Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows


-1-

It was almost time for her to live her dream among the stars, she was going to try and work her way to the very top of the social ladder to be with the cream of the crop. She wanted to be a socialite, she wanted to be a universally recognized fashion designer and she eventually wanted to meet her special some pony, maybe have a few kids and lead a quiet life. Well as quiet a life as you can lead when you wanted to be the center of attention to many different beings.

“Hey you, get out the way! Stop standing in the middle of the street with that idiotic vacant look on your face you horse!” The voice of a strange turquoise skinned five limbed frog creature gained the attention of a rather inattentive white furred pony with an elegantly curled royal purple mane and a coiled tail shaped like a spring, of whom also had a small horn adorning her forehead. Marking the pony’s flank was three diamonds represented what she was good at in life, which was either finding or seeing the beauty in persons, places and things on top of having a great eye for detail.

“Oh, I’m so terribly sorry sir! I was just so simply lost in some wonderful thoughts, excuse me.” This was Rarity Belle; she had her flaws as much as she had her strengths. She was friendly and easy to get along with, just so long as you were friendly personally. She was fussy at times and a bit of a clean freak. She was generous in many ways and sometimes that generosity wasn’t a good thing when it was likely to put her in the path of danger. She also had a slight greed problem; at least her greed was well under control and she was aware of it.

“Whatever, just stay out of the way!” The frog like being bellowed at her in an unpleasant manner, he continued onwards walking on three of his limbs.

The being that caught Rarity standing in the middle of a busy street was a sentient being known as a Pendaxon. Pendaxons were most known for being able to alter their limbs ending in three webbed digits into being used as hands or feet at a moment’s notice. They could walk around on anywhere between two to all five limbs as legs and the rest would be used as hands. Another thing they were known for was being able to use their tongue as an alternative limb as it too ended in three digits and was webbed; only it was far stickier and more disgusting for them to use their tongues to wield things.

Rarity, being the polite mare that she was, would never say what she truly thought of any Pendaxon. Mostly for the fear of what the seven foot tall round bodied frog that likely weighed above three hundred pounds could do to her with or without weapons. The Pendaxons weren’t a very friendly race, they were extreme omnivores and they hardly cared about what they ate as long as it could be vaguely considered food. They’d even eat a pony if they could get away with it and could rip ones limbs off with relative ease, so caution was definitely warranted here.

Watching as the Pendaxon moved on Rarity released a relieved sigh that she hadn’t earned its ire; it was always so hard for her to tell what the gender of a Pendaxon was. If the slimy, warty and relatively ugly five limbed giant frogs even had set genders to begin with, not to mention the slur of ‘horse’ that it called her made it less than pleasant to run into.

Turning about and continuing on her way towards the spaceport, the pony known as Rarity Belle was hoping to leave Planet Desserzon before her parents could drop on by to saddle her with her little sister again. It was becoming a bit of a bother to be the one raising her younger sister; she wanted to make herself scarce before her parents left her with Sweetie Belle.

Desserzon was a planet that was generally covered in badlands and peaceful forests with about a little less than half the planet being covered in water. Most of said water could be found underground, plus the planet was friendly to most organic beings, living here certainly hadn’t been a problem for Rarity except for the one day she got dragged across the landscape to find out what her special talent was. That was back when she was a little filly and if she hadn’t remembered some things from some camping survival courses, then she probably very well would have died out there. She really didn’t like filth and muck, but at that point she had been covered in it before she was rescued and brought back to civilization with knowledge of what her special talent was. She could have easily gone into helping mining operations on asteroids or planets rich in mineral deposits; instead she was going to carve her own path through space and growing up on this peaceful if rather slightly backwater planet with exceptionally good educational systems was the way to go about it.

It was hard enough making money to buy the ship she was going to finalize the purchase on and she couldn’t be late; it paid to be punctual after all and if she could avoid her parents the better the outcome would be. Taking care of Sweetie Belle for the first three years of her little sisters life, including changing her diapers and feeding her, left Rarity with a pretty good idea of how to raise a foal if a little strapped for intergalactic cash.

