//------------------------------// // Deep Space: Part I // Story: Where the Heart Is // by Workable Goblin //------------------------------// Deep Space "Warning: Fifteen seconds to hard dock" a recorded voice intoned over the sounds of frantic scribbling. Sighing, Shining Armor let his pen fall still, folded up his paperwork, slid it into his saddlebags, and reached up to grasp the hold-bar just as the distant thunk of the docking latches echoed through the passenger cabin and the room shook slightly. Shining Armor released the hold bar and pushed up towards the center of the cabin. Ahead of him, Triplicate Forms, the only other occupant of the shuttle, did the same, floating out ahead of his Admiral and towards the docking hatch. Shining followed a moment later, still running over the latest batch of orders that he needed to sign. As he entered the shuttle’s central corridor, he saw Triplicate Forms waiting at a T-junction ahead of him, where the exterior accessway intersected with the shuttle’s main artery. As he passed the intersection, turning to travel towards the research ship they were visiting, the adjutant released his magical grip and pushed off to float alongside Shining Armor. “Sir,” he started, “about that report--” Shining swept one hoof up in a sign for silence. With experience born of years in space, he plotted his course and gave a last shove with his magic, gliding in a slightly upwards but ruler-straight trajectory along the docking tunnel. As he passed through the interface between the shuttle and the arrival/quarantine chamber, the pull of gravity abruptly embraced him, pulling him into a ballistic trajectory that ended with a neat click of his hooves against the floor paneling as he touched down, knees flexing to take most of the impact. Beside him, a much louder whoomf accompanied Triplicate going down to his knees after his touchdown. “Yes, I read it,” Shining answered him as he stood up. “I agree; we need to be focusing on the fleet, not the Mothership, and in any case the antimissile array doesn’t seem to be as useful--ah, Dr. Fields,” he greeted the pony walking towards them. An earth pony with a dull red coat and limp mop of brown mane and tail, he had an air of perpetual distraction, as if he was seeing something out of the corner of his eyes nopony else quite could, and devoting most of his energy to understanding it. His cutie mark was simple, two particles, faint speedlines visible behind them, approaching each other. Shining asked, “I’ve heard Project Hellfire is doing very well?” The physicist jumped slightly at the question. “Ah yes, yes,” he answered, peering for a moment at his two military visitors. “Excellently! We’re almost ready for full-scale production, and I’m confident you’ll agree with that today during our demonstration. Come,” he added, turning to walk out of the arrival room, “we’re almost ready to start.” As they walked down the corridor, Shining could see other passageways branching outward like blood vessels from a main artery, but the project director kept them on the main path, leaving only the impression of half-glimpsed activity down the side passages. As they walked towards the main control room, he kept up a constant patter of description, while Shining only half listened to the good doctor, the other half of his mind continuing to chew away at the fleet's production issues. “--so even before launch we had been conducting research into particle beams...straightforward development of prototypes, combined with data from the battle over Equus...ah, we’re here!” A heavy metal door, looking more like something from a bank vault than a starship, swung silently open. Stepping through, they found themselves in a dimly-lit room, control panels and display systems glaring in the pervasive darkness. “Particles,” Fields asked, tone raised, as they walked in, “what’s our status?” “Ready to fire at your mark,” a young mare sitting at one end of the room answered, spinning her chair to face them. “Dosimeters have been mounted and checked out, rad levels are good, atmosphere pump-down is complete, everything’s been checked out, Fields; we’re good to go.” “Hmm,” he answered. A moment later, he started speaking, in that fixed tone most ponies used when they were recording something. “Project Hellfire test one-nine-three,” he carefully enunciated, “demonstration for the fleet commander. Prototype beam projector nine, carbon, energy one hundred MeV, luminosity full, dispersion simulated. Begin recording...now,” and the monitors around the room leapt into life, squiggles incomprehensible to Shining Armor working their way across screens. Across the front of the room, a massive wall of displays lit up, showing nothing but an empty, black space for the moment. “Everything checking out, Particles?” he asked. “Yes sir, no