Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 13: Mission 21: Somewhat Worse Than Average Accidents

“Keep pushing, Cadence.”

“I’m trying! Even if I would rather leave her like this!”

“A promise is a promise! A little harder! Luna, ten percent less!”

“This was so much easier with that stupid staff… there!!”

Chrysalis, queen of the changelings, blinked her eyes for the first time in over a month.

Under the bedsheets (wait, what was she doing in a bed?) she could feel little bits of obsidian flaking off her body as her limbs gradually relaxed from a stiff pose she hadn’t known she was holding. Her body gradually warmed as concentrated harmony magic poured through it. She glanced around her to see four alicorns- count ‘em, one two three four- carefully sending their magic into her, clearing away… something.

At first it felt warm and cozy, but after several seconds Chrysalis began to squirm as the spell wriggled its insidious way into corners of her soul she hadn’t ever intended anything, let alone a pony, to investigate. When the four princesses ceased the spell simultaneously, each gasping a bit from the effort of the sustained spell, Chrysalis gasped her own sigh of relief and relaxed even more limply into what she assumed was a hospital bed.

“That should do it,” Twilight Sparkle said, being the first of the alicorns to recover. “Chrysalis, how are you feeling?”

“A little confused.” Was that her own voice? Since when was she so soft? She cleared her throat and forced herself to speak up, “Why exactly am I in a hospital bed? And which hospital bed, exactly?”

“You’re in the infirmary at your own space center,” a more familiar voice spoke up. The four princesses parted to let Cherry Berry, who sported a fetching blue jumpsuit over her pink fur, pass through. Behind her, standing or hovering near the wall, were Goddard the Griffon, Warner von Brawn, Occupant and Lucky Cricket. “Lucky and his recovery team kept you safe during the invasion, and after the yetis withdrew they brought you here.”

“We had a kingdom to put to rights,” Celestia said gently. “The restoration of our magic undid the damage of the Storm King’s tornado, but there was still all the damage his fleet did-“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Chrysalis said, holding up one perforated hoof. “Back up a bit. What invasion? What Storm King?”

Twilight Sparkle raised her eyebrows. “What do you remember, exactly, before waking up here?”

Chrysalis considered lines like This is my space center, I’ll ask the questions, and then reconsidered them in the light of being surrounded by four alicorns, none of whom particularly liked her. She dropped her hoof, leaned back into her pillow, and looked up at the ceiling. “Well,” she said slowly, “the pony took her balloon off to Canterlot for your friendship festival… Goddard and von Brawn were in Appleoosa tinkering with some new rocket design or something… I was only sticking around to oversee delivery of replacement rocket parts after Mission Twenty, and I’d intended to go back to the hive for a few days once they were stored in the VAB…”

“And they’re still there, nice and safe!” Occupant chimed in before Cherry Berry raised a hoof to shush him.

“Yes, my changelings were carrying the newest capsule off the last barge when I saw this big, ugly airship coming up along the southern coast.” Chrysalis raised a hoof and made a slow swooping gesture, demonstrating how it had flown. “And right behind it was a second one just like it, both trailing huge clouds of smoke and lightning. Both of them black and beautiful, almost as if I’d designed them myself.” She smirked a bit as she added, “Of course I knew we were under attack as soon as I saw them.”

“Really,” Cadence drawled. “Because they couldn’t possibly be rich ponies with a taste for gothic fashion?”

“A single airship like that, possibly,” Chrysalis said. “But anybody who deliberately makes two of those things, and then sends both of them somewhere, wants to scare people.” She snorted. “Not a bad tactic if you know your enemy. If the enemy has weak discipline, they’ll hesitate or break outright. But a disciplined force, under good leadership, will know exactly what to attack on sight.” She smirked a self-satisfied smile as she added, “Obviously whoever sent them didn’t know me or my subjects. I knew my changelings could easily repulse two airships, no matter how large.”

“Er, my queen?” Occupant looked a little embarrassed. “I, um, it turned out it wasn’t two airships.”

“It was five,” Lucky Cricket added.

“Five?” Chrysalis said, leaning her head up. “I only remember two.”

“Well, you remember how you led us into battle against the first airship?” Lucky continued. “We forced that one down into the bay. It was a brilliant victory!”

“Yes, I remember that part,” Chrysalis nodded. “I saw the blimp going down, and I was shouting at you to form up for a second attack…” Her face screwed up in concentration. “Something hit me between the shoulders, just here-“ she leaned up and waved a hoof at her spine just below the neck- “and I thought it was some really heavy piece of debris. I tried to shake it off…” Her voice trailed into silence.

“It was a piece of misfortune malachite,” Twilight Sparkle said. “An extremely potent petrification spell. And you were hundreds of meters over the water when it took effect.”

“It came from the third airship,” Lucky Cricket said. “They were hiding in the smoke cloud from the first two ships. We saw you falling, Dragonfly and me, and we caught you before you hit the water. We carried you to the fire swamps to hide, and we didn’t look back.”

“The defense kinda broke up after that,” Occupant said. “I tried to rally some guards to hold the space center, but…”

“They didn’t take you prisoner, did they?” Chrysalis asked.

Occupant’s eyes widened. “No!” he shouted indignantly. “We hid. When their troops surrounded mission control, we knocked a couple of them out and copied them. In about ten minutes we’d replaced fifteen of them- me, Carapace, Plastron, some of the other old hooves.”

“Fifteen?” Chrysalis asked. “What happened to the other three hundred changelings I had here?”

“The rest either followed us into the swamp or fled back to the hive,” Lucky Cricket said softly. “And to be honest I’m still surprised even fifteen stayed. Without you leading us, we were no match for those airships.”

Chrysalis flopped back onto her pillow. On the one hoof, that was sort of a compliment to her leadership and tactical skills, she supposed. On the other hoof, a dozen changelings should have been enough per airship, with any kind of leadership.

And on the back hoof, she was frankly amazed that fourteen of her changelings had voluntarily followed Occupant’s leadership anywhere other than into the line for the Fun Machine.

“And this was all over a month ago?” she asked. “So spring is half over now?”

“That’s right,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And for us it’s been a very busy month. But I’m sure you’ll hear all about it from the others.”

“Yes, we do have to be going,” Celestia agreed. “We have some hard flying ahead if we’re to be in Manehattan for Dragonfly’s big parade.”

Chrysalis stiffened in her bed. A quick glance around revealed that yes, Dragonfly was not in the room. “Parade? Parade for what?”

“For her brilliant rescue of those stranded astronauts,” Celestia continued. “You must get Cherry to tell you about it. It was a marvelous achievement.”

“Dragonlord Ember’s going to personally escort her to the Dragonlands after this for their own celebration,” Luna added. “The yaks already held their own ceremony.”

“Dragons? Yaks?”

“Well, get plenty of rest,” Twilight Sparkle said, easing towards the door. “By tomorrow your post-petrification fatigue should be gone, and you’ll be back to normal!”

The alicorns walked out, followed by Goddard, von Brawn and the two drones. Cherry Berry was about to follow when Chrysalis reached out with her magic and grabbed the earth pony’s tail. “Not so fast, pony,” she hissed, dragging her chief pilot back rump-first to the side of her bed. “You’re not going anywhere until I get an explanation.”

“Um, well,” Cherry Berry flustered, “I was in Canterlot for the invasion and got captured with all the other ponies there, so I don’t-“

“Don’t try to deceive a deceiver,” Chrysalis warned, green fire flickering in her eyes. “You must have been here for whatever Dragonfly did, right?”

“Well…” Most ponies were terrible liars, and Cherry Berry worse than most. Chrysalis could read on the pink pony’s face three blatant fibs considered and rejected in the course of about five seconds before she gave up and settled for the truth. “Yes, I was. I was in charge of the whole flight.”

“Flight, is it?” Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “I think you had better tell me everything. Start at the part where you got back to the space center and go from there.”

“Don’t you think this should wait until you’ve rested?”

“Talk,” Chrysalis barked.

Cherry Berry talked.

---

The much-delayed Friendship Festival turned victory celebration had been a blast(301), but after over a week of terror and imprisonment Cherry Berry was more than ready to get back to work. She felt true gratitude to the changeling air controller standing on top of the makeshift flight tower who waved her balloon through the swirling pattern of changelings returning from hiding to Horseton Space Center, giving her priority landing clearance.

Occupant met her at the hangar. “Welcome back!” he shouted up before she’d even tethered the balloon. “We’ll have things back up and running in no time! Just give the orders!”

Cherry gave the tether ropes a final tug-check and motioned Occupant to walk with her to the admin building. “What happened here?” she asked. “Was anything damaged?”

“They came in and beat the queen,” Occupant said briefly. “Lucky Cricket and Dragonfly took her and escaped. Most of the others ran away, but a few of us stayed and disguised ourselves as guards to keep an eye on things. Most of the invaders left the next day, and the ones that stayed just sort of stood around. They locked the scientists and pony construction crew up, but they didn’t break or steal anything.”

“Good. What about Horseton?’

Occupant flinched. “They didn’t do so well,” he said. “The changelings Lucky and Dragonfly rallied in the swamps did their best to help(302), but keeping the queen safe was more important…”

Cherry Berry nodded. “I understand,” she said. “At least I can call Twilight Sparkle and tell her the space center is intact. The princesses can focus their time on helping Horseton recover.”

“Actually,” Occupant said, “we were hoping you could call Princess Twilight to help with our queen.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Cherry asked. “Where is she? I thought she was the one organizing all this.” She pointed to the literal swarm of changelings converging on the space center, returning to duty stations, bringing in fresh supplies.

“Um, no, that was me,” Occupant said quietly. “Come and see.”

---

The thing lay in a plush bed, a pile of soft pillows behind its head, covers drawn clear up to the slack-jawed chin.

All of this is ridiculous, Cherry thought. A statue doesn’t belong in a bed. It belongs on a pedestal in a garden or museum.

As statues of Chrysalis went, Cherry supposed it was a good one. The confusion on the changeling queen’s face was too ambiguous for a casual sculptor, who might have gone for wide-eyed non-comprehension instead of the more subtle expression. But the effect was spoiled by the blocky, cubical black crystals that popped up here and there, half-covering the obsidian statue.

Cherry supposed it was the difference between a life-like sculpture and a living sculpture.

“You’re telling me this is her?” she asked, pointing a hoof at the hospital bed.

“This is our queen,” Occupant insisted. “We’ve called in a zebra, but she says this isn’t a normal petrification, like what a cockatrice or a basilisk does. We need alicorn magic to cure her.”

For a brief moment Cherry seriously considered dumping the statue(303). She could have the space program all to herself, without having to worry about the inevitable day when Chrysalis revealed how she was going to use it all to conquer Equestria. That idea had given her more than one nightmare over the previous year, no matter what she’d said to Luna.

But the thought only lasted the moment. Whatever Chrysalis might do if the roles were reversed- and Cherry knew the changeling queen would take over anything in an instant given the opportunity to do so- Cherry wasn’t Chrysalis. Cherry had made a deal, and she was going to keep it. Chrysalis would get to walk on the moon.

And no, being tastefully arranged on a plinth in a lunar grotto didn’t count.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try to call Twilight Sparkle. You get everypony organized again. I need an inventory of the rocket parts available and other supplies. Get somepony from the construction crews to do an inventory of the construction materials for the R&D expansions- make sure the Storm King’s goons didn’t loot anything there. And send someone out to Appleoosa to check on Goddard and von Brawn. We need to get the rocket factory there back up and running.”

“Will do, my qu- I mean boss!”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. “Don’t call me boss,” she said. “I’m not your queen and I don’t want the job,” she said. “I fly things and that’s all, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Occupant said, saluting as he left.

Halfway between the astromare complex’s infirmary and the administration building, Cherry had to duck as one of the guard changelings, her uniform spattered with bits of swamp, almost tackled her from the sky. “Pardon me, Miss Berry!” the guard panted. “But the pony princess Twilight is on the telepresence, and she wants to talk to you!”

Cherry blinked. “But I was just on the way to call her,” she muttered.

The guard shrugged. “Maybe pony princess read minds? All I know is, she’s really upset.”

A short gallop later, Cherry saw on the screen that Twilight wasn’t upset. She was frantic. (304) “Cherry!” she shouted. “Thank Celestia you’re there! They won’t let me talk to Chrysalis! We’ve got a big emergency!”

“So do we!” Cherry Berry replied. “We need you here as soon as possible.”

“No, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “We need you here as soon as possible!”

“What are you talking about?”

“If we don’t get you in a rocket and into orbit in three days,” Twilight gasped, “three astronauts are doomed!”

Cherry blinked. “Three astronauts?”

“Doomed!!” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Cherry said, waving a hoof to slow Twilight down. “We didn’t have anypony in orbit this past week, and neither did you, right? So how did these astromares get there?”

“They’re not mares,” Twilight said. “It’s Gordo the Griffon from the Griffonstone Rocket Project, Fireball from the dragon program… and an astronaut from Yakyakistan. All of them launched at the same time three days ago, during the Storm King’s occupation of Canterlot. All of them were attempting a lunar fly-by.”

“But why on- no, not important,” Cherry said. “What went wrong?”

“Lots. The three rockets launched within an hour of each other. The griffons launched first and got an equatorial orbit with their first two stages. But they messed up their staging orders somehow, because when they tried to ignite the third stage, instead it decoupled the third stage. And the heat shield. And the parachute. Everything but the capsule.”

“What were they thinking?” Cherry demanded. “You always check your staging! And check it again, and again, and again! We keep it on a sticky-note in the cockpit for every launch: Check Your Staging!”

“Don’t ask me!” Twilight snapped. “I wouldn’t even have launched the rocket if it were me! But they did!” She waved her hooves wildly as she continued, “Anyway, Gordo’s rocket dropped everything it could drop at once, and one of the pieces of debris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It collided with the dragon rocket on its way up.”

“It what??” Cherry gasped. “You know what the odds are of a collision in space!”

“It happened!” Twilight insisted. “So Fireball lost his engines too, and he’s just as stuck as Gordo.”

“Okay, so what happened to Leonid?” Cherry asked. “More debris?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. The yaks had the worst trajectory for a moon shot, and they didn’t attempt a direct ascent. Their rocket ran out of fuel just getting to an equatorial orbit. But that’s not the worst of it.” Twilight took a deep, steadying breath. “The pilot’s not Leonid. It’s the other yak astronaut. Prince Fauntleroy. Rutherford’s little brother.”

Cherry rememebered the tiny (by yak standards) prince from EVA training at Cape Friendship. “The runt?” she asked. “Why did they send him up? Rutherford loves him like Pinkie loves sugar! He’d never sign off on sending him on a moon flight.”

“He didn’t give them the option,” Twilight reported. “I just spoke with Rutherford. He tells me his brother whacked Leonid on the head and took his place in the rocket. Said he was the better pilot.”

Cherry slowly flopped onto her flanks. “So, just to be clear,” she said, “you’re telling me there are currently three astronauts overhead right now, with no engines, no parachutes, and no way home.”

“And they’ve been up there for three days,” Twilight said. “They all have seven days of food, and of course my life support system will keep them in air and water, but what happens when the food runs out?”

Cherry Berry nodded her head. “I can imagine,” she said. “What have you got for rocket parts, then?”

“That’s another thing!” Twilight replied. “We need you to send us everything you have. We used up all our back stock of parts putting the communications satellites in orbit. We were going to order more after the friendship festival, but… well, anyway, we need more, right now!”

Cherry blinked. “You have nothing at all?” she asked.

“Well, there’s the experimental rocket ship,” Twilight said. “But it needs a lot of rocket boosters to get it into orbit! Of course, once in orbit its magic thrusters should be enough to get to and from each ship, and it has plenty of passenger space…”

“No,” Cherry said flatly. “It’s a beautiful ship, and it’s my favorite color, Twilight. But we can’t possibly put together enough boosters to get it to orbit. Not in three days. It’s just too heavy.” She thought for a moment, looking away from the telepresence projection so she wouldn’t have to see the fidgety, anxious alicorn princess. “No, we’ll have to do it from here. We still have some leftover parts, if the Storm King’s goons haven’t messed with ‘em. And you have princess work to do, fixing the kingdom and un-stonifying innocent ponies and stuff like that.”

“But-but- wait a minute,” Twilight stammered. “I thought everypony that got petrified by Tempest was restored when the Storm King was defeated.”

Cherry sighed. “Look, just get down here as soon as you can, please? We can begin making plans while I explain what our price is for this launch.”

“Price?” Twilight asked. “Three people are about to die in orbit, and you want to send us a bill??”

“I’ll explain when you get down here,” Cherry said, and cut the connection.

Footnotes:

(301) In the literal but fun sense. Not to be confused with the invasion, which had been a blast in the literal and absolutely no fun at all sense. The difference lies in how close you are to ground zero of the detonations.

(302) It’s hard to help defend people when they’re convinced you’re just another enemy attacking from the other side. A year of peaceful coexistence in Horseton hadn’t wiped away a much longer period of dread. But Lucky and Dragonfly did their best, rescuing a large number of the villagers and even wrecking one of the Storm King’s airships before the final armistice came down. A week can do more than a year to rebuild reputations, if it’s the right kind of week.