Her parents only took her sister for three months before dropping Sweetie back on her for six more months after those three years, it seemed to be alternating thing leaving her doing most of the work. It was bad enough that Sweetie had called her ‘mom’ more than once until she was old enough to understand that Rarity was in fact her older sibling, especially when it was Rarity paying to put her through school when she turned six so she may as well have been her mom. She was going to force her parents to take responsibility for her little sister as she wanted to be free to pursue own her dreams without anyone getting in her way. Rarity really did love her parents and little sister, but her parents were being really lazy ponies when it came to her little sister by always gallivanting about in vacation spots throughout the various systems. Rarity loved her family dearly, but she currently really wanted to get away from them for a few years.

Rarity looked at the few intelligent species she recognized as she passed by them heading into the spaceport, some looked like cats, others kangaroos and there was even this one species that looked like almost exactly like a bipedal goat with wings walking along with a pink earth pony talking about something. It wasn’t as weird as say the three legged one eyed spider creature following them.

Shaking her head, Rarity had to meet up with her contact and get this deal finalized quickly before her parents could arrive and find her escaping them. She was going to do a lot of traveling and that wasn’t a stable life for little Sweetie Belle, even if her sister loved her greatly this was a time when she was actually willing to be selfish. She pulled a mirror out of her saddlebags to check her makeup, nodding with satisfaction that she was still the epitome of her own strange standards of beauty as she would soon move on to meet her contact in hangar bay three.

Walking along the crowded spaceport towards the hangar bay calmly and with an air of giddiness to her, Rarity was about to purchase her ship, load up the cargo that was going to be delivered soon and begin her journey to shine across the universe. What did she want to do? She wanted to design dresses and clothing for any race and would eventually be able to do custom jobs for any species she came across that could afford her low prices for anything from the rarities she could make to the simple and plain that could keep her afloat when business was not doing so hot. She would also design fancy and functional space suits as a business mare and an entrepreneur jumping hooves first into the world of the galactic fashion designer.

Being a unicorn Rarity was capable of performing feats of magic through using her horn as a focus; she wasn’t very strong with her magic and couldn’t really lift heavy objects. What she was magically capable of however was levitating many small objects, finding gems in the ground or asteroids by getting a mental picture of where they were, lighting up an area and the usual unicorn defense method of firing bolts of magic in the form of missiles. Rarity’s magic missiles were only strong enough to stun, but it was good enough to scare off a ruffian or two that tried to accost her in the past and she could honestly defend herself with just her horn if she had to.

Magic wasn’t the only method of defense in the universe, there were also psychic of varying powers, technologically gifted individuals and many strange natural biological powers that many other intelligent species had. Psychics were the notable ones that were always powerful, but they had a limit when it came to doing things compared to the magic a unicorn could do if given enough time and practice. Even then sometimes all the power in the universe couldn’t save you from being shot by an energy pistol.

What Rarity was doing with her magic right now was pulling out her informational data pad as she trotted along, as the name suggests it was compact computer system that could have many things on it. In particular Rarity had been through a do it yourself course on making AI’s and her slightly catty AI popped up on the small screen. AI came in various flavors; the one Rarity made was capable of learning and had every kind of rampancy protection and firewall you could imagine. One firewall in particular was almost impossible to break unless you had Rarity’s very particular one of a kind magical frequency. Since she was Rarity and not in fact an impostor, the screen swiftly popped to life.