unexpected errors, all data taking is operating at full, online processing systems booted and ready.” “Thank you. Begin test, one second duration, on my mark...mark.” Instantly, the display wall came to life. Beginning on the right of the complex, a faint blue beam could be seen, concentrated, narrow, and perfectly straight, glowing from an inner light. Halfway along the beam tunnel, a mass of equipment could just be made out in the beam’s light, wrapping around the beam and blocking part of it from view. On the other side, to the left of the equipment, the beam rapidly fanned out, radiance dimming and vanishing from sight as it spread over a larger area. On the far left, the now invisible cone intersected a wall, marking out a perfect circle on its surface. Here, the tranquil calm of the rest of the test chamber was shattered under a mass of flying sparks and red-glowing matter, shading near the center to an almost white heat, unfelt but no less palpable for being only images on a screen. Then it stopped, almost as quickly as it had started, the target cooling nearly as fast as it had heated up, and the secondary displays going once again flat as the data collection instruments they were connected to lost their signal. “Mmmmm...” he muttered before Shining could say anything. “Ah! Admiral, you’ll want to see the dosimeter readings!” As he led Shining Armor away towards another of the consoles surrounding the control room, he explained, “Despite what you saw, radiation is the main effect of the beam, not physical damage. This is only a simulation, of course, but we’ve adjusted the physical parameters to replicate what a beam frigate would face in an actual battle as closely as possible, taking into account our limitations, so the dose estimates should be accurate...ah, Dr. Rad Heart,” he added as they came up to the console, in front of which was a pegasus mare, “Admiral Armor is here. Please explain to him the dosimeter readings.” “Okay, so here,” she waved her hoof at the screen, “we have the doses all the live dosimeters are reporting. And, ah, here--” she paused and tapped a couple of keys, grinning as the image on the screen changed to a photograph of a small room “--this is our test chamber. It’s shielded at the back to protect from any penetrating radiation, and around the front it has simulated armor. This in particular is designed to have the same rad-protection capabilities as those alien armor samples the materials teams are playing with. So we’ve seeded live dosimeters all over it--these are super-rad-hardened, you could drop them in a neutron star and they wouldn’t fail until they hit--” “The results, doctor, the results,” Fields interrupted. “Ah, yeah, results. So--” she tapped her keyboard again and switched it back to the dosimeter traces “--all of these are plots of radiation dose during the experiment. See the rapid rise here?” she traced her hoof along one of the plots, an almost delta shape. “That peak? It’s, well, really high. Instantaneous incapacitation high. Except for our super-hard electronics--which, you know, are stupid, not very useful for controlling a ship--anything in there would be dead. Well,” she amended herself, “incapacitated. In a coma. And close to death. Even standard hardened computers would be dead. Delivered in less than a second. So,” she looked up at him, eyes colorless in the darkness. “A hit from this, at full power, would be bad. Really bad.” “Thank you, Doctors,” Shining replied, before stepping over to his adjutant. “I have something on my schedule shortly, yes?” Triplicate Forms nodded, motion barely visible in the control room. “I am sorry,” he nodded towards the scientific staff, “but I need to go. The demonstration was very impressive, though.” Without another word, he and his adjutant stepped back out into the main corridor, blinking at the sudden wave of light. “So--” Captain Forms started a moment later, only to be interrupted by Shining’s upraised hoof. “Full production authorization,” he answered the unfinished question. “Captain, make sure Production hears that; this is absolutely their next priority project.” “Already sent, sir,” Triplicate answered. “Thank you; what’s next?” he asked. “Ah...trials of the Vengeance,” he said. “Back to the Mothership.” “Very well, lead on Captain, lead on,” Shining said. --- Rainbow gratefully laid back in bed, sighing in comfort as she sank into the cushions. The physical assessment had really taken a lot out of her, though the results had been about as positive as she could have expected; a few weeks until her primaries grew back, now that they had stopped the accelerated regrowth, some time to regrow her own red blood cells and check out her new marrow. She’d need physical therapy, but only to push her back to the peak of physical performance, not to