Part 3 (Moriah) - Chapter 5
“I’ve already explained, you can’t get in yet. Reactor is in pre-start sequence.”
Moriah paced back and forth by the parked Hummingbird, growing increasingly frustrated. For instance; she wasn’t really “by” the Hummingbird, since they had been told to retreat to a distance of 500 meters or greater, while the HPI people did something remotely using the something or whatever. She hadn’t really caught any of it. It didn’t bother her there were pre-flight checks to run, didn’t bother her that it might take even an hour or more to get flying.
Actually, that had been a relief when she first heard it. She wanted every second she could to tear through the manuals and find the most basic information. For instance, how to activate its internal autopilot and maintain a constant height. A few bits of simple knowledge, even if they wouldn’t let her actually do any flying herself, might save their pony butts from even a serious technical fault.
She couldn’t get on board to look at it, though, because the pre-flight procedure had already started by the time she drove there, and they “absolutely couldn’t under any circumstances” get closer than 500 meters.
“I’m not going to try and fly it,” she explained, as simply as she could. “I’m not going to be doing anything to draw power. I won’t even start the main computer! I just need one of the maintenance terminals to open a damn PDF! Which I wouldn’t need to do if your damn operating system let us access the documentation.”
“The manuals are classified, but I think you-”
“Yes, classified.” She glared at the phone Joseph held in his magic for her, as though doing so might cause it to combust using the force of her anger alone. If she had a horn, it might have. “Because the goddamn commies might steal your autonomous nuclear VTOL designs! Better yet, the ponies. We clearly have the technical skill to build nuclear aircraft.”
The speaker on the other end, a cheerful woman named “Taylor Gamble” who seemed to grow frustrated right along with Moriah, replied in a near shout. “It’s a damn unshielded nuclear reactor, horsehead!”
That gave her pause, suddenly conscious of the stares of her friends around her. They had moved all their supplies, enough food and water and camping gear to last for a week, into a pile so far away from the farmhouse they were near the road. “Huh?”
“Think about it, if you can,” Taylor continued over the phone. “Nuclear fuel has some of the best energy-to-weight ratio in the world, short of topping the thing up with antimatter. Problem is, shielding a reactor is heavy. The reactor on a Hummingbird or an Albatross has thermal shielding only. The body is insulated, but only minimally. If you step into a Hummingbird before pre-flight is complete, you’ll be glue.”
When Alex had given her the phone and introduced the engineer on the other end as “a friend”, Moriah hadn’t realized that would translate to “constantly reminding her she was a pony.” It almost made her upset enough not to take what the woman was saying seriously, even though the warning was clearly not the sort she should ignore. “If there’s an unshielded nuclear fission reaction happening under my feet, how is a pre-start sequence going to stop us from being cooked alive?”
The woman on the other end sighed deeply, exasperated. “This is an HPI Hummingbird, Moriah Strickland. Like all HPI vehicles, it’s equipped with a CG- a… CPNFG. A… look, it makes a sphere where energetic radiation of all kinds gets neutralized. We’ve reconfigured this one only to produce a shielding radius large enough for the reactor itself once it's cleaned up all the radiation it made getting started… but until it’s running, it’s not safe to go inside. Do you understand?”
Moriah didn’t answer for several seconds, letting her own heart settle down. Maybe it was possible she had let her emotions get the better of her over something minor. “Yes, Ms. Gamble, I understand. I… apologize for being difficult. I think the stress of being asked to fly this thing is getting to me.” She considered for a moment, forcing herself back to neutrality. She would have meditated if she thought she had the time. She knew she didn’t, though. “These communicators of yours can send data too, right? Could you send me the Hummingbird manuals? I’m nowhere close to ready to fly this thing.”
The instant Moriah calmed down, the voice on the other end seemed to relax too. “Sure! We’re not supposed to send HPI data anywhere outside the network, but… your communicator isn’t off the network, is it?” A second later the communicator’s screen lit up again, informing them a PDF had just been downloaded. “Couldn’t pay me to fly one of those death traps, even if I had the certs for it.”
