Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 9: Mission 11: Throw Yourself at the Ground and Miss

Elytron resented being left in charge of the hive while Queen Chrysalis spent most of her time at the new space center hundreds of miles away. Not that he cared much about rockets or space or things like that. He just hated getting stuck with the most routine, boring chores and the most idiotic workers. Chrysalis wanted only the smartest changelings working at the space center, which meant every time some project required more workers, the average IQ of the changelings back in the Badlands dropped by a measurable amount.

What galled him most was the fact that Chrysalis had asked him to recommend the most intelligent warriors to serve as security in Horseton. She had not asked him to bring them with him. She had not asked for him to recommend other intelligent warriors beside himself. She had merely accepted his recommendations and took them away with her to her new shiny home in the swamp.

Elytron might not have been terribly bright, but he knew when he was being slighted.

Unfortunately he didn’t know what he could do about it, so Elytron received the mostly boring reports from infiltrators coming in, saw to the distribution of love reserves, trained the warriors, and went through the routine day after day after day. It wasn’t tedious; Elytron thrived on routine. He just hated the idea that his holy queen thought he wasn’t any good for anything else other than that.

One particular day Elytron sat through yet another infiltrator’s all-too-detailed report about how she’d turned some pony family’s life into something straight out of a bad agony novel(146). He longed for something different, anything different, just so he would have a chance to demonstrate that he could be smart enough for the glory work at the space center(147).

And something different did come up, or rather down- specifically, Clickbug, who had taken over the post as guard at the hive entrance- replacing the buck-fanged drone Elytron had thought the most useless changeling in the hive(148). “Commander!” she shouted, bursting into the throne room and interrupting yet another retelling of the travails of Some Ponies Or Other and how that fed the hive. “We just got an urgent telegram from Appleoosa!”

“So what?” Elytron grumbled. “Pass it on to the queen like you always do.”

“No, sir,” Clickbug insisted, “it’s for us here! They’re telling us to expect a couple of ponies! They’re on their way here in a sky-chariot!”

“Ponies??” Elytron shouted. First that mail-pony visiting once a week. Then that crazy pink-and-yellow pony with the flying contraption, who stayed. And now two. Four, if you counted the pegasi who would be pulling the sky-chariot. It wasn’t an invasion yet, but Elytron could see a trend. He didn’t like it one bit. “What are they coming here for?”

“The Appleoosan station didn’t say,” Clickbug said. “The message was, ‘Be prepared to welcome two visiting unicorns, stop. Arriving by sky-chariot from Appleoosa today, stop.’ And that’s all.”

“How in the name of Celestia’s royal cake repository(149) are we supposed to prepare for something we know nothing about?” Elytron shouted.

“Don’t ask me, sir!” Clickbug whimpered. “I only take down the messages and pass them along!”

“Well-“ Elytron was prepared to tell Clickbug to pass this message along to Queen Chrysalis for orders when it sank in. This was a New Thing. Something non-routine, something unexpected, and above all something that would give Elytron a chance to demonstrate his good sense and sharp thinking to the queen.

He didn’t think I can do this. He thought, I will take care of this. I’ll take care of everything.

“Well, get back to your post,” he finally told Clickbug. “I’ll have a message for the queen after I’ve interr… I mean once I speak with these ponies.”

There were guards to reposition, armor to be polished, and pods to be prepared for possible new occupants, and it all had to be done at once. Fortunately Elytron knew exactly how to make that happen.

But the order that gave him the most pleasure was the one which dismissed all the waiting infiltrators to quit pestering him and go give their stupid reports to one another. For giving him something more important to do than listen to all those boring stories, Elytron thought, he could almost thank these pony scum.(150)

Of course, the first thirty seconds of seeing these particular examples of pony scum drove all thought of thanks entirely out of Elytron’s mind.

For one thing, the sky-chariot was drawn not by the two pegasi as per standard, nor the team of four that the enormous pile of luggage would have justified, but by a single pony- the grey cross-eyed mailmare who visited twice a week, Wossername. Despite her obvious exhaustion, the unicorn couple in the chariot lifted not one hoof to help as the pegasus unharnessed herself, opened a side-door to let them leave the chariot, and then began hauling one trunk and suitcase after another off the tailgate of the chariot onto the rocky desert floor.

“My word, Jet dear,” the female of the pair whined, “what an ugly location this is. Do you really think that parvenu princess can be trusted?”

“Be strong, darling,” the male said. He kept his nose stuck upwards, making it obvious that his pince-nez were there for the sole purpose of helping him look down his muzzle at the world. “Not everypony is cultured enough to be part of the Canterlot elite. We must set an example to the lesser ponies.”

Elytron, who had been standing alone at the entrance to the hive, in full shiny purple armor, kept his jaw firmly shut only through decades of discipline.

“There,” the gray Pegasus gasped, the last bag offloaded. “That’s everything, Mr. and Mrs. Set.”

“Please!” The female unicorn tossed her nose into the air even higher than her husband’s, making her bouffant mane bob. “I kept my own name when we married, thank you!”

“And I would never have asked otherwise, my dear,” the male unicorn said, comforting his wife. He reached into the breast pocket of his polo shirt and pulled out a few bits, which he tossed at the pegasus’s hooves. “Job well done, miss. No need to wait for us; we’ll telegraph Appleoosa when we’re ready to depart.”

Elytron had little firsthand knowledge of the world outside the changeling guard and prided himself on that ignorance. Still, he thought that the hoofful of bits seemed a piddling gratuity for even a normal chartered sky-chariot. For the work the two unicorns had put the pegasus to, it was a petty insult.

The wall-eyed pegasus pushed the bits together in the dirt, then left them next to the chariot and trudged over to where Elytron stood. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bring the mail this trip, sir,” she said. “Do you have anything going outbound?”

“You there, doorpony!” The male unicorn waved a hoof imperiously at him. “Hurry up and take our bags. We have urgent business with your queen!”

Changelings have a reputation for being callous towards their main food source, and Elytron was the extreme case which reinforces a bad reputation. Pity was not within his emotional range, not even for a fellow changeling. Hate, on the other hand, was an old, true friend. After his brief exposure to those two unicorns, he was inclined to support anyling and anypony against them- even the annoying, semi-competent mailmare.

“Have Clickbug take you down to the kitchen,” he said. “Carapace is working at the space center, but he had a couple of apprentices who should be able to make some of that gunk you like.”(151)

“Thank you, sir,” the mailpony said solemnly, walking slowly down into the entrance to the hive.

Only after the mailpony’s flanks were lost in the dim light of the cave did Elytron turn his attention, ever so slowly, back to the ever-more-unwelcome visitors. “I am Elytron, commander of the warriors of Queen Chrysalis’s hive and acting regent during her absence. What business do you have here?” he said coolly.

“Please fetch a bellhop to take our things,” the unicorn said. “We need to see your queen at the earliest possible moment!”

“Or failing that,” the female added, “this earth pony, what’s-her-name, Cherry Berry.”

Elytron wanted to stop and count to one hundred(152), but the ponies required an answer. “Queen Chrysalis and Chief Pilot Cherry Berry are both at Horseton Space Center,” he said carefully.

“A likely story!” the male unicorn snorted. “We already contacted the space center. We were told the queen was not available there, and that any contract proposals would have to wait until after their next launch!”

“Which, I might add,” the female said, “they haven’t scheduled yet!”

“But we’re determined to see the queen no matter what!”

“We wish to hire the services of your space program.” The female waggled a hoof in distaste as she added, “Without all that tedious paperwork your minion asked us to fill out.”

Elytron paused for a moment to consider options. The obvious right thing to do was to send these self-important annoyances on their way. He knew it was the right thing because it was second place on his list of things he wanted to do with them. The first option- sticking them in the pods until someone asked about them- ran counter to standing orders, worse luck.

But if he did either, he’d be giving up on his big opportunity to show Queen Chrysalis he was smart enough to be on the space center roster. Also, the two would probably demand that exhausted pegasus haul them and all their things back to Appleoosa. Though he barely cared about that, he did care just enough to admit it was a factor.

“I am afraid,” Elytron said at last, “that Queen Chrysalis may not be available for some time. In the meantime, as acting regent, I have the authority to listen to your proposal. If it is pleasing I shall lay it before the queen at the earliest opportunity.”

“Isn’t this typical?” the female unicorn asked. “Even here in the forsaken Badlands you can’t escape the middlemare.”

“You can’t expect better of these barbarous ponies,” the male said.

Through the intensifying red haze Elytron had a brief memory of an old, old lesson back when he had been just a larva. “Ponies panic easily,” the teacher had told the class, “but they don’t stay panicked long. A dangerous thing that doesn’t hurt them for a week becomes normal. A dangerous thing that doesn’t hurt them for a month becomes the way things have always been. Ponies always fear what they can’t see, but they think they’re born to rule over everything they CAN see. That is why we cannot rely on fear to keep the hive safe.”(153)

Two years ago, he thought, glaring at the unicorns, you were running down the streets of Canterlot screaming. Now you’re thoughtlessly insulting me to my face. Proof, as if we needed it, that coming out of hiding was a mi… er… not one of the queen’s better decisions.

Elytron was running alternate scenarios of reintroducing these ponies to the fear of changelings through his limited imagination when something very bright and shiny yanked his attention back to the real world. The male pony had opened the smallest trunk… which turned out to be full to slightly overflowing of bits.

Thousands of bits.

Tens of thousands of bits.

Not enough to restore the treasure mound in the throne room to its full glory after it had been mostly spent on Horseton, but enough to double, maybe even triple, what was there at the moment.

The pony was saying, “We are prepared to pay quite well to be the first ponies from Canterlot to travel through space.”

His wife added, “We’ve been to all the fashionable and trendy places around the world on the fastest airships and trains. And right now there’s nothing more fashionable and trendy than rocket ships.”

Elytron blinked. “Er… yes, ma’am,” he said on pure reflex. The fire of rage inside his head was being put out by the fireponies of Ladder Company Duty and the Ambition County Volunteer Fire Department. The queen always wants more money for space, he thought. Here is a LOT of money. It will probably buy a lot of space.

And when she finds out I’ve got her a lot more money for space, she will say, What a clever changeling you are, Elytron. I need clever changelings like you around me at all times. Pack your things and come to Horseton at once, as soon as you’ve picked some particularly stupid and worthless guard to take over your duties back at the hive. Because I can trust you to pick the right changeling, because you are very smart and clever indeed.

So… how to get this money without any fuss or bother? Elytron straightened up. The old traditional methods, he decided, are the best. “It will take some time to bring Queen Chrysalis here to meet you,” he said at last. “In the meantime, allow me to bring you to our special VIP cell- er, deluxe spa and resort caverns,” he corrected himself. “After a tour of our most scenic caves and natural wonders(154), you shall be ensconced in a luxurious sleeping chamber where you can while away the time experiencing only the most delightful and nutrit- um, pleasant dreams in absolute comfort.”

