Chapter 54. Outside
"Well, this is unexpected," I said through my communicator. The support team had been waiting for this moment, and what I was seeing was nothing like what they had hoped. I have to admit, I was also expecting something better.
"What's it like outside?" Maisie asked. She was coming in clearly, indicating that there was a repeater outside the hull. "How does the sky look? Is it pretty? Is there grass?"
"That's exactly it. I'm not even sure we are outside!" I said.
"What do you mean?" Maisie sounded puzzled.
"Well, we are outside of the airlock door, but really, it doesn't look that much different from lower levels of the habitat itself."
"Explain, please," Maisie requested.
"It's very cluttered," Cacha said. "There are hundreds, no, thousands of pipes, wires, girders and whatnot."
"Everything seems to be colored in the blue-green-grey range. Some parts look like they have been deliberately placed in exact positions, but a lot of it has a sort of grown in place feel to it, much like a lot of the equipment in the lower levels of the habitat itself," I said.
"Basically, it looks like the methods used to grow the habitat are the exact same methods used to create whatever is out here," Cacha said.
"Brainstorm, what did you see when you were repairing the last break-in?" I asked.
"Not a lot. Darkness, a damaged door, and that's about it. I was not prepared to illuminate the area in fear of attracting more clockwork spiders."
"That's disappointing," Maisie said. "I was hoping you could see the sky, and something that looked like old Equestria. This giant ring is meant to be some sort of living space, isn't it?"
"It's too early to be saying what is and what isn't out here," I said. "We are just outside the door, after all. We'll do some more exploring. Maybe the habitat is larger than we thought, and we are not outside it yet, or maybe this is the lower levels of the ring, itself."
"Are there any signs of clockwork spiders?"
"No. It's quiet. Perhaps we were dealing with a single stray."
"Or a scout. It's too early to be jumping to that sort of conclusion. Stay alert. Stay safe," Maisie said.
"Okay. For now, we'll explore the immediate area, and the area through which the clockwork spider broke in."
Light was currently being provided by our pods. The entire surface of the body of each pod was lit up, so, with three soft light sources the resultant lighting was ambient in nature, the shadows being very indistinct. A previously unseen feature of the pod's mentally projected displays was that it was impossible to be dazzled. The disadvantage of this sort of lighting was that the range was limited.
We appeared to be parked on a platform that was part of Habitat Eleven. That soon sloped down, to a lower surface that was presumably the old ground level of Equestria. If I concentrated, I was able to visualize the main structural elements, despite them being camouflaged by the growth of finer... details. Not too far to my right was a substantial leg that reached out from the habitat, further than the ramp, and terminated in a massive foot. To my left, and still associated with the platform and ramp, was the main hangar door.
The door would need to be cleared before it could be opened; many of the smaller spars of the grown structure had attached themselves to it. Likewise, the other sections of the hull I could see were similarly adorned. If the remainder of Habitat Eleven was covered in these suckers, there would be absolutely no way to launch it, not that launching the dying relic was a possibility, anyway.
We were lucky the airlock door we had used hadn't been blocked!
"I'm going to have a look at the other airlock door, the one the clockwork spider busted through," I said. "You two, keep your eyes open... Well, keep your minds open." After all, with the mentally projected imaging system, they probably had their eyes shut too.
"Will do."
I directed the pod towards the other end of the main hangar door, dodging between some of the pillars that had sprouted from the platform. As I did, I recalled the stories of something growing over the bridge at the top of the habitat, eventually dropping below the level of the upper view ports, but still covering those only a floor or two lower. It was probably more of this modifier-built structure.
When ponies designed and built something, they thought about the overall design, then planned where each element should go. Even when the location caused twists and turns, there was a logic, an order to it. Even the lower levels of the habitat showed more planning than this.
If I had to guess, I would say that the modifiers responsible for building this giant ring were running on a common, generalized code, adjusting their behavior depending on where they were, and what they encountered. They were behaving not unlike a pony's cells forming a new foal according to the DNA they held, depending on what hormones were present, or what their neighboring cells were doing.
As such, to these builder-modifiers, Habitat Eleven was just a big lump of something that had been built before, not a foreign body, and the builder-modifiers reacted by attaching new structure to it. That was fortunate. Had the builder-modifiers seen the habitat as foreign, they would have probably broken it down for use in construction. That would surely have killed every last one of us.