(303) Several of the changelings were also considering this. Thus far none of them were sure of having enough support to overcome Chrysalis’s loyalists, and therefore they bided their time. The hive needed a leader, after all, and if the current one was spending all her time as a paperweight… well, minds could change…

(304) When one lives in Ponyville for any length of time greater than a month, one learns the distinction. To a long-term Ponyville resident, the gradations of distress from mildly anxious to terrified beyond control of one’s bodily functions, and all the points between, are as clear as the different shades on the paint chips at the hardware store. Be prepared, as you are running for your life from this week’s disaster, to be lectured on the difference between “disturbed” and “perturbed”, should you pass that way.

Chrysalis shifted in her bedsheets and sipped a little water through her straw. “So, you made a deal,” she said. “The rescue mission, in exchange for my life. How did Twilight take it?”

“All things considered, pretty good,” Cherry replied. “She wanted to say she would have done it anyway, but I think the words kinda stuck in her throat.” She shrugged, adding, “Anyway, she said she needed the combined power of four alicorns to overcome the curse, and Cadance was going to be the harder sell. So I guess it was a good thing three space programs did stupid things right then.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “That almost sounds like something I would say, pony.”

“I know. It scares me a little.” Cherry Berry sighed.

“And how did those foolish space programs take it when they heard you were going to be the ones rescuing them?”

Cherry cringed. “Not well…”

---

“You put life of baby brother in hands of changelings?!?” Prince Rutherford looked one step, one very short step, away from saying his favorite five-letter begins-with-S word. (305)

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle began, looking at the yak, griffon, and dragon on the other side of the conference table, “if you’ll just let me explain-”

Cherry Berry, sitting next to Twilight, brought her hoof down on the conference table hard enough to drown out any further words. “The princesses,” she said firmly, “have a continent to rebuild after the Storm King’s rampage. Princess Twilight Sparkle delegated this vital task to the world’s most successful space program because she can’t be in two places at once! Why can’t you appreciate the time she’s sparing for you when there are whole cities still on fire?”(306)

This silenced Prince Rutherford, Dragonlord Ember, and Grampa Gruff. All three had the expressions of creatures with guilty consciences.

“Anyway,” Cherry continued, “what possessed the three of you to launch without a real plan or preparation like that? Especially while Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help?”

“It was because Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help!” Ember snapped. “This was our last shot. I may be Dragonlord, but I can only push so far before the other dragons just blow me off, scepter or not.”

“Gordo’s stupid hobby was bankrupting Griffonstone!” Gruff snapped.

“Weren’t griffons already broke?” Rutherford interrupted.

“DON’T INTERRUPT ME, you young whippersnapper!” The elderly griffon’s shout did what few other things could; it made the prince of the yaks cringe for just a moment. “As I was saying, there wasn’t any money left for rockets and wasn’t gonna be. So he wanted to go out big.”

Rutherford nodded. “Yakyakistan rich in tradition, rich in culture, rich in history and glory and pride,” he said. “In gold we… less rich.”

“Anyway, we figured… I guess we all figured,” Ember said, making the distinction between we dragons and we three space programs, “that the Storm King invasion would delay the ponies and the changelings enough to give any of us one last chance to take the lead in the space race. If we were the first to the moon, maybe that would give us a chance to keep things going.”

Cherry Berry heard Twilight Sparkle’s teeth begin to grind. “Are you telling me,” the purple princess said in a tone Cherry usually heard from Chrysalis’s mouth, “that when we were under the cloven hoof of the Storm King, seeking any possible way to free our people from his subjugation, that you-”

Cherry put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, breaking off the impending rant. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But the Storm King was going to come for everybody else next, after he had the princesses’ magic. Why weren’t you getting ready for war?”

Grampa Gruff snorted. “You kiddin’?” he snapped.

“It’s true the Storm King went through you ponies like a claw through gypsum,” Ember said.

“But you’re ponies,” Grampa added. “We knew something would happen-”

“-you hit dumb Storm King with mighty rainbow smashy magic-“ Rutherford said.

“-or recruit a band of unlikely heroes to save the day at the last minute-“ Ember continued.

“-or else that idiot Storm King would do something stupid like betray his chief lieutenant, allowing the ponies to snatch victory from the beak of defeat!” Grampa Gruff finished. “Like always happens!”

Ember and Rutherford nodded solemn agreement.

“What??” Twilight Sparkle wasn’t going to be silenced by a shake of the shoulder now. “We won by a miracle, and you were COUNTING on that? That’s absolutely stupid!!” (307)

“Where ponies concerned-“ Rutherford began.

“- the more stupid it sounds-“ said Ember.

“- the more likely it is to work,” Grampa finished.

“Remember avalanche?” Rutherford pointed out, waving a hoof as if surrounded by the snow-heavy peaks surrounding the land of the yaks.

“Remember the drake who tried to take a nap in Smoky Mountain?” Ember reminded Twilight..

“Remember baking soda?” Grampa muttered. “Who ever thought a powder would change a way of life?”

“Ponies do the stupid and impossible every day,” said Rutherford

“So this was our one and only chance-“ said Ember.

“-to do it before the ponies,” Grampa said.

“The ponies,” Cherry said coolly. “And what about the changelings?”

“Who cares about the changelings?” Grampa grumbled. “The changelings are crazy!”

Once more Ember and Rutherford nodded.

Cherry Berry felt a headache coming on, and she reached both hooves up to rub her temples. I don’t want this job, she thought. I just wanted to fly a rocket. But the sooner this is done, the sooner I get the evil mastermind back on her throne and go back to letting her handle roadapples like these…

Fortunately for the pink earth pony, Twilight Sparkle had regained control of her tongue and her temper. “Well, let’s leave aside arguments about who is crazy and who isn’t, after what happened,” she said. “Cherry Berry already has a plan to rescue your astronauts and-”

“Baby brother!” Rutherford wailed, bringing his hooves down on the conference table and breaking a chunk of it off in his moment of emotion.

“-bring them back safely,” Twilight finished.

I have a plan? Cherry thought. That’s nice- now how about someone tell me what my plan is? Right now all I know is we’re gonna do it.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ember asked. “I feel responsible for Fireball. I… well, I kinda blackmailed him into this.”

Grampa looked at the blue dragonling. “You mean Fireball didn’t want to go up?”

“He quit after his orbital flight,” Ember said. “Just like he quit after his first flight. But I said that if he didn’t go up on this flight, I would. Without training. That shut him up.” She looked down at her claws and added, “I guess that wasn’t such a hot idea, huh?”

“I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the diamond dogs didn’t manage a launch along with all of you,” Cherry Berry said into the silence that followed (308).

“In any case, you can leave everything in Cherry Berry’s hooves,” Twilight said. “In three days she’ll be on the way to rescue-”

“Four days,” Cherry said. “The first thing we do, we tell all the marooned astronauts to go on two-thirds rations.”

“What?” Rutherford had to stretch his forehooves a little to prop himself up on the broken edge of the table. “You starve baby brother??”

“You packed seven days of the pre-packaged rations into the capsule, right?” Cherry asked.

“Well… yes, yaks think so,” Rutherford admitted. “Whatever you send us. Yaks not make space food.”

“We just add gem sprinkles to mix in with the packs,” Ember said. “For proper nutrition, like Dad always told me.”

“If we’re paying for the capsules,” Gruff grumbled, “why should we blow money on new food packs when yours will do? It’s not like any griffon will pay money to eat that garbage on the ground!”(309)

“Okay,” Cherry said. “Those meals are calculated for a very active astronaut, doing a lot of things in the capsule. They’re heavy in calories. Two meals a day would be enough to live on, on the ground, even for a yak.”

“Yaks have mighty, mighty appetites,” Prince Rutherford said doubtfully.

“But by cutting out one meal a day, we buy the astronauts maybe two days,” Cherry said. “We can use one of those days to build the best rocket we can- one that can get everypony home. The other day is insurance in case we have trouble getting to them.”

“Trouble?” Grampa Gruff snorted again. “You just aim your firecracker at them and keep flying till you catch them! How hard can it be??”

Footnotes:

(305) Which is to say, not all that different from how any yak usually looks.

(306) This was a kind of lie… specifically, the blatant kind. No cities had been set on fire in the first place. Granted, there was other damage that, unlike Canterlot, hadn’t been automatically repaired by the power of Friendship/Love/Dreams/Whatever Celestia Did Besides Delegating To Twilight. But no fires, because the Storm King had gotten as far in the Evil Mastermind’s Handbook as, “Pillage before burning.” (310)

(307) Twilight Sparkle thinks she is a vastly better diplomat than she actually is. She has the handicap of being unable to not say what she’s thinking at the worst possible times.

(308) The dogs had precisely one Flea-powered flight to their name, but the promised Project Stardust was due to launch Any Week Now… and had been for months.

(309) Here, for once, Grampa Gruff seriously underestimated both the willingness of griffons to part with money for something more valuable (to them) than money, like for example a chance to live a little like their space-going heroes, and the willingness of other griffons to seek to make a profit on the first group of griffons. Fortunately for himself, Gordo hadn’t made that error, and he’d kept the food cabinets in the capsule locked until just before liftoff.

(310) Admittedly, this is the first page after the contents, dedication, and preface.

“How hard can it be?” Goddard the Griffon choked. “How hard can it be??”

Cherry and Twilight blinked at the elderly griffon on the telepresence screen, who looked fit to lay an egg. (Which, as he was a tom, would have been something to see.)

“What my colleague means,” Warner von Brawn, standing next to him, interjected before Goddard could overcome his shock, “is that achieving a rendezvous between two orbiting space objects requires careful planning and precision flight. It’s never been done before.”

“What’s so difficult about it?” Twilight asked. “You merely calculate the relative position and trajectories of the two objects, you calculate an orbital insertion burn that produces a close intercept, you plan a second burn that matches velocities between the two objects, and then you use small bursts of power to achieve a final rendezvous. It’s really quite simple!”

“Simple!” Goddard gasped, his feathers bristling, his hackles rising on his back.

“Not everypony can do calculus in their heads,” Cherry replied quietly.

“Princess,” von Brawn said carefully, “look at it from the point of view of an ordinary pony. Supposing you are an earth pony, on the ground, chasing another earth pony. You can’t fly or teleport. Assume the pony you’re chasing maintains a constant speed, what do you do to catch up?”

“Run faster, of course,” Twilight said.

“True. That’s common sense. That’s what any normal person in a normal situation would say.” von Brawn steepled his massive fingers and continued, “But orbital mechanics and common sense don’t operate in the same way. Suppose you are in a ship in orbit. You accelerate prograde, burning straight ahead. What happens?”

“Well, my apoapsis rises,” Twilight said. “The orbit gets higher, bigger, until I achieve escape velocity.”

“Correct,” von Brawn replied. “Now imagine you are in orbit, behind another ship. You burn straight ahead, trying to catch up, the way common sense dictates you catch up to someone else.” The minotaur’s cool blue eyes bored into the princess’s. “Which of you has the longer distance to travel to return to the starting point of your orbit after the burn- you, or the ship that has executed no burn?”

“Er… burning prograde enlarges the orbit… which means I’d have the longer distance to travel,” Twilight said.

“Which means?”

“That the ship that hasn’t made the burn, having the shorter orbit, will complete that orbit faster than the ship that executed the prograde burn,” Twilight said.

“In other words,” Goddard grumbled, “by going faster, you fall farther behind.”

“And this,” von Brawn agreed, “is the fundamental paradox of the mechanics of orbital rendezvous. The entire notion of catching up with your target must be thrown out the window. Instead you have to think of it in terms of achieving a point of intercept and then matching velocities with your target.”

“I think I get it,” Cherry said, feeling obligated to hold up some part of the egghead conversation. “Rather than try to catch the target, you want the target to catch you!”

Both Goddard and von Brawn worked their jaws for a moment, trying to think of a constructive response. Finally von Brawn said, “If it aids you to visualize the problem, so be it. But more properly, the question remains one of intercept: plotting a course that puts two ships in the same place at the same time, on vectors which can be adjusted to keep them in proximity using the minimum fuel possible.”

“Ideally, a direct ascent intercept could do the job,” Twilight said. “One burn from the surface to the target.”

“The first target,” Goddard muttered. “We have three to deal with, Faust help us.”

“Also, a direct ascent intercept would require a level of precision in both calculation and piloting no space program has yet come close to achieving,” von Brawn said. “And we would be doing it with leftover parts and experimental equipment.”

“But can you do it?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, assuredly we can do it,” von Brawn said. “Intercept and rendezvous is merely difficult, not impossible. It helps that we have complete tracking and communications with the stranded ships, courtesy of your satellite network.”

“The two big problems,” Goddard said, “are finding a way to get space for four astronauts into a single capsule, and then finding a way to get that capsule down again safely.”

“Weren’t you working on a three-person capsule?” Cherry asked. “Can’t we just launch that with a Probodobodyne core?”

Goddard shook his head. “Even if we had that capsule ready for flight- which it isn’t and won’t be this week- we haven’t got rocket engines of matching size. We’re still working out the bugs in the next generation of rocket motors.” (311)

“And besides,” Twilight said, “after Shotputnik I don’t think the other space programs will be happy about entrusting their people’s lives to a robot pilot.” She grimaced and added, “In fact, I think even suggesting it might trigger a war. Three wars.”

“The problem is not insoluble,” von Brawn insisted. “Goddard will stay here and complete what can be completed in two days. I will return to Horseton immediately and see what we have to work with. Then we may consult together and find the optimal configuration of resources to achieve the desired ends.”

“Well, okay,” Twilight said. “Remember, all Equestria- all Equus- is counting on you to bring those people home.”

“Relax,” Cherry Berry said confidently. “What space agency is more reliable than the Changeling Space Program?”

---

“You said that with a straight face?” Chrysalis asked, brushing a little bit of post-petrification sand out of her bedsheets.

“Barely,” Cherry admitted. “I still didn’t have any clue how I was going to make it all work. I’d have to organize the rocket design and assembly, train for the mission, fly the mission, and somehow oversee it from the ground- all while basically reorganizing your kingdom to keep things running while you were napping. I didn’t see how I could do it all.”

“And then Dragonfly came to you,” Chrysalis said.

“That’s right- hey!” Cherry said indignantly. “How do you know it was her idea?”

“I know her, and I know you,” the changeling queen said. “She’s a changeling, and you’re a pony. You’d never think of disobeying me without a very good reason, but a proper changeling thinks about disobedience all the time.”

“That’s… really weird,” Cherry said, her eyes crossing as she tried to figure out how that could even work.(312)

“That’s my children,” Chrysalis said.

“No, I really think that’s just you,” Cherry said.

“Just get on with the story,” Chrysalis grumbled. “You were just about to tell me how Dragonfly talked you into disobeying my express orders…”

Footnotes:

(311) In the Changeling Space Program, “getting the bugs out” is seldom a figure of speech. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little knowledge in a changeling’s head, plus a complicated piece of equipment, is a recipe for explosions.

(312) Of course it doesn’t work at all, except in Chrysalis’s head. But before judging, consider how many “this is stupid, but we do it because this is the way we’ve always done it” things there are in your society/culture/government.

Two hours, Cherry Berry thought. Twilight Sparkle’s been gone only two hours.

And they still keep coming.

“Excuse me, Mis Cherry Berry? Ma’am?”

Number forty-five, Cherry thought. “What is it now?” she asked the changeling who had blocked her path to the administration building.

“I need someone to approve the new guard duty roster.” A clipboard wrapped in sickly green-colored magic floated over to the earth pony, along with a pen.

“What?” Cherry asked. “First, I signed one of those less than an hour ago! Second, take it to Occupant! His whole job is signing things!”

“Standing orders from the queen,” the changeling said meekly. “Anything Occupant signs, she has to countersign. And…”

“Yeah, I got it.” Cherry Berry gripped the pen in her teeth, careful not to bite down hard enough to sever the fountain chamber and get a mouth full of ink. A few strokes later, she spat the pen back at the changeling, who didn’t bat an eye. “Now why didn’t the last roster last an hour?”

“Three guards just showed back up,” the changeling in front of her said. “One of them outranks Rhinohide, so his roster got thrown out, and-”

“Right,” Cherry sighed. “Go write up a special order and bring it back to me in two hours- and not sooner, got it? Special orders, any further guards returning to the center are to report to Occupant for special assignments, and the guard duty roster is not to change until the end of the week! Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The changeling saluted, took clipboard and pen, and left.

Cherry managed four steps before another changeling got in front of her. Number forty-six, she thought. Unlucky number fifty is going to get an education. “What?” she asked.

“Um… I’m sorry, ma’am…” This changeling was slightly taller than Cherry. It had fins that looked like sawblades. Its fangs dripped continuously. And yet it was cringing slightly away from her, for reasons Cherry couldn’t possibly understand. “I’m just r-returning from as-as-s-s-assignment, an-n-and I was t-t-told to-to s-s-see you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Cherry said. “Do you work here?”

“N-no, ma’am,” the fearsome changeling stuttered. “‘M-m-m-i’m an in-in-in-infilt-trator, ma’am.”

