands with attached hooks that fit over a pony’s hooves to provide a little better dexterity.  Rainbow slipped a pair on and helped move the packages of food and supplies passed to her by either Zimin or Twilight.
After the locks from inside the Rus were released, the robotic arm slowly eased the storage compartment away from the main capsule.  The cargo from inside the spacecraft had nearly been cleared out at this point.  Zimin drifted back through the hatch.  Twilight pulled the last package from its resting place with her hooves and pushed it towards the airlock.  Everything was so easy to lift in space that it was almost easier not to use magic to move things around.
Rainbow made room for the Russian to come out of the airlock.  She glanced over at Dr. Flack, who was at the controls of the robotic manipulator carefully guiding the storage unit towards an auxiliary airlock.  There was a small bzzzt noise.
As Rainbow watched, a small wisp of smoke puffed out of the electronics.  At first it was hard to tell what it was, as it merely formed into a ball in the absence of gravity.
Flack saw it, and realized something had happened.  He reached for the power shut-off switch.  A bright blue spark of electricity arced to his hand.
“Ow!”  The doctor jerked his arm back.  At the same time, the robot arm began swinging the wrong way.  The whole module shuddered as the storage container collided with the Rus and the outside of the Station.  The lights flickered.
Everything was silent for a moment…well, almost silent.  The gathered astronauts noticed the hiss of escaping air.
The airlock door sensed the change in pressure and automatically swung closed, shutting Twilight inside the capsule.  The sound of leaking air stopped.
“Somepony get her on the intercom!” said Rainbow.  Fournier, who was standing closest, pressed the button.
Twilight’s voice crackled out of the speaker.  “What happened?  There’s a pressure leak around the airlock seal.  You’ve got to get me out of here!”
“Twilight, can’t you teleport past the hatch?” asked Rarity.
Twilight was unused to not having the answer.  “Well…no, I don’t think so,” she said.  “I’m in unfamiliar territory, I can’t actually see where I’ll be moving to, and the narrow passageways of the station make the allowable error very small.  Add the orbital velocity to that, and I don’t think I can do it.”
“You have to try!” urged Applejack.
“I can’t do it!  Look, I can still breathe, okay?  You guys can come up with a solution to get me out of here.”  Twilight sounded hopeful, but fear was rising in her voice.
Taylor moved over to the intercom.  He examined the pressure readout from the airlock, which was dropping rapidly.  “Twilight, I need you to do something.  Seal up your pressure suit.  It will stop you from communicating with us, but you’ll be better protected.  We’ll work something out quickly.”
“Well, all right.  Work fast, please.”  There was a click as the unicorn locked her helmet closed.
Taylor turned off the intercom and glanced around at the assembled crew.  “She has just minutes,” he said quietly.  
While the pressure suit would stop Twilight from being exposed to the vacuum of space, the mare had no way to get more oxygen.  The air hoses in the Rus wouldn’t work.  None of the designers had figured that there would be a pressure loss while the capsule was connected to the Station.  Once Twilight breathed everything that was already inside the suit that would be it.
“What are we going to do?” shrieked Fluttershy.
“We have to find a way to plug the leak,” said Flack.  “Perhaps if there was some way to compress the seal.”  
The doctor turned to Rarity.  “Can you use your magic to pull the capsule towards the Station?  Maybe it will squish the leak closed.”
Rarity thought for a moment.  “Well, I suppose I could, but I can’t see what needs to be done.  I might be able to move something that I can picture in my mind, but I have no idea what to do here!  There’s no window close to where the damage is.”
Rainbow began putting her pressure suit on.  “I’m going out.”
“Are you crazy?” said Applejack.  “You don’t have any better protection than Twilight.  What are you gonna do?”
“I’ve got a plan,” said Rainbow, more confidentially than she felt.  “Rarity, you said you have to see it, right?”
The unicorn nodded.
“Well, look at this.”  Rainbow got the collar of her pressure suit attached and pushed off towards a small restroom nearby.  She grabbed the mirror, which was actually just a piece of chrome-plated metal, and wrenched it off the wall.  “I’ll take this out and hold it for you.”