Clockwork spiders were something quite unlike modifiers, operating at an entirely different scale to them, and by the single example we had observed, were reasoning beings, intelligent in their own right.
"Snow, do you remember what these aliens, the Warners, looked like?" I asked. Somehow that was something that hadn't actually been clarified.
The only other pony that had been alive when the Warners were here remembered very little about their physical appearance, other than them being some sort of HELaTS themselves. Princess Lunar Eclipse had not seen fit to record their physical details of them in her journals.
"The spiders that built Snow?" Snow asked.
"Uh? Oh, yes. They made you, didn't they?"
"Up!"
I had forgotten that Snow was a construct created in a laboratory. It didn't matter to me. As far as I was concerned, she was a pony.
"So, did you get a good look at them? Do you remember what they looked like?"
"Up. Spiders." She was using her voice again, so I had no idea how scrambled that answer was.
"Think it to me, Snow."
The image hit me, and I had to concentrate to not lose control of the pod due to my instinctive fear reaction. We were close enough to our destination, so I stopped – that seemed like the safest course of action!
"Spiders?" I asked. "These Warner aliens were fucking giant spiders?"
"Up. Spiders."
Who would have guessed? Snow had that word right in her mangled mental dictionary. It also explained why she called their mechanized variation clockwork spiders.
"Seriously?" Kakuun said, through the communicator.
"Oh, hello Kakuun."
"Hello Aneki. Spiders? Seriously? Nothing I read in the library hinted at that!"
"Did it hint at anything?"
"Um. No. Even Princess Lunar Eclipse' journals only suggest that they were not unlike their spaceships."
"A classic case of failing to make records of the obvious," I chuckled.
"Poor or missing documentation seems to be a part of Habitat Eleven life, doesn't it?" Cacha said.
"The same would probably be true of any civilization over a few hundred years old," Brainstorm said.
"Perhaps we should get on with writing some new history books, then?"
"You are doing a great job of finding something for us to write about. Perhaps you could find us something to write on!"
Ah, yes. We were resource starved, weren't we? All the same, I knew Maisie was joking. Central had generators that could produce paper, much like food generators produced food. The real problem was finding resources to sacrifice to the generators, so they were reserved for extraordinary circumstances. These explorations were such a circumstance.
"So, just how big is fucking giant?" Kakuun asked.
"Big enough to eat a pony," I answered. "Around the same size as the clockwork spider, I guess.
"And they are still out there?"
"I guess we will find that out with time."
"Hopefully we will see them before they see us!"
Now, to the task at hoof – checking that other airlock door. I rolled the pod forward until I could see the door, then parked the pod so it illuminated the area as well as was possible.
Not wanting to be constrained, I dismounted the pod. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it spat me out again. It was damn cold out here! I briefly shivered as my body adjusted itself to the new temperature. Ah, that was better.
Okay, it was time to see exactly how the clockwork spider had penetrated the impenetrable.
Moments later, their method was fairly obvious, not to mention crude.
Considerable force had been used to tear the outer door from the hull. It was lying near the opening, slightly twisted, a foreign anchor fused to it. It had put up a greater struggle than the interior airlock door, which was merely held in place by its massive mechanism. This outer door was also equipped with bolts – hoof thick bolts that extended from the second stepped ring from the front. The first step contained substantial compression seals, as did the third.
These bolts had either sheared, or twisted, shattering either their mounts in the door itself, or the wall into which they had been anchored.
The machine that had been used to rip it out was still attached to the hull of the habitat. It was conical in shape, its walls several times thicker than the door it had destroyed and was fused with the material of the hull itself. A reinforced opening on one side gave access to the interior, and thus to our habitat. Protruding from the narrower end of the machine was a central shaft that was currently retracted, a pushing head, visible through the opening, attached to it.
Assorted pieces of alien equipment lay scattered about, abandoned.
"The clockwork spider must have been working alone. I wonder if there is something or someone waiting for it to report back," Cacha said.
"It's been a year and they haven't come looking," I said.
"True."