Cherry sighed. Each sigh was getting deeper than the last, partly because it wasn’t so much a sigh as the sound of her rage pressure release valve. “Don’t you have another changeling to report to?”

“Th-th-they sent me here.”

“Of course they did.” Cherry counted silently to ten, then said, “Listen… what’s your name anyway?”

“Girdler, ma’am,” the changeling said. “I take the place of d-d-dresser aides in M-m-manehattan stores and-”

“Stop. Stop right there, Girdler,” Cherry said. “Your queen and I have a deal. I work for her so long as she doesn’t do anything illegal or really immoral involving me. Are you about to tell me about illegal or immoral things you’ve done on your queen’s orders?”

The fearsome changeling paused to consider this. “Well,” it said, “what happened in the ch-changing booths wasn’t ex-ex-exactly ordered, n-not as s-such-”

“Yes or no?!”

Girdler thought a little more. “D-does mixing lace with p-pl-pleats count as im-m-m-moral?”

Cherry counted silently to eleven this time. “Go get some paper from Occupant,” she said. “Write up a report, put ‘Burn After Reading’ on the cover, and tell Occupant to give it to the queen when she wakes up. Then do whatever Occupant tells you to do after that. I do NOT want to know, understand? I don’t want to- wait, that’s a lie.” She looked at the changeling, who by all appearances ought to have been a top warrior. “How do you disguise yourself?”

A flash of green fire later, a petite, adorable cream-colored earth pony mare with blue eyes and gray mane blinked up shyly at Cherry. “C-c-can I interest you in our premiere l-l-line of s-saddles for that in-in-in-in-intimate m-moment-”

“NO!!” Cherry bellowed, rearing up to cross her forelegs at the transformed changeling. “I’m sorry I asked! Now go see Occupant like I said!” The shout sent Girdler scurrying in the direction of the mission control building.

She didn’t even get to take one step this time, because Girdler had given two other changelings the opportunity to intercept her. Forty-seven and forty-eight, Cherry thought. I think somepony is sending these changelings to me for some reason. (313)

“Miss Cherry, ma’am,” one changeling said, “Aphid here has a pony and won’t share.”

“Miss Cherry,” the other changeling, presumably Aphid said, “please explain to Styletto here that it is possible for a pony to be a voluntary food source, and at the same time, unwilling to be fed on by more than one changeling.”

Cherry wondered, idly, if the pain in her right temple was a blood vessel about to pop and relieve her of all this stupid stuff. “Aphid,” she said carefully, “is this pony on the grounds right now?”

“No, ma’am,” Aphid said. “After the invasion she went to Trottingham to make sure her parents were okay.”

Cherry looked at Styletto. “And you make this a problem… why?”

“Well… the pony’s gonna come back, right?” Styletto asked. “So why can’t we share? Sharing is the pony way, right?”

So is bucking smart-flanked changelings right in the chin, and although I don’t do that, it is becoming VERY tempting… “Have you considered… I can’t believe I’m asking this… have you considered getting your own pony? In a consensual, no disguises, no cocoons, no venom way?”

Styletto cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

“Try asking them,” Cherry said in a cutting, ironic tone that echoed Chrysalis almost perfectly.

“Oh.” Styletto cocked her head the other way, then looked at Cherry and said, “Ma’am, will you let me suck your-”

“NO!!!” Cherry roared. “Go find ANOTHER pony! And when you ask, don’t use the word ‘suck’!!” She turned her rage on Aphid, shouting, “And you go take a week off in Trottingham and quit bothering me!”

Two changelings saluted smartly, then bolted off in opposite directions. The path to the administration building finally, finally lay open.

Except for changeling number forty-nine. “Hey, bossmare. Can I talk to you for a minute?” Dragonfly asked, standing directly in Cherry Berry’s path.

Cherry let out a long, long sigh of relief, certain muscles finally relaxing. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about stuff,” she said. “As soon as Dr. von Brawn gets back, we’re going into conference on a rocket design for this mission.”

“This is more important.” Dragonfly pointed to a small, as yet untenanted office just down the R&D building hallway. “In private, please?”

Snorting- as if she didn’t have eighteen other jobs on her hooves!- Cherry allowed herself to be led into the office, which had become a large storage closet with a desk inconveniently placed in the middle of it. But there was space for two pony-like creatures to stand and a door that closed, and that was apparently what Dragonfly desired.(314) “All right, what?” Cherry asked the moment the door latch clicked.

“Let me fly the mission,” Dragonfly said, coming straight to the point.

Cherry gawked at the changeling. “I’m sorry, what??” she asked. “You want me to let you fly a mission with three other ponies’- people’s lives at stake?”

“Yes, exactly!” Dragonfly said. “Now I know you might have some problems-”

“Problems??” Cherry asked. “I’m not the one who has problems! The dragons aren’t happy about Twilight not leading the mission herself, you know! Nor the griffons! And especially not the yaks! If they find out a changeling is flying the mission, they’ll go roadapples all over us! And that will be peanuts, peanuts I tell you, compared to what Chrysalis will do when she finds out we disobeyed her direct and unambiguous orders to keep you grounded!”

Dragonfly sighed. “That’s why I’m asking you, now,” she said. “We both know that, given the queen’s wishes, I’d never see the inside of a capsule again. That might change, but when? But right now she’s out of circulation. This is probably my last chance to fly a rocket ever again, as a pilot. And I’ve never yet had an orbital flight. I want that before I move on to whatever else I do next.”

Cherry snorted again. “This isn’t about you,” she said quietly. “This is about three astronauts in very deep trouble. It’s going to take the best we have to get them down safely, and we only get one try at it. Are you gonna tell me, with a straight face- no, let me rephrase that. Can you say, without lying or misleading in any way, that you are the best pilot for the job?”

“The best available one? Yes,” Dragonfly said simply.

“I said no lies,” Cherry replied.

“It’s not a lie!” Dragonfly insisted. “Look, Rainbow Dash is off doing Elements-of-Harmony stuff. She’s not available. Ditto Cadance. No one else has more than two flights experience, and no one else has any familiarity with our space program and facilities. I’m the best candidate out of the astronauts from every service who are available. Plain, honest fact.”(315)

Cherry pondered this for a moment. “Okay, so Rainbow Dash is out,” she agreed. “But I am not out. Do you really think you’re a better pilot than me?”

“No,” Dragonfly admitted. “But I’m counting on two things to change your mind.”

“Really? Okay, what?”

“First....” Somehow Dragonfly contrived to turn featureless glowing bug eyes into the most soulful, doleful, heartbreaking puppy dog eyes Cherry had ever seen, without any actual shapeshifting or changeling magic. “Because if I never get an orbital mission I’ll be awful saaaaaad… and that’s a thing you ponies care about…”

Despite the last eight words of distilled cynicism, Cherry felt herself moved… but not dislodged. “And second?”

Sighing, Dragonfly dropped the poor-pitiable-me act and looked the senior pilot straight on. “Second, you may be a better pilot than me… but ask yourself if either Occupant or me is the better substitute hive queen.”

“What?!”

“How many changelings have bothered you about routine stuff today?” Dragonfly asked. “And how many of them came to you after Occupant told them to do something? Lots, and lots. I know- I’ve been watching and listening.” She took a step closer to the pony and whispered so that her already buzzy voice became almost indistinguishable from insect noises. “Right now the hive doesn’t have a leader. And a changeling hive must have a leader. A clear, undisputed, unquestioned leader. Without a leader we don’t get along. We really don’t.”

Cherry gave some thought to this. There were honest friendships among certain changelings, she knew. She also knew that every changeling thought ninety-nine percent of their fellow changelings were complete idiots (316) and held them in contempt. And, above all, she’d seen how, at least in the short term, changelings without orders to the contrary would follow practically anybody with a loud voice who looked like they knew what they were doing. “Good point,” she said. “But how’s that relevant?”

“It’s relevant because, right now, you are leading the changelings!” Dragonfly insisted. “At least the ones here at the space center. The main hive has a viceroy for now, although Elytron mostly gets obeyed only because he’s loud. Pharynx would be a much better pick if he wasn’t so paranoid…” Dragonfly shook her head. “Anyway, how much training do you think you’re gonna get done with hundreds, maybe thousands of changelings asking you things every minute?”

This gave Cherry another pause for thought. Up to now, she hadn’t thought there was any choice. She had to be the boss and the pilot and, yes, the queen pro tem, because if she didn’t three people would die in orbit. It all had to be done. But if Dragonfly… well, Dragonfly would certainly be able to put her full attention on the problem, no question of that…

… but when Chrysalis found out, there would be Tartarus to pay…

Sensing indecision, Dragonfly asked, “Would it help if I gave you the cute sad eyes again?”

Cherry snorted and pronounced a very filthy Zebrican word (317). “All right, you’re in,” she said. “But I still need you to sit in on the rocket design conference.”

“Woo-hoo!!” Dragonfly took flight, making rapid spins around the cluttered enclosed space of the office-turned-closet.

As bits of discarded equipment and junk fell here and there around her, Cherry Berry roared, “Get out of here before I change my mind!!”

“As you command, bossmare!”

“And don’t call me bossmare!”

Footnotes:

(313) They were. Leaving aside the various "dump Chrysalis in the bay and take over" plotters, there was a large faction, particularly among the space center changelings, who thought Cherry Berry had queen potential. And, after all, there were those old rumors about ponies being turned into changelings… you wouldn’t get stories like that if there wasn’t something to them, right? Never mind that none of the Cherry Berry promoters had a clue how you’d go about changing an earth pony into a changeling, never mind into a queen… they thought it was an option, so they were quietly testing Cherry to see how she would rise to the challenge. What rose, mostly, was Cherry’s blood pressure. Since this reminded the changelings of Chrysalis, this was counted as a point in Cherry's favor.

(314) It’s astonishing how many cultures fail to appreciate that privacy when working is good for everybody and not just for those with the most power and fewest duties.

(315) The phrase “plain honest fact”, coming out of a changeling’s mouth, almost universally fails the laugh test, even among other changelings.

(316) This estimate put them, according to certain outside observers, within one percent of accuracy.

(317) You don’t need to know the word. This is an uplifting, highly educational history of a critical moment in space history, and as such not a fit place for potty language. Take your bucking curiosity elsewhere.

“And that was all it took?” Chrysalis asked.

“Look, not all of us were born to be queens,” Cherry Berry replied. “And nopony made me princess of the universe. I just fly your ships. But somepony had to hold things together while you were napping, and Dragonfly was right. I couldn’t do that and fly that mission at the same time!”

“Did you try… no, I don’t suppose you could have threatened grievous bodily harm credibly,” Chrysalis mused. “And I don’t think uncertain retribution threefold would be taken all that seriously if you were-”

“Look, would you like to know about the mission or not?”

“Not particularly,” Chrysalis admitted. “Dragonfly went up and came back down without making any major blunders.” She paused, then added, “You did say she got a Manehattan tickertape parade, or something like that?”

“Getting one. Today. In about an hour, I think.” Cherry Berry looked at the clock on the infirmary room wall. “Yes, about that.”

“Then she didn’t screw up. That’s all I…” Chrysalis trailed off, considering. “Honored by the dragons?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Honored by the yaks?? The yaks, the most ungrateful species on the planet besides my own noble lineage?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I lied,” Chrysalis said, sitting up a little straighter in her bed. “Let’s have the rest of the story.”

---

“Okay, here’s the problem,” Cherry Berry said, looking at the beings gathered around the conference table- Dragonfly, von Brawn, Lucky Cricket, Plastron, and Occupant. “One pilot goes up. That pilot meets one, two, three orbiting vessels and retrieves their pilots. Four people come down. How can we build a vessel that will do that using what we can get here in two days’ time?”

“I can tell you one thing we cannot do,” von Brawn said at once. “Sticking two passenger compartments in-line behind a capsule is out. On re-entry such a craft will invert, come down nose-first, and kill all passengers. The aerodynamics and the relative weight of capsule and passenger cabins make that inevitable.”

“Maybe we could rehabilitate Capsule One,” Dragonfly suggested. “It looks nice as a historical exhibit at the entrance to the space center, but it’s still a perfectly good spaceship. That would give us four capsules, right?”

“A chain of four capsules would be even more aerodynamically unstable,” von Brawn said, shaking his head. “Re-entry in such a craft would be suicide.”

“Not if you send the capsules down one at a time,” Dragonfly said. “Make the command capsule the bottom one in the stack. Give it plenty of orbital maneuvering fuel. Each rescued astronaut gets in an empty capsule as far from the engine as possible. As each capsule is filled, the command pilot slows down the craft until it’s on a re-entry trajectory, then decouples the top capsule. The rescued pilot flies their own re-entry, while the rescue ship boosts back into a stable orbit before they hit atmosphere.”

“Hey, that might actually work,” Occupant said.

“Now I know it’s a bad idea,” Lucky Cricket muttered.

Von Brawn shook his head again. “No, I think not,” he said. “Such a plan adds more complications to an already complex flight plan. We’ll need several orbital adjustment burns as it is. Let’s not add more until we absolutely must.”

Dragonfly threw up her forehooves. “Well, then you tell me where we’re going to get passenger space for four!” she snapped. “Maybe two capsules and a passenger compartment?” She considered this. “No, the pilot would have to go EVA to let the last passenger in. There’s a risk of the ship going into a tumble. That’s bad.”

“I’d certainly say so,” Cherry Berry agreed in a drawl dry enough for Chrysalis.

“Well, there is one other thing,” Occupant said cautiously. “Jet Set sent us a prototype four-pony cabin- he calls it the ‘Hitchhiker’- just before the Storm King’s invasion. It was on the barge that the queen was waiting for.” His face wrinkled in doubt as he added, “But it’s sized to the diameter of our next-generation rocket systems, including the three-crew capsule. It’s way too big for our existing tanks or engines.”

“Can we bodge it to fit?” Cherry asked. “Make, I dunno, adapters or something?”

“Hmmmm… possibly,” von Brawn rumbled. “We have one prototype fuel tank of the same gauge, so that might be useful as an orbital stage fuel tank. But we’ll also need a heat shield of that diameter, and that we don’t have.”

“That’s easy-peasy to fix!” Dragonfly insisted. “Make that the top priority at Appleoosa and we’ll have a heat shield of the right size here in time for vehicle assembly, no problem!”

“And we have plenty of decouplers of that size,” Occupant said. “OMB sent us the new models weeks ago for testing.”

“True,” von Brawn said. “But it would still be a massive vessel to be sent up on a small rocket. We would need more booster rockets than we’ve ever used before. And extreme caution would be required during ascent to prevent such a slender rocket from snapping in half under the aerodynamic forces involved.”

“We only have two of the big SRB’s in stock at the moment, fueled and ready to go,” Plastron reported. “But we have plenty of T-400 fuel tanks and Swivel engines. We could build liquid rocket boosters.”

“Hm… yes,” von Brawn admitted. “Perhaps we could link the liquid boosters to the central stack so that the fuel tanks all acted as a single unit… no, better yet,” he continued, “have the boosters pump fuel into the central stack. All the Swivels could fire at launch to steer while the solid rockets fire, and then once the booster tanks were empty, they could be decoupled while the central motor continued to boost on a full tank.” He nodded to himself. “I suspect the ascent would be slow, especially early on, but considering the instability of the design, that is a feature and not a defect… hm…”

“But will it work?” Cherry asked, putting the stress on the central point.

“Hmmm… well, we can simulate it…” von Brawn said. “We would need the final design, properly weighted, for wind tunnel tests and for calculations in the sim-”

“You’ve got two hours,” Cherry said bluntly. “Two hours and five minutes from now I want Dragonfly in the simulator. If she can get the thing to orbit two times out of three, then that’s the plan.”

---

Three very busy days passed. More changelings came in to Horseton, both space program staff and infiltrators who didn’t want to deal with Elytron. Cherry Berry kept some as a guard for Chrysalis, put others to work mending the damage done to the space center during the invasion, and sent the bulk of the rest back to the Badlands with the admonition that no, she did not want to hear their reports, yes, they had to put up with the idiot viceroy, and the queen would be up, around, and disenpetrified very, very soon. (318)

There were other things that filled Cherry’s every waking moment. Reporters kept turning up, asking for interviews; after the second such interview running aground on a question about whether Cherry would take the opportunity to drop Chrysalis from a high place and see if she made more pieces than the Storm King, she banned freelancers from the space center. Round-the-clock manufacturing at Appleoosa had to be arranged for, followed by three special trains and a number of barges to get the new components to Horseton. Occupant had to be persuaded, almost on an hourly basis, that he did have permission to sign things again(319). Steel, cement, chemicals had to be ordered and paid for, mostly on credit(320).

And, three or four times each day, Cherry had to spend half an hour on the telepresence tracking down Twilight Sparkle to request some princessly cutting of red tape, each time some bureaucrat somewhere insisted that, no matter how urgent the need, procedures must be followed, even if it took three weeks to process the forms.(321)

By the third day Cherry was thinking at least once every ten minutes: how does Chrysalis manage all of this and train for spaceflight, too?(322)

But if she was worn ragged, so was Dragonfly, who spent the waking portions of two and a half days practically sealed into the simulator. The first two designs had proven lethally unstable and prone to breaking up (323) mid-launch, due to the long, spindly shape of the boosters and the immense size and weight of the orbital stage. Eventually Goddard had been called in to consult, and the result had been several struts tacked on to the design, with mounting points equipped with tiny explosive charges that would fire along with the appropriate stage decouplers.