relearn how to walk or fly. She was on the verge of sleep, when a voice snapped her back to reality and pain in an instant. She grunted and cracked her eyes open just a hair. “Patient Rainbow Dash?” a white-coated, pink-maned earth pony standing above her repeated. She pulled her eyes open and croaked her response, “Yes?” “You have a visitor,” the nurse told her. “A...Pinkamena Diane Pie?” she added, stepping slightly aside. Behind her was another earth pony, pink-coated with a slightly duller pink mane hanging straight like a waterfall around her face. Sad blue eyes looked into Rainbow’s, and the mare cracked a little smile as she saw Rainbow looking at her. “She says she’s a friend,” the nurse added, questioning. Rainbow wracked her brain, trying to remember the face. It was somehow familiar, but not anypony she could consciously recall seeing before. She focused, digging deep into her memory for any trace of the mare. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the nurse said a few seconds later, barely audible through her concentration. “I don’t know why you’re trying to--” She saw them turning, the nurse gripping Pinkemena to lead her away. Dash caught sight of her cutie mark, and an image flashed into her brain. “Wait,” she said, lifting her hoof. “I remember...Pinkie?” The mare smiled again, this time beaming in happiness. “Yep, that’s me!” she agreed cheerfully, and Rainbow’s mind flashed back to the party right before the launch. Just a couple days ago for her, but... The nurse looked uncertainly from one to the other. “You have thirty minutes. Miss Dash is still recovering, so you must avoid physical contact and leave if she requests it, do you understand?” “Yes ma’am,” Pinkie agreed, seriously. “Completely.” For a moment, the nurse looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she turned and silently walked away. “Sit,” Rainbow commanded, pointing to the hard plastic chair next to her bed. To be honest, she was kind of curious about why Pinkie was here. She had been visited by the whole squadron at some point since waking up the previous day and Applejack, both yesterday and today. She almost shook her head, then remembered herself. That mare was a little unhinged. The squadron was like her family, and Applejack was family, technically. But Pinkie she had seen, oh, once. So why was she visiting her? “Why--” “I just--” Rainbow leaned back and grinned sheepishly. Of course she would have her own question. As Pinkie was opening her mouth, Rainbow waved a hoof at her and said, “No, you go first. Your question probably answers mine, anyway.” Pinkie tilted her head slightly at that, but after only a momentary hesitation asked, “What’s it like? The military, I mean,” she clarified a moment later. Rainbow lay back and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. She could hear the buried edge there, and the question itself was surprisingly difficult now that she started really thinking about it. Saying something like "Awesome" would be unhelpful and wrong; it was, sometimes, but a lot of the time it wasn't, either. What was it like? She reached back into her memories, drawing on what she remembered of her service and what she had done and experienced before, everything from her first parade to the Sonic Rainboom. A whole galaxy of adjectives seemed to swirl around her, vying to be chosen, all falling short somehow or other before she threw them away. Finally, one flew before her, and she reached out to grasp it, knowing it was right, or as right as she could say. “Familial,” she said at long last. "It's like a big family, where you always know where your place is and what you need to do." Pinkie looked at her for a long time, those eyes studying her, making her feel more than a little uncomfortable. “That’s helpful, but not quite...I meant, what is it like,” she stressed. Rainbow opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “What is it like,” she repeated. “You know I’m a fighter pilot, right?” Pinkie nodded. “Well, for me, it’s about flying. It's taking machines, huge ones, twenty or thirty times longer than a pony is tall, and pushing them to their limits, making them just as agile and graceful as I am. It's doing that not just because I can, but because that means destroying our enemies. That's what it's about for me.” Pinkie looked at her. “That’s...philosophical,” she said. “Since when are pilots philosophers, too?” she added, tone light and teasing. Rainbow grinned sheepishly. “Normally, no. But,” she waved her hoof around the ward, “it's not like I've got anything better to do here. Now,” she continued in a business-like tone, before Pinkie could say anything else, “I think you don’t really want to know what it’s like just because you’re curious. You want to enlist.” Pinkie nodded. Rainbow looked at her for a