//------------------------------// // -3- // Story: Coarse Diamonds // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Rarity felt very strange amount of pressure surrounding her body, and her eyes blearily blinked open as her head swam painfully. She only started to panic once she realized she was strapped down into a med-bed entirely surrounded by fluids with the lid on it. She started struggling which caused her heart rate to spike on some kind of monitor. Her thoughts were plainly, what was going on? Being in a med-bed while surrounded by unknown fluids, she started trying to move her hooves for the lid because she felt like she was drowning and it was the first instinctive reaction to this situation. Her hooves were also strapped down and this added to her panic. “Meowstress Rarity, please calm down! Everything’s going to be okay. Take deep breaths and stop panicking. Hold on a second and I’ll be right there for you. I just need to move the med-bed to where you can see me.” Suddenly a static filled screen appeared over the med-bed and on it Opal was looking down at Rarity with worry. “Breath Rarity, stay calm, you were hurt. I got you to a med-bed as quickly as I was capable of. Your safe, nothing bad is happening right now. Good, keep that up and try to relax. I’ll drain the fluids soon so you can talk to me; I just need you to nod your head to confirm for me that painkillers would be a good idea right about now.” Rarity calmed at the soft spoken words and her mind came into full if pained focus, she had been mostly reacting to how awful she felt. She didn’t know what was causing the pain, but she was strapped down to a med-bed and that causes panic for just about anyone waking up on one surrounded by indigo colored fluids that made you feel like you were underwater. She started to finally breathe instead of trying to hold her breath and felt herself calm slightly. The fluids were actually a breathable substance and not causing her to drown, that was just a trick of her own mind and Opal was here for her. Gathering her thoughts together, Rarity figured something bad must have happened for her to be strapped to the med-bed like this and placed under medical fluids. She couldn’t move her head to see the rest of her body but she could see her horn was fine and her hair was flowing in front of her face from the sudden struggling, she tried to pretend that she was a mermaid mare to keep her sanity. After a moment she gave a pitiful look to Opal and gave very noticeable nod. That little movement had seriously hurt and it showed on her face, but she had to show that she was fully cognizant enough to give her assent for Opal to drug her. “I’m sorry for making you do something painful like that.” Opal’s pink hair notably wasn’t up in the cute pigtails, instead the AI’s appearance had changed slightly and her hair was flowing freely over her shoulders and she was smiling at Rarity sadly with her paws clasped together looking as if she was praying. A small syringe filled with a green fluid popped out on a small mechanical arm next to Rarity who saw everything tinted with the color of indigo because of the fluids she was submerged in. “Injecting painkillers, then I’ll proceed to drain the med-bed. Do not try to get up when the straps come off and please stay comfortable.” The syringe positioned itself and sharply entered Rarity’s neck and it felt as if a hot butter knife had been stabbed into her before a cooling sensation slowly washed over her body. The scream Rarity had let off was muffled by the liquid and she started slightly feeling off from the administered drugs, she gave off a rather dopey looking smile to Opal after a few minutes. “Yeah it’s working, draining the medical fluids… and a minor amount of bodily waste.” The med-bed slowly drained and Opal watched as the pony sigh happily when the lid finally rotated away and the straps came off her body. “My dear Rarity, do you want to hear the horrible news, the bad news, the good news or the excellent news?” “The order of ascendance from devil to angel or as ewe saw fit with a side of fries darling, but I’d rather we work with missionaries.” After saying this Rarity coughed up some of the fluids and figured she needed a shower and her head was quite fuzzy, the room was spinning. Though her voice wasn’t weak, it had wavered a bit causing the AI to give her an upset look, the look the AI gave Rarity worsened when she started giggling. “Am I guilty or innocent, what’s the verdict on my filly’s nursery judge? I can fake if it is bad guys, which is not yet blood but apples are red. Will I punt the bucket without devout wonder fluids?” “You’ll make a full and complete recovery Rarity; the tank took care of a lot of the swelling and bruising. The CATs got you in there before you breathing became too troubled and labored, your injuries might have asphyxiated you if they hadn’t. That would have been embarrassing considering you were wearing a very