The unicorns balked, to Elytron’s total lack of surprise. “Of course we can’t stay in a place which hasn’t been rated by Four Doors!” the male said, ignoring the utter illogic of packing like an army going to war while not being willing to actually remain at the destination.

“If we stayed in an ordinary residence,” the female insisted, “we’d be laughed out of our clubs! The elite of Canterlot would shun us for…” She shuddered delicately, gasping out the words, “… slumming it.”

“You’ll be staying in the very same chamber chief astromare Cherry Berry uses when she’s visiting us,” Elytron said without blinking. Which was almost true; it would be the same chamber Cherry Berry spent her first two weeks in, mostly asleep and putting off enough love and happiness to turn a trim changeling guard eggplant-shaped. “And you’ll be served the same food,” he added in sudden inspiration, “eaten by Equestrian Games athletes when they visit us.” Not quite a lie; precisely one Games athlete visited the hive, and she was downstairs right now being fed. She’d also qualified for the Cloudsdale Best Young Fliers competition a couple years back, but Elytron doubted Canterlot unicorns would care. For that matter, he didn’t care. He only knew it because of the five or six times Occupant had gushed about his one friend in the world, back in the days before rockets.

The almost-facts brightened the unicorns’ attitudes immediately. “Well then,” the male said, “if such celebrities endorse your hospitality, then we simply MUST try it for ourselves!”

“The same bed as the bravest mare in Equestria!” the female said. “Wait until I tell Brown Snooty about this!”

“I shall order some of my guardlings to bring your… possessions,” Elytron said. “Once you’ve had the tour and settled in, I shall contact the queen and let her know of your proposal. For now, if you would care to follow me, Mr. and Mrs….?”

The male held a hoof to his polo shirt. “I am Jet Set,” he said, “owner of Canterlot Airways. This is my wife, Upper Crust of the Canterlot Crusts.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Upper Crust smiled.

“Quite,” Elytron said, drawing on his deepest reserves of discipline. Half an hour of tour to get them to lower their guard, two quick nips to the back of the neck from the guards, and they’re in the pod and out of my chitin. I can put up with them for that long. “Right this way, sir, ma’am,” he said, gesturing them into the hive.

Gesturing the flies into the parlor.

Footnotes:

(146) Several of which were being adapted to the new medium of television, sponsored by various manufacturers of soap and cleaning products, but Elytron had avoided being contaminated by the foul device. He let changelings watch it now and then as a reward, or withheld the privilege as punishment, but he never watched himself if he could at all help it. The cruddy novels, however, were unavoidable, given the queen’s unfortunate addiction prior to the space program. You couldn’t toss a larva into any hole in the hive without the little twerp landing on three of the things.

(147) The "glory work" consisted of sitting in security booths, checking paperwork for ponies going in and out of the complex, and taking an occasional trot or flutter around the place to make sure nopony was stealing the buildings. Any guard with ideas or curiosity tended to get promoted out of the job, which contributed to the steady bleeding of the cream of Elytron’s corps. If Elytron ever got out to Muck Lake, he would be sorely disappointed.

(148) Which proved to Elytron’s satisfaction, if no one else’s, that things could always get worse.

(149) This refers not to any room in the palace at Canterlot or any government agency, but to a certain portion of alicorn anatomy.

(150) The resulting discussion and direct comparison of techniques and experiments became a regular practice among the infiltrators, whose efficiency went up 20% within the month and even higher as time went on. Elytron might have been commended had he done this on purpose; instead he got a quiet black mark in Chrysalis’s mental ledger for shirking his assigned duties.

(151) And yea, though it was but a plain vanilla muffin baked by a casual cook rather than a master chef, Derpy still got her muffin, and it was good. And for some ponies that’s all it takes to call it a happy ending.

(152) This is not quite the truth. The truth is, Elytron wanted to count to a hundred to prevent himself from doing what he really wanted to do with these two obnoxious unicorns.

(153) Actually the teacher had said, “That is why we can’t rely on fear to keep the hive fed.” Elytron, like almost everybody of any species, heard and remembered mostly what he wanted to.

(154) This wasn’t really a lie. There were some quite extraordinary caves which the hive had left mostly untouched, except for windows to let in sunlight in certain caves and extra glowing crystals or luminescent goo in others to enhance the natural beauty. Although Elytron was just as immune to beauty as he was to pity, he at least knew he ought to find such things beautiful. Thus he visited them on an irregular basis and knew the most efficient path to lead the ponies through on their tour. The third most popular such beauty site, as it happened, lay right next to the currently underpopulated feeding pods, which were about to get two new guests.

---

Cherry Berry banked her biplane and began her final approach to the rough-paved runway at Horseton Space Center. The visit back to Ponyville hadn’t been as relaxing as she’d hoped, what with half the town holding a parade in her honor and the other half giving her the cold shoulder for being a “changeling collaborator.” She’d spent three days on vacation, and the only times she’d actually relaxed aside from sleep came in the cockpit of her airplane.

She’d been shocked to notice the leaves on the trees beginning to change color. When she’d left Ponyville to find some space program willing to take on an earth pony pilot, Winter Wrap-Up had just finished. Half a year and more had gone by filled with one thing after another, with construction and design and testing and brief, exciting (terrifying) rocket flights. Now here it was, only a couple of weeks until Nightmare Night, and then the Running of the Leaves, and then Winter Ramp-Up and Hearth’s Warming.

There was a thought; she needed to get Warner von Brawn and Goddard the Griffon together to discuss the effect of cold weather on the rockets. Horseton would never have much in the way of snowfall, but there would be nights when it got vaguely close to freezing, and Cherry Berry knew that kind of weather would damage magic engines and any liquid-cooled motors.

On the other hoof, Baltimare and the entire Horseshoe Bay got considerably colder in winter than the Hayseed Swamps, so if cold weather made no-go conditions for flight, then the Equestria Space Agency would be slowed down, too. Which suited Cherry Berry just fine. Twilight Sparkle had announced a launch for ten days from now. Chrysalis had responded by announcing Mission Eleven's launch scheduled for eight days from now. It was crystal clear that whichever rocket actually launched first would put the first mare in orbit of Equus.

Which, darn it, is going to be ME, she thought.

Cherry was pondering the benefits of a little white lie to encourage Twilight into an excess of caution about cold-weather launches when the ear-splitting shriek from somewhere on the ground blasted into her and through the plane.

In retrospect, the shriek itself didn’t really shake the plane; it only felt that way because Cherry Berry’s hoof jiggled the flight stick when the loud cry of outrage ripped through her. She barely had presence of mind to abort her landing and bank hard to port as practically every changeling in the space center took flight, rushing straight away from the administration building in all directions- including directly across the runway, because of COURSE they would.

As she brought the plane around for another approach, a number of changelings fell into formation, generally behind her. A couple actually formed up beside her, including Dragonfly. “What was that?” Cherry shouted over the wind of flight.

“The queen’s really upset!” Dragonfly shouted back. “When she’s this upset, even dumb changelings know to make themselves scarce!”

Cherry Berry checked her mirrors, glanced at the skies around her, and said, “And swarming around my plane counts as scarce?”

“It’s fine!” Dragonfly shouted. “So long as you’re between her and us!”

Cherry Berry had heard stories about the Prench Foreign Legion and its generals’ favorite tactic, Operation Equine Shield(155). “You mean, so long as mine is the head she bites off!”

“Exactly!” Dragonfly nodded, grinning a very befanged grin.

Grumbling, Cherry Berry shook her head, finished her turn, and managed to get the plane on the runway without striking or running over anypony.

Once on the ground and out of her plane, Cherry Berry became the focus of attention. The changelings who had fled in terror of their queen were regathering, mostly hiding behind her plane or various buildings. The construction ponies(156) faced her on the other side, all shouting questions about the scream, what it meant, and whether or not they could claim overtime for the work stoppage. Marked Knee and a couple of his goat assistants ran up from the research and development buildings, followed by Double Face and a handful of unfortunate earth pony tourists who had been in the Fun Machine enjoying freefall indoors when the alarm went up.

Cherry Berry didn’t bother to answer questions. She plowed through the ponies in front of her and ignored them as they filed in behind her, mingling with the changelings that leap-frogged from cover to cover. Before long she had every living being in the space center, or so it seemed, following her like a cult following its prophet through the wilderness, murmuring in quiet respect.

Cherry Berry was relieved that the inarticulate screams and exclamations still coming from the administration building were of only normal volume, and not the Princess-Luna-In-a-Temper level of loud the first shriek had been. Half the windows, including all of them around Chrysalis’s office cum throne room, had been blown out. Occupant, trembling, stood guard by the main doors, all the regular guards having joined the crowd of trembling bugs in Cherry’s wake.

“What’s going on?” Cherry Berry asked.

Occupant began, “Well-“

“BU DEE BI DIP DIP DAH!”

“-we just got a call on the tele-whatzis from-“

“RIDDIE RI DIP DOOP DER DARR!”

“-from the Hive, and it seems-“

“I CAN’T CRIPPIN RIP RAZZIN FRAZZ LUFFA WUFFLE DAH!”

“-to have upset Her Majesty beyond the-“

“WHADDA DUM-DUM DIDDLE DER WHIPPLE WHICK WHEE!”

“-beyond the ability to speak,” Occupant finished between Chrysalis’s nonsensical rantings.

“What did-“ Cherry tried to ask.

“BY ALL GUM DIM SUFFA FRAGGLE RACKIN FRACKIN DRRRRM!”

“Dunno!” Occupant said quickly. “I left the room!”

“IMA RIDDLE RIP NIDDLE!”

“Well, I’m-“ Cherry timed her words to fall into Chrysalis’s pauses for breath. “-going to find out.” Pause, gibberish. “You stay here-“ Pause, gibberish. “-and keep everypony-“ Pause, gibberish. “-out. She-“ Pause, gibberish. “-probably won’t hurt me.”

Occupant saluted smartly(157) as Cherry Berry stepped past him.

Cherry Berry opened the door, knocking only after she’d had a look inside. Aside from the windows, nothing seemed broken except the crystal array that had once been the telepresence communications device. Chrysalis had apparently run out of even nonsense words and had settled for banging her head on her desktop.

For a moment Cherry considered calm words and soothing tones. Then she remembered who she was dealing with, and she decided to go for blunt talk instead. “So, what happened?” she asked.

Chrysalis stopped in mid-headthump, finally noticing the presence of the blonde-maned pink pony. She took a deep breath, but this time actual words came out. “HE DUMPED THE BITS OUT ONTO THE PILE!” she shouted.

“Context please?” Cherry Berry asked.

“HE DUMPED THE BUCKING BITS ONTO THE TREASURE PILE!” Chrysalis shouted even louder. “HE DIDN’T EVEN THINK TO COUNT THEM!”

“And that’s bad,” Cherry stated as a fact.