Moriah sat down, gesturing for Joseph to release the phone. He did, and it dropped right out of his levitation into her waiting hooves. “Sorry again, Gamble.” She clicked the phone off before the HPI engineer could respond, taking a stylus in her mouth and beginning to navigate the screen.
A few hours later she was in the pilot seat, “flying” what might very well be the most sophisticated machine humans had ever built that hadn’t been designed to travel into space. She didn’t really consider it flying, since she knew absolutely nothing of what was happening and would have had little recourse at all except in the most basic of malfunctions.
While in operation, the screens that represented her “windows” filled with images of the outside, superimposed with maps and instruments and readouts. The Hummingbird made an absolute mockery of FAA safety standards. There wasn’t a single analogue redundancy in the entire cockpit, nor was there a single non-digital control.
The operations manual actually justified the design choice, albeit it somewhat cynically. “In the event of a central computer failure, the CPNFG unit will immediately cease operating. The four seconds needed to accumulate a lethal level of exposure was not deemed a sufficient time to safely land and evacuate.”
There were dozens of levels of digital redundancy and protection she didn’t understand. Remote piloting itself was a redundancy, meant to supplement the on-board supercomputer. The manual went on and on about its command-stream being sent in real time for automatic and human verification back in “central”, with the remote host taking over if the slightest discrepancy was detected.
Even still, she felt uneasy. How long would it take to bounce a lightspeed signal off a satellite and back to earth, then process the input, then bounce another signal back? She sat behind controls she didn’t really understand thinking of how significant a difference of a few seconds response time could really be. Answer? Way more than she liked.
If their onboard computer malfunctioned, or miscalculated, they would all be very dead.
For once, she was the cheerful one. She didn’t want to convey to the others just how vulnerable and completely suicidal this felt, so instead she just looked stoic and answered any questions they gave her with a nod. She had already protested, and they had ignored her protests.
A pilot is always calm and collected, she told herself, feeling neither. I will be at my best and most able to respond to threats when I retain control of my emotions. It was no easy task, but she managed. Up until the sirens started.
Took her nearly ten seconds of scanning to locate the icon, one of a dozen different unfamiliar symbols on the electronic display. Of course, by the time she had found it, verbal warnings had started. “Warning: Thaumic spike detected! Active compensation will reduce operative thrust! Engage?”
“Yes!” Moriah screamed at the display, searching wildly for whatever might be causing the computer to scream at her. She felt a sudden jolt of acceleration, not enough to jar her from her restraints, but probably enough to knock someone into a wall if they weren’t prepared. She felt the aircraft start to descend, stubby wings slowing them only slightly in the absence of power.
Then she looked up, and saw what had set the computer to protesting. No, it wasn’t anything Joseph was up to in back. The HPI had, as they had patiently explained, set the internal thaumic radiation sensors to their lowest possible level. The readings were coming from outside, and Moriah could see why.
There in the sky, coming straight at their aircraft, was a dragon. A conflagration in the air, roaring blue and purple and green flames with runes blurring almost too fast to read along its back. It was a long, elegant beast, with fins running along the spine of its transparent body, like something Moriah might’ve seen in a Chinese New Year parade.
There was no time to think. She checked the altitude (65,000ft and dropping), searching for the controls and not finding them. The dragon was heading straight for them. A sturdy aircraft like this might be able to take a great deal of punishment. But flying through the body of a fiery serpent?
Still, she had a hunch. “Pilot override!” she shouted, using the words she had been explicitly told not to use under any circumstances. “Divert all power to the CPNFG! Engines, life support, communications, anything but the computer! Give me the biggest, strongest field you can!”
“Command acknowledged.” The deceleration wasn't as sudden this time. The lights above her went out, and somewhere above her the constant roar of jet engines abruptly died. No pumps recirculating the air, no fans, no music from the cargo area. Only the distant, sonorous hum of the reactor remained, like the heartbeat of the world. That, and the rush of air from outside, and the terrified screams from the cargo compartment.