moment. “Do it,” she decided, sliding back into a rest position that let her see nothing but the ceiling. “I was one of the first fighters out when we got back. I saw Equus; it was...burned. Like a cinder. This is a war, and if I know the military--and I am an officer,” she reminded her, “they’ll be wanting recruits. Whatever you’re good at, they probably need. If you really want to, you’re not going to be satisfied in a civilian position, even if those are important also.” She heard the chair scraping against the floor, the click click click of hooves tapping against it. They paused, and she could almost imagine Pinkie turning to face her, opening her mouth. “It’s no problem,” she assured her before she could ask. “You’re a friend, and that’s what friends do for each other.” She stood still for a moment longer, then the sound of her hooves resumed. Rainbow closed her eyes, drifting gently off away from her pain to dreams of soaring in endless skies. --- “So this here is the digester section we set up for you,” Applejack told her visitor, walking along beside her. “It was a bit of a bear adjusting the protein synthesis units for those new amino acids, but we got her done alright". Fluttershy nodded, clearly occupied somewhere else entirely, whatever the position of her physical body. Applejack took a deep breath. She was no biologist, but she wasn’t a fool, or ignorant, regardless of what a few idiots thought when they heard her open her mouth, and she had a sneaking suspicion about why Admiral Armor had informed her--urgently, and in the flesh--that Life Support needed to immediately start synthesizing a bunch of a proteins she knew weren’t found in anypony’s diet, and which were built out of amino acids she knew weren’t found in any natural organism. When they had sent Fluttershy--who had, over the last week, become rather more quiet about what work she was doing, not to mention much harder to get a hold of--to check her team’s implementation of the changes Admiral Armor had requested, that had pretty much confirmed it for her. Something was up. And she was going to find out exactly what it was. “What I’d like to know,” she started off, all casually, “is why. You know, I know a little about biology, and I ain’t ever heard of any of these proteins being eaten by nothing.” “That’s classified,” Fluttershy said, distantly. Well, she hadn’t really expected her to just come out and say it, though it would have been nice if her friend had trusted her enough to do it, or at least look decently pained by it. Though maybe that was just because Fluttershy wasn’t really listening to her. “But still,” she pushed, “ah know something's up, and everypony on this team knows something's up. What we’re all wondering, is just what is up?” “Classified,” Fluttershy repeated, swinging her head back and forth in a ‘no.’ This time she did have the decency to look embarrassed. That got her credit, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to...keep going. “Look,” Applejack said, all reasonable, turning to face Fluttershy. Step by step she advanced, pushing her friend into one of the side passageways between the synthesizer units. Above, their tops swelled out from their base, almost touching, and closing off flight; behind Fluttershy was nothing a blank wall. “There ain’t nopony around here,” she continued, backing her friend into the wall, eyes widening as she returned to the present and realized just what situation she was in. “Any listening devices’ll be wiped out by the sound of the synthesizer units,” and in the background their low rumble did muffle all other sounds. “And you know ah know that the only sensible explanation for why you’re making me synthesize alien proteins is because we’ve got aliens on board. And all ah want to know is a little bit about them.” “Th-that’s c-classified,” she repeated, trembling as the situation she was in dawned on her. Applejack growled. Her devotion to secrecy might have been commendable in other contexts, but right now...abruptly, she launched herself forwards. Fluttershy spread her wings and reared, as if to take to the air, but Applejack’s front hooves shot out, slamming against her limbs and pinning them to the wall, as Applejack rammed her face almost into Fluttershy’s terrified visage. “Damnit mare, just tell me what ah want to know!” she shouted in her face. “O-Okay!” Fluttershy sobbed. The film of anger that had reddened Applejack’s vision faded, and she could see that Fluttershy was crying, great tears streaming down her face. Ashamed and sickened by herself, she released her, turning away as her friend--former friend--rose to her hooves. “Yes,” she answered her after a long silence during which Applejack thought long and hard about the contents of her stomach. “We do have aliens on board. The aliens,” she