This, plus every single control fin in storage, produced a ship that could just about make it to orbit. The rest of the simulations had been focused on making sure it did that, with as much fuel remaining in its immense final stage as possible. Sim after sim after sim, Dragonfly repeated the launch over and over until Cherry pulled the changeling pilot out of the sim capsule and forced her to go to bed.

And then time for sims ran out, and as the real, non-simulated ship took shape in the Vehicle Assembly Building, a worn-looking Cherry and Dragonfly joined von Brawn and George Cowley for the final mission briefing.

“Here are the three wrecked ships,” von Brawn said, pointing to a telepresence projection showing three cartoon capsules in a ring around Equus. “Fortunately for us, the ships are practically sharing a single orbit- a very low Equus orbit.” Pointing to each in turn, he said, “Fauntleroy- Gordon- and Fireball. Fauntleroy launched last, but he had so much trouble achieving an equatorial orbit that the other two ships almost caught up to his.”

“We intend to time tomorrow’s launch to intercept Fauntleroy’s craft directly,” Cowley said. “Ideally only a small correction burn will be required to make rendezvous. Once that is done and Fauntleroy is on board, Dragonfly will boost into a more elliptical orbit- but not too great of one.” Using a pointer, the elderly minotaur described an arc outside the orbit shared by the three wrecks. “We don’t want to go too fast or slow- the less difference between our craft’s speed and theirs, the less braking will be required to match speeds again.”

“So rather than go for a rendezvous in a single orbit, we will wait two, three, or four orbits- but not more than that- for the target to catch up with our ship,” von Brawn said. “Then we can make a final adjustment, get the rendezvous, and rescue Gordon. We repeat the process for the third target, and then we de-orbit and come home as close to the space center as possible.”

“But it must be a splashdown,” Cowley insisted wheezily. “The Hitchhiker component hasn’t been impact-tested, and we don’t know what the capsule and adapter on top of it will do to its durability. We’ll have five parachutes on the assembly, but the difference between water and land might be the difference between alive and dead. There must be no chance of a touchdown on land, understood?”

“No land,” Dragonfly muttered, yawning. “Got it. Right.”

“One other thing,” von Brawn said. “Even with the rationing, the stranded pilots will eat their last rations the day after tomorrow. We’re packing plenty more food on this ship just in case, but time is an issue. We can’t spend forever waiting for a perfect alignment on each rescue attempt. That’s why we’re sending up the huge tank of fuel in the first place, after all- to ensure there’s enough to get this done and done quickly. Ideally the flight should be over in twenty-four hours.”

“Sure,” Dragonfly grumbled. “No pressure at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Cherry said. “I’ll be on capcom for the whole mission, and you’ll have all of us down here talking you through everything. Just fire the engines when and where we tell you, and everything will be fine.”

“Just what everyone wanted,” Dragonfly said. “Carriage-seat drivers.”(324)

Footnotes:

(318) Cherry Berry didn’t know whether hearing someone describe criminal activities made you an accessory under the law, and she didn’t want to find out.

(319) Because, under Equestrian law, Cherry didn’t have power of attorney over the changeling hive’s business dealings outside the space program. As it turned out, Occupant was the only bug in Horseton who could sign anything more legally binding than a receipt, Chrysalis’s standing orders notwithstanding.

(320) One short year before, any changeling asking for credit would have been laughed out of town before it was brought back into town so it could be run out again on a rail. Times change.

(321) It’s probably for the best that Cherry Berry never learned how Chrysalis handled this problem as a matter of routine: (a) do what you want and let the pencil-pushers try to stop her if they dared; (b) if they dared, replace them with an infiltrator; (c) if impersonating them proves impractical, find a bit of quick blackmail to stop the problem; (d) if they’re too clean to blackmail, lawyer up, file bureaucratic counter-claims, and forge ahead while they’re drenched in paperwork. By Chryssy’s own standards, each step in the procedure represented an escalation in evil.

(322) As might be apparent by now, she didn’t. The benefits of being an evil changeling tyrant included the ability to scare away anyone who didn’t have legitimate business, the ability to delegate to underlings one didn’t much like, and the instinctual guile and malice to ensure that annoying obstacles ceased to annoy in short order. Had Chrysalis been given a detailed list of all Cherry’s difficulties during this period, she would have been wondered why the pink pony had wasted so much time on unimportant things when she could have had plenty of time for lounging on the throne, eating tiny bits of chocolate, and reading bad adventure novels.

(323) Or as von Brawn called it, “rapid unplanned disassembly.” Popular music aside, in rocket science breaking up is extremely easy to do.

(324) The ponies having never seen the need for automobiles beyond sports and entertainment, the concept of a “back seat driver” has not yet occurred to them. But the pony (usually a noble) sitting inside the carriage who continually complains about how the steerspony is handling the reins or how the pull team is running? That pony is familiar to practically every pony… and everyone who impersonates ponies. Don’t be that pony.

Dragonfly sat in the capsule the next day, running down pre-flight checklists as the countdown clock for this mission ticked down towards zero. She’d been there for over an hour since the rocket was cautiously carried out to the pad, wobbling under the efforts of almost a hundred changelings to carry it without breaking something. If something went wrong with the systems, they’d have to wait ninety minutes for Fauntleroy’s wreck to make another orbit before they could retry the launch.

While she automatically rattled off one system check after another over the comms to Mission Control, Dragonfly ran through what they’d learned in the simulation. Max Q (325) will kill this ship on a whim, she thought. A slow, almost vertical ascent through the dense lower atmosphere, then a very gradual turn down the ball as the air thins out. And keep burning all the way to space, because this fat-flanked piece of junk is so heavy that it needs every bit of delta-V I can squeeze out of her.

The checklist ran out. The pad crew detached the fuel lines. Dragonfly switched on the ship’s internal power, batteries recharging from two little solar panels mounted midway between the capsule and the Hitchhiker compartment. Seconds ticked by, called out in a calm, professional voice by the blonde-maned earth pony who, Dragonfly admitted to herself, probably should have been in the capsule instead.

But I had to have one more flight, she thought. One more dance with the Pale Mare. And orbit.

The seconds ran out, and on the count of zero Dragonfly hit the staging button, activating the two SRBs and the three Swivel liquid-fuel engines.

With a speed best described as deliberate, Mission Twenty-One lifted off the launchpad.

“What is this?” Dragonfly shouted, mike still live. “This is like riding in an elevator! Where are the G’s?”

“You’re going the same speed you did in the sims,” Cherry Berry replied. “It’s a heavy, underpowered ship. And we don’t want you going fast right now anyway.”

“Roger,” Dragonfly grunted. “Easing her over to ten by ninety. Some excitement this is.”

“I know three people listening in to this in orbit who are a lot excited,” Cherry replied. “Now focus on the job, okay?”

“Copy, Control,” Dragonfly said. “Holding her steady at ten by ninety, awaiting SRB burnout.”

The solid rocket boosters burned out just after the ship reached the speed of sound. Dragonfly decoupled them and looked at the altimeter; still too low to turn down the ball. “Control,” she said, “we’re burning a lot of fuel to be this low and slow.”

“We noticed,” Cherry’s voice came back. “You’ll have to use some of the final stage to get to orbit. And the fuel levels in the liquid-fuel boosters are dropping fast. Time to pitch down while you have the control authority of all three engines.”

“Copy.” Dragonfly began pitching over to the east… and found herself holding the stick hard over. “I’m not getting much of a rate on this turn,” she said. “Thing doesn’t want to go over, even with the fins.”

“Keep trying,” Cherry said.

“What else am I going to do?” the changeling pilot grumbled, watching her instruments as the nav-ball slowly, slowly rotated over past twenty, past thirty, to forty degrees off the vertical.

And then the boosters, having pumped their excess fuel and oxidizer over to the central stack, ran dry. For a moment, as Dragonfly hit the staging button to dump the dead weight, the ship actually slowed down. Then, for a few seconds, the rocket’s velocity held steady, before glacially accelerating once more.

"Control,” Dragonfly said, “are you sure this thing can make orbit?”

“What’s the matter?” Cherry fired back from the ground. “This flight too exciting for you?”

After that Dragonfly restricted her comments to altitude and speed checks. The altitude climbed respectably, the ship’s early vertical momentum carrying it out of Equus’s atmosphere. The ship picked up more and more speed, but not enough for her comfort. She kept pushing the stick over until, finally, the ship’s prograde vector touched the horizon line. “Attitude ninety by ninety,” she reported. “How long until apoapsis?”

“About two minutes,” Cherry’s voice responded. “Keep firing.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel, at her velocity. The central booster was about to go dry, and her velocity wasn’t even close to orbital yet. The sims, she thought, were hopelessly optimistic. “Stand by for first stage burnout and second stage ignition,” she reported.

“Control copies, Twenty-One,” Cherry said. “Ninety seconds to apoapsis. Welcome to space, by the way.”

“I noticed,” Dragonfly muttered. The noise of the main engine ceased. “Burnout, staging now,” she reported. With two slaps of the staging button the last of the boosters fell away from the lozenge-shaped ship and the small Terrier engine lit, not so much pushing the ship forward as nudging it.

Is the throttle set to full? Dragonfly thought.

Unfortunately, yes.

“Sixty seconds to apoapsis.”

“Come on, you big fat…” Dragonfly began easing the nose back up, trying to push the trajectory outwards. In an ideal universe, if you wanted to raise your periapsis, the most efficient point in the orbit to do so is at apoapsis. That point was coming up fast with orbit nowhere in sight… which meant it was time to prolong her stay at the apoapsis as long as possible. That meant thrusting more vertically, which would raise the apoapsis and at the same time push it a little farther into the future of her current trajectory.

“Thirty seconds to apoapsis.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working for beans this time. The ship didn’t have enough thrust. Given enough time, of course, the Terrier engine would achieve orbital velocity… but Dragonfly’s time was measured in altitude, and it was about-

“Apoapsis in five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

-to run out.

Dragonfly yanked the ship hard up, putting the craft at a forty-five degree angle to the horizon. The maneuver wasted fuel like a rich Manehattan kid wasted bits at the candy store, but it was that or scrub the mission. The top of the atmosphere awaited her only a short distance below, and once the ship fell back into the soup the Terrier wouldn’t be able to climb out again.

Faster!

Dragonfly reached over to key up the new trajectory map display, the newest feature of the control system. Her trajectory lit up on the little screen, showing the high point of her trajectory behind her.

Faster!!

The screen flickered as the computer recalculated the projection, and flicker by flicker the peak of the curve began to catch up with the ship. Meanwhile, the bottom of the arc expanded, leaving the dark circle of the projected planet, forming an almost-orbit.

FASTER!!!

Mission Twenty-One clawed its way slowly, wastefully, away from the border between air and space. It ceased falling and began rising once more, as the indicator marking apoapsis overlapped the ship.

Relieved, Dragonfly began nosing the ship back down, engine sputtering on as she completed the orbital burn. The moment the projection showed a periapsis above atmosphere, she said, “Main engine shutdown!” and pulled the throttle to zero.

“Mission Control copies shutdown,” Cherry said. “With the underperformance of the ship, we show you considerably behind the first target. Stand by for orbital correction burn instructions to match up your apoapsis with their periapsis. With your lower periapsis, you should catch back up to them in a few orbits.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel readout. One-third of the fuel in the big fat bucking heavy bucking useless fuel tank was gone already. “Standing by, control,” she answered glumly.

Well, she thought, the good news is, I’m in orbit. Yay me.

But will it do anyling else any good?

Footnote:

(325) Max Q is the point in a launch at which aerodynamic forces reach their peak. It’s not a fixed point; it varies according to launch speed and trajectory. Wherever it is, though, it is the place where physics lurks, waiting to pounce on ill-planned rocket launches. And considering how frequently the natives of Equus defy physical laws, that which lurks at the point of Max Q has a massive chip on its shoulder. Even Dragonfly walks (flies) softly there.

Fauntleroy sat in the passenger compartment which was all that remained of his spacecraft and pondered some fundamental truths of existence.

The first fundamental truth that had come to him, in almost a week of nothing to do except contemplate such matters, was he’d erred grossly in claiming himself a superior pilot to Leonid. Leonid would not have attempted a direct flight to the moon without an Equus orbit. Thus, he would not have gone far higher than standard orbit before discovering the trajectory was off. He would not have fiddled around seeking an equatorial orbit for a second attempt with the remaining fuel, because he would have known there would be no remaining fuel after the long burn required to get such an orbit.

And, since he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get in such a situation in the first place, Leonid would not have succumbed to the traditional yak rage and the even more traditional yak rampage. Smashing everything in sight, while momentarily relaxing, did one no good when everything in sight was required to keep you alive.

Fortunately he’d still been wearing his full space suit when the hull breach happened, and he’d been able to get behind the pilot’s flight couch and down into the passenger compartment, with the food and the backup life support, before the capsule more or less fell apart on him. And, even more fortunately, the passenger compartment contained the emergency reserve rations- one week’s worth- provided by the changelings with every capsule and passenger compartment they sold.

So he’d had time enough to come to terms with his inevitable demise… and then, when his demise became evitable, time enough to come to terms with that as well. Oh, he could still die up here, and if he lost his temper again he certainly would die up here. Yak culture, with its glories and follies alike, was such a hard thing to escape, lamentably. But there was a chance…

“Horseton, Twenty-one… we have zero relative velocity to target at six hundred thirty-eight meters. We have rendezvous, over.”

“We confirm, Twenty-one. We still want you to ease in as close as you can to make it easy for Fauntleroy to get to the ship. This will be his first spacewalk, after all.”

“No problem, boss. Didn’t I tell you I could do careful and delicate?”

“Don’t call me boss.”

And there was that chance now, close enough that his suit comms could pick up chatter directly from the rescue ship. Up until now his only communications had been through the pony communications satellite network. “Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” he said aloud. “Standing by for instructions on rescue.”

“We read you, Four,” the unmistakable voice of Cherry Berry called back. “Keep the channel clear until we’re ready for you. Twenty-one, go ahead for five meters per second towards the target.”

“Copy, Horseton.” That sounded like a changeling- probably their third-tier pilot, what was her name? Oh yes, Dragonfly. They’d met in EVA training at Cape Friendship. She was the one who was… what was the kirin phrase? Gung-ho, that was it. Excessively eager.

“Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” Fauntleroy said again. “I’m quite sure I could cover half a kilometer by suit thrusters. There’s no need-”

“Four, please keep the channel clear.” Cherry Berry’s voice had gone from light and friendly to hard steel, while somehow retaining its little squeak. Only a pony, Fauntleroy thought, could pull that off. “We are coming to you. Sit tight. Twenty-one, proceed.”

“Five hundred meters and closing.”

Fauntleroy’s life flashed before his eyes. It was very short, and most of it was books, smashing, and snow. He’d hoped for a little more before the end…

“One hundred meters and closing. Slowing to two meters per second… wait a minute.” The changeling voice went silent, and then came back filled with obvious consternation. “Yak Shot Four, is that a passenger capsule you’re in? What were you doing bringing up that dead weight for a one-person flight? What were you thinking?”

“As I understand it, the griffons and the dragons launched passenger compartments as a test to see if they could sell tourist flights around the moon,” Fauntleroy said. “But I think my compatriots threw this on the stack because we had it in the barn. No other reason, really, except using everything up in one last glorious flight.” Which, of course, was a foolish thing to have done, but it was also a very yak thing to do.

“Eh, makes sense,” the changeling pilot replied. “Fifty meters.”

And, evidently, also a very changeling thing to do, except the changelings had more sensible people to keep them in line. A most enviable condition, Fauntleroy thought.

“One meter per second,” Dragonfly called out. “Going to stop at about ten meters separation. I don’t want to bump into you by mistake.”

“I’d be most grateful if you didn’t, miss,” Fauntleroy replied politely. He’d put his spacesuit on as soon as he’d heard the first buzzing of Mission Twenty-One over the comms, and now he slipped his helmet over his radio headset and locked it into place. “Standing by.”

“And… there!” A ring of satisfaction. “Zero relative velocity at eight point eight meters! It’s a shame there’s no way for me to just grab on to your ship. I could probably just kiss that can with this ship, easy. And it’d make ship-to-ship transfer a lot easier if the two ships could, I dunno, connect somehow.”

“The bulls like your idea, Twenty-One,” Cherry replied over the comms. “Four, we’d like you to exit your craft in your own time. Once you’re free of your craft, we want you to use your thrusters to translate over to the rescue ship. There are handholds all over the ship, including ladders leading to the pressure doors of the passenger cabin. Do not, repeat, do not go for the capsule; there is no internal connection between the capsule and the passenger cabin. Copy that, Four?”

“Four copies,” Fauntleroy said, double-checking his suit life support, then reaching for a handle near the passenger cabin hatch. “Depressurizing cabin now.”

Air hissed out of the cabin, vented to space. The cabin backup life support shut down as the pressure inside the cabin dropped. When Fauntleroy couldn’t hear the hiss anymore, he said, “Cabin depressurized. I’m coming out now.”