"Brainstorm," I said, "there are some pieces of alien technology lying around out here, near the outer door to the airlock you welded shut. I presume you will want them. We can drag them back into the hangar for you. The tool they used to force the door is now a permanent part of the hull, so if you really want to see that, you'll have to rely on one of our memories."
"That will be adequate, for the time being," Brainstorm said. "Perhaps, later, I can accompany you out there."
After stashing what alien technology we could recover from the area back in the hangar, Snow, Cacha and I again exited the habitat, closing the airlock behind us. Our confidence was higher. This was the third time today that we had faced the potentially unknown on the other side of a door. Sure, if something suddenly jumped out in front of me, I'd probably flinch, training or not. I didn't expect that would happen, though, as our earlier expedition suggested the area was deserted.
This time I was planning to travel further from the door, but not from the habitat. I wanted to see the cradle in which the habitat was sitting, and to explore under the habitat, if possible. Once we were clear of the hangar door, and the ramp, we found a gap between the bottom of the hangar and the ground. It was sufficiently large for us to drive into.
Again, we found ourselves in a forest of grown beams, made of multidimensional material. Slowly, I guided my pod towards the main hull of the habitat. I wasn't sure what to expect, now that the alien builder-modifiers had changed things so drastically. According to Snow, there had been a gap between the hull and the hemispherical cradle in which it sat. That made sense. External access during its construction would have been impossible, otherwise.
The precipice was hard to see until I was practically on it, disguised as it was by the forest of beams. Setting the pod to levitate, I floated between the beams and over the edge of the cradle, Cacha and Snow following me. The curvature of the hull was so great that it appeared quite straight this close to it. The same applied to the drop. The limit to the range of our light and the abundance of tendrils of multidimensional material between the habitat and the cradle prevented us from seeing very far down.
I allowed the pod to descend slowly.
"It's cold," Cacha said.
I couldn't feel it at the moment, being in my nice, warm pod, so I checked the readings. She was right. No wonder I had felt a chill when I exited the pod, earlier.
"That would be expected. The lower levels themselves are cold, after all."
"Not this cold!"
"The hull must have some sort of insulating layer in it," I said. "Besides, there's a load of equipment down there generating heat, even if most of it is piped up to the life support chamber. So for the lower levels to be as cold as they are, the temperature has to be even lower out here."
Snow flashed me a series of images and scenes – ponies flying kites near the partially completed habitat, thermals rising from the gap giving the kites lift. So, back then, the earth in which the cradle had been set was warm. The crust of the planet varied from the diameter of the habitat, at twenty miles, to about two and a half times as thick as that. And it had been warm down there, below the crust! Things had certainly changed.
"What do you hope to find down here?" Cacha asked. "The gravity generator?"
"Yes," I said. "Perhaps there is fuel left over."
"Cross!" said Snow.
"How would you know if there was any fuel left?"
"The engines powering the generator would be outside the cradle. We are at the top of a very long drop. If we have technical difficulties or fall, it is a very long way down, and should we survive, an equally long way up again. I have wings. You do not," Snow thought to me.
"Oh, so you are saying it is too dangerous?" I asked.
"Yes, and irrelevant to our current problems. If we must go down there, let us do so when we have full support out here."
"Fair enough," I agreed. Snow was right, of course, but there was something about that gap that called out to me. The longing reminded me of the curiosity that had led to this world-changing adventure in the first place. I had gone from a humble worker that liked running, living in a world a mere twenty miles in diameter, to a queen that was one of the first ponies to leave this habitat, some two thousand odd years after it had been sealed.
I guided my pod away from the drop. This time, curiosity could wait.
Plans changed, and after some discussion, we decided to expand the area of exploration. We were now about half an hour's travel from the habitat, and as we were getting hungry, stopping for something to eat had definite appeal.
So far, we hadn't found anything particularly extraordinary. It really was as if we were exploring a larger, more organic version of our own habitat's lower levels. There were many conduits, pipes, walkways, corridors, impenetrable areas with pipes going into them, wires, and even the occasional monitor screen. It really wasn't that different, apart from being less hospitable due to the lower temperature.
Communications with the support team had also become impossible. We were simply too far from the repeater on the hull. If we wished to expand our range, we would need to make some stand-alone repeaters we could place out here.