“YES, IT’S BAD!” Chrysalis propped herself upright and glared at Cherry. “IT MEANS WE CAN’T REFUND THEIR MONEY!”

Out of the multitude of questions, Cherry chose the simplest. “Whose money?”

“THOSE BUCKING CANTERLOT SNOBS WHO WANT TO TAKE A JOYRIDE INTO SPACE!”

“Oh.” Cherry Berry flopped back onto her rump, having instantly recognized the significance of joyride into space and can’t refund their money.

“I think you’d better tell me… no, don’t tell me,” she said after she suppressed her own urge to scream nonsense words(158) and bang her head into solid objects. “Go do whatever relaxes you while I get some changelings to rush Goddard and von Brawn back here from Appleoosa. It sounds like we’ve got a mission-critical emergency on our hooves thanks to… that idiot.”

She didn’t know yet who that idiot was, but if some changeling at the hive had taken a bunch of money from rich ponies who wanted to buy a ticket to ride the rocket, then no matter the circumstances, they deserved the name idiot. And possibly much worse.

No tourist ponies were going to take the first orbital mission away from her.

Footnotes:

(155) Operation Equine Shield: have the foreign ponies defend the indefensible fort and slow down the enemy while the generals, their staffs, and their toadies save their own skins. If the fort holds out long enough for Prench reinforcements to come and relieve it, this is a bonus… but by no means a requirement.

(156) The last element of the flight hangar, the tall air traffic control tower, was almost complete. An expanded astronaut training center, with the rigging required to practice using Twilight Sparkle’s new EMU (Equine Maneuvering Unit) spacesuit thruster backpack, was about midway to completion. Work had begun on an expanded tracking center, not only to track and communicate with spaceships even on the other side of the globe but to add new computers designed by the minotaurs which could actually plan maneuvers rather than just chart trajectories. Next on the agenda after that was an expansion of the vehicle assembly building (VAB). The joke in Horseton was that only princesses would live to see the day the space center was actually finished.

(157) Secure in the knowledge that absolutely noling wanted to get past him. Only intense loyalty, a profound sense of duty, and a desire to get the queen to sign off on the purchase of a certain collectible set of salt and pepper shakers kept him there at all.

(158) Actually Cherry wouldn't have used many nonsense words, as such. As she'd demonstrated before, when sufficiently provoked she retained her language skills. Indeed, her vocabulary expanded under stress... and got much, much bluer..

---

Travel by sky-chariots drawn by pegasi was safe, but often tiring, for non-flyers like minotaurs and elderly griffons.

Travel by airborne freight carts pulled by changelings untrained for the task, in a tearing hurry, was… much more tiring.

As Chrysalis related the full story of Elytron’s folly, Cherry Berry noticed Goddard’s feathers were more rumpled than usual. Von Brawn’s apparent calm rose less from his imperturbability and more from the adrenalin crash after hours of gripping the rails of the flying cart in stark terror. The other three at the table- Chrysalis, Occupant, and herself- hadn’t had to travel any distance, but each showed varying levels of stress and fatigue from the situation that Elytron had dumped on their backs.

“I don’t see the problem,” Occupant said once Chrysalis finished. “Why don’t we just keep the money and the ponies both?”

“Because that would be wrong,” Cherry Berry replied firmly.

“Because that would be stupid,” Chrysalis corrected her. She put on a wide-eyed innocent look and sang a song of sarcastic acting: “Why, hello there, Princess Celestia! Why yes, we do have two of your ponies here from Canterlot, you know, your capital city that we tried to conquer and enslave? They showed up with a bunch of money, and they were a little bit annoying, so we’re keeping both them and the money. You don’t mind, do you? Oh, you’re coming with your army to turn the hive into a mile-deep crater? That’s nice! Looking forward to the nice chat! I’ll bring the tea and crumpets! Ta-ta!”

Occupant slumped. “You beat Celestia before,” he replied sullenly.

“Tell me, my dear servant,” Chrysalis said smoothly, “do you happen to have another exceptionally powerful yet gullible unicorn who is so lovestruck he could feed you and a hundred of your siblings for a month straight on a single day’s supply? No? Let me know when you find one, and maybe I’ll consider a rematch with the mare who moves the sun.”

“Just saying it’s an option,” Occupant muttered.

“So let me get this straight,” Goddard said slowly. “Your chief guard took the money of two ponies who said it was to pay for a flight into space. He then put it in the general pool without counting it. In the meantime, the two ponies are on ice, fully expecting a rocket ride when they wake up.”

“Elytron was so very proud of the fact that he never actually promised them a space flight,” Chrysalis growled. “When I get my hooves on that fossilized brain-dead-“

“Any court of law you care to name,” Goddard continued, “even a griffon court- especially a griffon court, come to that- will call acceptance of payment as acceptance of contract.” His feathers ruffled a little bit more, and he ran his talons through them, trying to smooth them down. “And since he was technically your regent at the time, they can argue and win the point that he had authority to make such a contract.”

“But we can’t do it!” Chrysalis shouted. “Even if we wanted to, we can’t cram three ponies into one capsule! And we wouldn’t do it for Mission Eleven anyway! We agreed on this- nothing but orbit! Nothing that risks orbit!” She threw up her hooves and finished, “But that means we’re in breach of contract! We can’t refund the money because we don’t know how much it is! And Canterlot ponies LOVE to sue! And Canterlot ponies would ESPECIALLY love to sue into the GROUND the species that tried to CONQUER THEIR CITY!”

Goddard nodded. “Sure looks that way,” he agreed.

“Then we’re bucked,” Cherry Berry moaned.

Chrysalis, Cherry, Goddard and Occupant all slumped in their seats. von Brawn, who had been slumped all this time, straightened up.

“Why?” he asked quietly.

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “Have you been asleep, doctor?” she asked pointedly.

“No.” von Brawn straightened up a bit more, still looking travel-worn but no longer completely out of it. “Why are we in breach of contract? Did these ponies ever specify that it had to be the very next rocket? Did they, in fact, set a deadline at all?”

“No,” Chrysalis breathed. “Or he didn’t mention one, anyway. The idiot.”

“Find out,” von Brawn insisted. “Be absolutely sure. But I’m willing to bet they didn’t, from Mr. Elytron’s story as you tell it. And if they didn’t, that means we can launch their flight on our own timetable, not theirs. In which case Mission Eleven is not directly in jeopardy.”

Long, soft sighs of relief echoed through the conference room. A weight lifted from the shoulders of pony, changeling, and griffon.

“We’ll still have to figure out some way of getting them up and down,” Goddard pointed out. “And we can’t leave them in a cocoon indefinitely.”

“We shouldn’t have them in a cocoon at all,” Cherry Berry remarked pointedly.

“What truly galls me,” Chrysalis muttered, “is that Elytron thought he was being clever and imaginative. He used those words at least three times in his report.”

Cherry Berry ignored the queen. “Can we just build a bigger capsule?” she asked. “I know the yaks are working on one. And we were going to need one ourselves, eventually.”

Goddard shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “but it’d weigh a lot more, and it’d require an entirely new series of rocket motors and fuel tanks sized to match. I suppose we could stick it on top of our existing rockets and get a launch, but I’m worried about drag issues if we try that. We need wind tunnel and simulator tests on that.”

“Probably easier to just build a separate crew module,” von Brawn rumbled. “We might even be able to re-use cabin gear from personal airships. I know some Canterlot unicorns have the things. Expensive as Tartarus, though.”

Goddard nodded. “That would be simpler in the short term,” he said. “But then the question is, can we bring it back safely from orbit?” He rose from his chair and went to the chalkboard, sketching out two spaceships- one a simple capsule plus heat shield, the other a capsule, heat shield and a canister in between. “The ablative heat shield protects the capsule from atmospheric heating during reentry,” he said, pointing to the first sketch. “But the longer a ship is, the more likely parts of it will stick out beyond the protection of the shockwave and thus be exposed to plasma, either directly or dragged in behind the ship. Too much exposure, too much heat… and boom.” He slapped the chalk against the second sketch hard enough to break the chalk.

“And that’s a phenomenon we don’t know well enough to trust the simulator,” von Brawn rumbled. “The only way to find out if we can do it is to fly it.”

Instantly Chrysalis and Cherry Berry looked at one another. “Obviously,” Cherry said in a firm voice to make it clear that it ought to be obvious even if it wasn’t, “we don’t do this flight test with the paying passengers.”

“Indeed not,” von Brawn agreed. “Not if we want repeat customers, anyway.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Chrysalis murmured.

“No,” Cherry Berry said firmly.

“I know, Celestia wouldn’t approve,” Chrysalis acknowledged testily. “Just let me enjoy my daydream, why don’t you? If you’d met more rich Canterlot snobs, you’d understand.”(159)

“Anyway,” Cherry Berry pressed on, “that means a test flight before the paid flight. And we can’t put off the paying customers for very long.”

“It looks like Mission Eleven is affected after all.” Goddard modified his second sketch. “Obviously we won’t have our passenger cabin ready in a week, but we should be able to put something of about the right size and weight together to test the flight dynamics.”

“We’ve got a Science Jr. in from Twilight Sparkle,” von Brawn rumbled. “If it were a capsule, it might just fit two ponies inside.”

Goddard shook his head. “For tourists? No, no,” he said. “A bit longer, I think. Maybe if we add a service bay.” He smiled and added, “We’d want to do that anyway. The service bay is heavier and more heat and crash resistant. And we can put some goo cans in it and get extra science data from orbit.”

“What happened,” Chrysalis asked sharply, “to ‘nothing that gets in the way of orbit’?”

“Your chief guard happened,” Goddard replied just as sharply. “So we have to adapt. A heavier ship, but a more direct flight path.”

“We’ll be using the Terrier for the final-stage engine,” von Brawn added. “That’s a ton lighter than the Swivel, which means we can double the last-stage fuel load. We’ll also get rid of all the solid fuel except for the two Thumper boosters on the first stage. With no distracting mission tasks, that means more delta-V and a straighter vector. I think the margin is solid.”

“Do we get orbit that way?” Cherry Berry pressed.

“I’ll have to verify the numbers,” von Brawn replied, “but I’m confident.”

“Of course I’ll be flying it,” Chrysalis put in.

Cherry Berry blinked.

Occupant, Von Brawn, and Goddard all leaned their chairs back from the table.

“This is an untested design,” Cherry finally managed to say. “Mission Eleven will be going faster and coming down heavier than anything we’ve flown yet. Unproven and high-risk. That means I fly it.”

“It’s not substantially different than Mission Nine except for the payload,” Chrysalis said. “And the capsule will only be, what? Half a ton heavier? Less?”

“That’s still twenty-five percent heavier,” Cherry replied. “And the Terrier isn’t flight-tested, your underwater test notwithstanding. Unproven. My flight.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Chrysalis insisted. “My flight.”

“You’re lying,” Cherry Berry remarked.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. “How can you tell, pony?”

“Have you ever noticed Occupant?” Cherry replied. “When we’re arguing his ear-fins perk up until you start lying. Then they droop.”