He reached up and rotated the latch for the airtight door which, under happier circumstances, would have taken him through to the capsule. The instant the latch released, Fauntleroy discovered two things: first, that the air had not all left the compartment; second, he was indeed coming out now, much faster than expected.

The now-dead passenger compartment which was all that remained of Yak Shot Four tumbled slowly away behind him, while Fauntleroy tumbled swiftly forward, popped out like a cork from a pony popgun.

Well, he thought. This is exactly like the training, isn’t it? Take a deep breath. Resist the urge to smash things, because it will not help. Bring arms down and back to activate the suit thruster controls.

Twin armrests, each ending in a control joystick, popped out of the suit backpack and under Fauntleroy’s spacesuit-covered hooves.

Good. Activate controls. The inertial system will sense the spin and automatically stabilize me.

The system did so, firing thrusters in what seemed like a frantic, random series of bursts, then settling down as the tumbling stopped.

“I’m all right,” he reported. “It appears I was wrong about the cabin being fully depressurized.”

“Yeah, we got that,” Dragonfly’s voice said dryly. “Bossmare, we need to make a note of that- the passenger cabin needs indicators to show pressure level.”

“Roger, Twenty-one, and don’t call me bossmare,” the voice of Horseton Mission Control answered. “Four, can you see our ship?”

“Stand by…” Fauntleroy checked the navigation ball in his suit’s little cluster of readouts. “The ship appears to be right above my head.”

“Copy,” Dragonfly said, and a moment later she said, “I see Fauntleroy. Repeat, visual on Fauntleroy.”

Fauntleroy worked the controls, pivoting his suit to face upwards. “Visual on rescue ship,” he repeated. “I understand I am to go to the large hatch amidships?”

“Affirmative, Four,” Cherry replied. “Just take it easy and float on up.”

“Understood.” Fauntleroy touched the controls with un-yaklike gentleness. His suit glided forwards, up towards the massive bulk of the changeling rescue ship. Minor adjustments left, right, backwards, forwards, zeroed him in on his target- not the hatch itself, but the ladder rungs above it. “Ten meters… five meters… I’m reaching for a grip…”

It was just that easy. Spacesuit hooves hooked over rungs, thrusters shut down, and Fauntleroy swung himself upside down and, as it happened, almost on top of the hatch. Two rungs down, and he was on the hatch, its controls directly in front of him.

“Firm contact,” he reported. “I’m coming in, and thank you, CSP.”

And as the yak space program came to a close, its last pilot thought, Leonid might have done the rest of it better, but I bet he couldn’t have done this as smoothly. Not in a million winters.

---

“Horseton, this is Mission Twenty-One,” Dragonfly reported. “Two crew safe aboard, two to go. Let’s talk about that.”

“Good job, Dragonfly,” Cherry replied. “We’re working on the burn for the next rescue, and we’ll have that up to you in a bit.”

“Yeah, about that, bossmare.”

“I keep telling you not to call me that.”

“It took three orbits for me to catch up to Fauntleroy,” Dragonfly pressed on, as she reached over to the trajectory plotter and began hitting keys. “And I was only a little behind him. Now Gordon is way, way behind me in orbit. It took me five hours to rescue Fauntleroy- how long is it going to take to get to Gordo?”

“We’re working the problem-”

“What I’m saying, Control,” Dragonfly continued, “is that I’ve got a computer and an interface up here, too. And all I need to do is make a long burn to get a bigger orbit, right? Bigger orbit is slower orbit, right? So I’ll just do that now, and we can fine-tune it for the final intercept later.”

“If you’ll be patient, we can tell you exactly how long that burn needs to be,” Cherry said.

“Eh, whatever,” Dragonfly said. “We’ll make it work. Stand by for prograde burn… targeting Gordon’s wreckage… ship oriented for prograde burn… five, four, three, two, one!”

Dragonfly’s hooves worked the magic born partly from long practice with the simulators and partly from designing several of the controls herself, including the trajectory computer interface. She’d learned a lot in the past year, and especially in the past few months, from the bulls and Goddard and even that loony Pinkie Pie. It was amazing how easy it all was, once you had a not-quite-lack of hunger and people willing to explain, in words of three syllables or fewer, anything you asked about(326).

From what Dragonfly half-remembered from some lesson or other about geometry, the circumference of a circle was three and a bit times the diameter. If you wanted to enlarge the circumference by a certain amount, you enlarged the diameter by slightly less than one-third that amount, or something like that. She could do the math if she sat down and took a long time, but so long as she had plenty of fuel, she could fudge things and make corrections and do it fast and sloppy.

And, as she’d had drilled into her head the past three days, fast was the important thing.

So she watched the trajectory plot creep up in a higher arc above the low orbit of the space wrecks, noting the difference between apoapsis and periapsis growing… and noticing the fuel levels in that fat fuel tank barely dropping at all. The Terrier might be the weakest of the first generation liquid-fuel engines, but it also provided the most bang for the buck… and, after all, once you were in orbit, ninety percent of the job was done anyway, wasn’t it?

There. That seemed like about the right number.

“Shutdown,” Dragonfly called out. “Successful burn. Now let’s see what that gets us…”

“Dra… Twenty-one,” Cherry said, the exasperation beginning to show in her professional tone, “we show your first close intercept with Griffonstone Five… excuse me, Griffon ship Nickel… in three orbits. That’s assuming you conduct two correction burns which we’re putting together now.”

“Three orbits??” Dragonfly shouted. “That can’t be right!” She tapped out commands on the vector plotter… and, sure enough, there was no intercept market on the plot where she’d expected it to be, coming back around to her planned intercept point.

“It’s good enough,” Cherry said. “Gordon and Fireball still have food through tomorrow. We have the time for a careful intercept. Sit back and let us go through it step by step, all right?”

“But it should have been… I mean, I had it…”

“Dr. von Brawn says he’ll explain it to you once everyone’s on the ground, Twenty-one. Stand by for instructions on the first correction burn to line up the intercept point. That will be in thirty-seven minutes… mark.”

“Standing by for detailed instructions,” Dragonfly said grumpily.

Darnit, it should have worked...

Footnote:

(326) The example of Dragonfly demonstrates the possibility that changeling foolishness is not an inborn condition, but rather a result of poverty, cultural stasis, and extremely limited educational horizons. For the counterargument that even educated changelings can be prize idiots, see Occupant.

Dragonfly had to admit, though the slow and careful way was slow, it got the job done.

“Griffon ship Nickel, this is CSP Mission Twenty-One,” she called out. “Holding station at one point one kilometers and preparing for final approach. How’s it going, Gordo?”

“Hey, great to see ya, Dragonfly!” a cheerful, brash cry came over the comms. “Well, you know what I mean. I don’t have visual yet.”

“No problem,” Dragonfly said. “I’m tracking you just fine. Are you ready for some larger accommodations?”

“Well, I kinda like it here,” Gordo chuckled. “It’s private. Would you believe you’re the first person to come up and pester me since I got here?”

“Well, if you don’t want a ride home,” Dragonfly said teasingly, “I can go get Fireball, and you can wait for the next door-to-door rocket salesling to come by.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind having a look at your wares,” Gordo said. “Looking forward to the trip.”

“Twenty-One, Nickel, this is Mission Control, Horseton,” Cherry Berry broke in. “Before you two drift apart again, how about we get this rendezvous finished?”

“Well, hello there, Cherry Berry,” Gordo said. “And how’s Equestria’s second-best pilot doing today?”

“Ask Rainbow Dash that,” Cherry said. “Or who do you think is the best pilot?”

“You’re talking to him,” the griffon said smugly. “Who else could have got a stable orbit out of a rocket that was falling to pieces all the way up?”

“The way I understand… never mind,” Cherry Berry said, and Dragonfly could hear the ripping sound of the earth pony tearing herself away from the badinage to be professional again. “Twenty-one, you are go for close approach.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Going to ten meters per second towards target.”

Three minutes later, it was done, with CSP-21 floating a mere ten meters away from the can-shaped wreck of Griffonstone Rocket Project Ship Nickel. “There. Relative velocity at zero,” Dragonfly said. “Gordo, remember to make sure your ship is fully depressurized before you open the hatch. It’s important.”

“No worries, Twenty-one,” Gordon the Griffon said over the comms. “Depressurizing now.”

A short period of time passed.

“Okay, that seems to be it,” Gordon said. “I’m leaving the hatch now.”

“Wait a minute, Gordon,” Dragonfly said, anxiety rising in her barrel. “That’s not even as long as Faunt-”

“WHOO-HA!”

Dragonfly blinked. She looked up through the tiny windows of the capsule, seeing only blackness in both. “Gordon? Nickel, this is Twenty-one, what-”

WHANG.

Something hit the rescue ship hard enough to shake the interior. Dragonfly immediately used her magic to grab her helmet, which was floating loose in the capsule, and jam it over her head. A quick shove of the locking collar, a flip of the switch to activate the suit life support, and she was safe. “Fauntleroy, you okay back there?” she asked.

“I’m well,” the yak in the passenger compartment said over the comms. “And the pressure in this compartment appears to be holding steady, assuming the instruments here are correct.”

“Good.” Seems like some smart pony put the kind of gauges in the Hitchhiker compartment that ought to have been in the tourist pods. But then, the Hitchhiker had an exterior hatch, didn’t it? You had to have pressure sensors so the chamber could be cycled for astronauts going in and out. “Gordon? You all right out there? Talk to us!”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the griffon said. “I took one heck of a tumble, though. I guess the air wasn’t gone as far as I thought.”

“Something hit us right after you opened your hatch,” Dragonfly said. “Any idea what it was?”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that,” Gordon said. “Equal and opposite reaction thing. When I went flying, my ship went flying back the other direction. It kind of glanced off the side of your ship just above the engine. Doesn’t seem to be any external damage. At least, you still have an engine.”

“While you’re out there, could you take a closer look?” Dragonfly said.

“Will do,” Gordon said. “I’m looking at the impact point now, and I don’t even see a dent. Well, maybe a little one. I don’t think it struck at much more than two, maybe three meters per second. And it was only a glancing hit, really.”

“Gordon,” Dragonfly hissed, feeling quite justified in her anxiety, “this ship has to get the three of us down, plus Fireball if at all possible. Give it to me straight- is it broken or not?”

“Dragonfly, honey, I’m giving you the facts,” Gordon said. “No visible exterior damage to speak of. A little paint scraped, a dent about the size of my talons about two hooves above the weld joining the engine to this weird fuel tank you have.”

“Is the dent on the angled part?”

“Yeah, like I said, a couple hooves above the seam with the engine assembly.”

Dragonfly let out a long sigh of relief. The conical adapter made to mount the Terrier engine on the massive fuel tank was empty except for the fuel and oxidizer lines at its very center. So long as the seams held firm on both ends, a dent there damaged nothing. “Okay, thanks, Gordo. Come on inside and take a load off. Wait until Fauntleroy depressurizes the passenger compartment, though.”

“Don’t worry, Gordon,” Fauntleroy said. “I made the same mistake you did, and I won’t make it twice.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gordon said. “I’m drifting over to the ladder now. Just say when.”

Relaxing on the flight couch, Dragonfly reached up to remove her helmet. “Horseton, this is Twenty-one,” she said. “We had a little drama up here, but it’s all sorted out.”

Silence.

“Horseton, Twenty-one, comms check,” Dragonfly said.

More silence.

“Mission Control Horseton, this is CSP Mission Twenty-one,” Dragonfly said, her little black heart sinking as she spoke. “Communications check, please respond.”

Son of return of the silence.

Dragonfly hit the release on her straps, pushed herself out of her flight seat, and reached over to the small tool box mounted on the capsule wall next to the hatch. She dug out a ratchet, fitted the socket for the standard bolt used to hold together the consoles, and unscrewed the bolts holding down the access panel beneath the main control panel. Among other things, that was where the crystal that held the telepresence enchantment was kept. That crystal linked all the suits nearby to itself, and from there to Twilight Sparkle’s comm-sats and to the tracking stations at Horseton and Baltimare and at each of the other space programs’ home bases.

When she removed the cover, two bits of crystal floated up along with it. More fragments of crystal clung to the mounting point, which apparently had been just a little too close to the cover. Dragonfly reached out with a hoof, plucked the mount, and noted the unacceptably large range of play in what ought to have been a rigid, solid bracket.

“Horseton,” she said, knowing nobody could hear her, “we have a problem.”

---

“Twenty-one, Horseton, comms check,” Cherry Berry said, as all eyes in Mission Control looked her way.

“Cherry,” Occupant said from the flight director station, “you’ve tried for five minutes straight. We lost comms at the same time we lost telemetry.” The changeling pointed to the projector screen, which showed nothing except the orbital diagram showing the relative positions of the rescue ship, the three derelicts, and the satellites orbiting Equus. “We can’t hear them, and they probably can’t hear us.”

Cherry sighed. “Right, I know,” she said. “Do we know what happened?”

“Based on tracking data,” von Brawn said from the bullpen at the front of the control room, “it appears that the same problem occurred as with Fauntleroy’s craft. The loss of air propelled the ship into the rescue ship, where it impacted in some fashion. The two ships are now drifting apart at about one and a half meters per second.”

“The good news,” George Bull said, standing beside von Brawn, “is that tracking indicates Gordon stablized his own drift, maneuvered to the rescue ship, and boarded. That suggests our ship is still functional.”

“Won’t know for sure until it makes some sort of maneuver,” Goddard the Griffon added. “Worst comes to worst, the Hitchhiker has food for four people for seven days each. If we don’t see the ship move, we know to put together a second rescue mission. Or possibly a resupply run.”

“And where does that leave Fireball?” Cherry asked. She turned around and looked up at the VIP observation booth, where Dragonlord Ember sat next to Grampa Gruff, Prince Rutherford, and Princess Twilight Sparkle. All of them wore expressions ranging from dread to barely-checked rage.

“Fireball’s in Dragonfly’s hooves now,” Occupant said quietly. “Without comms, we’re out of it now.”

“Do we still have comms with Dragon XL-3?” Cherry asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Then let’s… no, let’s wait a little longer,” Cherry said. “If the ship can move, Dragonfly won’t wait around. She’ll try to rescue Fireball herself… as soon as possible.”

---

“Okay, I’m inside,” Gordon said over the comms. “What now?”

Dragonfly had spent a few minutes thinking that exact point over. Under the flight protocols laid down from practically the first flight, if a ship lost communications, it came down at once- as soon as it could land safely. She hadn’t tested the engines yet, but the reaction wheels worked fine, and the solar panels were recharging the batteries, and the parachutes showed as functional.

But if they came down now, Fireball was as good as gone. Not that she knew Fireball all that well- she’d only seen him at astronaut events and the EVA training, and he was always at the fringes of things, staying as far away as he could from everyone else, saying practically nothing. But in his place, she wouldn’t want her rescue ship to give up.

And more to the point, she didn’t want to give up. This was her mission. This was the last flight she’d begged Cherry for, the one she’d risked Chrysalis’s future wrath to get. And she wasn’t going to end it at only two-thirds successful.

“Now,” she said, “we go get Fireball. Strap in and prepare for acceleration.”

Losing the telepresence spell would make the job tough, but not impossible. Suit-to-suit comms worked for about two and a half kilometers even without a proper telepresence crystal linking them. Horseton could probably still talk to Fireball and keep him informed. And, as she’d pointed out to Cherry five hours and loose change before, the trajectory plotting system could be used by an astromare in the capsule- by Dragonfly, in other words- to plot her own course without referring to Mission Control.

And the first step, of course, was simple: repeat what she had done to make a rendezvous with Gordon. That meant a long acceleration burn to get a high orbit and allow Fireball’s capsule to catch up.

“How’s it coming back there?” she asked.

“Stand by, commander,” Fauntleroy’s voice said. “Gordon is strapping in now.”

“Excuse me?” Dragonfly asked. “What did you call me?”

“I said commander,” Fauntleroy answered, matter-of-factly. “This is your ship, after all. We are merely supernumeraries, under your authority. That makes you commander of the vessel and of the mission, does it not?”

Huh.

Dragonfly rolled the phrase Commander Dragonfly around her mind to see how it felt.

One third of her liked the sound of it.

The other two thirds cringed and said, My queen is going to go berserk.

“Okay, I’m in,” Gordo said. “Straps nice and tight. Ready for acceleration.”

“Okay, here we go.”

With a pressure much lighter than the sudden weight of responsibility bearing down on her mind, Dragonfly’s hoof pushed the throttle forwards, and the Terrier engine reignited and began boosting Mission Twenty-One higher once more.

---

“XL-3, this is Horseton Mission Control,” Cherry Berry said. “We’ve got some news for you, please respond.”

A growly voice came back over the magic comms network. “Lemme guess,” it said, “Celestia’s gotten bored with raising and lowering the sun. She’s decided to raise and lower the ground instead, so all I have to do is step outside the hatch and she’ll be waiting there with a medal and a box of rubies for me to snack on as I ride her home. Is that it?”