Food and relaxation were on our minds when we located a nook that offered some shelter from gusts and breezes, and parked our pods across the opening as a barrier of sorts. Exiting the pods, we retrieved our food generators, reloaded them and nestled in for some quiet time. Needless to say, Cacha promptly attached herself to me. Even after a couple of years, this habit hadn't changed. I wondered if it would be possible to adjust my HELaTS body to actually, as distinct from conceptually, join us together briefly. That would surprise her the next time she wanted to do something by herself!
"So, where do you think we should go next?" I asked.
"Up!" Snow said. This was another one of those rare cases where what she said was what she meant. Her delighted, beaming face proved that she was enjoying the moment.
"Okay, we'll head yeswards, then," I said.
She blew a raspberry at me.
I smirked, then took another mouthful of the greenery the food generator had offered me. The hull of the habitat did a pretty good job of containing the magic from the magic generators housed in the sublevels of the life support chamber. There was sufficient leakage of the magic for us to be able to use the generators in the lower levels, despite being outside the shell of the life support chamber. Outside the main hull, however, it really was impossible.
Snow had already compensated for the problem when she built the pods, connecting small magic generators to their engines. This type of small generator were dotted around the hangar, and in the landing craft, so salvaging a few had been easy. Of course, powering the food generators with our own magic would not work, as doing so would take more energy from us than we could hope to gain by eating what we had generated.
Raising my head after taking another mouthful, I felt the faintest gust of air as something passed over me. That would have been beneath notice, had my eyes not detected movement above us. I looked up, not sure what to expect, and was very surprised to see a tiny HELaTS hanging there on gossamer wings.
"Look up," I said to my companions. "Just above us."
"Sweet Luna! Is that a breezie?" Cacha asked. "I thought they didn't exist!"
"It certainly fits the description – a tiny, pony-like creature with gossamer wings."
Snow nodded, knowingly. I guess she was old enough to have encountered them before.
The breezie looked at each of us, its tiny face puzzled. It said something quite unintelligible, then pointed a tiny hoof towards my food bowl.
"It appears to be hungry," Cacha said.
"I wonder if the food generator will even recognize its presence."
The breezie repeated itself, and pointed at the food generator again, allowing itself to drop lower, so that now it was floating at our eye-level.
"I have no idea what you are saying, but help yourself," I said, also pointing at the generator, and the uneaten portion of my meal still contained within.
The breezie descended and landed on my meal, immediately eating, biting, chewing and gulping down food hungrily. The amount of food in the bowl did not change, suggesting that the generator was not designed to feed breezies. It was still adjusting the available food to suit my needs. I wondered if the generators would recognize changelings. The fixed ones in the habitat obviously did. Perhaps they merely recognized the changeling's pony form.
"It is hungry," Snow thought to us. "Small creature. Needs to eat often."
"More interestingly, it's not afraid of us at all," I said. "Perhaps it is familiar with ponies."
"It will be fun when we return to the habitat. It will be Hey guys, we found a breezie! and they will not believe us," Cacha said.
"Why not?" I asked. "They believed us when we found an alicorn princess!"
"We did have the evidence standing behind us that time," Cacha said.
Satisfied with its meal, the tiny creature floated up to the height of our eyes. Floated? Flew? It was hard to tell. Again it tried to talk to us, and again the words were foreign, although I could detect a hint of ancient. Clearly this method of conversation was not working for us. It was time to try my language learning skills, but I wasn't going to do so without its permission.
Hopefully the telepathy spell would work. I sent an image of the small creature holding its head to my horn, along with some graphics to suggest an information exchange. If it understood me, it could initiate contact if it agreed.
It stared at me for a few moments, again talking. I shook my head and re-sent the image. This time the breezie floated closer, settling on my head. I felt gentle pressure against my horn, so I began my language learning spell.
Within moments, the spell had done its job, and I found I had gained not one, but two new languages. One of them was entirely new to me; the other had obvious roots in ancient. Just as my own language had deviated from ancient over two thousand years of isolation, so had this one.
I resisted any temptation to cram my own language into the tiny creature's head. There might be capacity issues!