competently made EVA suit. One of a higher grade than any pony can possibly find on market thanks to your wonderful eye for detail in engineering clothing.” Opal showed a scene of a badly injured unconscious Rarity being peeled out of her undamaged space suit and strapped down by the two CATs and she looked positively horrible with various bruises covering her body. “You’re suit helped keep you alive, it took the brunt of the impact and you had a very bad case of whiplash. It was almost severe to the point of being… fatal. I’m glad you’re okay, relatively speaking of course.” “Opal, what is a floppy broken wing to me? I look positively dreadful without a mustache... how do I look now? Can I get a goatee? Then I’d cuddle the goat and call her merry, but then she’s not a lamb.” Rarity winced at her slightly twisted words and the visage of her heavily bruised form frozen on the screen, but then started laughing as for some reason she suddenly found it randomly funny being injured like she was. “You’re always beautiful to me, though the drugs are making you quite a bit loopy. The question you should actually be asking is what happened to the ship. My answer, quite a number of things happened which led to your current injuries.” Opal saw a confused look on Rarity’s face before she gave her a quirky smile while biting her bottom lip. “Okay how do I explain this? We didn’t get away completely unscathed from the space pirates. We’ve obviously disabled them and they are nowhere near where we are currently, if they are not all dead after the well timed exploding escape pod missile. So we’re currently fine as far as you being alive is concerned.” “Opal… your Meowstress is missing, what’s wrong you cute fluffy bunny? What’s the real issue here with parsnips and your stick has a carrot doesn’t it?” Seeing the pensive form of what Rarity considered to be a trusted companion for several years, she tried to sit up. “No, I’ll talk, conserve your strength and remember to stay at rest please!” Opal was the one that was panicked now and Rarity did as she was asked, even in her delirious state she was still apparently conscious of her actions. “Okay the space pirates might have gotten off a lucky shot from one of their turrets; their main guns certainly couldn’t hit us with the major distraction we hit them with at the end of the chase. I’m far more concerned about the fact that they knew where we’d exactly be to even set up the interdiction field that stopped our jump personally, but that can be investigated later when I’m done explaining what happened.” “My appearance is in danger of being beautiful, but not the injuries of looking pretty ugly?” Seeing her favorite cat wince and start pawing at her hair made Rarity knew she hit the nail on what might be her coffin. “What’s this about a lucky shot at a stallion? I didn’t know you were dating someone.” “Well we managed to enter jump, but one of the last shots from the pirate ships managed to get pulled into the jumps field of effect and our shields were down. The shot got sucked into and heavily damaged our jump module; the resulting explosion caused the gravity generator to go crazy for a few seconds. If we had had anyone else on board who wasn’t wearing protective gear… well they’d be worse off then you currently are, if not then definitely dead.” Becoming very quiet, Opal waited for this knowledge to begin sinking into even Rarity’s impossible form of consciousness. “Also just be glad I can read between the lines as to what you’re actually saying or else this would be a really confusing conversation we’re having here.” “Is the impulsive down with the disco?” There was a sense of dread to the answer of that question that Rarity asked, such as not being able to control their movements in space with a limited supply of thruster fuel. Rarity asking if their impulse travel was still working was something important to know about. “The shot only destroyed our jump module; we still have impulse and everything else. Only it will now take us approximately five months to reach Quia and our little ship doesn’t exactly have the supplies for it. This was supposed to be a simple two hour jump; your life is very much in danger now.” Opal just decided to get it over with and confirm for Rarity that things were bad. “That’s even considering the practice of keeping you under constant sedation which could adversely affect your health negatively, taking into the consideration of your current state of mind from just the painkillers alone. It wouldn’t end very well. Sending out an SOS would possibly doom us to be tracked down by those pirates if they are still out there and have friends. The irony about all this is that not having the weapons to shoot back with likely saved and doomed us at the same time. The extra power to the shields really helped keep the ship intact.” “Well blizzard there something that mew can flu or is this buying good?” Feeling her heart clench in her chest, Rarity