There was a long, awkward silence in the control room.(327)

“Nnnnnnnnooooooooo,” Cherry said carefully. “What I was going to say, Fireball, is Dragonfly is piloting a rescue ship to get you. She’s already picked up Fauntleroy and Gordon. But there’s a… contingency.”

This time the long, awkward silence echoed down from many miles above them. “When a pony starts using euphemisms that strong,” Fireball finally said, “it’s time to give them your full attention. I’m listening. What happened?”

“Put briefly, Gordon’s capsule and the rescue ship collided,” Cherry said. “Considering that the rescue ship just performed an orbital adjustment burn to refine its rendezvous with you- that’s coming up in twenty-three minutes, by the way- we’re assuming it’s fully functional.”

“But?”

After another long, awkward pause waiting to see if that one word was all Fireball was going to say, Cherry continued, “But the instant the two ships struck, we lost all contact with the rescue ship. Dragonfly is trying to rescue you all by herself. We can’t help.”

The long, awkward pause family reunion gave a big, silent hello to Uncle Ned and his family, who had just arrived from Vanhoover.

“Any chance I could just wait on the next ride home?” Fireball asked.

“No. Now listen,” Cherry said. “There’s a chance suit-to-suit comms will still work, which means you and Dragonfly can talk when you’re within two kilometers of each other. We can only talk to you while you’re in what’s left of your ship. Before you transfer to the ship, we want you to relay messages to and from the rescue ship, so we can get some idea of its condition. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fireball grumbled. “I’ll see if I can fit it in my busy travel OH WAIT. Looky here, an opening just turned up.”

Footnote:

(327) A frequent enough occurrence in Horseton’s Mission Control that it deserved its own place on the checklists.

Orbital maneuvers without the calm if squeaky voice of a pink earth pony in one’s ears proved trickier than Dragonfly had expected.

The burns she’d made trying to get and then refine an intercept with the dragon ship seemed to multiply like… like… something that had a lot of little somethings in a hurry. (328) A long burn to allow Fireball’s ship to catch up had, somehow, taken CSP-21 out of the right orbital plane. Correcting the orbital plane had taken the periapses of her ship and Fireball’s out of line. Attempts to realign those periapses had pushed apart the expected rendezvous. And so on, and so on, and so on.

The one good thing about all of this was, for all the burns she was making, she wasn’t using much fuel. The Terrier was efficient, but the truth was, it only took a few tens of meters per second in orbital velocity to make course corrections. The burns were brief- only a few seconds each, apart from the first. She’d still have half of the big tank left when she got close to Fireball.

Which, as it happened, was about to happen. According to the trajectory computer, the two ships had drawn within two and a half kilometers of one another, closing fast, with a closest separation of 1.3 kilometers.

“Dragon vessel XL-3, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-one,” Dragonfly said. “Do you copy, over?”

No response.

“Dragon vessel XL-3, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-one, do you copy, over?”

This time there was a voice, a gruff, growly, gravelly voice. “Yeah, I hear you,” it grunted. “Where are you?”

“About…” Dragonfly checked the distance-to-target readout. “Twenty-one hundred meters and closing. You ready for a little walk?”

“Just a sec, I got your friends in my other ear,” Fireball grumbled.

“My friends?” Dragonfly asked.

“Horseton Mission Control,” Fireball clarified. “I’ve been talking to them since they lost communications with you. They say you’re coming in too hot and need to match speeds with me. Right now.”

“Really?” Dragonfly looked at her readouts. Yes, her relative speed was a bit on the high side, but not that far off. “Are you sure that’s what they said?”

“They’re still saying it,” Fireball grumbled. “Shouting it, now.”

Assuming Fireball was listening to Cherry Berry, if she was shouting over the comms, that made it serious. “Okay, tell them I’m braking now.” Dragonfly flipped the rescue ship to full retrograde attitude and threw the throttle to full, braking the orbiting vessel as hard as she could.

Which, she recognized almost instantly, wasn’t hard enough. Not even close. She was going a couple hundred meters per second faster than Fireball’s wreck, but the efficient little Terrier was only slowing her at a couple of meters per second.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered. “Fireball, I think I screwed up.”

“Big surprise,” Fireball grumbled. “Lemme guess, no rescue this orbit.”

“I’ll fix it,” Dragonfly insisted as the rescue ship blew past closest approach. “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. In the meantime, tell the bossmare that my ship took a hit from Gordo’s pod. Hit the lower section adapter, remember that. The comms crystal mount was loose, and the jolt broke the crystal against the console interior. I can’t fix it, but everything else on the ship works. Got that?”

“Lower section adapter, got it,” Fireball said. “How long until you get back?”

“I’ll work it out!” Dragonfly said. “I’ll get back to you soon! Don’t worry! Sit tight!”

“Where am…” Fireball’s voice broke up and went silent as the two ships drew apart beyond the suit-to-suit communicators’ range.

Roadapples, Dragonfly thought as the engine continued to fire, as the relative velocity between the ship and its target crept lower and lower on the readout. By the time it bottomed out at five meters per second, the two ships were over five kilometers apart.

Roadapples, she thought again. Great steaming piles of roadapples. What now?

Now I work the problem. Just like in the sims. This is just another test.

The fact that I never once did this in the sims has nothing to do with it.

Dragonfly reached over to the trajectory computer and began punching numbers. After a couple of minutes, she had a solution: a burn that would bring the two ships back within about a kilometer of each other. The burn would have to take place in the shadow of Equus, out of the sunlight, as would the rendezvous, but that didn’t seem like a big problem. The suit navigation systems could pick up the target ship even in the dark.

She tried to tweak the numbers, to get the ships closer- and for certain she wouldn’t wait so long next time to match speeds. But whatever she did, one kilometer appeared to be as close as she could get. Well, that was close enough; she could make a more careful approach when the time came.

Nodding her head decisively, she oriented her ship for the new intercept burn. As the ship rotated, she caught a glimpse, just for a moment, of the sun setting behind the enormous curve of Equus.

Footnote:

(328) Dragonfly was in training to be a rocket scientist, of sorts. She was not now, nor would she ever be, a comparative biologist.

The first burn went smoothly. Only after it was complete, and Dragonfly saw the projected new orbit, did she realize it had gone smoothly to Tartarus.

The rescue ship and Fireball’s derelict would come within about a kilometer of each other- she’d got that much right. The problem came about fifteen minutes later, when her projected orbit dipped back into atmosphere- well into atmosphere, deep enough to force re-entry and landing. And even if, by some miracle, the air had zero effect on the craft, the orbit that climbed back out into space wouldn’t come within hundreds of kilometers of Fireball.

Obviously that wouldn’t do. She began working out a correction burn, as close to the intercept as- no. She’d been mistaken about her braking burn before. It would be better to postpone the intercept and just focus on staying in orbit. The sooner she made her correction burn, the better. It took about a minute to work out a decent correction which would get her an 800-meter intercept back on the day side of Equus and keep her ship up out of the soup.

She checked over the burn requirements- nothing huge, just a ten-second nudge to both raise the periapsis and lower the apoapsis- and began turning the ship.

Halfway through the turn, the reaction wheels powered down, and the computer screens went dark.

Dragonfly had the sudden sensation that a hole just like the ones in her hooves had opened up in her belly. Frantically she switched breakers off and on, wiggled the stick experimentally, even tried throttling up the engine. No response. Nothing.

Only then did she see, on the magic-powered readouts around the still-functional nav-ball, on the consumables readout: Battery power 0%.

Craaaaap.

Dragonfly tried to lean back on the flight couch to think(329). The closest approach to Fireball lay in the shadow of the planet, but she thought- thought- the ship would come back into the sun before she hit atmosphere. There might be time for a correction burn. But by that time the second intercept would be over… and after this mishap, she didn’t have any confidence that she could work out a third.

Also, she was getting tired. She’d been awake, except for a brief catnap, for about twenty hours. She knew just enough to know her judgment wasn’t at its peak(330). That would only get worse. And without updates on Fireball’s status, she couldn’t tell if it was safe to leave him another eight hours.

So… the question was… how much velocity could a space suit pack make up in ten minutes?

Footnotes:

(329) In free-fall it is very nearly impossible to slouch in a chair without straps to hold you into your slouch. If you flounce onto a flight couch, you will find yourself rebounding right back off it again, thanks to Newton’s laws of motion. Space psychologists have never found an adequate substitute for an easy chair in space.

(330) And she was intelligent enough- just- to admit that her judgment, even at its peak, wasn’t ideal. She might not have been the one who came up with the Mk. 0 cardboard-box capsule, but she’d gone along with it at the time...

“... this is CSP-21, do you read?”

Fireball twitched. He’d been about to go to sleep. In the forty minutes since he’d last heard the changeling’s voice, after passing on the message to Horseton, his comms had been left blissfully clear, giving him time to be bored again. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Ready for another try?”

“Shut up and listen,” Dragonfly said. “I’m going to be within a kilometer of you in about five minutes. In twenty minutes I’m going to be in the atmosphere. I have zero electricity and can’t turn or fire engines until we get back in sunlight, and that’s after closest approach. I have no idea if I’m gonna be able to get this close to you again. If you’re coming, now’s the time.”

Fireball got the picture first time. “Long distance spacewalk?” he asked. “Is that the deal?”

“That’s the deal,” Dragonfly agreed.

Another voice broke in: “XL-3, Horseton, what’s that about a long distance spacewalk?”

“What’s our relative velocity?” Fireball asked, ignoring the pony on the planet below.

“Thirty-nine meters per second and dropping,” Dragonfly said. “I don’t know where that will bottom out at. My computers are down except for the nav-ball.”

“Thirty-nine, huh? Can do.” Fireball suppressed a snort as he reached for his helmet. Based on training and the EVAs done by Cherry Berry, Chrysalis, and Rainbow Dash, the space suit thrusters could match thirty-nine meters per second with ease. If necessary they could probably match five times that much, if you didn’t worry about stupid things like safety margins.

Besides, his safety margin in this tin can was about used up. Fireball felt better about his space suit getting to another ship than hanging around in this one until a changeling found enough brain cells to get here again.

“Horseton, XL-3,” he said as he finished sealing his helmet on. “I’m going for a walk. Tell Ember I’ll see her on the ground.”

Ignoring the protests, ignoring the safety protocols, he pushed over to the passenger can’s latch, not bothering with depressurization, and just opened up the door. In an instant he was flying one direction and the remains of his former ship the other. That suited him fine; get the dead pod out of the way while he maneuvered.

It took only a moment for the dragon to stabilize himself. It took but another moment to find the rescue ship on the nav-ball and target it. According to the ball, it was growing closer pretty quickly, which suited Fireball just fine. He just had to make sure he was in its way as it came past.

In training Fireball had been anxious about learning how to fly EVAs. Once he’d picked up the trick, though, it was dead simple- much simpler than piloting a rocket launch, which had all sorts of potential for disaster. Up here in orbit there were only two dangers; drifting too low and ending up in atmosphere, and running out of power for the thrusters.

The batteries in the suit collected just enough magic power to run the comms and nav-ball; recharging could only happen with the system shut down, on board a ship. Maybe future suits would get better batteries, but for now there was a definite limit to thruster power, a limit you had to remember.

But you only needed thruster power to change direction and speed. You could coast forever. That was the trick. And at the speed CSP-21 was approaching, Fireball didn’t need to try to get there faster.

It was just so very, very simple. No worries at all.

Fireball fired one long burn to bring his course almost, but not quite, directly towards the rescue ship(331). Once he got within five hundred meters, he fired a second time, bringing his relative velocity down to ten meters per second. At two hundred meters he fired again, reducing relative speed to five meters per second; he followed this up with several short bursts of thruster to put him back on course.

By one hundred meters away he could make out the rescue ship. He slowed to two meters per second, not wanting to go kersplat against the hull like, many months before, he’d gone kersplat inside his capsule against the side of a mountain.(332) “Okay, I’m here,” Fireball said. “Tell me where to come in.”

“There’s ladders leading to the hatch on the fattest part of the ship,” Dragonfly said. “The sooner you get on board the better. I’m beginning to get sunlight on the solar panels again, but I can’t turn the ship to boost back to orbit until you’re inside.”

“Okay, I see them.” And Fireball did; now that he was close, they were pretty obvious. “I’ll be at the hatch in about thirty seconds.”

“Good. We’ve already depressurized the cabin, and Fauntleroy and Gordon are waiting inside.”

“Sounds like a party,” Fireball muttered.

“Sure is.”

“I hate parties.”

“Well, you didn’t have to RSVP, you know,” Dragonfly said.

“I hate burning up on re-entry a lot more,” Fireball said. “Stand by, I’m coming in.”

Two minutes later, as the drained electrical batteries of CSP-21 sucked up power from the solar panels, the ship turned with its tail pointed directly at the planet, fired its engines, and clawed away from the perils of an uncontrolled, unplanned re-entry.

Changeling, yak, griffon and dragon were safe, for the moment, and all together in a functional space craft.

Now: how to get home again?

Footnote:

(331) This is what is known as a “useful lie”. Fireball, in an absolute sense, was not flying directly towards Dragonfly’s ship. The two were orbiting (well, almost orbiting) Equus on a convergent course, moving in a direction almost directly behind where Fireball faced at this time. But from the limited frame of view of Fireball and his destination, he was moving towards it. It’s sort of like thinking that, when you’re in an upward bound elevator, you are standing still while the building is being lowered around you. The important thing is, Fireball was getting closer to safety, and he knew how to control his path to make sure he got there. Objective facts would only get in the way.

(332) Fireball didn’t pause to wonder how he allowed himself to be put into a position to risk his life, as he was doing at that moment, for a second time. First, woolgathering at this particular moment meant screwing up the spacewalk and dying- not an option. Second, he actually felt safer floating outside in his spacesuit than he’d felt at any point since Ember had informed him of Mission XL-3. Realization of just how bucked he might have been would only come later, after reflection (and a couple of news interviews).

“Three passengers on board, commander,” Fauntleroy reported. “Whither now?”

“Gimme a minute to think,” Dragonfly muttered back over the comms. “Have a snack while I’m doing that.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized she was hungry, too. Of course, all changelings lived in a state of perpetual hunger; it just differed in intensity, from “Well, maybe just a nibble,” up to ravening-mindless-monster levels. The problem was, that hunger was for love or other compatible emotions, not for the gunk ponies ate.

But there was a chocolate bar in the capsule’s food storage locker, which was the next best thing. Dragonfly nibbled on it while she considered her options.

Being out of communications with Horseton was, under the normal flight rules, a mission abort condition. Logically she ought to come down and come down right this minute.

But there were considerations. Back in Horseton it was currently after midnight. Dawn was hours away. She wanted to come down in daylight if at all possible, especially if she wanted to obey the warnings about avoiding touchdowns on land. Also, since she wasn’t one hundred percent certain that Horseton could track the rescue ship without the telepresence crystal to lock on to, she wanted the ship and its five parachutes to be visible even more than she wanted the surface she was landing on to be visible.

By the time she finished the chocolate, she’d come to a decision. “Okay, everybody,” she said, “I’ve been awake almost twenty-four hours, and it’s full dark back at the space center. I’m going to take a nap and wait a few orbits. Then I’m gonna pick a deorbit burn time, and then we’re going to see how small a splash we can make in the Celestia Sea.”

“Sounds good to us, commander,” Gordon replied. “Hope you don’t mind if we nap along with you?”

Dragonfly considered the two bulkheads and the unpressurized section of ship between the little capsule and the large Hitchhiker cabin. Yeah, I only wish you were here with me. I could snack a little, and I don’t mean chocolate. “No problem,” she said. “I want to rest at least four hours. That’s the earliest we can go home and expect to land in daylight.”

Sleeping in the capsule proved difficult. First, the air circulation fans made a good bit of noise. Second, the sun kept peeking in and out through the little windows as the ship rotated in the PTC(333) roll she’d put it in before sacking out. Third, she could lie down or curl up the way she wanted to because of the same laws of motion which kept separating herself and the flight couch. And, finally, the combination of the barbecue turn, the life support circulation, and the absence of her space suit (she’d taken it off to be more comfortable) meant that the temperature in the capsule lay just a tiny bit lower than comfortable for easy sleeping.

After two hours Dragonfly gave up the effort. There has to be a better way to do this, she thought. Maybe if we brought sleeping bags up here… yeah, and if we hung them from the walls, possibly… there would have to be straps, of course, to hold the bags wherever they were put, and maybe a couple more straps to hold us inside the bag when we toss or turn.

Dragonfly found a pencil and some blank pages from the flight manual and began to sketch.

Footnote:

(333) Passive Thermal Control, or “spit turn”, since the point of it was to “cook” the ship evenly on all sides, like a roast apple on a rotisserie. Both the capsule and the passenger compartment had independent cooling systems, but Dragonfly figured she’d rather be safe than sorry while she slept.

“Commander?” Fauntleroy called over the comms.

Dragonfly dozed, her fangs idly gnawing on the pencil in her mouth.

“Hey, Dragonfly, you awake?” That was Gordon, sounding a little concerned.

One of the changeling’s ear-fins twitched idly.

“YO, BUG! Are we coming down today or what??”