Chrysalis shot a nasty look at her subject, who hung his head, drooping ears and all, in embarrassment.

“You know this flight isn’t safe,” Cherry Berry continued. “And I know I’ve heard you say at least once, ‘I wish we could have a flight where the phrase got away with it didn’t apply.’” The pilot pony glared at the queen and asked, “So how come?”

“Because I'm the queen and I said so,” Chrysalis grumbled. “So… my flight.”

“You got to be first in space,” Cherry Berry said. “You’re going to be the first mare on the moon. Let somepony else get first in something in space. First orbit is mine. My flight.”

“My flight.”

“My flight!”

“Mine!”

“MINE!”

“Perhaps,” von Brawn said, shoving the word between the two bickering pilots, “we should go to training and see how that plays out.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry pushed away from the conference table, walking out the door side by side, snarling, “My flight,” at each other as they left.

“So,” Goddard said, getting out of his seat, “Lunchmeat here and I need to go start designing our luxury passenger can. I’m sure you won’t have any problem running training for the mission all by yourself, Occupant my boy.”(160)

Occupant groaned and held his head in his hooves.

Footnotes:

(159) Rarity (who loved visiting Canterlot) and Twilight Sparkle (who grew up there) would have argued forcefully against this stereotype. Celestia, who had spent most of the previous thousand years in the city, would have maintained a dignified silence. Luna would have subscribed to Chrysalis’s newsletter on the subject, if not for the minor enemy-of-my-little-ponies thing.

(160) When Goddard the Griffon was cheerful, it usually meant you were being dumped in the garbage wagon instead of him.

---

Simulator training for a mission had a protocol.

Under normal circumstances the lead pilot for a mission would run the simulator until she died three times or had a successful flight, at which point the backup pilot would get the simulator for one session, pass or fail.(161) Whichever pilot wasn’t in the capsule would act as cap-com during the sim, while Occupant and either von Brawn or George Bull oversaw the simulation and selected various flight scenarios, or “problems”, for the pilots to solve. Under normal conditions this protocol worked well.

Unfortunately the system hadn’t been designed for a situation in which the two lead pilots were competing for the flight. Usually the mission assignment was settled before simulations began. To make things worse, von Brawn, Bull, and the other minotaurs were either in Appleoosa with Goddard the Griffon and Dragonfly or rushing around Equestria, all trying to solve the problem of adding two passengers to a rocket system designed for a single-occupancy capsule.

This left Occupant alone in the simulators with Chrysalis and Cherry Berry, each of whom had decided to appear professional while undermining the other’s simulations. The pilots had had three turns each thus far on the day, with the results being zero orbits, two mid-launch aborts, three burn-up-on-reentries, and one successful landing from space.

Chrysalis crawled out of the capsule following the sixth simulation (burn up), snarling, “All right, I killed myself that time. I was hoping to shallow out my descent angle by inclining the capsule.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself into her more-professional-and-piloty-than-you mode. “So what else do we need to cover?”

Cherry Berry’s mouth turned up just enough to imply a smile while being able to deny that she was, in fact, smiling. “You had two problems in that scenario,” she said. “One was the mechanical fault which caused the solid fuel boosters to fall in and destroy the first stage once decoupled. You handled that well and should still have had orbit with the remaining delta-V on board.”

“And the other thing?”

“Pilot and cap-com error, technically. The verification of staging sequence checklist was never called for.” The not-quite-a-smile on Cherry’s face grew slightly less deniable. “The third stage engine ignition and the re-entry decoupler were on the same command line, due to an error by VAB crew, and it wasn’t caught. So when you hit the staging button to finish orbital burn, you instead dumped the whole stage and all its fuel, leaving you only the capsule and service assembly.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Chrysalis replied, each syllable falling with a thud on Occupant’s ears. “Well, let that be a lesson to us all,” she emphasized the last word as she stared directly at Cherry Berry, “not to become complacent with our safety checks, hmm?”

Occupant wanted to bury his head in the sand. He couldn’t tell what this was- a competition to see who was the better pilot, who was the better at cheating the simulator, or who was going to lose her temper first. Whatever it was, it wasn’t training.

“Oh, quite so,” Cherry Berry nodded. “But I thought you could use the reminder. I certainly had a wake-up call when my parachute deployed in orbit!”

“It could happen to anyone,” Chrysalis agreed. “Just like it did with me when my heat shield detached. Well, your turn for the can. Fly carefully, now!”

“Believe me,” Cherry replied, “I will.”

Occupant probably couldn’t have handled a shouting match, but he definitely couldn’t take this teeth-clenched fake pleasantry. Occupant could feel the anger and rivalry in the air. He knew Chrysalis could too, and he knew she was acting so that Cherry Berry would get the idea even if she couldn’t actually sense the emotions directly. And Cherry, knowing all this, was acting just the same as Chrysalis, as if the queen couldn’t sense the mood.

In short, the two mares were not just getting on one another’s nerves; they were stamping on those nerves with deliberate malice. That made it worst of all.

“I’m going to take a break,” he said, fluttering up from the simulation computer and over to the door. “I need some fresh air.”

The two pilots looked at one another. Their little contest, thus far, had ended in a draw, with the innocent bystander being the first one to crack. “Well,” Chrysalis said, “no point in your getting back in without him. Shall we go out?”

Before Cherry could reply, Occupant shouted, “My Queen! Miss Berry! Come quick, you need to see this!”

Footnote:

(161) On those days when Dragonfly wasn’t stuck in Appleoosa or in the R&D labs at the space center, she might get one session in the simulator when the other two pilots were done. For Mission Ten she’d got the simulator all to herself for one day. Lucky Cricket, technically fourth on the pilot list, had seen the inside of the simulator only twice, and Occupant, technically fifth on the list, was too busy helping run the simulations to fly one himself.

The canoes didn’t range as far as the eye could see, but they stretched quite a long way up and down Muck Lake. Cherry Berry counted thirty-one of them, each filled with what looked like earth ponies, although at that distance Cherry couldn’t tell whether or not there were any unicorns among them. A mere handful of pegasi guarded the sky above the line of canoes, hovering, watching.

“Close to four hundred ponies,” Chrysalis said, matching Cherry Berry’s estimate. “Probably all warriors. I have about a hundred dedicated warriors of my own on-site, and about as many more changelings I could trust to fight alongside them.” She waved a hoof at the native flotilla, dismissing it. “They’re no danger to us.”

“If that’s all of them,” Cherry replied. “They could be hiding a lot more ponies back in the jungle.”

“They could, but they aren’t,” Chrysalis replied, shaking her head. “For one thing, the swamps and jungles for twenty miles south of here are completely uninhabited except by a few monsters. We checked when we decided to build here. They came at least that far, and if they brought this many warriors that far, they wouldn’t hide them. They’d either show them all, or hide them all and attack without warning at night.” Chrysalis frowned a little at this thought. “A night attack might actually pose a danger. We’d still win, but we’d lose a lot of ‘lings and probably take a lot of damage to the facility.”

Cherry Berry tried to follow the logic, and couldn’t. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would they bring all those ponies here if not to attack us?”

“I can think of a number of reasons,” Chrysalis said, “at least if it were me giving the orders to them. But this looks like a show of force to me.”

“What?” Cherry Berry shook her head. “Why would anypony bring an army to show they could fight us, without fighting us?”

Chrysalis blinked. “This coming from the pony who managed to negotiate herself from prisoner clear up to head of my most important scheme? You really don’t see it?” Shaking her head at the innocence of ponies, she continued, “They obviously want something from us and don’t think we’re going to say-“

The education of Cherry Berry got cut short by a distant booming sound. Both mares focused their attention back on the canoes. A new vessel, a massive double-hulled ship with a sail and a deck connecting the two hulls, pushed its way through the tall grass on the southern shore and through the line of native boats.

Boom. The large ship was past the line and moving forward.

Boom. Boom. The rowers in the outrigger picked up speed.

Boom boom Boom boom Boom boom Boom…

As the outrigger sped across the water, traces of white foam rising from the double prows, something rose from the deck, sitting up on its haunches. A proud face, white framed by orange and black stripes, looked back across the water at the two mares.

“Tiger,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Mascot?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Definitely not. Trouble,” Chrysalis grunted.

As the ship drew closer, the source of the booms became clear; an immense drum on the rear of the ship. Smaller drums flanked the big bass, ponies setting up a rapid syncopated rhythm over the regular, resonant beat of the master drum. Cherry Berry’s heart raced in time to the higher-pitched drums. Everything inside her wanted to bolt and run at the sight and sound of this single vessel and its thirty or so occupants, even more than from the rest of the flotilla that waited behind them.

“Calm yourself,” Chrysalis muttered from the corner of her mouth. “Everyling is watching us. Don’t look,” she added, just barely stopping Cherry before she could turn and look at the crowd she could now hear murmuring behind the two of them. “Keep telling yourself, we are strong. We are powerful. We could sink every little boat they have without losing a single warrior. We are in control. They are coming to us. They fear us more than we fear them.”

“Is that true?” Cherry asked.

“Probably not,” Chrysalis admitted. “Now shut up.”

“Gee, thanks,” Cherry grumbled, and stood in silence as the catamaran approached. As it came close to shore, the bass drum gave a final roll, then ceased. The native ponies withdrew their paddles, and the boat coasted the rest of the way to the dock, turning just enough to bring it alongside the quay. Two ponies jumped out and wrapped ropes made of jungle vines around the pilings. Two more carefully lowered a gangplank from the boat’s deck to the dock, then kowtowed deeply as a pony with a large stone headdress stepped down the gangplank.

“Greetings from Tecnochtitlan,” the headdress-pony rumbled, deep voice speaking Equestrian with barely an accent. A few gray streaks ran through an otherwise ebony black mane, while a tiny bit of black beard dangled from the very bottom of his chin. “You may call me Calendar Wheel. I bring you the orders of our dread master, who is offended by your arrogance in profaning his sacred sky with your chariots of smoke.”

“And who is your master?” Chrysalis interrupted.

“You are not fit to hear his holy name,” Calendar Wheel replied solemnly. “All you need to know is that he demands your service in exchange for his forbearance.”

Cherry looked at Chrysalis. “How’s that again?”

“He said, do it or else,” Chrysalis replied. “So, what is it we’re supposed to do?”

“My master demands the use of your chariot of smoke,” Calendar Wheel said. “But to ensure that the vessel is worthy of his divine glory, he wishes to send an emissary ahead of him. You will take this emissary with you into the sky, and he will return and report to our master.”

“Wait a minute.” Cherry Berry set a hoof down quietly but firmly. “What you’re saying is, you want us to take a passenger into space. Or else w-“

“We accept,” Chrysalis interrupted, using one hole-riddled hoof to shove Cherry Berry back behind her.

“The emissary must fly and return within the moon,” Calendar Wheel insisted.

