Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 17: Mission 23 - The Snack Supplies May Be Starting to Run a Little Low

Contrary to popular belief, leaders do not usually walk in front of absolutely everyone else. A truly important ruler travels with an entourage of guards, secretaries and majordomos to take notes, announce their arrival, and discourage attacks. This large swarm of subordinates, not to say underlings, allows the ruler to walk at an unhurried, unruffled pace.

Chrysalis had known this since she was a nymph, and yet she had to grip on to that fact with a bite of steel just to allow two of her bodyguards to lead her to the administration building. She'd been pulled out of the final day of simulations- less than forty-eight hours before the pony launched for the moon-orbit test flight Mission Twenty-three- at the request of her fiercest, most despised rival.

Request? Summons is more like it, she thought. Typical pony princess behavior, throwing a wrench into our preparations when we're on the back hoof, trying to guarantee her victory! The thought put more quick into her quickstep, forcing Cherry Berry and the rest of the prime and backup crews for CSP-23(461) almost to a trot to keep pace.

The launch of Amicitas and the successful test of the Chickadee lander and the refueling drone had given notice to the Changeling Space Program that their lead in the space race was gone. Taking Amicitas into lunar orbit had only extended the Equestrian Space Agency's lead. Within two weeks of that pink monstrosity's return to Equus, it would be ready for a new launch... and that meant Chrysalis had that amount of time to see the test flight completed and the final landing mission launched, or else almost two years of scheming would go up in smoke. The last thing she wanted was any delays- especially Twilight Sparkle induced delays.

The drones guarding the main Administration doors snapped to a trembling attention and saluted snappily as Chrysalis approached.(462) The guards preceding her went through the doors without looking back, and Chrysalis followed, paying no attention as the footsteps behind her sharply reduced in number after a murmur from Cherry. After all, she and the pony had been the only ones summoned(463); no need for all the others to crowd into the room.

The guards led the way to the main conference room, which had two more changeling guards flanking it. Chrysalis allowed herself a brief snort at the sight; had protocol been followed, there should have been two pony guards present as well. Sparkle doesn't even understand how to behave within her station, she thought. Weakness.

Then she and the pony were through the door and into the conference room, where Twilight Sparkle sat, looking nervous and worried, on the other side of the main table. Chrysalis took a seat across from her, paying no mind as Cherry found a chair next to her. The door behind them shut, the guards withdrawing to wait outside.

"Well, little princess, you know we have a launch in two days' time," the queen snarled, not bothering with any greeting. "Yet you come here saying it's an emergency and you have to see us at once, pulling us out of vital simulator work." She leaned forward in her chair and nailed Twilight Sparkle with her most imperious glare. "So make it good."

Twilight Sparkle didn't flinch. She stared back at Chrysalis with pleading eyes and said simply, "We have a pony stranded in orbit around the moon."

Chrysalis blinked. She hadn't paid close attention to ESA Flight Thirteen, settling for the daily news briefings and an occasional dose of padded headlines which counted as so-called "television news". And today in particular she'd spent all day in simulations, watching Cherry and her crew two-thirds of the time, leading her own crew the other third. But nothing in anything she'd read or heard had hinted at something as horrible as this happening to the ponies.

"One of the refueling valves malfunctioned earlier today," Twilight continued. "It probably got damaged days ago during the orbital refueling we did. Anyway, the valve wasn't properly capped after refueling, not that the cap would have held under pressure anyway. It leaked fuel into the mid-deck, and in the process the loss of pressure caused the engines to malfunction. They lost power until they eventually flamed out, and the remaining fuel either vented through the engine pumps or into the compartment." Twilight's voice squeaked a little as she got to the end, and she stopped, swallowed, and got her composure back before continuing, "We have a stable orbit, but the ship has no fuel and not enough power in the thrusters to break orbit and return home before food supplies run out."

A quiet squeak popped out of Cherry Berry. Chrysalis, her own head spinning slightly, leapt into the gap before the pony could say something either foolish or soppy.(464) "You had better fill us in on the details," she said in a brisk, sober voice. "How many days of food does Rainbow Dash have left?"

"At full rations, nineteen days, not counting today," Twilight Sparkle said. "After the multiple rescues your space program performed back in spring, we doubled down on packing food supplies for emergencies. Rainbow launched with a thirty days's supply. But we don't have the rocket parts we need-"

"We'll come back to that," Chrysalis interrupted, raising a hoof. "Your steering rockets-"

"Maneuvering thrusters," Cherry muttered.