The roar of a dragon, even muffled by transmission over magical communicators, brought Dragonfly alert instantly. “Sorry!” she said. “I’m awake! Just a second!” As the pencil went spinning away to bounce off the breaker panel(334), she noticed the flight plan turned sketch pad, where the four views of the proposed sleeping bag design each had a happy, sleeping pony inside, and in the middle of the sketches sat a little stick-figure changeling with a bib, knife and fork.

Maybe, she thought, I won’t show the bossmare this sketch.

Four hours had become six and a bit thanks to Dragonfly’s second nap. By the time the ship hit atmosphere, she figured, the sun would be rising in Los Pegasus- more than enough of a daylight zone to bring the ship down. She brought up the trajectory computer…

… and paused. For all their genius, the buzzard and the bulls had never been able to teach any incarnation of their computers to predict deceleration from air resistance in their trajectories. Dragonfly would have to make her best guess as to where to burn to get a landing just offshore from the space center… and her guesses hadn’t been all that good so far this flight.

Well… when in doubt, err on the side of caution, or in this case, on the side of deep water. She could overshoot Horseton and land somewhere in hundreds of miles of ocean. But landing directly on Horseton, or worse yet west of it, meant the Hayseed Swamps, the San Palomino Hills and the mountains of the south Badlands, or possibly the southern jungles. So, overshoot it would be.

The burn was planned, and twenty minutes later, executed.

Its task concluded, the engine and its massive fuel tank, still over forty percent full, was jettisoned to burn up on its way down.

Everyone suited up and strapped in for the descent.

Minutes ticked by, as the ship slowly descended out of space and into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Footnote:

(334) Which had a big protective cover, currently closed. Goddard and von Brawn had figured out very early that it was vital, when dealing with changelings, to design certain switches that would only be toggled when it was intended that they should be toggled. ”Oops” is not a word one ever wants to hear in space flight.

The three passengers sat in their new-generation, supposedly more comfortable flight seats, scattered around the periphery of the large, open Hitchhiker cabin interior, as the ship twitched, rocked, and bucked across the skies of western Equestria.

“I confess I’m feeling a bit anxious!” Fauntleroy said over the sounds of groaning metal.

“So are we,” Fireball grumbled. “Why should we care?”

The little yak twitched. “You know what yaks do when we get anxious.”

Fireball thought about this, and then wondered just how thick the steel walls were around him(335). “Okay,” he admitted, “I care. But just a little.”

“Look, be cool about this,” Gordon said, trying and failing to ignore the shaking of the ship(336). “Dragonfly’s an experienced pilot. She’s got this. She’ll get us down.”

“Are you seriously asking us,” Fireball rumbled, “to be confident about our lives being in the hooves of a crazy changeling?”

“Urge to smash,” Fauntleroy said in a strained voice, “rising.”

“Look,” Gordon replied, his voice losing its faux-lighthearted tone. “There’s got to be a reason why the changelings can keep up with the ponies and we can’t. They’ve got something going for them, and I don’t think it’s just Cherry Berry, right? They have more flights. They made most of our equipment. They know what they’re doing, all right?”

Fireball snorted. “Well, that’s true enough,” he admitted. “If I knew what I was doing, I’d never have ended up in a rocket in the first place.”

“Urge to go back in time and smash my own face in,” Fauntleroy said with barely suppressed rage, “rising.”

Griffon and dragon looked at each other. “So,” Gordon said to Fireball, “read any good books lately?”

Meanwhile, up in the capsule, Dragonfly twitched the control stick in her hooves, this way and that, fighting to keep the large, lightweight passenger cabin from flipping around behind the small, heavy control capsule. Without the passenger cabin and the big heat shield beneath it, the whole ship would burn up. But it was a constant struggle, with the ship wig-wagging back and forth like a mad thing as it fell back to the ground enveloped in a globe of fire. All the while the sensation of weight crept back into Dragonfly’s life, bearing down on her as the rapidly thickening atmosphere forced the ship to slow down, threatening to cook or crush it entirely.

In short, Dragonfly was having the time of her life.

Yesssss! she hissed mentally as she continued to wrestle the controls. This was dancing with the Pale Horse! This was what she’d wanted, just once more! The thrill of being right on the very edge of complete disaster, and of pulling away again through the sheer power of one’s own awesomeness!(337) This was what being a rocket pilot was all about!

Alas, from her own point of view, it was over all too quickly. The wider profile of the vehicle, and its lighter weight per volume, allowed it to slow down much sooner than expected once she hit the thicker part of the atmosphere. This was all well and good, because Dragonfly had completely blown the placement of her re-entry burn, and had the ship been heavier and thus imbued with more inertia, it might have landed in the deserts of Zebrica or even Saddle Arabia. As it stood, one error more than cancelled out the other, dropping the ship well short of the Equestrian continent.

At ten thousand meters, with nothing but open ocean beneath her, Dragonfly hit the staging switch, releasing the five parachutes. The ship slowed even more, its plunge slowing to a more reasonable drop, and then to a gradual drift as the chutes opened fully at one thousand meters above the water.

Dragonfly lay back on the flight couch, sighing. Yes, she thought. I’m done now. If I never pilot another ship, I’m content. I made orbit. I rescued three people. And I’ve brought them home safely.

Maybe I should tell them that.

A flash of light outside caught the changeling’s attention, and she leaned up for a better look. There, circling the capsule and its array of parachutes, flew two alicorn princesses, the Day and the Night themselves having come to see the rescued astronauts home.

Dragonfly watched them fly around for a moment, then thought, Naaah, they can figure it out for themselves.

And slowly, gracefully, with surprisingly little splash, Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-One settled into the waves of the South Luna Sea.

Footnotes:

(335) Fireball was a dragon just out of adolescence, still small enough to fit in pony homes and pony spaceships. He couldn’t treat yaks with the same contempt a centuries-old mature dragon, as long or longer than a city block, could. The thing about yaks was, once a yak declared intent to smash, that yak would not be stopped until either the thing or the yak was smashed. Nobody with brains wanted to fight someone who literally did not know how to quit, scales and fire or not.

(336) Gordon held the unfortunate distinction of being the first pilot to lose his lunch in space. Now he was trying, through pure willpower, not to repeat, in multiple senses of the word.

(337) She’d read the line in an interview Rainbow Dash had given for some magazine or other. When the pegasus pony said it, it was stupid. But when Dragonfly said it about herself, in the privacy of her own head, it was simple, beautiful truth.

---

MISSION 21 REPORT

Mission summary: Rescue three stranded astronauts and bring them safely back to Equus

Pilot: Dragonfly

Flight duration: 25 hours 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 3
Milestones: First orbital rendezvous of two spaceships; first ship-to-ship transfer of crew

Conclusions from flight: Chrysalis is going to lose her goo when she hears we did this…

MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL

---

Chrysalis lay back and let her mattress hug her. It really was very nice and soft, except for the grit left over from her de-petrification. It made the assimilation of Cherry Berry’s long story, with all its digressions into defending Dragonfly’s performance, so much easier.

“So,” she said at last, “you’re saying you ordered the mission because rescuing those three idiots was the price of getting me un-rocked. Right?”

“What?” Cherry gasped. “No!! That’s only what I told Twilight! I would have done it anyway! Because it was the right thing to do!” The pink pony jabbed a hoof in the direction of the ceiling. “You’ve been up there! You know what it’s like! If you were up there, stranded, no way to come down again, wouldn’t you want someone to rescue you? If it were even remotely possible?”

With a snort, the pony reared up so she could cross her forelegs in disapproval. “And now you’ll say something about how we ponies are dumb enough to do it, and how you’re stronger than us because you wouldn’t.”

To her own mild surprise, Chrysalis hadn’t been about to say any such thing. She had, indeed, been up there, both at one with everything and, at the same time, horribly alone. She understood. But there wasn’t any point trying to persuade the pony of that, especially when she had a reputation to maintain. “That’s better,” she said. “I was wondering how much pony there was in you, since it sounds like you’ve been doing an excellent job as a changeling.”

The wide eyes, the spluttering fit, the gradual shift of the pony’s expression from shock into outrage, were everything Chrysalis could have asked for.

“In any case,” she continued, not letting Cherry recover enough to respond properly, “since you’ve kept order here so beautifully, I’m sure that imbecile Elytron has let the main hive collapse around his empty head. So you’ll have to go on pretending to be me for a week longer.”

“No.” Such a simple, yet heartfelt syllable. So desperate, so heartbroken. So delicious.

“Make that two weeks,” Chrysalis corrected herself. “I need to disappear for a little while and find myself some… nibbles.” Having stuck it to the pony in the way that would hurt the most, she moved rapidly on to business. “In the meantime, what’s our financial condition?”

The pony actually managed to smile- a genuine smile, one which made Chrysalis think she’d been too lenient with her petty emotional torture. “That depends on when we deposit these,” she said, pulling a handful of checks out of a saddlebag.

“What are those?”

Cherry passed each check over to Chrysalis to read, one at a time. “Reward for rescuing Fauntleroy. And Gordo. And Fireball. Prize for being the first space agency to achieve rendezvous. Prize for being the first space agency to conduct ship-to-ship crew transfer in space. And, finally, stipends for the first month’s wages for our three new astronauts. Because Leonid the yak, Gordo, and Fireball have all transferred to CSP.”

The last three checks were small. The other checks… not. Very not.

“I think, all put together,” Cherry continued, “this is enough money to pay for a robotic mission to Minmus and a piloted mission afterwards. Which will be our dress rehearsal for the moon.”

“I see.” I see you’re going to have the last laugh no matter what I do, pony. But tomorrow is another day. “Well, since you have matters well in hoof, arrange for a chariot back to the Hive for tomorrow morning for the two of us.”

Cherry blinked. “You and me?” she asked, confused.

“Of course not,” Chrysalis smiled. “Myself and the bed. Can’t you see I’m still a very sick person? I need my bed rest!”

And, after a brief moment to brush out a bit more of the grit from the sheets, she rolled over to get it.

Author's Note:

Okay. It's been a while, hasn't it? You'd almost think I spent nine and a half months stranded on another planet...

... yeah, anyway. First things first- as I post this I've just committed to spending $3500 on yet another transmission for the WLP company van, so let me plug my Patreon and KoFi again.

Ko-Fi (direct money to my PayPal) --> https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet
Patreon (monthly pledges, and patrons can get sneak previews of my stuff- including frequent live-writing sessions via Google Docs) --> https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Second: remember, those of you coming in from The Maretian, this is Dragonfly and Fireball before they even got so far as to be picked for the mission that would introduce them to Mark Watney. They're not as mature as they are by the end of the sequel. Dragonfly is still only faintly acquainted with the concept of consequences, and Fireball is even more antisocial than when he turns up at the Hab with the other shipwreck victims.

Also, my first draft of the story showed the actual launches, interspliced with one another, of the three ships. I felt it clunked and clunked badly, so it got replaced, but I recycled some of the dialog for the conference with Cherry, Twilight, Ember, Grampa, and Rutherford.

Now, on to how the gameplay affected the story.

I'd originally intended to pick up only two rescue missions for this chapter, and then to use either the three-person capsule or the tourist package plus a second detachable capsule (which I've done in-game before) for the rescue. Unfortunately the three-person capsule proved too expensive in science points for me to get, leaving me the problem of how to get four people down. I ended up using my banked science points to buy the four-person Hitchhiker cabin (usually used only as a space station component)...

... and then discovered I didn't have the proper sized heat shield. I ended up having to science-farm the space center using a rocket-powered rover (not portrayed in the story because I couldn't possibly make sense of it outside the context of Kerbal).

In retrospect the giant fuel tank was a bad idea; a normal-sized T-200 would probably have done the job, and the lighter payload would have offset the need for extra fuel to achieve orbit. I tested the ship to make sure it could achieve orbit, then let the game sit for over six months before flying the mission, which went pretty much as I document in the story.

About half the time stranded astronauts orbiting Kerbin in the game will spawn in capsules, the other half in passenger pods. This time all three rescue targets were passenger pods. Maybe sometime in the future I'll get somebody to draw clip art I can paste into the screen caps, but for now the story had to excuse the passenger pods somehow. I did my best.

The thing is, when you EVA a stranded kerbal from one of these pods, the game gets a little kraken- that is, it tends to act like the pod is fully pressurized when you order the EVA, sending the kerbal flying off and the empty pod spinning away. I did, indeed, have the second pod bump into the rescue ship. However, Kerbal doesn't allow equipment breakage without mods, so in-game my communications with the ground did not die.

I made that bit up- the comms loss- because I screwed up royally during my third rescue attempt. I badly misjudged the relative speeds of the ship and pod, and I overestimated my braking ability, and I blew past my rendezvous. I then compounded the problem by firing engines to get a new intercept without planning it out properly using a maneuvering node... and discovered I'd put myself on a re-entry trajectory.

While on the dark side of Kerbin.

Just in time for battery power to die, because you need electricity for the reaction wheels to turn the ship, and Terriers don't have thermocouples.

Of course long tetherless spacewalks of the kind that would give NASA controllers heart palpitations are nothing in KSP, and Fireball's flight really was smoother than most for some reason. I was easily able to get Fireball to the rescue ship and inside, and then boost the ship back into a proper orbit so I could pick and choose my descent, before time ran out.

And, having almost screwed the pooch, I decided to put it all into the story, and to justify it by having Dragonfly cut off from the cooler, wiser heads on the ground. (Including Cherry, although her head certainly wasn't cooler while it was going on...)

As a general rule, my method of achieving rendezvous with a target is this:

(1) Get coplanar with the target's orbit.

(2) Adjust your orbit so your apoapsis or periapsis lines up with the target's apoapsis or periapsis at some point, as close as possible both in altitude and location in orbit.

(3) Boost whichever high-low point you didn't line up with the target well above or below the corresponding point in the target's orbit. Lower means you catch up from behind; higher means you drop back towards the target. DO NOT try to get it all in one orbit.

(4) Since you have lined up a point in your orbit with the target's orbit, you now know where your intercept point will ALWAYS be, every orbit. Watch the distance between ships every orbit, note trends, and adjust your orbit to close faster or slower with each orbit. Remember, in vanilla KSP you can take all the time in the world, because of infinite life support.

(5) When the intercept markers show an intercept within two kilometers, plan your matching-speed burn. With minor adjustments, you can bring your ship to a relative halt easily and then use the nav-ball markers to carefully reduce the separation between ships if you're going for hard docking or a pretty screen cap.

RCS thrusters are way up the tech tree (as of 1.3; the new build might have changed that), but if you are very careful and very, very patient, you can achieve docking on main engines alone... provided something is holding your target stable. (Also providing you have docking ports, which are also way up the tech tree.) The first time you bump an unpiloted target, if you are even slightly off on your docking attitude, you WILL cause the target to tumble away, making a second attempt practically impossible.

Finally, I chose not to ignore the movie's events for two reasons: I prefer to include all canon in my stories except where canon released after I begin causes a conflict; and because "over my petrified body" was the only way Chrysalis was ever going to let Dragonfly have a proper pilot mission again.

That's enough babble. Let's post this so I can begin planning the next chapter: Cherry Berry goes to Minmus!

Comments

[Von Voctavia]

aaaaw yis

[Archivist Nightwatch]

Won't lie haven't read the Martian and it's not really something I want to just yet till this one finishes

[Prysmkitsune]

she cant be the first pony on the moon because 1 shes a bug, not a pony
and 2, luna beat her to it by a thousand years or so.

[Winter Quill]

That's a very good short version on how to do Rendezvous. For those who are crazy enough there is also Long Version, which is basically the original book on how to pull it off.

Fantastic chapter all round, I think the use of the movie events is a good framework for how it would happen that way and helps build up some characters that we are now very familiar with. It's always fun pulling of mid game maneuvers with early game tech, not exactly easy or a good idea, or even the fun kind of fun, but still 'fun'.

[Kris Overstreet]

9349012 Luna was the Mare IN the Moon, not the Mare On the Moon.

[Yellowtail]

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEEEEE!!! I HAVEN’T EVEN READ THE LATEST CHAPTER YET AND I’M EXCITED!!!

[M1_A4_Abrams]

When the reaction wheels died I honestly thought you were gonna have an honest-to-god Manley Maneuver.

But then you had to go and disappoint me by being all sensible.

Why are you still in 1.3? I'm fairly certain 1.5.1 won't break a fully vanilla save. (Don't quote me on that, I have like 50 mods active at any given time, broken saves are my existence.)

[Kris Overstreet]

9349055 My current CSP auto-updates, but I've barely touched it since the Squad sellout. I was too busy with Maretian.

[Vaalintine]

Griffon and dragon looked at each other. “So,” Gordon said to Fireball, “read any good books lately?”

Given Fireball pretty mich ends up getting a job transcribing human works, I find this funny.

[Wintermoon]

By the Pale Mare's hooves! I missed this story so much. Fantastic job on this new chapter, it was very exciting to read.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

9349011
Yes, he wrote the sequel before writing this. You should be able to wait until this is finished to read that & still not miss anything

“You’re talking to him,” the griffon said smugly. “Who else could have got out a stable orbit out of a rocket that was falling to pieces all the way up?”