“Not a problem,” Chrysalis said. “As it happens, in a couple of days Miss Berry here,” she gestured at the irate pink pony next to her, “will pilot a test flight to verify our ability to carry passengers into space. Once this is accomplished, I will personally pilot the ship that carries your emissary into the skies.”

"You what? I what?" Cherry protested, only to get another shove backwards from Chrysalis.

Calendar Wheel nodded once. His little beard wiggled, marring the otherwise perfect solemnity of the moment. “This is acceptable to my master,” he said.

Chrysalis pointed to the tiger glaring at her from the deck of the catamaran. "Is that our passenger, then?"

Calendar Wheel shook his head. "No," he said. "The servant of our master only observes."

"Then you? Or who?" Cherry Berry asked.

"My master has chosen another," the Technochitlan pony said, his resonant voice betraying neither relief nor envy. "He is not as fluent as I in your language, but he can understand well enough. He is intelligent. He is loyal."

"I em expendable," a whiny voice muttered from behind the Technochitlan chief. The newcomer had obviously taken all of Calendar Wheel’s native accent in addition to his own, and possibly two or three other ponies from the areas south of Mexicolt. He stepped reluctantly around his chief, a skinny figure of a stallion, light-coated and dark-maned, wide eyes begging the world to not do frightening things to their owner.

"This," Calendar Wheel announced, "is the pony we send to the stars."

Chrysalis and Cherry Berry looked the unprepossessing pony up and down. "What's his name?" Chrysalis asked.

"My name?" the pathetic pony asked. "Hobble Jimenez."

“We shall treat him like a prince,” Chrysalis said.

“Got a particular prince in mind?” Cherry said, a ton of warning lading down her voice.

“Better still,” Chrysalis said, ignoring her lead pilot, “we shall treat him like a celebrity. We shall give him the best training, the best equipment, the best care we can provide. He shall be honored as the most important person in the facility, short of myself of course.”

Hope risked a furtive, timid appearance on Hobble’s face.

“Please don’t,” Calendar Wheel groaned. “Give him his daily bowl of gruel, ignore his whimpering, and stick him in your smoke chariot when you go.”

“And bring him back safely,” Cherry Berry added.

“Oh, yes,” said Calendar Wheel, “I suppose the master will have to have him back, after all.”

Hope fled Hobble’s face as Worry and Fear resumed their accustomed positions there.

“We can do that,” Chrysalis nodded. “We’ll stuff him into a can on launch day, send him screaming around the world so high there’s no air, bring him back in a ball of the hottest flame, dunk him in the ocean, and return him to you just barely fit to tell the tale.”

Hobble’s limp body hit the dock planks with a thump.

“Ignore him,” Calendar Wheel said, “he just does that sometimes. We leave him in your care. We shall return for him in a moon… one way or another.”

As Calendar Wheel walked back up the gangplank to the deck of the catamaran, Cherry Berry waved over one of the changelings hovering nearby. “A bucket of water,” she said, pointing a hoof at the fainted Hobble Jimenez.

One soaking later, the scrawny native pony was more or less back on his feet, looking no more bedraggled and miserable than before(162). “Misser Wheel! Misser Wheel!” he shouted as the catamaran cast off from the pier.

“Yes, Jimenez?” the chief asked wearily. “Do you have a last request?”

"Oh, don' put it like that," Hobble moaned.

Calendar Wheel shook his head, shaking the heavy stone headdress in his mane. "Can I do something for you?"

“Tha's better. Jes, jou can do something for me,” Hobble said, raising his big, mournful eyes to Calendar Wheel’s. “Please don’ let them do this to me.”

The tribal pony snorted, turned his back on the pier, and gestured to the rowers. The drumbeats struck up again, and ponies rowed to the beat, driving the ship back across Muck Lake and to the long line of canoes.

Chrysalis caught sight of Occupant, who stood not too far behind her and Cherry Berry. “Take our honored guest to the astronaut quarters,” she said. “Give him a good room. Clean him up. Get him measured for a spacesuit. Talk with Heavy Frosting about a special diet.”

“At once, my queen!” Occupant saluted, fluttering over to Hobble and gently guiding the very frightened pony towards the astronaut facility.

As the crowd of observers broke up, Cherry Berry leaned over to Chrysalis and whispered, “What’s got into you? Why did you say yes? Why did you just give up Mission Eleven for him? Since when do you give way that quickly?”

Chrysalis smiled an evil, smug little smile. “Since I got a mission I can fly that doesn’t involve putting up with spoiled, whiny Canterlot snobs.” The smile grew a little wider as she added, barely audibly, “And especially doesn’t require flying a mission where half the ship is made of cardboard and good wishes.”

With that the changeling queen sauntered off the dock past Cherry Berry, adding, “Enjoy your mission, pony. It’s all yours.”

“What? Wait a minute!” Cherry Berry ran around Chrysalis and blocked her path. “You're not making any sense! What are you talking about?”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. “Figure it out, pony,” she said. “We now have two tourist missions to fly, not one. That means I can take the flight with this Jimenez pony and leave you to play taxi driver for those rich unicorns. Which means I no longer need to take Mission Eleven. It’s all yours, and welcome to it.”

The logic, such as it was, finally sank in. “So you’re saying,” Cherry said carefully, “that you didn't want Mission Eleven for yourself? You only wanted Mission Eleven because you think we have to take turns flying?”

“Um…?” Now it was Chrysalis’s turn to look confused. “But…”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Cherry Berry said, “that I could just fly both missions? That you could wait until the tourists were taken care of before taking your next flight?”

Chrysalis didn’t say anything for about half a minute. When she did speak, it was somewhat contrite. “I just committed us all to a second tourist flight, for no money, because I was stupid,” she said. “Didn’t I, pony?”

“Do you think we can back out?” Cherry asked. “Those canoes are still out there.”

“Not without a major battle,” Chrysalis said. “Maybe if I’d said no at the start, but definitely not now.” The changeling queen frowned deeply and added, “Especially not after I sold it that strongly.”

“So.”

“So.”

Pink earth pony and black bug-pony stared at each other.

“I think it’s time we got back into the simulator.”

“Yes.”

Footnote:
(162) The only way Hobble would have looked more bedraggled and miserable would have required a swarm of very hungry carnivorous parasprites, and even then they likely would have been put off their feed by his usual appearance.

---

“SRB separation.”

“SRB separation confirmed. Looking good.”

Yeah, Cherry Berry thought. Too good.

Both Cherry and Chrysalis had thought that, with the decision made as to who would fly Mission Eleven, the simulator shenanigans would stop. Instead things had gotten worse. Cherry Berry had gotten herself killed time and again- burned up on reentry, stranded in orbit, rocket breakup on ascent, and even, on one particular simulator run, dropping the fully fueled rocket on the pad after a flight of four whole inches after mistakenly decoupling the SRBs. She’d not only killed herself that time, but about half the space center; the computers claimed that the SRBs, fully loaded and unguided, had spun and corkscrewed right into the VAB and mission control buildings, utterly destroying them.
For sanity’s sake simulations were cancelled the day before launch, and Cherry had spent the whole day in her balloon. No plane, no simulators, just a magically controlled hot-air balloon. Just Cherry, the skies, and her thoughts.

It hadn’t helped.

“First stage burnout, jettisoning. Igniting second stage.”

“Second stage ignition confirmed.”

Cherry Berry aimed the rocket a bit more towards the horizon, flattening out the trajectory. The ship responded perfectly, doing only what she wanted, nothing more. There was no tumble, no drift, no pogoing, no shimmy, nothing. The new, larger fuel tanks held together like a dream, providing the steady flow of fuel and oxidizer the engine needed.

Go wrong, Cherry Berry thought. This is too good. This is too easy. Something must go wrong. I’ll even take a light bulb burning out in one of the controls, but please, something glitch!

Nothing did. The gentle giant’s hand pressing against her back lifted her up into the black skies, higher, faster, farther, without so much as a hiccup.

“Eleven, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice rang through her earphones. “Ten seconds to MECO, mark.”

Main Engine Cut-Off; saving half of the second stage’s fuel to circularize orbit. The call meant that her ship’s apogee now extended just beyond atmosphere, according to von Brawn and his bullpen. This mission was going to aim for the lowest stable orbit, the dead minimum required to say they’d done it and collect payment from the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Roger, Horseton, awaiting mark.” Cherry Berry raised her hoof and held it over the cut-off switch.

“Three. Two. One. Mark.”

Cherry’s hoof came down before Chrysalis finished pronouncing the terminal k. “MECO.”

“Horseton confirms MECO,” Chrysalis replied. “This might be the smoothest flight we’ve ever had, Eleven. Keep up the good work.”

Cherry squirmed in the flight chair. No, no, she didn’t want smooth. Smooth coming up meant something was going to go wrong while in orbit, or while transitioning to the higher orbit required for the second contract of the flight- the decoupler test.

And if not there… then on the way down.

Mission Eleven’s construction had been based on coming as close as they could, using existing parts, to the volume required for a two-pony passenger pod. At the top, of course, was the control capsule, tried and proven, where Cherry Berry flew the ship. At the bottom of the landing stage, just above the ablative heat shield, was a robust cargo bay, built in Appleoosa to Goddard the Griffon’s dyspeptic demands. Heat tests showed it twice as durable as the command capsule itself.

But in between the cargo bay and the capsule was an Equestrian Space Agency Science Jr. Twilight Sparkle’s inspired materials-experiment setup was far and away the least heat-resistant part of the ship. A test(163) showed that the Science Jr.’s bay doors didn’t provide a total thermal seal, allowing heat and flames to penetrate the pod and destroy it.

Putting the Science Jr. on the bottom of the stack, with the heat shield attached, would have protected it from almost all the heat. Unfortunately the Science Jr. was also lightweight- too much so. When that configuration was tested in miniature in the Fun Machine, the whole ship wanted to flip over and come down nose-first, heavy capsule leading light, wind-tossed base. So, instead, the heavier cargo bay with two mystery goo pods was at the bottom, to lower the center of mass and make it easier to keep the craft stable… and leaving the Science Jr. in a position where, just possibly, the re-entry fireball could cook it to a crisp.

And if that happened… Bad Day.

It had happened in simulators four times. Each time, the ship had broken up, the parts tumbling through the atmosphere, exploding, and falling to Equus as a fine rain of tiny parts and ash.

Those same simulators, when allowed to pilot the ship themselves with no pony or changeling at the controls, said the ship could be landed safely, without even triggering the heat alarms. It could be done… in theory.

The problem was, as had been pointed out in the planning meetings, theory was all they had to go on. The simulators were only as good as Goddard and von Brawn’s guesswork. The Science Jr. might stay cool through reentry even with a ham-hoofed(164) pony at the controls… or it might go boom no matter how perfectly the pilot did her job.

Cherry Berry was literally flying into a complete unknown… with her self-confidence completely shot by all the bad simulator runs. She knew that. She knew the simulators weren’t the real thing, she knew it was all in her head… but knowing didn’t get it out of her head.