“That’s brilliant!” said Flack.  He began setting up the smaller airlock that was used for spacewalks.  Rainbow stepped inside, waiting until the last moment to lock her helmet onto the collar.  She was going to need all the air she could get.
Shortly, the exterior door of the airlock opened.  Holding the mirror tucked between her hind legs, Rainbow carefully maneuvered herself outside. 
In perfect silence broken only by Rainbow’s slow and steady breathing, the majesty of space stretched out before her.  The metal claws fixed to the outside of the pegasus’ pressure suit clinked soundlessly against the delicate latticework of trusses that ran along the length of the International Space Station like the bare white backbone of some forgotten leviathan.  Below—or perhaps above—Rainbow hung the massive bulk of Earth, a great blue and brown marble dusted with the shining white of clouds.  Beyond that hung only the black, star-speckled void.
Rainbow was not thinking about the view, however.  She knew that if any time in her life called for perfection, this was it.  If she slipped, she could drift off into space with no way to get back.  If she didn’t get the mirror set up soon, Twilight would die.  ...and if she didn’t make it back to the airlock in time, so would she.  Gritting her teeth, the pegasus moved as fast as she dared, fighting against deteriorating mobility as her suit swelled slightly in the absence of external pressure.
Rarity’s worried face appeared at a small porthole.  Curling her back legs around the truss to steady herself, Rainbow lifted the mirror between her hooves and looked expectantly at the white unicorn.  
Rarity shook her head.  The angle wasn’t right.  
Looking at the distance between the porthole and the damaged spacecraft, Rainbow saw that she would have to position the mirror in a different place.  It was further out than she could reach.  Unless…  Struggling to keep her breathing slow and regular to maximize what little air she had, the pegasus gritted her teeth and prayed to Celestia that her desperate plan would work.  She slowly relaxed her legs and drifted away from the truss, heading across the gap towards the rear of the Rus.
Rarity’s eyes tracked the mirror as Rainbow slowly drifted past.  When the floating pegasus crossed the critical point where the joint of the airlock was reflected back towards the porthole, the unicorn’s horn lit up.  A blue glow surrounded the spacecraft, shoving it gently and closing the crack that had been leaking.
Rainbow realized that her trajectory would intersect with the Rus on the smooth sides of the spacecraft.  There would be nothing for her to grab onto and arrest her slow fall into the void.  Working quickly, the mare pushed the mirror away, sacrificing it to change her vector.  The difference in momentum was slight, but it would have to be enough.
Grunting as she bounced into the side of the craft, Rainbow scrambled with her prosthetic claws to get a hold on something, anything.  Finally, one of the hooks caught a thin edge of metal around the window joint.  It couldn’t have been more than a quarter of an inch wide.
Rainbow gasped with relief.  Moving carefully, she pushed off, heading back towards the secure truss of the Station and working her way towards the air lock.  It was getting difficult to breathe inside the suit, and she was feeling lightheaded.
Flack must have been paying close attention, because the exterior door started to close almost before the wheezing pegasus was back inside.  The hiss of air was a welcome sound, and Rainbow worked loose the seals on her helmet.  She didn’t remember the thin recycled air of the Station tasting quite so good as it did then.
Rainbow came back into the station breathing hard, but steadily.  “The pressure is coming up,” announced Fournier.  Rarity stood at the porthole with her eyes closed, concentrating on what she’d seen in the mirror.  Her magic did not waver.
In another few minutes, Taylor jimmied the cover off the circuit breaker box and temporarily deactivated the pressure sensor.  It was not a by-the-book idea, but time was critical.  Working together, a few of them managed to pry the hatch open.  There was a small whoosh of air.
Twilight was curled into a fetal position, quite wisely resting to save oxygen.  She raised her head as she felt the air move.
Zimin reached out and grabbed the shoulder of her pressure suit, pulling her through the hatch.  Fournier made sure that it was closed and locked once she was inside.
Twilight popped her helmet off, gulping air.  “Oh Celestia, I never want to do that again.”