First place, food isn't as critical as air or water. You won't die from a few days without food. You will NOT be happy, but you won't die.
Second, I'd have just sent a resupply rocket with food to each astronaut, then taken my time to rescue them.

That said, I enjoyed The Maretian sequel & liked this too. One of these days, I'm going to reread the whole thing without the 1 year break.

[OddDreams]

Oh my sweet summer child...you haven't realized you can tweak the engine output on the fly...

[Skittlebug]

OH MY GOD IT UPDATED! See you all tomorrow.

Yes, I know this isn't a daily upload like The Maretian was. Geez.

[River Babble]

YEEEEEEEESSSS!!!! *dances with delight*

I'm SO happy this story is updating again! And WHAT an update!!! I love how you incorporated the events of the movie, allowing for everything to be explained to Chrysalis after the fact and conveniently sidestepping her usual reticence to be helpful. (I have no doubt you could write in reasoning for her joining in on the rescue, but frankly this scenario makes more sense. Also, props for naming/identifying the mystery ore that petrified the princesses, I like it.)

And I LOVE SEEING FIREBALL!!! It's really fun getting to see the players from Maretian before those events, and learn more about their backstories. I was surprised that Fireball transferred to CSP when he'd been trying to quit his own space program; maybe it was his way of avoiding further blackmail from Ember? He probably figured she wouldn't allow him to quit no matter what, so he might as well join the group that seems to have SOMEONE who knows what they're doing. It also both amazes and cracks me up that he actually experienced his own MINI STRANDING DISASTER well before the Maretian happened. Also also, it's really cool seeing his skill in EVAs; gives more logic to why he was chosen as one of the Amicitas crew, aside from his dragonness. He clearly has a talent for it, and it's only a shame that he didn't get to use it more in the Maretian incident (for good reason since they were kinda STUCK ON A ROCK THAT WANTED TO KILL THEM).

Man, this was literally like getting a good-length short story all on its own. What an excellent way to come back to this great story! I'm so excited for more updates! :D And best of luck with your car repairs!

Oh and of course, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

[River Babble]

9349094
Oh my stars I didn't even think of that, you're right, that's HILARIOUS XD

[Daremo]

Losing the telepresence spell would make the job tough, but not impossible.

You've got a ship with a functional telepresence spell drifting away from you at less than 2ms. Would it not be simpler to rendezvous with it again, EVA out, grab the module or the parts required to repair your own unit and get back to work?

But... 'lings in stressful situations don't always weigh all the factors and make the perfect decision. The 60% solution right now, trumps the 100% solution tomorrow.

[Venerable Ro]

It's nice to get to see Fireball demonstrate his EVA expertise. In The Maretian, it never amounted to anything but a tag by his name. But here, we can see how he got the "specialist" title. That was masterful.

[Daremo]

Typos for you, sir!

“No water,” Dragonfly muttered - “No land,” Dragonfly muttered (It may be that this is tired cuddlebug and not a typo, but why wouldn't they correct her immediately?)
He’s already picked up Fauntleroy - She’s already picked up Fauntleroy
As she ship rotated - As the ship rotated

[zsewqthewolf]

sees update...

[ShadowLDrago]

“We had a kingdom to put to rights,” Celestia said gently. “The restoration of our magic undid the damage of the Storm King’s tornado, but there was still all the damage his fleet did-“

Storm King, right, he was a thing.

“It was a piece of misfortune malachite,” Twilight Sparkle said. “An extremely potent petrification spell. And you were hundreds of meters over the water when it took effect.”

Ah, so that's what it was.

Twilight shook her head. “No. The yaks had the worst trajectory for a moon shot, and they didn’t attempt a direct ascent. Their rocket ran out of fuel just getting to an equatorial orbit. But that’s not the worst of it.” Twilight took a deep, steadying breath. “The pilot’s not Leonid. It’s the other yak astronaut. Prince Fauntleroy. Rutherford’s little brother.”

Name rings a bell.

Cherry Berry, sitting next to Twilight, brought her hoof down on the conference table hard enough to drown out any further words. “The princesses,” she said firmly, “have a continent to rebuild after the Storm King’s rampage. Princess Twilight Sparkle delegated this vital task to the world’s most successful space program because she can’t be in two places at once! Why can’t you appreciate the time she’s sparing for you when there are whole cities still on fire?”(306)

Thank you Cherry Berry.

“-or else that idiot Storm King would do something stupid like betray his chief lieutenant, allowing the ponies to snatch victory from the beak of defeat!” Grampa Gruff finished. “Like always happens!”

I mean...

“Where ponies concerned-“ Rutherford began.

“- the more stupid it sounds-“ said Ember.

“- the more likely it is to work,” Grampa finished.

... They have a point.

“Trouble?” Grampa Gruff snorted again. “You just aim your firecracker at them and keep flying till you catch them! How hard can it be??”

You wanna try to fly the rocket, old bird?

“What’s so difficult about it?” Twilight asked. “You merely calculate the relative position and trajectories of the two objects, you calculate an orbital insertion burn that produces a close intercept, you plan a second burn that matches velocities between the two objects, and then you use small bursts of power to achieve a final rendezvous. It’s really quite simple!”

Not everyone is a genius, Book Horse.

“I think I get it,” Cherry said, feeling obligated to hold up some part of the egghead conversation. “Rather than try to catch the target, you want the target to catch you!”

Precisely.

(311) In the Changeling Space Program, “getting the bugs out” is seldom a figure of speech. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little knowledge in a changeling’s head, plus a complicated piece of equipment, is a recipe for explosions.

And that worries me to no end.

“Relax,” Cherry Berry said confidently. “What space agency is more reliable than the Changeling Space Program?”

So far, none.

A flash of green fire later, a petite, adorable cream-colored earth pony mare with blue eyes and gray mane blinked up shyly at Cherry. “C-c-can I interest you in our premiere l-l-line of s-saddles for that in-in-in-in-intimate m-moment-”

COCO?!

Plain, honest fact.”(315)

Can't help but find that phrase ironic coming out of the mouth of a being for whom trickery and lying is probably second nature.

“First....” Somehow Dragonfly contrived to turn featureless glowing bug eyes into the most soulful, doleful, heartbreaking puppy dog eyes Cherry had ever seen, without any actual shapeshifting or changeling magic. “Because if I never get an orbital mission I’ll be awful saaaaaad… and that’s a thing you ponies care about…”

Fuck that's effective.

“How many changelings have bothered you about routine stuff today?” Dragonfly asked. “And how many of them came to you after Occupant told them to do something? Lots, and lots. I know- I’ve been watching and listening.” She took a step closer to the pony and whispered so that her already buzzy voice became almost indistinguishable from insect noises. “Right now the hive doesn’t have a leader. And a changeling hive must have a leader. A clear, undisputed, unquestioned leader. Without a leader we don’t get along. We really don’t.”

That makes sense.

Sensing indecision, Dragonfly asked, “Would it help if I gave you the cute sad eyes again?”

I like you.

“I lied,” Chrysalis said, sitting up a little straighter in her bed. “Let’s have the rest of the story.”

WHAAAT?! Chrysalis lying?! Why I nevah!

“You’ve got two hours,” Cherry said bluntly. “Two hours and five minutes from now I want Dragonfly in the simulator. If she can get the thing to orbit two times out of three, then that’s the plan.”

Best hope that the actual launch isn't the 1 out of 3 times it doesn't work.

And, evidently, also a very changeling thing to do, except the changelings had more sensible people to keep them in line. A most enviable condition, Fauntleroy thought.

Ouch.

Darnit, it should have worked...

Regardless of should or should not, it didn't.

Son of return of the silence.

*snort*

“I said commander,” Fauntleroy answered, matter-of-factly. “This is your ship, after all. We are merely supernumeraries, under your authority. That makes you commander of the vessel and of the mission, does it not?”

By that logic, yes.

A growly voice came back over the magic comms network. “Lemme guess,” it said, “Celestia’s gotten bored with raising and lowering the sun. She’s decided to raise and lower the ground instead, so all I have to do is step outside the hatch and she’ll be waiting there with a medal and a box of rubies for me to snack on as I ride her home. Is that it?”

Not the time.

This time the long, awkward silence echoed down from many miles above them. “When a pony starts using euphemisms that strong,” Fireball finally said, “it’s time to give them your full attention. I’m listening. What happened?”

Smart.

Dragonfly had the sudden sensation that a hole just like the ones in her hooves had opened up in her belly. Frantically she switched breakers off and on, wiggled the stick experimentally, even tried throttling up the engine. No response. Nothing.

Oh shit.

Only then did she see, on the magic-powered readouts around the still-functional nav-ball, on the consumables readout: Battery power 0%.

Craaaaap.

Yep.

“I hate burning up on re-entry a lot more,” Fireball said. “Stand by, I’m coming in.”

I would imagine you would.

“Gimme a minute to think,” Dragonfly muttered back over the comms. “Have a snack while I’m doing that.” As soon as she’d said it, she realized she was hungry, too. Of course, all changelings lived in a state of perpetual hunger; it just differed in intensity, from “Well, maybe just a nibble,” up to ravening-mindless-monster levels. The problem was, that hunger was for love or other compatible emotions, not for the gunk ponies ate.

That makes sense.

Minutes ticked by, as the ship slowly descended out of space and into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Time to cross the Rubicon. Alea jacta est.

To her own mild surprise, Chrysalis hadn’t been about to say any such thing. She had, indeed, been up there, both at one with everything and, at the same time, horribly alone. She understood. But there wasn’t any point trying to persuade the pony of that, especially when she had a reputation to maintain. “That’s better,” she said. “I was wondering how much pony there was in you, since it sounds like you’ve been doing an excellent job as a changeling.”

Huh?

“Make that two weeks,” Chrysalis corrected herself. “I need to disappear for a little while and find myself some… nibbles.” Having stuck it to the pony in the way that would hurt the most, she moved rapidly on to business. “In the meantime, what’s our financial condition?”

You are truly cruel.

“Of course not,” Chrysalis smiled. “Myself and the bed. Can’t you see I’m still a very sick person? I need my bed rest!”

Of course.

[Booster Spice]

A totally crazy flight, especially with the hundreds fold speed up in throwing bits together at teh beginning to get something up there, even if was the SLS equivalent?

Are the Dragon flights called XL, just so you can have the Adventures of Fireball XL-5?

Fireball XL-5 and The Sands Of Mars?

He would be such a Lucky Starr.

The thing with the crystal breaking is what lead to Twilight including radio, or was that only for the Concordia?

Everyone landed safely, I take it when that 40% fuel tank detonated in the upper atmosphere, someone had a real light show?

[Fresnor]

So, Dragonfly is going to be the central focus of the admiration and other positive emotions of hundreds if not thousands of creatures? I can't see any way that that is going to end poorly.

[Dakuookami]

It returns!

[RainbowDoubleDash]

Yay it’s back! And we got to spend a lot of time with my favorite lovebug.

Chrysalis is being surprisingly blasé about the revelation that her Hive can more or less function without her, though I suppose the lack of immediately obvious successors is a bit mollifying. Dragonfly and Occupant are too loyal to betray her like that, Elytron is a moron by changeling standards, and Cherry isn’t a changeling and doesn’t want the job.

Which means that Eggplant remains beneath suspicion...keikaku douri...

”Oops” is not a word one ever wants to hear in space flight.

My dad used to go on business trips to Southeast Asia. He has a story about one flight back from I think Singapore where over the Pacific he heard a sound no one ever wants to hear on a plane - WHOMP - followed by two words that should never come from the cockpit:

“OH SHIT!”

The plane dropped a few thousand feet, but the pilots got control and turned it around, were able to safely land in Japan. One of the engines had sort of exploded/fallen off, but fortunately they had three more. The airline gave everyone on board free tickets and free rooms and stuff and said that there had never been any real danger...but my dad met the pilot in the lobby of the hotel the following morning and the guy was drinking himself into a celebratory/coping stupor still, and confessed that in fact by all rights they should have crashed.

[Angelform]

Glorious to see this back.

It actually makes quite a bit of sense that all the regular militaries were sitting around waiting for some Equestrian miracle to turn up and solve the Storm King situation.
Why fight a war when The Hero will do it for you?

Love the cultural examination of the Changlings. Swarms of hair-brained enthusiasm unified by a single voice of reason. Chrysalis should consider herself blessed to have an entire two people able to keep her subjects pointed in something vaguely resembling the right direction in her absence.

[Kris Overstreet]

9349109 At this point in the story nobody has docking ports yet. The stranded astronauts would have to go EVA to get the food. Considering what happened, it's a good thing this approach wasn't tried. (Besides, for almost the same fuel expenditure as a food run, an empty capsule could have been sent up... if the other space programs trusted robots to rescue their people.)

9349110 Oh, I know it could be done in-game, but with the Terrier there's seldom any need. And you can't throttle the throttle on a real-life rocket engine.

9349184 Since all three of the shipwrecks turned out to be loaded popguns (seriously, that's how they acted in-game), it's for the best she didn't try it.

9349304 Not responding, I'm just wondering why someone would downvote this.

[Kris Overstreet]

OOPS - I forgot to put in this chapter's screen caps. I need to get to work on that.

[Marker]

Anyway, Gordo’s rocket dropped everything it could drop at once, and one of the pieces of debris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It collided with the dragon rocket on its way up.
...
...
I just spoke with Rutherford. He tells me his brother whacked Leonid on the head and took his place in the rocket. Said he was the better pilot.

Oh how I've missed that special brand of absurdity you could only get by crossing KSP with ponies.

[Kris Overstreet]

OK, pics now in text.

[LordMentat]

Dragonfly rolled the phrase Commander Dragonfly around her mind to see how it felt.

Almost instantly my brain snapped to..

I am Commander Dragonfly, and this is my favorite store on the citadel.

[Zaten the Changeling]

“Remember baking soda?” Grampa muttered. “Who ever thought a powder would change a way of life?”

Heh, I loved that.

0:39

[OddDreams]

If you're working it as real world, you haven't gotten to the point where "throttle" exists yet. It's burn or no burn :p

[ChaosShade99]

So, how many times has Fireball quit the space program?

[erictheblue]

the Storm King had gotten as far in the Evil Mastermind’s Handbook as, “Pillage before burning.”
oh, i've got to post this here:
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

[Kris Overstreet]

9349304 The disguise isn't Coco. Coco seldom stutters, and her mane is blue, not gray.

It's just an unusually big and lethal-looking changeling becoming a small, adorably mare- almost filly- who evidently sells scandalous lingerie. Among other things.

[ShadowLDrago]

9349508

Fair enough.

[erictheblue]

Cherry managed four steps before another changeling got in front of her. Number forty-six, she thought. Unlucky number fifty is going to get an education. “What?” she asked.

this made me think of several old RPGs...random encounters every 4 steps!

[Kris Overstreet]

9349504 By a strange coincidence, the number of Fireball's resignations tends to equal the number of his missions.

[Kris Overstreet]

9349490 In KSP you get throttleable engines from the start- in fact, you get throttle in the full range from 0% to 100%, which you can't get out of real-world rockets. In this story I lean to the game in this respect.

[Stainless Steel Fox]

9349309 Gerry Anderson, Arthur C Clarke and Issac Asimov references all at once. Nice. All you needed was saying it was a Red Planet, and you'd have added Robert A Heinlein.

I am so glad to see this has returned. This will be brilliant.

[Blaster M]

9349464
Me too

[Blaster M]

9349550
Staying on 1.3 for this story? Or... trying for new versions between missions?

[Kris Overstreet]

9349916 No, I'm up to 1.5 playing in 1.2 mode (old game save). A lot of other things adding up to my not playing many other games that take more than ten minutes to resolve right now.

[RandomBlank]

Why the heck did you plan maneuvers etc from 5km away? Within 30km from target you just forget orbital mechanics, point at the target and burn some 30m/s or so. Don't go too slowly and orbital mechanics won't mess things up.

[Prysmkitsune]

9349038
comics show that she was 'on' the moon, and not the only one, there's an entire species up there, that she corrupted, major plot point of the nightmare rarity arc, and standered rule is, till the show contradicts id directly, the comics are cannon.

[Kris Overstreet]

9350312 In the comics you could lasso the moon with a rope and climb/walk up it.

Not in MY stories, pal.

[Prysmkitsune]

9350317
welcome to my little pony, where physics are persistently told to go fuck themselves, tipicly care of one pink pony

[Razzy]

Well, Chryssie is just that good at her job. *sage nod*

D'awwww, she does care. Even if she has to keep appearances.

Well, for Dragonfly, that was a whole lot of restraint.

... I don't think Yaks make good astronauts.

Heheh, GSS Nickel.

9349038 Reminds me of a short fan comic I've read, where Luna was explaining that. It ended with a cut to the Moon's surface, with Nightmare Moon stuck in the moon front-first, only her butt and rear legs sticking out.

'And the fuel levels in the liquid-fuel boosters is dropping fast' - boosters are dropping

[Hakar]

“If we don’t get you in a rocket and into orbit in three days,” Twilight gasped, “three astronauts are doomed!”

Cherry blinked. “Three astronauts?”

“Doomed!!” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

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[TruckStop]

I am going to enjoy listen to this as I drive tonight. Gotta start from the beginning of the story. So much fun!