The breezie alighted my head, and I indicated Cacha and Snow should prepare themselves for some rapid learning. When both nodded, I activated the teaching spell. This time Cacha would have no cause to complain about an unexpected memory dump!
"Sooo, can you understand me now?" the breezie asked. I found its voice quaint, and with some accent. It was speaking the variation of ancient.
"We can."
"Which ship are you from? Is it the Lander 7H6? What language do you speak?" it asked.
"What is your name?" Cacha countered.
"Zephyr. I have become separated from my companions, and need your help to get back home, to my wife and child."
"I'm Aneki. And, addressing your earlier questions, we were speaking Equestrian, or what passes as it now."
"That was not Equestrian," the breezie said.
"Neither is this," I said, referring to the dialect we were now speaking. "In the two thousand years since we left Equestria, the language had changed a lot."
"Where are you from?" Cacha asked.
"I am from Lander 2H6," Zephyr said.
"Aneki, Cacha," Snow thought to us. "The landing craft I stripped for parts is Lander 3H11. The other landers are all Lander somethingH11. Lander number whatever from Habitat Eleven."
"So, this breezie is from Habitat Six?"
"I am here. You could ask me directly," The breezie muttered. "Yes, our Landing Craft came from Habitat Six.
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Yay update. I like where this is going.
Oh no. Poor guy!
Did any of the ships take off or did one return? Or did a lander get forgotten?
More mystery is a foot! Or perhaps a hoof?
7376721
Man that would suck. Habitat Eleven is claustrophobia inducing enough as‐is, but to be stuck aboard a single lander? Even taking their diminutive stature into account…
7376804 yeah. I really don't want that to be the case... weren't we told who they went with? Was it Fluttershy?
To hope that they can find extinct species surviving in the pods
If the spider welded a bolt and bracket to the door to get it open, I wonder how long it was working out what teh hull material was so it could create teh weld, then keep increasing the thickness till it got a result, why it didnt trigger a noticable warning before, and if thats the bolt, wheres the power wrench?
Nice description of how building sites are messy, and self assembling ones can be even messier, I think like magnetic dust fingers?
Theres life out there, but if the ring has been under construction, what has it been eating, given the Very narrow window between its lander having food, and it starving?
7376934
Different sort of bolt - the thick metal bars that extend from a safe door. The hull is so thick, dense and heavy that it would dampen out any of the minor noises from outside.
That is not a bad comparison
It can't have been lost for more than a day.
7376822 Fluttershy took Habitat Four. Details of Six have never been revealed.
Gasp. Could it be that all the habitats were captured?
Hmmm... Another habitat?
It's interesting to think about how many habitats have been mentioned and just how many have been mentioned leaving and how many have been left behind. Especially when you consider the Diamond Dogs seemed to be built into Elevens lower layers. Poor. Poor Diamond Dogs. It makes you wonder just what else was left behind?
Though the detail about the Warners was also a bit surprising and brings up so many questions about their resident head that came in and started slashing when she meet them. Why does she share traits with both ponies and the Warners? Why did she start slashing? Why has it done nothing but watch them and done nothing to try to communicate with them? Why did she force her way in like that?
Very interesting chapter.
7377361
Think on this: The ponies would not have evacuated the prisoners of Tartarus...
7378228 I don't know. Seems kind of a bad idea to leave behind something like that. Kind of cruel to leave Cerberus there too.
Though if it's an extra dimensional place, then the problem may as be as simple as closing the entrance there and opening it on their new home.
7378323 Breezies would have also had the dimensional problem. Nonetheless, at least some of them were on Habitat Six.
Here's an idea for a spinoff of this: Directly after chapter 29 of this story and before they find out that the entire ship is running on borrowed time, Central sends quadrotor drones with rifles, shotguns, and other weapons along with death squads outfitted for the extreme temperatures in H.E.L.L. Before the assault group can corner or surround the hellites, the Brainstorm duo are told to teleport the hellite population "Away from here." However because of a mishap while the two were casting the spell (or firing it from their "guns") they accidentally teleport the hellites to the outskirts of the Crystal empire in an Equestria in an alternate universe that is much like the canon version exept for a few key differences (in this case Twilight Sparkle (re)discovered that pegassai and earth ponies are able to use magic in the same way as a unicorn, but without as much magical stamina. The crusaders have different cutie marks (if any) and Twilight is planning on re-growing Golden-Oaks Library from one of its roots that was intentionally left when the thing was turned isn't a chandelier.) And then the first few chapters are of the hellites running from the equestrians out of fear that they would kill them, taking refuge in whitetail woods, a few chapters of the Element Bearers looking for them, the hellites hiding from guard patrols and Celestia, and then either Applebloom, Dinky, or Nyx meet them and make friends before introducing them to ponyville. Also Luna has to show up in the main character's dreams at least once. I can't do this because I'm not that good of an author. So one of you would have to do it.