stressed. “Why?” Applejack said a minute later. “Why not--” “Just kill them?” she asked, in a calm, collected voice. Applejack nodded, distrusting her own voice. “They’re prisoners, captives,” she said. “Why would we kill them when we could learn so much from them, about them?” Applejack paused. She did have a point there. If you found a new and unexpected parasite or infestation in your life support system, you didn’t kill it, not right away. You isolated it, studied it, found out about what could kill it or control it as quickly and cheaply as possible. Only then did you exterminate. If you did otherwise, you were as likely to make things worse as better. “Alright,” she said, after working through the logic. “Ah can’t say that I’m happy about it, but ah understand it. These aliens--” “Gryphons,” Fluttershy said. “Gryphons,” Applejack repeated. “They--” “They’re starving,” Fluttershy shrugged. “They need more protein than we do for health...some of them are starting to suffer from deficiency. We figured out that would happen pretty quickly.” “Alright. So this--” she waved her hoof. “To keep them alive, to make sure we can learn as much as possible,” she said. “Okay.” A moment later, in a quiet and shaking voice, “Ah’m sorry about being so hard on you. Friends?” “That wasn’t very nice,” Fluttershy said, a tinge of anger in her voice, and Applejack’s spirits dropped. She turned away from her ex-friend and stuttered, “Well, ah under--” “But,” Fluttershy interrupted her, “you probably should have been told.” She seemed to be considering for a moment. “Yes, you definitely should have,” she repeated. “So, if you’re really sorry--” “Ah am!” Applejack insisted. “Then...I can’t think of you quite the same way, and I don’t know I ever will. But we’re still friends.” “Ah suppose that’s fair,” Applejack said. “More than fair. Ah’m sorry, I just--” “Shhh,” Fluttershy urged her, “we’re past that. We still haven’t finished the inspection...?” she added, voice rising towards the end. “Ah, yeah,” Applejack admitted. “So--” she started as she turned to lead Fluttershy out of the cul-de-sac, “--like ah was sayin’--” --- Rarity was singing while she worked. She wasn't quite sure what she was singing, whether or not it even had words, not while it was being submerged by the sound of the big 6 DOF friction-stir welder joining the two segments of the radiation case together. It looked like a giant vase, like the ones her mother-- Her tail lashed once across the floor. That was irrelevant. Her mother's gardening--it was irrelevant. She had a job to do. Keeping one eye on the machine as its tool ground around the neck of the case, she slowly paced around it, closely inspecting its work. She couldn't see any flaws in the weld, and she sighed to herself, pausing her song for a moment before she resumed, injecting a note of victory into the wordless tones of battle. It would still need to be properly inspected, of course, but it looked like she had wrestled another tricky problem into the ground. Hopefully, her next job wouldn't involve beryllium; the hazmat suit was getting itchy. And she could never get it to stop pinching in places it really shouldn't-- She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see another pony standing behind her, also in a hazmat suit. She could just see his face. Steel, she remembered. He mouthed something at her through the faceplate. She moved closer, bumping their faceplates together for a better view. Meeting now, he said, as she followed his lips. You're wanted. She considered. The machine should be able to finish by itself...still. If she had messed something up and programmed it to ram the rad case through the enclosure...nopony wanted to spend a month in the hospital being purged of beryllium dust. You'll cover? she mouthed back. Steel was certified for beryllium, he could monitor it while she attended the meeting. Of course,, he answered. Go on, get! he added, pointing back towards the secure handling area's entrance, as if it wasn't obvious that she needed to go that way. She trotted past him, rolling her eyes. Stallions. As she stepped into the airlock, the ventilation system switched on, surrounding her in her own personal hurricane for a moment as it vacuumed downwards, sucking away every little dust particle that could have adhered to her suit. She endured it, and stood impatiently as the flow reversed to really blow off anything left over. As it died down, she stepped into the adjacent locker room. A bit of magic later, and her hazmat suit had peeled away from her body and floated into her locker for later, while she was already stepping back out and into the corridor. Quickly, almost slipping into a canter at points, she trotted towards the primary meeting room. Her tail slashed violently across the floor from time to time as she