Day 14: Airship, Hoofaestus
“I’m just saying,” Starlight grumbled as she gracelessly slid from her hammock.
“Well, don’t ‘just say’!” Trixie stomped an angry hoof. “What do you mean, ‘we should have listened to the newspaper’?”
The crew quarters were not as soundproofed as the cafeteria, and so Starlight and Trixie had spent most of the night jolting awake every few minutes when the closest electrical discharge rod let fly. When the ever-present mist outside their porthole turned from pitch to ash, they had abandoned the pretense of sleep in foul moods.
“Trixie, admit it – if we had taken a steamship from Baltimare straight east to Suet like the Canterlot Chronicle had calculated, we’d be halfway across Saddle Arabia by now.” The glare Starlight leveled at Trixie was laced with contempt.
“Oh, don’t!” Trixie shouted as thunder boomed. “Don’t you dare! You didn’t know about steamships any more than I did – how was I supposed to know we wouldn’t have to worry about sailing against the trade winds for an extra week?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Starlight spat back with a roll of her bloodshot eyes, “maybe by actually traveling to Saddle Arabia!” Without waiting for Trixie’s retort, she flung open the door, assaulting the both of them with a torrent of rain and wind and thunder. Wordlessly Starlight lowered her head into the storm and plowed on to the cafeteria, Trixie a step behind.
Immediately upon slamming the cafeteria door shut behind them, Trixie rounded on Starlight. “How dare you walk away from the Great and Powerful Trixie in the middle of a discussion!” This caused the assembled crew, Stig and Captain Gretchen included, to look up from their breakfasts.
“Oh, so we’re reverting to third person now?” Starlight sneered. “How about the Boastful and Ignorant Trixie explain how, for all her worldly travels, she doesn’t even know what a steamship is?”
Stig gave a quiet cough. “Actually, it’s only been within the last seven years that–”
“Shut up, Stig,” Starlight, Trixie, and Captain Gretchen said in unison.
Stig lowered his head back to his bowl of oatmeal with a muffled apology.
Trixie returned her glare to Starlight. “Trixie never said she’d been to Saddle Arabia!”
Starlight’s eye began to twitch. “Then how do you know Griffonstone is the fastest way?!”
“Books!” Trixie gestured wildly with a hoof. “Trixie has been studying travelogues and explorer’s guides since she was a filly touring with her grandfather’s–”
“Oh goddesses.” Starlight fell to her knees as she clutched the sides of her head with her forehooves. “You’re as bad as Twilight!”
A deep gasp tore its way from Trixie’s throat. “Excuse me?”
“You’re both so sure of the infallibility of the written word!” Starlight felt a bout of helpless laughter boil in her chest, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop if she started. “Books don’t magically update themselves as new information presents itself! You need to get out there and actually do some research in the field every once in awhile!”
Trixie marched up to Starlight until they were nearly muzzle-to-muzzle. “Trixie has done plenty of ‘research in the field,’” she hissed. “She has been on the road since the day she got her cutie mark!”
Starlight matched Trixie’s glare as she got back to her hooves. “And a fat lot of good that’s doing us now, trapped ten thousand feet in the air on a rickety death trap–”
“Hey,” Captain Gretchen called over, “I get that you two are having a lover’s quarrel or whatever, but leave my ship out of it.” She made a circular motion with a foreclaw. “How about you two go back to your bunk and, uh, buck it out.” She turned to Stig. “Is that the right expression?”
“It’s a bit on the nose, Cap’n.”
Starlight and Trixie both blushed furiously as they lapsed into silence. After a pause, Starlight asked, “Captain Gretchen, is there any way to make the Hoofaestus go faster?”
Captain Gretchen said “no” at the same time Stig said “yes”. A low growl rumbled in the captain’s throat as she glared at him, and he slunk low under the table.
Starlight fixed her gaze on Stig. “How?”
His eyes darted between her and Captain Gretchen, who eventually sighed and motioned for him to continue with a claw.
He cleared his throat, then said, “Well, if we fed the auxiliary power cell into the main feed, we could boost both cloud generator lift and envelope engine propulsion by a quarter.” Seeing Starlight’s blank stare, he added, “We can cut a day and a half off our trip.”
Before Starlight could respond, Captain Gretchen cut in. “But, it would drain the auxiliary power cell as well, and I can’t stress this enough, alicorn-tier mana batteries aren’t cheap. As profitable as this run is, I’m not gonna waste hundreds of bits on getting a pair of whiny passengers to their destination a little faster.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “How many hundreds of bits?”
Captain Gretchen blinked, then said “twelve” at the same time Stig said “nine”.
“Stig!” Captain Gretchen’s glare promised a painful death.
“Y’know what, I’m just gonna go,” he said as he gathered his dishes.
For the first time that morning, Starlight smiled. “So, nine, then.”
In a blink, Captain Gretchen was staring imperiously down at her, feathers fluffed. “Eleven. We’ve never gone full burn with a load of cargo, and my crew deserve hazard pay for the risk we’ll be runnin’.”
Starlight was unphased. “Ten. Your crew get an extra day and a half of shore leave.”
The captain narrowed her eyes. “Ten-fifty. You don’t wanna spend a second longer on this ship than you have to, and we’re doing just fine at our current speed.”
Starlight narrowed her eyes as well. “Ten-twenty, and I throw in a tin of honey-roasted peanuts.”
Captain Gretchen stared at her for an uncomfortable moment, then grinned. “Always wanted to see what this boat could really do.”