As she watched, the pinnacle of human technical achievement began its battle with a sudden onslaught of supernatural might. Below her hooves, the energy of an ancient supernova was coaxed out into a soup of boiling salt, and over only a few moments, into the superconductor running the length of the ship. That energy poured into intricate coils of composite wires, reflectors around the magnetic bottle that contained at its very center a glob of exotic matter. Trillions of calculations a second modulated the wave of energy pouring into the CPNFG.
As the dragon neared them, opening its jaws wide to swallow the Hummingbird whole, Moriah felt a sudden wave of emptiness wash over her, deeper and more complete than anything she had felt in her life. She saw what happened next as if from far away. The wave was invisible, yet she saw it strike the dragon. Runes and teeth and scales alike were shredded to nothing, leaving only a vague haze in the air.
That, and a torrential vortex of air. Perhaps the Hummingbird might’ve breached it without faltering, but that was before. Now they had slowed down to subsonic speeds, lost the split-second corrections of the supercomputer and the connection to the HPI’s secret bunker.
They were slammed to one side, and Moriah was suddenly hanging from the ceiling. She was spinning, seeing red then black then red again, and knew she might lose consciousness at any moment. She had to cancel her previous commands or they would all die, perhaps even more painfully than the death the transparent sky-spirit might’ve brought them.
Apathy surrounded her. Pain crushing her, an avalanche of blaring alarms and rushing air. Through it all returned an old voice, that same one that had been speaking to her in the forest.
It will be easier now than ever, it told her. Simply do nothing. No one will know you meant it to happen. It won’t even be that painful, not really. A few more seconds and you’ll be unconscious anyway.
In the crushing emptiness, Moriah felt a brief flicker of magic. It didn’t come from outside; it didn’t even leave her body. It was the same spark she had felt the first time she had really felt magic. Vibrant and beautiful, it lasted only a second before the overwhelming crush of the field swallowed it and left her empty again.
That second was all she needed. “Disregard previous command!” she shouted, praying the computer could understand her over all the alarms and the screaming from behind her and the air. “Restore the engines and resume previous heading!”
In the world she knew, even the most experienced pilots would have difficulty escaping from a crash now. The miles of the altitude were only prolonging the inevitable, and even then not for long. 70 tons of metal and composite might withstand the colossal forces acting on them now, or they might be ripped apart before they even met the ground. Too fast a correction would guarantee that kind of death. Too slow, and she wouldn’t be able to correct in time.
But Moriah wasn’t the one making the correction. Their onboard supercomputer might not know the first thing about what to do in the event of a magical fire-dragon attack, but it knew exactly how to recover from a runaway descent.
The engines roared back to life, acting in perfect, gradual concert with the flaps and the rudder and even the props. Thousands of gradual movements, each perfectly timed, brought the Hummingbird out of its meteoric descent, at an altitude that couldn’t have been more than a few hundred meters.
That was when she really heard the screams.
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If there's another Alex journal tomorrow, I hope it has nothing but praise for Moriah. Without the precautions she had to fight for them to take, after she insisted they shouldn't even be going at all, they wouldn't have survived this. Awesome work, Moriah.
The runes on the dragon are interesting. Some of them are zodiac signs - Aquarius, Cancer, Libra. Some of them are the pigpen cipher magic runes. Can anyone translate?
Hmm. Interesting. It seems that is is not an actual dragon, but some kind of spell construct. The question is who or what on the earth would be powerful enough to cast such a spell? Hmm.Screams, I hope non of the others where injured in the back, or maybe Alex was injured and they are going to find out that she is really SuperPony.
Well... Hello Mr. Dragon. Come to say hello—
Oh, well that's not very nice.
Looking forward to the next chapter, and the screams of the innocent.
As usual, I keep looking for a way to click the thumbs-up a second (...eleventy-seventh) time.
Please tell me Moriah is getting a Hawaiian shirt and some plastic dinosaurs for the dash of the Hummingbird. Hell, just have Zutcha draw it and I'll die happy.
Ooooookay.... magical dragon attack at 65,000 feet... really wasn't expecting that. What the heck is going on?
Edit: actually isn't 65,000 feet a little extreme?
Well, that's certainly one way to deal with a potent magical attack. Assuming it was an attack. Still, the sudden dramatic absence of magic in who knows how big an area has probably led to a massive amount of panic both on board the Hummingbird and in the city. This probably isn't going to go well...