You don't mind the idea of someone else using one of you characters in a fic that they're making, do you?
I mean, a large amount of well known fics have side stories and spinoffs. For example Fallout: Equestria has TONS of side fics and quite a few spinoffs, as does the Lunaverse, The Conversion Bureau, friendship is optimal and others.
7431770 Except we already know that the entire planet has been destroyed...
7436784 They get sent to an alternate universe. That has happened in some fics where someone makes a mistake when teleporting or has something mess with the spell.
7439565 For sure. The gene location would still be there, even if no pony carried an active gene (recessive or not). Reintroduction of the gene through breeding with pegasi or by genetic tampering would result in more pegasi being born.
7439805 Well, that's just a theoretical problem! Not my department.
7439903 Are the others alicorns as well?
7439900 so if the Brainstorm duo could find the gene then they could single-hoofedly bring back the pegasai. The problem is: which gene is it?
7439895 okay... That was just an idea I had. The whole "sharing the males" thing has probably become engraved into the hellite's culture and that was my idea for why they would still do it.
7439873 Okay then.
7443140
Presumably. There were enough alicorns for each habitat to have one or two. The Equestria area had 10 (not including Habitat 10). Other countries would have had their own habitats too.
Indeed.
It won't significantly change in this generation, as existing family groups would not want to break up. The youngsters, and converted sexless however, would be more likely to go look for their own stallion, as they would not have formed attachments yet. Mares that used to belong to the head stallion would also look for another, but may settle for Crimson or Brainstorm.
7443266
Were the other element bearers alicorns?
I thought so.
Okay then.
That would be logical, but apart from Fluttershy, I have not named names.
Habitat 6?! Wasn't that one of the two that took off? 11 I could understand failing to launch on account of accidents and changelings, but 2/3 is way too many to have been an accident...
7746421 There are presumably Habitats numbered 1 to 11 from equestria. 10 is inside 11. 1 to 9 are presumably separate habitats. As such, 2 in 10 have failed. There would also have been habitats in other countries. The details of these are unknown.
Finally getting back in gear!
...crap. They're not just embedded in whatever superstructure their solar system was harvested away for... they're simply part of it.
"Blame!", here we come, I guess
)
(It's up on Humble Bundle atm, btw. Worth the read
Well, plenty of tubes out here. Check what they contain, connect a few up to the Hab?
Walkways and corridors, though? That implies something walks out here.
Queenie meanie
To quote Lewis Carroll, quoting Alice, who was at that very moment forgetting how to speak good English...
Curiouser and curiouser!
Say whaaaaa?
So... could be a mission sent back to find out what happened to their planet, 2 millennia later? Or did 6 simply not take off either?
7835534
The builders simply saw a big ball of the same material they were using, presumed it had been placed there for a reason, and fused their work to it.
I assume that is NOT directed at me.
Give them time...
Access for the builders, repair, inspection, and of course, clockwork spiders.
All will be revealed. You could read the next chapter - it is there, after all!
7836013
Nope. Others might want to check it out, though
Kinda funny how you can't mark this as crossover because it'd spoil a good fifty chapters of buildup
Shush. You know I comment as I read through. It's a stream-of-consciousness thing.
7836790
It is but one source of inspiration. It is, however, the inspiration for which I dropped the loudest clue, not that anyone appears to have noticed.
Ok. My human theory is thusly disproven.
GODDAMN JUST FIND ANOTHER HAB ALREADY
HHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!
Cept the giant ring. Were they trying to build a Halo ring?
No, they are usually built in a forge by Forerunners who are not spider like at all. That and they use headlights, not nanomachines. I think...