Flying isn’t fun anymore, Cherry Berry thought. In her head, a quiet, weepy voice added, I want to go home.

“Eleven, Horseton,” Chrysalis called up from hundreds of miles below and behind her. “We’re coming up on atmospheric interface, so how about we get the ship’s attitude trimmed and prepare for orbital insertion burn?”

How about we get the pilot’s attitude trimmed? Cherry thought. “Eleven copies,” she said, nosing the rocket down until the nav ball’s pointer hovered just above the artificial horizon, in line with the prograde trajectory marker. “Ready for orbital insertion.”

“Go for orbital insertion burn at your discretion,” Chrysalis replied. “You’re currently forty seconds from projected apoapsis, so you might want to get on with it.”

“Main engine ignition,” Cherry replied, reactivating the second stage and setting it to full throttle. The giant’s hand gripped the ship again, pushing the rocket into Cherry’s back and up into the stars.

“Confirm main engine start,” Chrysalis said. “Everything showing green here, Eleven. Looks like we’ll need a little bit of the third stage to get a clean orbit, though.”

Cherry Berry nodded to herself. That was the way it always played out in the simulators… well, when the simulations had even got this far. A quick glance at the fuel levels in the second stage and the velocity readout confirmed it. “Eleven copies, Horseton,” she said.

Thirty-two seconds later the second stage engine burned out, and Cherry smoothly decoupled the empty stage and ignited the final engine. Unlike the Swivel’s firm thrust, the Terrier barely nudged Cherry’s back… but it did nudge it, gradually but very efficiently boosting the rocket higher and faster.

But…

“Horseton, Eleven,” Cherry Berry said. “I notice this engine isn’t as efficient as the simulators made it out to be, over.”

“Yeah, we’re seeing that too,” Chrysalis’s voice responded. “It’s not a big difference, but… well, we’ll see. Coming up on orbit now. Throttle back to twenty-five percent and stand by for MECO.”

This time MECO would mean a stable orbit, entirely above atmosphere. Again Cherry’s hoof hovered over the engine cutoff switch. “Throttle to twenty-five and standing by, Horseton,” she said.

“Steady… steady… and MECO!”

Cherry Berry’s hoof came down. “Engine shutdown!”

“Shutdown confirmed,” Chrysalis said. “Periapse reading at just above atmospheric interface. Congratulations, Eleven; you are officially the first pony in orbit around Equus. The press wants to know how it feels?”

How does it feel? I want nothing more right now than to get down, and I’m not sure I can survive coming down, and everything is going so very right that I’m scared witless and it’s taking everything I have to not look like I’m panicking in front of Celestia knows who’s watching…

“It’s an interesting sensation,” she said, which was both truth and huge horking lie. “The thought that I could stay up here pretty much indefinitely… or at least until the snacks run out…” Pause for laughter down on the ground, good, get a chance to think of something else to say. “And, of course, the sensation of free-fall, which all ponies dream of as kids when they sleep. It feels like fulfilling my fondest dreams(165) of flight, just like a pegasus. I’m so very lucky, as an earth pony, to be able to experience this.”

There. That was enough whinnying for posterity. “But now it’s time to get back to work. Opening cargo bay doors and activating first mystery goo pod.”

“Horseton copies. We show cargo bay open, pod activated, all green.”

“Activating Science Jr. package.”

“Horseton copies. We show Science Jr. bay doors open.”

“All right.” Cherry Berry took a couple of deep breaths, looking at her displays. “I’m showing about sixty percent left in the third stage, Horseton. Where does that put us on our flight plan?”

The original flight plan had been, after verifying orbit and the first round of science gathering, to boost the ship up to an elliptical orbit with apoapsis high above the planet, open the second mystery goo pod, decelerate to drop the periapsis into the stratosphere, test the decoupler (if possible without decoupling), come down, burn the rest of the fuel in the upper atmosphere to decelerate, and then decouple (if she hadn't done so already). That had relied on the fuel tank being above seventy-five percent, though. The difference between simulated performance and actual performance was not insignificant.

“Yeah, Eleven,” Chrysalis drawled, “we’re looking at that now. Flight director suggests that we might not want to risk the higher re-entry speed in any case this mission.” She didn't say why more speed was undesirable. Cherry knew, and the press didn't need to.

An idea struck Cherry Berry. She took a moment to look it over. It would let her get straight to the part of the flight that scared her the most and get it over with, one way or another. It would keep her from looking like a coward. It would even look like another way of one-upping the other space programs. She couldn’t see any down side…

… well, aside from the possibility of being rendered into a ball of flame and soot twenty miles above the ground, but that would be there regardless.

“Horseton, Eleven,” she said.

“Go, Eleven.”

“Have you got confirmation of my having achieved orbit? Written down? Check signed?”

“We only have the verbal confirmation,” Chrysalis replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking, what if I made precisely one loop around the planet? As in, I re-enter now, and drop the capsule back down on the space center?”

“Er… stand by, Eleven.”

The channel went silent, and Cherry Berry leaned back and tried to relax and enjoy outer space. It still didn’t work. She wanted to be doing things, anything, to take her mind off the fact that, compared to both ends, the middle of her spacecraft was made of papier-mache. Give me something to do and I’m fine, but don’t just leave me up here!

After a couple of minutes Chrysalis came back on the audio channel. “Eleven, Horseton,” she said, “we’ve got written confirmation that you are in orbit and that the contracts and prizes are due us. Ad Astra says that early re-entry will not void that status.”

“Roger, Horseton.”

“As to the other thing,” Chrysalis said, “the bullpen say they can’t project an accurate landing point because the computer can’t predict atmospheric deceleration. They’ll make their best guess and get back with you for a scheduled burn in a few minutes. Once we have that, you’ll be go for reentry.”

“Copy that, Horseton.”

“Incidentally,” Chrysalis added, “where on the space center did you plan on parking your cart?”

“I was thinking next to the cafeteria,” Cherry Berry said. “You didn’t put any cherries in the snacks bin.” A blatant lie- every changeling in Chrysalis’s hive by now knew about the lead pilot’s favorite food, and packed accordingly- but it made a good joke for the press.

“You’ll do anything for a cherry, won’t you?” Cherry could hear Chrysalis smirking over the headset.

“Obviously,” Cherry replied. “After all, I’m working for you.”

“Touche,” Chrysalis chuckled. “Stand by for reentry procedures.”

And just like that, Cherry Berry thought, we pretend we’re not scared.

And Rarity never has fixed the bathroom arrangements in these spacesuits yet…

Footnotes:

(163) An expensive test, because it destroyed the Science Jr. A fun test, because it involved a flamethrower. An annoying test, because afterwards a full score of changelings had to be forcibly prevented from using the flamethrower for a new game they’d invented called Dragon Tag. It had taken threats of violence from Chrysalis to get the idea across that Horseton Space Center was not, nor would it ever be, It.

(164) Although ponies eat very little meat of any sort, they know what ham is. However, in this case “ham-hoofed” refers not to the butcher’s cut, but to the portion of the anatomy hams are attached to. To put it more plainly, the phrase implies that the pony driving, building, swinging the tool, etc. could not possibly be more clumsy if they just sat on the thing they were working with. There is, of course, a second meaning to the pony version of the phrase, but it is not fit for such a fine, upstanding, educational story such as this one.

(165) Technically Cherry Berry’s fondest dream was having a cherry tree in her backyard which flowered and gave fruit every day of the year, producing a new fruit every time she picked one, with no pits. But this was even less the time or the place than usual for that one.

Mission Eleven reentered atmosphere in the first light of dawn over the lands of the Qi Lin.

The second mystery goo pod had been activated in the uppermost reaches of Equus’ atmosphere, and then all bay doors had been closed. The final stage had been jettisoned long since, with more than half its fuel unspent, left to burn up and tumble down a bit behind the descent stage. Now Cherry Berry’s life rested in her four hooves, the heat shield, the heat resistance of the rest of the craft, and one solitary parachute at nearly its maximum rated load.

Do or die, Cherry thought. Literally.

This reentry was slightly steeper than her first, extremely shallow return from outer space. On Mission Nine she’d coasted along in the upper atmosphere for almost half the world’s circumference. This time, if all went well, she would come down in a bit less than that, crossing the Unexplored Lands and the Ocean of Storms before passing south of Las Pegasus, over the San Palomino Mountains, Macintosh Hills, and the eastern massif of the Badlands, and landing somewhere near the space center- in the Hayseed Swamps or in the ocean.

Then she’d had little enough to do; the capsule had practically flown itself. This time, with the longer structure and narrower safety zone, she’d have her hooves full.

Deep breaths. I don’t care who’s watching me on the big screen in Mission Control. I need to focus now.

The capsule began to vibrate and shiver slightly. Streamers of plasma raced past the little window over Cherry’s head. Outside, she knew, the fireball was beginning, as the thin air compressed until it could compress no more, heated to fantastic temperatures, then got pushed out of the way by the shock wave of the descending spacecraft. Bits of the material of the heat shield ablated, as it was designed to do, melting and vaporizing and carrying away heat as it joined the rush of air blasting past the ship.

Tweak. Nudge. Tiny movements. Keep the ship behind the heat shield. Watch the estimated rate of ablation on the readout.

Requests for updates from mission control. Report. Keep voice calm and steady. Keep eyes on the readouts. Drifting off retrograde attitude- tweak, push, get the ship back behind the heat shield. There. Good.

Ship beginning to decelerate. Good. Dropping into the upper stratosphere. Now the really dangerous part begins. Things get much hotter, much faster, from here on.

Warning buzzer. Flashing red light. Report it. “Reading heat alarm, external capsule section.” Wait, what? Not the Science Jr.? The capsule is reading excess heat? “Rotating capsule forty-five degrees.” That might get the overheated part of the hull out of the plasma flow. Or not.

“Horseton copies, Eleven, keep us posted.”

Tweak. Roll ship. Nudge. Center vector back on the retrograde marker.

The alarm went silent. Good. “Heat alarm deactivated. All systems green.”

“Horseton confirms all systems green. Good job. Keep it up.”

Tweak. Nudge. Midway through the stratosphere now. Everything outside the window is red. Don’t look. Keep eyes on the readouts. Heat alarm again. Capsule again, different part. “Heat alarm, external capsule. Rolling to compensate.” Roll ship. Alarm goes off. Good.

“Horseton confirms. Everything looking good. Your trajectory is looking very good for the space center, by the way. Computer currently shows you overshooting by about five hundred kilometers, but that’ll change as you slow down.”

“Thanks, Horseton. Heat alarm, external capsule. Rolling ship.” Roll again. Nudge. Tweak. Alarm goes quiet. Getting difficult to hold her behind the shield now. Ship is shaking a lot. Beginning to feel gravity return in a serious way.

“Looking good, Eleven.”