“I’ll contact ground control,” said Taylor.  “We’ve got to file an incident report.”
“Woooweee,” said Applejack.  “Ah think mah heart is goin’ two hundred beats a minute.  I’m glad you’re okay, Twilight.”
“Oh my gosh,” said Pinkie.  “I don’t even know how to celebrate something like this!  I’m going to have to invent it on the fly.”  She moved away with swimming motions, heading for the kitchen facility.
Fournier touched Rarity on the shoulder.  “You can stop now.  For the moment, we aren’t going to waste air by trying to keep the capsule pressurized.”
Rarity relaxed.  “I don’t know if I’ve ever done something so difficult.  Moving large, heavy objects isn’t really my thing.”
Rainbow was left in close proximity to Twilight.  Forgetting what she had intended to say to her before the incident had occurred, Rainbow speared Twilight with an unkind look.  
“This is why I was against this trip.  You aren’t right for this.  You could have been killed.”
“It wasn’t my fault, Rainbow.”  Twilight knew that Rainbow cared for her safety, but the pegasus’ words stung.
“Maybe not, but you’re still not fully qualified.  This isn’t an easy job like in Ponyville.  This is serious.  We nearly lost you.”  Rainbow’s voice was rising.  It had a visible effect on the unicorn, who shrank back.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight whispered.  She turned away and moved towards the other end of the Station.
Rainbow watched her go.  Twilight hadn’t even thanked her for that daring rescue.  Some friend.



Invisible in the black expanse of space, the Nightmare watched.  The incorporeal monster floated patiently in the darkness, unseen and undetected as it observed the station and its oblivious occupants.
It had been a minor setback to its plans that most of the ponies were in a good mood after recuing their friend.  However, the Nightmare was nothing if not patient.  It could wait for something nasty to develop.  The two ponies arguing was something it relished.
After the Elements of Harmony had banished it from its control over Princess Luna, the Nightmare had left the planet, a shadow of its former self.  The ponies could not get to it in space, and it was able to recover.  When a doorway to a new world opened in Equestria, the Nightmare observed, biding its time.  The new place seemed to harbor more evil.
Summoning what power it could, it had made the transition.  In the years since, it had waited and watched, slowly drawing its power from the wars, the genocide, and the hate.  The Nightmare wanted to participate.  It desperately wanted to kill, it wanted to enslave.  It was only a matter of time until its power was great enough.  
Its old enemies were near now.  How appealing if the Nightmare could get them to turn on each other.  Perhaps it could even find a willing body to share.  At the very least, their deaths would be pleasureable.  They’d foolishly exposed themselves, and it wouldn’t take much effort for the Nightmare to exploit the weaknesses of the human-constructed place where they resided.
The Nightmare drifted closer, inspecting its work.  The harm caused by the errant storage container pleased it.  It examined the area, looking for any way to increase the damage.
A thick wire ran over the outside of the Station.  It had been bent slightly by the storage container’s impact, cracking the rigid insulation.  The Nightmare did not completely understand electricity, but knew how to break things.  It could feel the hum of energy in the wire.  Cutting off the flow could have serious consequences.  Good.   All it needed was something to insert into the crack.  Low Earth orbit was full of small, drifting pieces of junk metal.



Taylor waited patiently for the airlock to open.  He’d dressed up in the full space suit.  What Rainbow had done had been brave and necessary under the circumstances, but also incredibly dangerous.  He wasn’t about to leave the Station without an air supply.
The astronaut drifted out of the airlock, attaching a hook to part of the Station’s truss.  It was connected to a short piece of rope that held him securely.  It was low-tech, but it worked.
Nobody on the ground knew the full extent of the problem yet.  Truthfully, neither did anyone on the ISS.  Rainbow Dash hadn’t had time to inspect the damage.  Taylor worked his way over to the Rus.
The robot arm had been locked into position so it couldn’t cause any more trouble.  The storage container looked battered, but intact.  There were a few scrapes on the outside of the Station, but nothing major.  The docked spacecraft had taken the brunt of the impact.