“Rarity my dear Meowstress, did you let your head get caught in the clouds again? Your starting to fall behind schedule, didn’t you say we needed to be off this planet within the hour before your parents can pawn your little sister off on you again? Goodness knows you don’t want her getting under your hooves and tripping you up on your deals now would you? Now that we’re here I’m already taking in the cargo manifest via communications, everything seems to be in order for the delivery. All we need to do is talk to the owner of the ship and get it hoofed over to us and then load up the ship when the delivery gets here.” A voice mewled; it was Rarity’s AI which sounded vaguely upset that Rarity was running even a few seconds late. The AI’s avatar on the screen was a white bipedal cat with a black paw print on her chest, she had crystal blue eyes matching the color of her creator’s own eyes and long streaming pink hair tied up in two pigtails hanging down her back. She perked up her ears and narrowed her slit pupils at Rarity as she pawed at one of her flowing pigtails. “Are you sure the ship doesn’t need weapons Rarity? I know we’re getting a good deal on it by letting the owner keep the weapons and two drones, but I can’t help but be worried that just having shields and two diagnostics and repair CATs alone won’t cut it out there. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to go around in an unarmed ship, especially one that you’re going to try and become well known on. You’re just asking for trouble because someone is bound to find out that you’re dumping a lot of money into this venture and will come looking for a big payoff.”

Capable Assistance Technology looked like oval drones with two upraised fins and can be modified for a number of various functions some among which can be vital ship repair. The CATs mentioned in particular were made with two small manipulator arms, powerful multipurpose scanners and they had no weapons aside from welding torches for structural repair purposes. They can be manually operated, remotely controlled by Rarity’s AI or allowed to run on their own automated less than intelligent programming.

“You worry too much Opal, we’re making a short hop into the next system and there haven’t been very many pirate attacks in the Verpo System in the last five years. I’ll get some defenses when we have the money for it.” Rarity was sure that such a short trip wouldn’t be a problem, especially if she could avoid her parents attempt at making her take her sister with her today. Goodness knows what kind of trouble Sweetie Belle could get into if she ended up along for the ride; Verpo was such a peaceful system like the Equon System which was home system to ponies and various other species that came from the planet of Equus. The Verpo System was not a place to make the right kind of connections Rarity wanted to have and thus she was looking to start small in the next system over. “Why it should be perfectly… “

Someone among the many loitering intelligent and alien creatures slammed into her and she was knocked off her hooves by the force of the impact by a tall figure that fell over as well dropping a lot of stuff. The tall figure was quickly up on her feet and looking apologetic.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry miss!” Looking at the being that ran into her Rarity could see that it was a blue colored dragoness with rose colored eyes, dragons came in various shapes in sizes this was obviously a biped dragon from her home system of Equon. They were fire breathing leathery winged creatures of incredible strength and fortitude, this one in particular was friendly by the way she held her claw out to help Rarity up before she started picking up her own things. It showed that this dragon cared more about causing an incident with her and was not particularly aggressive, unlike the rest of her species which were mostly if not extremely omnivorous then highly carnivorous.

“No, no, let me help you with this, I’m Rarity Belle. It’s my fault I’m sorry for not watching where I was going.” Rarity started to levitated things back into the dragons grasp for her to put away. The dragon blushed while rubbing at one of the horns poking out from the side of her head… or were they tusks? Looking to the rest of her body she could see that she was wearing gold colored armor that looked to be space capable. “Excuse me for asking, but what is a bounty hunter doing here of all places? I assume that’s what you are. Nothing horribly violent has happened on Desserzon in quite some time.”

“Yes, I guess you could say I am. I’m looking for a group here, apparently pirate activity around this sector has increased by quite a bit and I just recently arrived looking for trouble. Are you a local? I’m Ember McFlame, but a lot of people just call me Flamethrower.” Ember didn’t particularly seem to like that title judging by tone of her voice, even if it seemed a relatively apt one given that she was a dragon who just took back her large rectangular rifle that Rarity had problems levitating. “I really don’t like that nickname, but it’s accurate nonetheless.”

The rifle in question was heavy and bulky dangerous looking material rifle, but it’s owner didn’t seem the aggressive sort like Dragons usually were or was Rarity just stereotyping them now? The rifle had two nozzles. The upper nozzle was obviously for shooting materials and the second one smelled of chemicals that Rarity found horrid to her nose, but it definitely smelled of some kind of accelerant.