This. Was. Fantastic.
Moriah saves the day in the most spectacular way possible. And all because of a tiny spark of life. Beautiful.
... So, somehow there is a spell that managed to make a giant flaming dragon, a Chinese version of one for that matter, and it was set to kill...
Okay, WHO managed to do that shit in about a few months, WITHOUT books from Equestria, I mean, WTF?
There better be an explanation later...
Now, Moriah, this is a big step for her, she has been rather suicidal for a while, judging from the walks through the forest and dark depressing thoughts and all. Thankfully she managed to pull away from that, why? Because of her unborn child.
It's basically her heart saying 'You want to kill yourself, FINE, but you have NO RIGHT to make that choice for THEM, you are going to live, and your going to give birth to them, whatever happens afterwards is your choice, but you are NOT dying today!'
For now, she has managed to find something to live for, let's see where that takes us.
6281829
Well, we did have Moriah and Joe's conversation about the coded messages being possibly from Equestrian "Saints or Monsters" who decided to come to Earth. Strong evidence for Monsters, I think.
6281910
Grrreeeat... I swear if it's fucking Blueblood wanting to establish himself as a ruler...
Moriah? For what it's worth, I approve. As the aircraft commander you had the responsibility to take whatever action you felt was necessary. Maybe you weren't totally right about the necessity but it was still your call.
The end of the scene was interesting. Moriah felt the magic of her foal, maybe really felt magic for the first time and it seems to have convinced her that she wants to live.
"It's okay guys!"
"OKAY? I'M SEEING THE MEAL I HAD FIVE BUCKING DAYS AGO AND YOU'RE CALLING THIS OKAY?!?"
Aaand that's the scariest part of the chapter for me, as someone who's done the ground parts (read: most stuff other than actually flying) of a PPL.
And I can't even go and do a nice IFR flight on flight sim to make up for it because my computer's dead...
6281672
Yeah, 65,000 feet is the start of near space. It's the point where a human needs a pressurized suit to even survive.
Aerodynamics still work at that altitude, so it's possible, but it's higher than anything except satellites and a few extreme skydiving stunts.
Damn, nice reactions Moriah! Definitely an argument for letting the man on the spot know the specs of the equipment they're using regardless of how unnecessary it seems, they would have been dead had Morry not learned about the CPNFG in advance of the dragon attack.
Speaking of which, an Earth mythology magical summoned dragon? Huh. Someone is up to something questionable.
6282190
6281672
65,000 feet is definitely high, but it's also an extremely efficient altitude for high speed aircraft. Drag up there is so low that it's almost a non-factor, and if you have an engine which can still function well enough at that low of pressure you might as well fly where you can reach such high speeds. Plus, like Moriah said, nothing like ten miles of altitude to use as a buffer to keep you from dying!
If the Hummingbird has one of those doors to load cargo in the back and a power was transferred to the CPNFG, could have one of the ponies fallen out the open door? They must have seen everything that was going on behind them.
6282407
Normally I would say that there are certainly mechanical locks on the doors to keep that from happening in the event of power failure, but since power failure is a death sentence to the people who designed the craft, whether they fall out of the plane or not, they might not have bothered with that....
6282407
It seems unlikely that the HPI would design a craft whose doors opened in the event of a power failure, considering how dangerous thaumic radiation is to them.
That's a good nine point... one out of ten on the awesome scale.
In other news, something else extremely significant just happened, and I think everyone missed it. Spoiler if you wanna give it a guess first: A spark/flicker of magic was created in the absolute absence of magic. That means one thing: Humans turned Ponies still have the ability to create magic in a void, and this possibly extends to their children too. Going one step further, this would also apply to the Humans who moved to Equestria and their children, but Equestria in this ~verse is very far away so bugger off on that.
6281692
Area seems to be the constraining limit on these CPNFGs, so I'd say the affected area's about the size of the Hummingbird. Moving, of course, but it wouldn't effect the ground.
Well. Moriah scores one point in my book. She's still well in the red, though.