Tropopause. The air thickens up very quickly. Heat shield cooking away at a rate of one percent every ten seconds. Speed beginning to drop seriously now. Gravity has noticed me and is upset. Two heat alarms. “Heat alarm, external capsule and external science module. Rolling ship.” Roll, recenter. Please go away. You did it three times before, alarms, now please, please-

“Alarms deactivated. Two gees and rising. Speed sixteen hundred and falling fast.”

“You could have phrased that better, Eleven,” Chrysalis’s voice teased. “The press is listening.”

“Yes, but I’m not a queen. I’m not allowed to say booger.”

“And don’t you forget it, Eleven. We show the fireball dissipating.”

Cherry Berry’s higher mental functions fully reasserted themselves. She rolled the ship so she could see the ground through the window. The eastern end of the San Palominos, with the green lands of central Mexicolt to the south. A quick glance at altitude, speed and angle of descent, and some mental guesswork, told her she was going a bit too fast.

With the heat shield showing an ablation rate of zero on the gauges, Cherry Berry turned the ship sideways, perpendicular to her trajectory. It was like hitting a wall. The gee meter hit a bit over five times the force of gravity… and then dropped off, as the ship finished the turn, coming round nose first in its descent.

This would be nice if I had wings, Cherry Berry thought. As it is, no. She tried to pull the ship back around. Nothing doing. Aerodynamics were in full control, and the electrically powered reaction wheels spun to maximum deflection only to get the nose about forty degrees off straight-ahead, no more.

And then, as she rolled the ship again, a glimpse.

“Horseton, Eleven,” she said. “I can see the space center! I see the islands off the south cape of Muck Lake. I think I can pick out the VAB building.”

“That’s good news, Eleven,” Chrysalis said. “We can’t see you yet. Our plot now shows you falling into the Hayseed Swamps a bit short of us, though.”

“Oh.” Yeah. The faffing around trying to turn the ship after her braking maneuver had cost her forward momentum. Not that she hadn’t needed to shed some, but… “I’ve got the ship’s nose forward,” she said. “I’m going to try to get a little bit of lift, stretch out the flight as long as I can. I should get pretty close.”

“Don’t risk the ship over it, Eleven,” Chrysalis replied. “You’ve already done very well getting this close. We show your speed three-ninety meters per second at nine kilometers altitude.”

“Confirmed, Horseton,” Cherry Berry said. “I’ll pop the chute at four thousand meters or when my trajectory goes vertical.”

“Good enough, Eleven. Welcome home.”

I’m not home yet, Cherry thought, but her heart disagreed. She’d come through the fireball on a ship with kindling and straw in the middle, and she was still alive. In fact, the science module had barely presented an issue.

That was something to discuss with the scientists later. For now, this minute, she was alive, and flying- well, falling, but falling in a guided way. She had a little control left before she released the parachute, and she used it, holding the nosecone up just a little, trying to balance between generating lift and losing speed.

It was, of course, a losing battle, but Cherry fought it to the end. Every three seconds meant a kilometer closer to the space center, ten seconds a kilometer closer to the ground. Then, four seconds per kilometer closer, eight seconds per kilometer down. The ship slowed, her control lessened, her airspace shrank. She fought, nudged and begged for lift, until finally, at fifty-two hundred meters elevation, her trajectory crossed the forty-five degree threshold from vertical to horizontal. She nosed forward briefly for the last bit of forward momentum she could squeeze out of the ship…

… and then, as promised, at four thousand meters she pulled the ship vertical and popped the chute.

“Chute deployed,” she said. “That’s all I could get. How close am I?”

“You’re coming down in a hay-pasture about midway between Horseton and the space center,” Chrysalis said. “We have retrieval changelings on the way now. Excellent work, Eleven.”

The chute deployed fully, giving Cherry one last hard pull as she slowed down, and then there was nothing left for her to do but drift down and think.

I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.

The retrieval team found the craft in the hayfield as expected, tipped on its side. The landing had been gentle, but the freshly mown field was just uneven and boggy enough that the ship had landed a little off-center and continued that way until it was flat on the grass stubble.

One thing, one final thing, had gone wrong after all; the ship had fallen hatch-down, trapping Cherry inside.

On the other hoof, Lucky Cricket(166) observed as he motioned the rest of the retrieval team to descend, it showed off the CSP’s banner quite well lying like this.

Now if only Miss Berry could get out and plant a proper flag…

MISSION 11 REPORT

Mission summary: Achieve orbit; collect scientific data from upper atmosphere; test stack decoupler in orbit; test flight and reentry dynamics of Science Jr. in preparation for future passenger flight

Pilot: Cherry Berry

Flight duration: 96 min. 24 sec.

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: Orbit

Conclusions from flight: Heat is an issue, but we can manage it.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

Footnote:

(166) Dragonfly, at that moment, was in Saddle Arabia with the main retrieval team. Not knowing when or where Cherry would come down, she’d been stationed on the other side of the world, just in case. This left Lucky Cricket, who normally would have had that job, back at base and ready to assemble a scratch retrieval crew on zero notice, which he did.

Author's Note:

Wow. This took much, much longer to get done than I expected. It's been a busy summer.

First and foremost, a reminder: I have a Patreon. Donors so far have been kind enough to say, "Write what you want," so what little time and energy I've had to spare has focused on this project. However, I've had requests for certain non-pony things, so it might be a while before another CSP chapter comes out. Of course, if you want to change that... https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Anyway, on to the writing.

One of the stall-points was the fact that I couldn't remember if I'd given the chief changeling guard a name. Possibly I did back at the beginning, in one of the drafts that got eaten by a power outage. But now he's Elytron, and he's a thick-headed guard promoted beyond his competency.

Chrysalis' rant is all me. If I'm seriously upset and in a situation where profanity isn't an option (especially the golf course) that's how I talk. It's funny as hell when it's not me.

Jet Set and Upper Crust were always going to be the first pony tourists. For VIP flights, however, my first choice was going to be (believe it or not) Princess Luna. And then I was reminded of Bill Dana and Jose Jimenez, an act which was regrettable and forgettable for its racial stereotype... except for Jose's time as the most reluctant astronaut ever, which shows Jose less as a Hispanic immigrant stereotype and more as an intelligent, imaginative man in a job that he hates. It would have been better without the ethnic razzing, but it still deserves to be remembered and, yes loved. But ONLY the astronaut bits.

So... Hobble Jimenez, a less-than-willing servant of... well, of a being A. K. Yearling knows all too well. Who, in addition to feline lieutenants, has whole tribes of native ponies at his beck and call.

Cherry Berry is a big dose of Mary Sue; it's kind of unavoidable when you need an Indispensable Competent Person in a cast of screwballs. However, the big difference between her and the standard Mary Sue is, there is actual good reason for other characters to like, admire, respect, and obey her. That said, I thought it was time to show that she's not perfect.

Chrysalis might have been stupid about "You take X mission, so I MUST take Mission X+1", but if Hobble hadn't happened along and she'd taken Cherry's suggested solution, Chryssy would go four missions without flying (#9, #11 and the tourist mission flown by Cherry, #10 by Dragonfly). So she might have something there after all.

Reentry heat issues in 1.1 (now 1.3) of KSP still have me baffled. I did not have tons of failures in simulation; I tested the design once in sandbox with a Level Five pilot, then ran it once in the CSP game in progress, and it worked as you see it in the story. Cherry opts for an early re-entry because, to be blunt, I got antsy when I was flying the mission in-game. My whole focus was: will this kill the pilot? Will the game let me revert to start after orbit? I was impatient to get to the important bit (reentry) and so rushed things, and all of that anxiety went into the writeup you've just read.

I'm planning an interlude showing a vital part of Equestrian Space Agency Flight Six, which takes place two days after Mission Eleven and (spoiler alert) puts Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash into the lead in the space race. They do something special, and something which is vital for the next full chapter, which will focus on training three tourists to be spam-in-a-can while Chrysalis and Cherry Berry do the actual important sciency astronauty things.

Comments

[Fireheart 1945]

Glad to see this update once more. And hopefully Elytron's mistake does not end the program (probably won't because storyline will require it keeps going, but interested in how it turns out).

[Georg]

(On the woes of IQ differentiation)
Com Bug: Horseton, we have a problem. A bunch of the changeling workers are holding a demonstration in front of the hive, waving signs and chanting. Well, we think they're chanting. They could just be singing showtunes.
Chrysalis: So what do they have written on the signs?
Com Bug: We're not sure. We've sent the protesters a couple of dictionaries and some new paint.
Chrysalis: (deep sigh) Announce that we're sending a Fun Machine to the hive next month, and that everybug who exceeds their work quota will be entered in a lottery to ride in it. Oh, and up their work quotas by 20%.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Huh. Funny, I was just thinking of this story earlier today. Always good to see more of it.

Ah, space tourism. Those two are a bit ahead of schedule, but at least they're paying well. And hopefully Rarity can sort out the suits' waste elimination issue before Señor Jiminez goes up. As for the hand-tailed dog thing behind the man, I have to wonder if Chrysalis isn't the only one who's thought of trying to grab control of the moon by actually going there. I can only imagine what the ESA is going to think should they hear about that contract.

Great work building up the tension during the mission itself. Definitely looking forward to more, especially with that teaser. (Also, I think you forgot the second half of footnote 158. Well, the first footnote 158.)

[Kris Overstreet]

7525231 Footnotes fixed (I hope).

[D48]

This was very good outside the minor footnote issue FanOfMostEverything already mentioned. The others have already basically said everything I wanted to say, so I'll just say that the shenanigans at the hive made me laugh and I'm looking forward to seeing the dark side of the space race in the interlude.

[Scigatt]

I'm planning an interlude showing a vital part of Equestrian Space Agency Flight Six, which takes place two days after Mission Eleven and (spoiler alert) puts Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash into the lead in the space race.

I'm thinking either orbital EVA or rendezvous, unless the ESA has mastered remote spaceflight control.

[PiMan]

fifty-two hundred kilometers elevation

Pretty sure she's much lower than that here. I think you meant metres.

[Razzy]

Welp, that went well. But it speaks volumes when a changeling who sees ponies as food is nicer to them than the ponies themselves.

Nuuuuuuu, Chryssie must win the discs race!

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

And here I thought the non-cursing was:

[Kris Overstreet]

7526524 Rrgh, yes, fixing it now. I finished the chapter in a 4500-word rush on Monday and did only a quick editing pass on Tuesday.

[PiMan]

Before reading the footnote, I thought ham hooved referred here to the colour of Cherry's hooves.

[Booster Spice]

Wouldnt it be safer to keep the knobs in the thermal crash absorbing cocoons when canned up? They seem to have all the life support stuff already included?

[Kris Overstreet]

7527442 First, consider that without the happy-dream-juice inside a changeling cocoon is not a fun place to be. The passengers would be less than satisfied.

Second, no way would a cocoon be rated safe for re-entry. You'd still need to build a durable habitat to put them in, and if you've got that habitat, why bother with the cocoons?