moved, irregularly. She didn't seem to notice, though, and as she neared the meeting hall she slowed to a walk. She reached out with her magical grip, pulling the door open. Hard Nails looked up at her, meeting her gaze with mild eyes. "Ah, Rarity. We were waiting for you." "Yes, sir," she answered as she stepped inside. A dozen or so other ponies were already standing in the room, all certified master machinists, though with a variety of specializations. "I was--" He raised his hoof. "I know. Let's just get to business, aye? Command has just approved Project Hellfire. Each of you--" he pointedly locked eyes with every other pony in the room "--is being assigned one critical component of the Hellfire system to develop. I've just--" he tapped the tablet at the podium "--uploaded the specifications for your parts. Get to business." With that, he stepped down and out. Rarity pulled out her own tablet from the side sleeve on her uniform. A quick authentication later and she was in, examining an eye-wateringly complex blueprint on the screen. She frowned, studying it, turning the tablet this way and that to get a better view of it, trying to reconstruct the part's 3-D structure in her mind's eye. Gradually, the details began to crystallize for her. Through the center of the part ran a narrow tube, surrounded by most of the really complex machinery, in particular an intricate magical field projector, all enclosed in a lightweight framework. She recognized this; it was an alignment and acceleration unit, designed to reduce the beam's spread and give it an energy kick. She had built one earlier in the week for the Hellfire prototypes. "Hey," Daisy Heart said from behind her. The peach mare sidled up past Rarity, craning her neck to catch a look at her blueprints. "What did you get?" "A&A unit," Rarity answered her. Daisy clucked her tongue once. "Better you than me. I got the main injector unit. You want we should compare notes? I think the A&As and the injector have some similarities..." "That sounds like a good idea," Rarity nodded. "Over lunch? I don't know about you, but I'm starving." She twitched. Once it would have been her and her father talking about her latest mechanical exploits over lunch--Her tail slashed across the floor again. "So am I," Daisy agreed, apparently taking no notice of her friend's strange behavior. Rarity slid her tablet back in her uniform's pockets, and the two mares walked side-by-side out of the meeting room. --- "Warning: Fifteen seconds to hard dock," the same mare intoned as they neared the Mothership. Shining reached up to grab the hold bar, allowing the vibrations from the docking to die down before he pushed off for the passage to the docking tunnel. Triplicate was close on his heels as he entered the shuttle's spinal tube. "Production's just messaged that they've pushed the Hellfire designs to Prototyping," he noted as they reached the T-junction between the spinal corridor and the docking tube. "Sir...I'm concerned about how well these systems will do in the real world." He paused as they touched down in the arrival hall, then resumed as the two of them stood back up. "It's just...we don't really know what we're up against, really." "Fleet," Shining Armor said as Triplicate finished, "how's the investigation going?" As he spoke he began walking along the corridor towards the transit center, headed for the Operations Center, Triplicate following closely behind. "Slowly," Twilight instantly replied. "I'm still processing the data center from the Infinity. Those drives were really not meant to be subjected to that environment, so it's taking forever to just reconstruct their hardware-level storage, let alone anything more complex. And--" "Twilight." "Sorry," she said. "It's just frustrating, especially since I don't think they saw anything we didn't. But yes, slowly. I wish we had the Scaffold's systems, but we couldn't get them, and I understand that." "And the enemy ship?" he prompted. "Ah, that." He could almost hear her grimace. "Of course I duplicated everything and I've been probing it in virtualization, but all the actual data is encrypted and I can't even begin to guess how. With the technology they have, there's no way I can brute-force it. So..." "Our guests," he finished her thought, grimacing himself this time. "Yes. We need them to tell us how to break it. I'm working on building a translator, but that's going even more slowly than the Infinity. There's just no references there, all of our systems assumed it would be a friendly contact. And they just won't talk, Shiny, they just won't. I don't..." When several seconds went by without any more, he asked, "Fleet?...Twilight?" Moments later, she came back, voice now diamond-hard. "You'll want to see this. Hyperspace signature just opened up at long range. A big one, Shiny!"