watched as Opal gained an angry look in her eyes. “No you’re not going to die if I can help it! Though I really can’t…” The AI then became rather depressed and the pony just wanted to pull her into a hug because of the way she drooped on the screen. “I currently have us at full impulse and I’m scanning the surrounding empty space for something, heck, anything that I can use to possibly save you! I’m not about to give up on you Rarity, there has got to be something out here. A space wreck or a derelict we can use.” “You bled sue had good chews?” It would make Rarity feel better to not be pressed into a rock and a hard place mentally about her high mortality chances right now. Those drugs were really good as she couldn’t feel any pain right now, but her ability to have anything approaching good diction was a perfect mess. “Good news the ship is mostly intact and only needs a few repairs which I’ve already done, can’t do anything about the jump module otherwise everything else is intact. The excellent news is that you’re still alive. Aside from losing a highly important function and an almost completely lethal hiccup in the gravity generator, we’re still together.” After a pause Opal decided to add. “Next time, if there is one, we’ll carry spare parts for the vital functions of our ship and to do that we need to make some money if we ever make it to the Quia System. We also need a new escape pod and have the capabilities of a short range fighter without weapons, at least the living arrangements are nice.” “Opal I flow I’m bugged flight cow, but you’re bounding a small too… emotional… I’m glad for that. At feast poor fought an intellectual rampart.” Not seeing a flinch at the accusation, Rarity saw that Opal became rather silent. “It is… going…. to be… okay… Opal.” “No it’s not okay; you’re obviously a bit too delirious to see that you need more rest! You’re starting to say things that that scare me. I need to… there, I finally found something!” Opal disappeared from the screen immediately leaving Rarity alone to her own thoughts; the AI had ignored and did not bother to try and see between the lines of what Rarity recently said. Rarity had just after all accused Opal of rampancy, her reaction to the accusation was rather telling in its effect. Opal was rather talkative and going completely silent instead of immediately reassuring her that the rampancy protocols were still in place had her worried. The addled equine hoped Opal wasn’t into the whole creepy cybernetic zombie thing; the pony really didn’t like the idea of Opal making a puppet out of her dead body to try and keep her memory alive. From where she was sitting though, the pony couldn’t get out of the med-bed soon enough. It would require her to get her rest and for the drugs to wear off. “It was kind of obvious enough with the way she always took initiative.” Rarity muttered to herself quietly; however her words did not exactly come out like that and were just as distorted as anything she had previously said. An AI like Opal truly cared about life and to see her hair not in those playful pigtails her avatar was initially programmed with was quite disheartening. It was as if Opal had lost that childish innocence that Rarity had instilled her with, it left the pony hoping that she might see her AI with those bouncy pigtails again and that the recent change wasn’t a permanent thing. - “Rarity….” Opal reappeared on the screen and the pony woke up from her nap; it looked like she was still going through a slight mental breakdown which was breaking Rarity’s heart. “I-I… found a ship… but there’s problems and they are pretty big ones at that. One the jump module on it is going to be too big for the Caravel Boutique to install and the other is that no matter how much I hail it, it’s not responding. I hate to say this, it’s a sifter drifter infested vessel and we need to commandeer it for your sake.” Rarity could now understand the mental breakdown that was probably occurring to Opal, the CATs weren’t likely to be able to kill sifter drifters as they were civilian grade support drones and it would likely fall on her to board and eradicate the infestation personally. Venting whatever ship Opal found was a last resort method for dealing with sifter drifters, as opening the insides of the ship to space could damage its systems by letting an unknown amount of radiation wreak havoc on them and thus making it pointless to try and commandeer. That is if the insides weren’t already a wreck from someone previously trying to vent the infestation. “What kind of ship is it?” First question out of the way and Rarity hoped the answer was positive on the outlook, at least she wasn’t speaking in incredibly bizarre metaphors anymore. “It carries a light carrier classification, but it looks like a cruiser. Likely a hybrid design worked on by various species; otherwise it would be rather confusing that a ship like it could exist. It has enough room for us to land in it