This reminds me of an SCP description. In brief: "If containment fails, attempt Plan A. If Plan A fails, no further actions are necessary." Implied: "If Plan A fails, everything is doomed, so don't bother trying anything else."
6281829 I wonder if it was simply a naturally-occuring magical construct of some sort. Which, come to think of it, would be terrifying.
6281654 Just have her do a Chuck Yeager impression and I'll be happy.
Ladies and Gentlemen we apologize for the turbulence as we recover from a magical fire-dragon attack. What you've experienced is an extreme descent from 65 thousand feet to just a few hundred meters above the ground. We appear to be a tad off course but everything is under control.
Excuse me? Are you telling us absolutely everything?
Not exactly, we're also out of coffee.
Rainbow Dash would be proud.
So... I suppose that "spirit-dragon" didn't used to be human. Otherwise, that'd raise a lot of questions about its behavior.
Though come to think of it, there totally could be humans who got turned into dragons.
6285258 so wait if adult humans turned into adult dragons does that mean they would have wrecked their homes? if they where indoors. Also is gems are a dietary requirement they might be starving.
6277036
Yes, I think there will be. Winter is coming.
6278436
I don't think there's any sign that humans would come back through rebirth like that. Not saying it couldn't happen, but from what we've seen so far, it seems they're just going into the future + tf. So far, anyway.
6278496
Yeah, I don't think Alex really wished an awful premature life-changing event on Moriah. I think that was mostly resentment for the way Moriah has acted in general, and less actively wishing bad things on her. We'll see how she reacts later, so I won't go into detail about that.
6278526
What happened in Philadelphia? TUNE IN SOON TO FIND OUT!
I really do think the first generation will be interesting to explore, since they'll be riding the line between pony and human in some ways. As time goes on, I expect the human influence to grow weaker and weaker across the generations, until it's gone completely. Unless, of course, the colonists now can manage to create an enduring culture to preserve human values, customs, and nature. Otherwise,..
6278541
Cows were too in the last story, by that logic.
6278545
They'll go to tuns of parenting classes? Er... wait, I guess there aren't any of those anymore. Well, they'd want to if they could! And by that I mean that Joseph wouldn't be caught dead in one of those. No real way to know yet what he thinks about this whole pregnancy development, but I expect we'll learn soon enough.
6278605
Miserable pile of secrets has already been said, so I don't need to go into that direction. I do enjoy writing from the perspective of characters of different races. Get to explore their racial abilities I never got to play with, having only an Earth Pony for a main character last story. It's nice.
6278629
Thanks! I hope this story turns out half as good as its original. Less than half the readers have made it, for whatever that's worth. It's much more work to write. Still fun, though.
6278659
Moriah would totally make that mistake, but the narrator shouldn't. Fixed it, thanks for pointing that out! Not sure how that word slipped by.
6278706
I wonder if Equestrian flying machines were considered basic enough knowledge to include in the bookset. They might not be in there just because they figured humans had them already so didn't need help building them. Dunno.
I think Moriah and Alex just cope with their transformations in different ways. Alex just tried to keep living the way she always did. Moriah hates herself, but actively defies the transformation by ignoring her disgust and powering through the awful sensations. I think she's trying to overwhelm herself out of being upset by it; keep doing the thing that you hate often enough pretending to like it, and eventually you will.
Not saying it works that way. But that may be what she thinks.
6278754
Discord was certainly involved in the spell! They'd be helpless to do so much crazy magic without his kind of power.
6279020
Thanks! I think Moriah has some serious flaws, but I always thought it was a shame she'd ended up the story's hategoat. Totally a word not a thing I just made up, trust me.
6279065
I don't know if Joe tried or not (not from what we've seen anyway). Ignoring horse anatomy for the moment, a quick google search indicated it has about a 20% failure rate when used as the primary form of contraception by regular couples, and a 4-8% failure rate when used "perfectly." It remains to be seen whether they even attempted this, however.
6279273
Yeah, Moriah and Joseph aren't the ideal couple. Which is why they make the perfect first couple for the story! Oh, the drama! I can see the trainwreck approaching miles away!