“Well I have been here for quite a few years yes, but I was originally born on Equus before moving to Desserzon here in the Verpo System.” Rarity figured she had some time to stop and chat with such a strange individual, dragons hardly ever left Equus and it was curious to see one here of all places.

“Rarity…” Opal started only for Rarity to look at her data pad with an eyebrow delicately raised. “Meowstress you have five minutes to get to hangar three; I’m already contacting the owner and telling him you’re being held up by a mercenary for questioning.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a mercenary, just someone who needs to eat gems to live and I guess doing odd jobs does kind of make me one. Also running into you was entirely my fault! I guess you can you can figure out that I too was born on Equus and it’s nice to meet someone from the home world.” Ember’s armored tail shifted about nervously on the floor a bit; she was being quite shy and friendly for a dragon. She fiddled with her claws for a bit while trying not to drop her stuff. “Anyway, have you seen a large number of Pendaxons around here?”

“Well I just saw a rather rude one moving down the southern street leading up to the spaceport, but I haven’t seen many others around aside from that one.” Rarity received a brightened look of glee from the dragon. “Is what I said of some importance to you?”

“It might be and I’d like to think so. Might have been one of the space pirates I’m hunting for. Anyway are you going to be around later?” Ember was rubbing at the dark blue spines on her head looking rather sheepish. “I would like to get to know you better as you seem like a nice pony that doesn’t look at me and immediately think voracious horrific fire breathing monster of death and destruction.”

“Sorry, no, I’m about to head for the Quia System to planet Ewesen to meet up with a friend, I’m currently here to finish buying a ship and inspect it before I take off. Now if you’ll excuse me and my digital companion.” Rarity moved on past the dragon towards Hangar three and went through the doorway.

Ember looked back at Rarity sadly while watching her flanks sway as she trotted off; there was a faint blush on the dragon’s cheeks. She found Rarity to be quite a beautiful and attractive pony; the cutie mark was especially nice to look at. Shaking her head, Ember shouldered her rifle and made for the southern exit as she had a job to do and she just got a lead to follow up on.

-

“Glad to see you’re still punctual, I hope that the mercenary didn’t give you too much trouble Rarity.” The suave sounding voice came from the most unlikely of places, it was a two armed neon orange slug creature known as a Plurt. This particular Plurt was Ragiror Gitonir who was selling Rarity a five room one deck ship and his two eyes stalks seemed to be a bit worried about the pony. Plurts were always relatively pacifistic in nature and friendly; they were especially friendly with ponies and would rather avoid fights if they could. When they couldn’t, they used their wits to get away or gain victory without incurring friendly casualties to the best of their abilities and usually had a high enough IQ to do it. Plurts were always great starship captains when it came to crew safety and survivability.

“Oh it’s no real problem at all Mr. Gitonir, she was just asking for directions to look in.” Rarity kept her tone lukewarm and pleasant, even if she didn’t particular like being near stickier looking races of the universe. She was generally alright with Plurts for their personalities, but never would she stop feeling repulsed by their jiggling forms. Ragiror was already quite aware that she was repulsed by his physical appearance and he didn’t take any offense because of it. Rarity was willing to overcome her distaste for his outward form and do business with him; as such he was willing to be friends with her for paying more attention to his inner beauty and sparkling personality as he was quite the gentleman. “Opal if you will please finish the purchase with a transfer of funds and Mr. Gitonir if you’ll finalize the transfer of ownership to me. Then I believe we can take the ship.”

Through various interactions Rarity had learned Mr. Gitonir was a professional ship salvager and was paid to tow in derelicts that lost their crews to various things. He had plenty of horror stories to tell about ship devouring biological matter, dangerous creatures that snuck onboard a ship to devour a whole crew or even machines going crazy and running amok. Those were the stories of Sifter Drifters, the things that left ships adrift in space waiting for the unwary dumb enough to board them without caution or care.