"Reaction control system," Twilight muttered at the same time.

"Whatever." Chrysalis dismissed the interruptions with a flip of the hoof. "As I understood it, they're rechargeable, just like the spacesuit thrusters. How long would it take to get home on those?"

Twilight shook her head. "The current generation of RCS batteries require time to recharge," she said. "We're still working on batteries efficient enough to provide steady thrust. With the weight of Amicitas and the thrusters on board, we can't do better than twenty meters per second of delta-V per day. It would take thirty-two days to escape the moon's gravitational sphere of influence, and then even more to drop our periapsis down to Equus atmosphere."

"What about the get-out-and-push thing?" Chrysalis asked. "Like Cherry Berry did."

"Rainbow Dash wouldn't even get half a meter per second of delta-V by getting out and pushing," Twilight said. "We already did the math. Three pushes in twenty-four hours, about 1.3 meters per second total. It might shave about two days total off the return flight. That's still longer than Dash has, even on half rations."

"I see," Chrysalis said, nodding her head in understanding. "And so, with one of your closest friends- and, might I add, one of the mares most vital for the defense of Equestria from people like me," she added, unable to prevent her fangs from showing as she said the last three words, "in horrible danger, you have come to us for aid." She put on her most judicious facade, steepling her forehooves together. "What, specifically, can we do for you, princess?"

"All we need are some rocket components," Twilight Sparkle said quickly. "I have a list here, but the main items we need are a probe core, some fuel tanks, and a couple of Swivel engines. If we get those in ten days, we can launch-"

"Are you CRAZY?" That was Cherry Berry's voice, and Chrysalis couldn't help flinching at the outburst. "Anything could happen in that time! And we're going up there ourselves with a ship big enough to haul Rainbow Dash back!"

Chrysalis heard in her head what the pony's next sentence would be. No. No, no, no, NO. Think fast-

Twilight's eyes widened. "But won't that-"

In three seconds Chrysalis had split the difference between analyze all the options and I need something right the buck now and decided on action. "It won't be any trouble at all!" she said loudly, cutting off all possible words from both that pony and her pony. "We can perform the rescue as part of our shakedown flight. We won't even need to change the rocket!" A hoof struck the table as the queen finished, "In fact, I shall personally fly the mission and guarantee the safe return of Rainbow Dash!"

"That's righ- whaaaaa?"

Chrysalis felt Cherry's head snap round to look directly at her for the first time in the conference. She herself kept her eyes on Twilight Sparkle. Calm, poised, in control, that was the look she wanted.

"Now hang on just a-"

"After all," Chrysalis continued, reaching a hoof to the side to firmly push Cherry back in her chair, "the Changeling Space Program is the preeminent organization where it comes to in-space rescues! And we have a reputation to uphold!"

"Actually, I'd prefer Cherry to fly the rescue, if you don't mind," Twilight said quietly. "In fact I was going to ask her to help with-"

"Oh, no, I insist," Chrysalis said hurriedly. "After all, Cherry will be needed to fly our actual moon landing. And besides," she added, deciding it was safe to pretend to admit the truth, "if the pony flies a rescue mission for another pony, the world will see it as one pony rescuing another. For the sake of my children," she concluded firmly(465), "I must insist that the Changeling Space Program be seen as doing its duty, in the eyes of the world, for fellow astromares in distress."

The purple princess's eyes went from pleading to thinking, then to resolve. Despite herself, Chrysalis approved; firmness was a trait you wanted to see in rulers, even enemy rulers. "I understand your point," she said quietly. "But if you're going, then I have to go too. Because otherwise everypony will think you've replaced Rainbow Dash with a changeling."

"Oh, really?" Chrysalis asked, raising an eye ridge. "I don't remember seeing you in any of the joint astronaut training exercises. To the best of my knowledge, you went up in Flight Eleven on less than a week's total training, if that. How do I know you won't be dead weight on the flight, princess?"

"I know every system on Amicitas nosecone to tailfin," Twilight replied, not giving an inch. "I designed the flight systems in your EVA packs, the locking seals on the helmets, the life support systems. I created the spacewalk training systems themselves. And I designed the docking system you're going to need to link up with Amicitas when we get to the moon!" She leaned forward over the table, eyes locked on Chrysalis. "Plus I know every aspect of space flight theory just as well as Dr. Goddard and Dr. von Brawn. I've studied all their work cover to cover and applied it to my space program. There is no pony more likely to be useful to you on a rescue flight than me."