6279382
True, I'd say she did. Need a little break. Time to scream at the world for awhile. I'd like to point out that the cows were drawn in the past story, too. So being drawn probably doesn't mean you're going to be a speaking character. It might, but it might not.
6279662
That first one is definitely a mistake, and I've corrected it! The second one was intentional however, so I'm not taking it away. These narrators each come from the perspective of the characters, and that sometimes means a little bit of colloquial language slips in.
6279863
It's much more for those who don't pull out correctly (apparently it has a failure rate of about 20-27% for the average couple who uses it and it alone), at least according to the (scant few) studies my quick search turned up on Google Scholar. To be fair through, so-called "perfect" use of the method had a 4% failure rate in these studies, which is only twice as high (2% vs 4%) as using condoms. Actually more effective than some other forms of birth control, despite requiring nothing more than good timing (which, admittedly, might be difficult or impossible with certain facts of horse anatomy).
6281003
Oh, we'll see more of Riley, don't worry. She won't be getting a part (she's not one of the founders of Alexandria, after all), but we will get to see more of her perspective.
6281654
Zutcha doesn't have any brown coats in his closet that I'm aware of. I do, though!
media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/f0/23/06/f02306aa750285516487ad6ea6904d80.jpg
6281672
Not for certain military and (presently experimental) drive systems, it isn't. It is way above the cruising altitude of conventional aircraft, though.
6281829
Trust me, there will be. All will be explained in time!
6281964
I upvote your code-related comments when they're right. BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW IT WAS ME WHO UPVOTED?!
6282068
I think it's safe to say this airplane could never exist in the conventional world. Only got to exist because of the extremely unusual conditions that made its design (and the departure from conventional principals) possible.
6282190
Fortunately, the Hummingbird is built to handle extreme low-pressure conditions. Alex has already compared it to a spacecraft. Or Moriah did. Somebody did. For good reason.
6282386
The kind of get even where you throw a huge party! Obviously that's what Moriah meant. >.>
6282407
That would be really, really poor design if they made a door that needs power to stay shut. Five Nights and Freddy's design principals right there.
6283020
Even if it extended for a ways around the ship with Moriah blowing the power way beyond what it's normally given, I doubt it extends for ten miles.
6283448
I wish I'd thought to have Moriah be this suave.
10/10 , would read again
6284259
I can't recall. I have kinda sorta met him, since he visited the brony club at my university once, but I don't think that particular subject came up.
6284374
"Wait, you're saying a unicorn did that? No way!"
6285311
Yeah, about that... I'm a bit concerned for the ponies who'll show up 100 years later. Or 1000. Or 5000.
I don't think their homes will be there anymore by that time. Sucks if you live in a skyscraper.
Or if the land has been re-settled and a wall was built right where your bed used to be 5000 years earlier.
41.media.tumblr.com/295dc81f1acb54423900b35d084045f5/tumblr_nsjnnm0JxM1rsmidfo1_540.png
Equestrian dragons don't look like that last time I checked.
img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140721202748/falloutequestria/ru/images/5/54/Mlp_dragon_by_mihaaaa-d42855l.png
6287850 Boy howdy, Batman! What else do you think it obviously isn't and was not intended to resemble?
6281654
I am a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar.
Man fuck you HPI. World is dead, and you're still playing like your countries matter.
this made me think of "live free or die" by John Ringo, where the protagonist had bought a spaceship from friendly aliens and was explaining how it operates. he didn't so much steer it as tell the computer where to travel to and let it figure out the best path.
it also had anti-gravity, or rather fancy gravity manipulation systems, so it didn't even have WINGS.
it WOULD go splat if it's power failed, but it's power system didn't produce any radiation.
BUT building systems like that required rare elements like Platinum or Osmium, and it needed He3 for fuel, which is also rare.
A what?? What does it stand for?? I've been searching for the meaning for so long, I looked through and re-read the stories and found nothing, this is the first mention of the name, yet it does not have a definition other than properties. I'm DYING to know. Please.. Wh-what.. is i-it???
11570688
It's in the story somewhere, though I forget where. That's charged particle neutralization field generator