In particular the ship Rarity was buying was a Hopper G-47, which was known as The Bobber. What eventually finished off its small crew compliment? Well the previous owner died of a three hearts having an attack at the same time and he had been getting on in years for his species anyway, Ragiror gave that mans final message to the rest of his family and they gave him rights to this small one floor cargo ship that looked a bit like a heavy metal manta ray.

The ship had one main corridor leading to five rooms and the ship itself was good enough to house eight people comfortably and twenty people would be making things a little tight. Why Rarity wanted it was because it had plenty of space for her to setup a workshop to make clothing as she traveled.

The front of the ship had the bridge being one of the five rooms and the smallest at that, the left side frontal area had the living quarters and the front right side room had medical and bathing facilities. The back left side had the cargo space which was now being loaded by several large machines; the back right side was the drone maintenance and repair facility. Aside from the cargo bay at the back left rear of the ship, the ship had four airlocks. Two branching corridors off from the main corridor at the center of the ship between the front three and the rear two rooms that opened at the left or right side of the ship. The bridge had its own airlocks which could only be opened, vented or even used in emergencies. Aside from all these specifications, the ship had one escape pod that could seat eight people of smaller species that was launched from the rear of the ship and could be quickly accessed from the bridge through the use of a small tunnel underneath the main corridor.

The main corridor itself had three small personal bathrooms, plus every room also had one bathroom except for the main medical and bathing one which had several. Toilets were definitely a thing in space, it was a good thing someone invented artificial gravity generators.

“Well it’s yours now. Its space worthy, fully fueled with completely charged shields and the computers have been cleaned for your AI’s insertion. It could use a new coat of paint and some weapons, otherwise it is certainly a fixer upper on the inside, but I assure you all the facilities are in working condition. It could also use a new name.” The slug tapped at his own data pad and nodded to Rarity who got a confirmation of ownership that was sent out to local authorities and beyond. “The CATs that came with your purchase are already in the maintenance facility and are also ready to use. Are you sure you don’t have any money for the weapons? I’d feel horrible if something were to happen to you Ms. Belle.”

“No sir, this is the best I could afford and not become completely broke. Opal, confirm access to the CATs and have them run a full external scan before doing an internal scan while you perform a full systems diagnostics please.” They heard several doors opening in the ship and two oval shapes with upraised triangular fins floated out, they took up positions and slowly circled the ship as Rarity turned to the slug creature with a smile. “Thank you so very much for doing business with me good sir, don’t worry I’m sure I’ll be perfectly fine since I can put more power into the shields. I’ll call it The Caravel Boutique.”

“Thank you as well for your purchase Ms. Belle.” The slug creature bowed to Rarity and then started to slither away leaving Rarity to turn to her ship The Caravel Boutique. “I hope we can do business again; if you need another ship, repairs for your current one, maintenance or just a little advice about something, just give me a call!”

“I guess it’s a start, right Opal?” Rarity didn’t think the brown color scheme of the ship really suited her, but she could get it painted later to fit her unique expectations as otherwise it was perfect.

“Of course Rarity, but I don’t think it’s up to our full standards yet Meowstress. In any case I’m lowering the left side ramp. It’s time for you to take a tour of our ship and start launch preparations; I’m already contacting traffic control for exit vector.” Opal smiled up at Rarity as the left airlock side opened and produced a small ramp for Rarity to walk up, she wasn’t about to enter her ship through the cargo bay as it just wasn’t proper. “Now please get in me you beautiful pony with your hair well styled, your makeup expertly applied and the universe calling out to become the fish at the end our pole… or is it the universe will be our oyster? Pearls aren’t really that great are they, considering how little market there is for them on a universal scale.”

Rarity rolled her eyes while smiling at her AI’s odd form of flattery as she trotted calmly up the ramp. She was promptly followed up the ramp by the two CAT drones into the airlock that soon closed the door on her time on the planet of Desserzon in the Verpo System.