When the Rus had been hit, the craft had twisted slightly, cracking the seal on the airlock and leading to the pressure leak.  Taylor inspected it, thinking that it could be repaired.  He spoke into the microphone in his helmet. 
“The Station’s integrity hasn’t been compromised.  The cargo unit should survive.  The airlock even looks like it could be fixed.”
“Copy that,” came Flack’s voice.
Taylor clipped the rope to another piece of the structure and tested it.  He was uncomfortable with drifting away from the station for any reason, and wanted to make absolutely sure the anchor would hold.  Slowly, he pushed himself away, floating towards the Rus.  
There were a few scratches and dents.  Taylor swung around to look at the other side.  His eyes widened.  The capsule’s heat shield had been damaged.  There was no way it would survive reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The astronaut shivered slightly for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold water circulating inside his suit to protect him from the sun’s unforgiving heat.  It almost felt like he was being watched.
No, that’s silly, Taylor thought.  He turned to go back, but couldn’t resist glancing around.
After passing back through the airlock, Taylor broke the bad news to the assembled humans and ponies.  The Rus was ruined.   
The eleven of them were silent for a moment as they considered their options.  There was a Soyuz vehicle docked to the station to function as an escape capsule, however it only seated three.  
“We can get a rescue,” suggested Denisov.  When one rocket blasted into space, there was always another standing by in case of a problem.  That was standard procedure.  All of them knew that, but it was comforting to hear the cosmonaut mention it.
Rainbow nodded.  “It’ll take a day or two, but they should be able to get here.  What I’m worried about is that the backup capsule wasn’t modified.  It still seats just six, two of which will be for the pilots.”
“They can bring more supplies,” pointed out Taylor.  “So you can stay as long as necessary.” 
Stuck up here with her? thought Rainbow, glancing in Twilight’s direction.  Their eyes met, and she knew that the unicorn was thinking the same thing.
“Well, we should probably get that damage report made,” said Flack.  Abruptly, the lights inside the station flickered.
“What’s happening?” asked Fluttershy worriedly.
“Did you see any damage to the electronics?” Fournier asked Taylor.
“One of the main transfer cables from the starboard solar array got bumped,” he answered.  “I didn’t think it looked very bad.”
As if mocking him, the power went out.
The blackness of the station was filled with gasps of alarm and quickly-stifled cries of fear.  Rainbow winced.  Losing the lights was bad enough, but what else might have shut off?  The communications gear?  The oxygen scrubbers? 
Luminescent green strips glowed in the darkness like beacons, indicating the limits of the corridors and locations of important panels.  Without the electric lights, the crew had to use the emergency strips to navigate.  Zimin grabbed a flashlight from where it was held to a metal cabinet with a magnet.
Fournier took it from him and navigated to an electrical box.  With a couple of switches thrown, the lights came back.
“What happened?” several voices asked in near-unison.
A few minutes of methodical searching found the problem.  Apparently, one of the power cables had failed.  The result was the loss of electricity from half their solar panels, all of them on one side of the station.
“We are running on what is left plus the batteries,” said Fournier.  “The life support equipment has to work harder for all of us.  It might not be an issue if there were only three crew members aboard.  All nonessential processes will have to be shut down.”
Taylor picked up the radio microphone.  The controllers on the ground were continually monitoring data from the Station and had been paying extra attention since they’d been informed of the incident.  It was time to tell them just how bad it had been.
“So is there a problem, ISS?”  The ground controller sounded as if he was praying that there wasn’t.
Knowing that the radio conversation was probably being recorded, Taylor refrained from some particularly choice words.  “No, not just a problem, Houston.  We have an emergency.”

Author note:
This is the first chapter I've written that has ever received a bona fide editing.  I'd like to give Fernin a huge thank you for that.  You should click that link and read his stuff.  It's pretty awesome.

I'm also going to be bumping this up to Teen.  It's getting darker, and we aren't done yet.

In other news, I've really been drinking a lot of Tang lately.  I think five quarts in three days?  Not to worry, the sugar free variety has only eighty calories per gallon.