[Born-From-Black-Lightnin]

I'll have to read this later. I've read a few coments and it seems like people like it. I hope I do too. But this right here seems to say that I will.

Together, Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, and a horde of brave-but-dumb changelings will make world history... or, more likely, they'll make a lot of really big explosions.

I have a felling that I'm going to enjoy this. But not right now. I have to catch up to several other stories first.

-BFBL

[Latrans]

7527477
A little late on the reply here (was brushing up on current CSP events) but it's occurred to me that a maintained cocoon would be the ideal long-term arrangement for deep space travel. Changelings maintaining the pods get all the emotion they can stand while ponies get a form of suspended animation that won't burn through resources like food.

Of course, I suspect that level of travel is going to be rather outside the scope of our current story.

[BlueNinja]

We must set an example to the lesser ponies.

I can't wait to see how epically bad this goes.

The first option- sticking them in the pods until someone asked about them- ran counter to standing orders, worse luck.

Just "forget" those orders, stick them in the pods, and send a routine report to Chryssie.

Here is a LOT of money. It will probably buy a lot of space.

... I didn't know it was possible to fail an IQ test.

Derpy still got her muffin, and it was good. And for some ponies that’s all it takes to call it a happy ending.

... Nope, too easy.

including directly across the runway, because of COURSE they would.

Bird strike!

No tourist ponies were going to take the first orbital mission away from her.

Don't you still have, like, a half dozen Fleas sitting around gathering dust?

and got much, much bluer..

Period, or ellipsis?

“Not if we want repeat customers, anyway.” “Now there’s an idea,”

I support Chryssie in this matter.

Luna would have subscribed to Chrysalis’s newsletter on the subject

Ha!

Smooth coming up meant something was going to go wrong while in orbit, or while transitioning to the higher orbit required for the second contract of the flight- the decoupler test.

If Cherry has a flight where nothing goes wrong, does that mean she trips and breaks a leg after getting out of the pod?

A fun test, because it involved a flamethrower.

Spaceballs the Flamethrower?

[mastermenthe]

I have read this chapter, Amazing writing!

[Bahamuttone]

cherry tree in her background which flowered

Hmm maybe backyard would be better...

[Kris Overstreet]

8652751 Given the character involved, I plead Freudian slip on that one.

[Hermaeus Xerxes]

Chrysalis wanted only the smartest changelings working at the space center, which meant every time some project required more workers, the average IQ of the changelings back in the Badlands dropped by a measurable amount.

Dear God... The space program changlings are the smartest... How do they function?!

[Strange quark 42]

I laughed so hard when I realized that hobble(spelling?) jimenez was a reference to jose jimenez

[Kris Overstreet]

8653991 You'll notice they haven't conquered Equestria yet...

[Axel Azabash]

As a KSP player, I’m really enjoying this. Can’t help but analize every design and think how I would try to solve the contracts myself. And really, changelings feel like kerbals in this fic. Good job and fly safe.

[Zaten the Changeling]

For one thing, the sky-chariot was drawn not by the two pegasi as per standard, nor the team of four that the enormous pile of luggage would have justified, but by a single pony- the grey cross-eyed mailmare who visited twice a week, Wossername. Despite her obvious exhaustion, the unicorn couple in the chariot lifted not one hoof to help as the pegasus unharnessed herself, opened a side-door to let them leave the chariot, and then began hauling one trunk and suitcase after another off the tailgate of the chariot onto the rocky desert floor.

DERPY HOOVES STRIKES AGAIN!

[Zaten the Changeling]

8719643
As a SimpleRockets mobile player, I try replicating as many designs as possible from this story with the limited selection of parts and stuff, and with it being 2D as well. I love watching Kerbal Space Program videos though. I will love this story for a !ong time.
YEET

[tsaukpaetra]

Jimenez was amazing! Thanks for that reminder!

[ookacha]

UUUUUUUHHHH

Chrysalis’s office cum throne room

... What does this mean?

[Kris Overstreet]

8976604 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum

[TheExplodingChipmunk]

Ah, to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Not an easy thing to do. By the way, you need to forget you are falling when doing it or it will not work.

[ShadowLDrago]

“My word, Jet dear,” the female of the pair whined, “what an ugly location this is. Do you really think that parvenu princess can be trusted?”

These 2. Great.

[Blank-Page]

Cherry Berry was relieved that the inarticulate screams and exclamations still coming from the administration building were of only normal volume, and not the Princess-Luna-In-a-Temper level of loud the first shriek had been. Half the windows, including all of them around Chrysalis’s office cum throne room, had been blown out. Occupant, trembling, stood guard by the main doors, all the regular guards having joined the crowd of trembling bugs in Cherry’s wake.

I feel like that isn't right.

[Dive Bomb]

Chrysalis’s office cum throne room........
.........
..............
interesting

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

“We can do that,” Chrysalis nodded. “We’ll stuff him into a can on launch day, send him screaming around the world so high there’s no air, bring him back in a ball of the hottest flame, dunk him in the ocean, and return him to you just barely fit to tell the tale.”

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=lyrics+please+mr+custer+i+don%27t+want+to+go&&view=detail&mid=FED4656A82F3E96AFC8AFED4656A82F3E96AFC8A&rvsmid=DFEAA3AA57F655E57726DFEAA3AA57F655E57726&FORM=VDRVRV

[Skittlebug]

9352515
Bing.

[Rhombicosidodecahedron]

office cum throne room

[I_am_catkid]

I sound a lot like that whenever I'm startled or I've stubbed my toes.

[computerneek]

Funny... I recently landed a pod just like that...

Well, except for the heavier science load (two mystery goo, two barometers, two thermometers, in the cargo bay), parachutes (4 radial drogue, 2 radial MK 16s), and fly-by-wire aviation hub on the tip (makes pilot experience irrelevant). Oh, and it wasn't insertion from LKO, it was interplanetary return, fully loaded with science data. Burned retro with the Terrier I used to set up the suborbital trajectory until it ran out in the upper atmosphere, jettisoned them at still above LKO velocity (but before the point in the atmosphere at which it would just come right back at the rocket), set retrograde hold on the SAS, nearly burned up the Science Jr. with its experiment from the surface of Minmus... and landed successfully. Any more, I always go overkill on the parachutes- lets me land a pod with a passenger cabin, or three of them (I've done that before), with the same parachute load... and not worry about it. Speaking of which, it's actually harder to get it down to parachutable speed when it goes sideways, I've found- in my early days, before I had someone properly orbit Kerbin and get the prograde/retrograde hold ability, I lost a few craft (And Jebediah at least once) by doing that.

... Yes, I have the MIA respawn option enabled, so the starter four respawn at the KSC, experience wiped, a couple hours after a Bad Day.

[Kris Overstreet]

9820818 Quick question: why more than one barometer or thermometer? Both devices are infinitely reusable. If the ship is piloted, go EVA, grab and store the data, and you're good. If unmanned, a science storage canister lets you transfer data with a mouse-click.

[computerneek]

9821019
Because I'm terrible at EVA (but better than Rainbow next chapter, as I've done numerous rescue missions and- to date- never stranded a Kerbal, except on an escape trajectory from The Sun. The rescue mission is cruising after the careless pilot right now), it's easier to simply have multiple on board, and having multiple balances the weight on the rocket (even minute imbalances can throw off an ascent or descent if I'm not careful, especially if I forget to mount solar panels on the thing... Which, I suppose, is another difference: My rocket had solar panels on it, Cherry's didn't).

[Brosif1357]

If you were worried about increased speed from a higher orbit, you could have tried aerobraking repeatedly. Set your periapsis to around 55000 metres and you’ll hit the atmosphere, slow down a bit (but avoid the bulk of the atmosphere and thus the part that really starts to burn) but still enter space again because you are going fast enough. But your orbit will be smaller and you can renter properly next time around (your periapsis is sub-orbital, you don’t even need more fuel because eventually you’ll be slowed down enough for a proper insertion).

[erictheblue]

if i remember, Jet Set and Upper Crust are the two ponies that insult Twilight's dress at about 0:45 in THIS scene:

[Black--Soul]

Most chaotic chapter yet fantastic

Got to love this wild ride of emotions ♡

[PartTimePegasister]

“My master demands the use of your chariot of smoke,” Calendar Wheel said. “But to ensure that the vessel is worthy of his divine glory, he wishes to send an emissary ahead of him. You will take this emissary with you into the sky, and he will return and report to our master.”

So, query: are we going to get a bonus chapter about Ahuizotl's ride in a rocket? Even if it's just the bit where, after they get him into orbit, they hit the emergency release on the hatch and blow him into space without a helmet, thus forever ridding Equestria of him?

[Strange quark 42]

10445590
eh...he kinda redeemed himself in s9 ep21 where he explained that he wasn't really a bad guy, he was just doing his job protecting the ancient temple. an occupation that daring do threatened by taking artifacts he was hired to protect. ahuizotl explained that he would get fired if one more artifact went missing which is why he fought daring do so much. although things worked out later when he became an author

[nlinzer]

“There,” the gray Pegasus gasped, the last bag offloaded. “That’s everything, Mr. and Mrs. Set.”

“Please!” The female unicorn tossed her nose into the air even higher than her husband’s, making her bouffant mane bob. “I kept my own name when we married, thank you!”

I have a idea for Twilight's new Thesis: how a society that is either egalitarian or matriarchal has a tradition of the wife taking the husbands name. I am sure there is some fascinating history behind this

[RDDash]

Realistically and based on the game settings the pilot should experience the plasma blackout (a period of time during the reentry when the plasma burn scramble the radio transmission)

[Kris Overstreet]

10602251 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spider_and_the_Fly_(poem)

[mishun]

And something different did come up, or rather down- specifically, Clickbug, who had taken over the post as guard at the hive entrance

Wasn't she mentioned as Occupant's assistant and telegraph operator in chapter 8?

He didn’t think I can do this. He thought, I will take care of this. I’ll take care of everything.

She

Oh, you’re coming with your army to turn the hive into a mile-deep crater?

Badlands would win against her army.

And Canterlot ponies LOVE to sue! And Canterlot ponies would ESPECIALLY love to sue into the GROUND the species that tried to CONQUER THEIR CITY!”

They may bring their case before Judge Chrysalis.

“Now there’s an idea,” Chrysalis murmured.

“No,” Cherry Berry said firmly.

“I know, Celestia wouldn’t approve,” Chrysalis acknowledged testily.

Important question is what would she do. But the actual reason it's a bad idea is because there also would be a pilot there.

And Rarity never has fixed the bathroom arrangements in these spacesuits yet…

Rarity needs to add brown underpants?

[Kris Overstreet]

10644626 The guardpost at the hive entrance is where the hive's telegraph is kept, as of this point in the story.

Elytron is definitely a he (and an idiot).

[mishun]

10644656
I mean

She[Chrysalis] didn’t think I can do this. He thought, I will take care of this.