and we can dock with it at various points. I wouldn’t do either as it would be putting the Caravel Boutique at risk of being infested with these unknown sifter drifters as well.” After a look of concentration passed her face, Opal sighed in defeat. “I’m not getting much because the ship isn’t powered up, except for the fact that the life support looks like it’s been running for a while on emergency power and I’m reading twenty life signs over there that aren’t moving. None of them are near each other and are all over the ship. I doubt the living quarters would be randomly placed everywhere.” “How sure are you that these life signs are sifter drifters?” If Rarity had to, she would go onto that ship to power it up. She would have to dodge around the monsters that sifted through unwary crews and drifted through space on floating tombs. Her ship might not have had weapons, but Rarity certainly did. She had a few energy pistols and her horn to fight with. Now if only she had the willpower to lethally end something’s life, ponies could do strange things in the name of survival. There were various kinds of hand held weapons, energy, plasma, material and many others. Rarity had five regular energy pistols that only had lethal applications, they were stored away in her things and it looked like she would soon need to pull them out. They were all the same model of pistol, simple design, simple to use and usually seen in the hands of species with claws or fingers. The most common type of handheld weapon were of the energy variety as you could carry a weapon that didn’t need to be reloaded and worked well in any environment except underwater. The only problem with them is that they had no stopping power and the varying kinds of energy that you could fire were sometimes ineffective against certain species and personal shields easily blunted their effectiveness. There were things like shock and burn type energy weapons aside from the classic laser that could be charged to fire a powerful shot or have a variable dial for intensity of energy shot and how it’s shot. Energy weapons were quick to reload as long as you had an energy source nearby that you could plug them into. Material weapons fired a solid mass which gives them a good amount of stopping power. The ammunition could have various effects such as armor piercing or incendiary qualities. The problem is of course dealing with limited ammo capacity, plus buying high quality material to make bullets if you manufacture them yourself is costly. If you didn’t make your own bullets then there were premade clips that you could buy for a material weapon that weren’t always trustworthy, plus material weapon had higher mechanical failure rates than any other kind of weapon. “I have it calculated to be a seventy three percent likelihood of it being a sifter drifter infestation. I couldn’t tell you what they are; all I know is that it is thankfully not a grey goo type of infestation. The other twenty seven or so percent could possibly be, however unlikely it is, survivors. Nothing is moving on that ship so either the survivors are sleeping or those are sifter drifters in some form of hibernation.” Her hair flaring out when she shook her head, Opal was not pleased to find a ship that screamed danger like this one that required Rarity to survive by boarding it and fighting the unknown. “Biological and mechanical grey goo infestations would require an immediate quarantine and or full destruction of the ship, destruction especially in the case of mechanical grey goo. The outside of this ship looks perfectly fine, but I’m betting inside is a different story entirely. Don’t know what’s on that ship, but you’re not going in unarmed or alone. The CATs at least have sensors that could give you early warnings of incoming danger and will wield your spare energy pistols. I doubt they’d match MAT drones in performance, but it’s what we have.” “Would there be any issues after getting inside?” To Rarity it paid to ask all these questions before you found yourself on you back and a growling maw filled with teeth in your face. “Yes, getting in is going to probably cause a stir and once inside the CATs might have a delayed reaction time to everything if my signal to them starts waning the deeper in you get. We can’t get the hangar open unless we have control of it or the bridge, so we should objectively target the bridge so I can take control of the entire ship after it’s powered up. It’ll give me easier access to controlling the drones and I can get a more accurate lay of what’s in this ship aside from what we have already.” If Opal wasn’t sure about this excursion then Rarity had to be for them to get anywhere. “I don’t think it needs to be said that we should proceed with extreme caution, the reason I want access to the hangar is that I have an idea involving the variable thrusters on the Caravel Boutique. First order of business would be turning the ship on and I’ll take the lead and rear with the CATs, stay between them at all times. If we can get things working we can find out what happened to this ship. Do not take the EVA suit off when you get inside, the life support doesn’t seem to be all too stable and there is no gravity generation going on. It even might be a good thing that there’s no gravity in there to put stress on your body.” “Opal, please give me a full visual of the ship so I know what we’re working with here.” The reason why Rarity hadn’t asked if they could just shut down the life support system is because there might actually be a survivor on that ship. The ship that popped up on screen was a sight bit large than Rarity’s dinky little cargo freighter, it was bigger than the pirate cruisers at the very least. It seemed to have three decks, top deck was most likely bridge and engineering, middle deck was living quarters and the bottom deck was hangar and maintenance facilities. It was clearly a military ship based on its design and weapons; it looked to be mostly for dealing with fighters and ships of similar size. It also looked like a flying brick or something akin to a bazooka shaped like a brick. “Right, I know I’m still a bit woozy darling, but I want you to help me suit up Opal. We’re taking this ship and if it is loaded with sifter drifters we’ll take care of things as they come.” Trying to keep an upbeat attitude, Rarity wasn’t as positive as she tried to make herself sound and Opal seemed ready to board that ship by herself with just the CATs. “Permission to salvage any inactive drones we come across?” If there were more drones onboard that she could use, then she put them to work for Rarity’s sake. “Granted, if you can find them and get them working, then do it fast.” It wasn’t hard for Rarity to act like Opal needed her permission to do it, because her rampant little kitten could have done it anyway. It was kind of adorable to see that Opal was trying so hard to not appear rampant, at least emotionally rampant AI’s were safer than intellectual rampant versions that tried to take things to an extreme and violent logical conclusion. Now if only the emotional rampancy didn’t revolve around and focus on her, it was as flattering as it was scary. - “Okay we’re at the airlock, I can do this.” The airlock from Rarity’s position was on the upper deck at the front of the ship which connected to the bridge, part of which she could see in the distance at the back. Her EVA suit was working as she was going to advertise to any other species that needs a good EVA suit that was comfortable and rather functional, she’d start with selling to ponies of course. She wasn’t exactly good with installing electronics into suits, but she managed the HUD in hers. Next to Rarity were the floating CAT drones and they had their lights shining on the ship against the darkness of space and with a flick of her own horn, two lights activated and shined out of her helmet. She started to manipulate the airlock and a bit of gas seeped out as she opened it. Once inside with the two drones, she turned around and shut the door. The airlock seemed empty and clean. So far so good, there was no activity from the twenty life signs on the HUD. The airlock securely shut she turned to the door that the two CATs started to power temporarily with their own batteries and the inner door hissed open. Rarity levitated a pistol out of her suits pocket and passed two more off to the two CATs that seemed to take them eagerly. CAT-1 entered the corridor and started looking around, things were as Opal said. The inside of the ship was a different story, there were claw marks, blood and something that looks like decayed gray matter caking the wall across from the airlock they came in from. Out of revulsion, Rarity’s last meal threatened to jump up her throat. Moving into the corridor to follow after CAT-1, Rarity knew they were heading directly for the bridge when an exclamation mark appeared on her HUD as she flew past several doors with the impulse powered saddle. “Rarity… there’s movement and it’s coming at you fast, one of the life signs is heading directly for your position.” There was more than an ounce of fear in Opal’s voice. “Keep moving and get ready to shoot… holy crap it’s right on top of you, where is it! How come the CATs don’t have a visual? There’s not that much time delay!” Rarity came to a stop when she noticed several floating droplets of unidentifiable fluids and turned her head to a large open vent above her from whence they floated out of. She naturally had herself oriented so that the floor was below her and she was closer to the ceiling. “Oh bother.” Suddenly a pair of claws stretched out and pulled the floating wide eyed Rarity up into the vent with her levitating pistol following along, several shots rang out and a squelching noise was heard before a body flew out of the vent to slam into the floor spilling blood weightlessly into the air. Two lights were suddenly shining upon it.