"Ahem."

"No offense, Cherry," Twilight added quickly, "but it's true. I was wrong about not accepting you as a pilot, but I'm not wrong about this."

"So you're a scientist and an engineer," Chrysalis drawled. "Which is all well and good on the ground. But will you know what to do in an emergency? In a space capsule? With deadly vacuum outside and nothing but your wits and a few switches inside? A pony who panics at the first drop of a flower petal has no business in space, princess."

It was Twilight's turn to raise an eyebrow. "I think," she said quietly, "that the list of enemies I've defeated over the years speaks to that. I'm no filly anymore, Chrysalis." She rested her forehooves on the table and leaned a little farther forwards. "And I am going. I am going to see my friend rescued for myself, and you're not going to stop me."

Chrysalis let the expression of intent pass by like a bullfighter dodging a charge(466). "Stop you?" she said, smiling broadly. "Why, dear princess, we are here to help! Nothing could be further from our minds than hindering in any way the rescue of Rainbow Dash! After all, what fate is more horrible than being stranded in space, all alone? And who truly understands that aside from astromares?"

The expression of confusion on Twilight Sparkle's face that followed warmed what passed for Chrysalis's heart. Good, good, she thought. Let the enemy be confused.

"But now that the key point has been decided," she continued, "I believe we should take a short recess. You will need time to prepare a detailed briefing on what we need to know for the rescue. And my chief pilot and I," she said, putting a hoof on the trembling shoulder of a pink pony ready to explode at any moment, "need to assess the changes we will need to make in our flight program to include the rescue."

"Er... thank you," Twilight said, "but I already have some briefing-"

Chrysalis arose from her chair, giving Cherry a subtle hint by pulling back the pony's chair a little with her magic. "Guard!" The door swung open, and one of the space center guards poked his head in. "Twilight Sparkle is to have run of the space center," she continued. "Remain with her and see to it she has everything she requires. We will reconvene here in..." She glanced at the clock above the wall. "Well, it's just time for lunch now anyway, isn't it? Two hours. We'll meet back here in two hours. Until then, princess!"

The door shut behind her and Cherry Berry, and instantly the pony's mouth was wagging. "What the sun-forsaken BUCK do you mean-"

"Outside," Chrysalis said, drawing the pony's mouth shut again with a brief flash of magic.

Footnotes:

(461) Prime crew: Cherry Berry commanding; Leonid the yak, backup pilot; Dragonfly, engineer. Backup crew: Chrysalis commanding; Fireball the dragon, backup pilot; Gordon the griffon, engineer.

(462) Under most circumstances fear makes people stupid. In certain select cases, however, fear is an effective reminder to people that now is the time to be extremely careful and correct in everything they do. It only took a moment's glance at Chrysalis's face for the door guards to realize this was one of those times. It didn't hurt that the guards, like all changelings selected for duty in the space program, were significantly more intelligent than the average changeling... but it didn't take much brains to know that getting your head literally bitten off by an angry changeling queen would not look good on a resume.

(463) Twilight had only asked to speak to Cherry Berry about an emergency. Chrysalis hadn't been asked for. Chrysalis knew this, but she felt that she should have been asked, and therefore she would act as if she had been, just to demonstrate to Twilight Sparkle that she wouldn't permit anyone to go behind her back. That was how you started sprouting daggers, after all.

(464) If Chrysalis had known what a Venn diagram even was, she would have had the field marked "soppy" as a circle entirely enclosed within "foolish".

(465) "For my children" was a lie that, for all the many times she'd used it, never failed to weaken pony resolve. Chrysalis did things for herself, like a true queen should. If the rest of the hive benefited that was a happy bonus, but she wouldn't hesitate to feed every last one of them into a woodchipper if it advanced her ends. After all, the hive was hers, her possession. If the ponies wanted to make more of her reasonable interest in the well-being of her primary asset, well, she'd keep using that tool until it broke.

(466) Bullfighting is indeed a sport in Equestria, though it is more popular in other lands around Equus. Unlike the brutal and senseless so-called sport known on less civilized worlds, Equestrian bullfighting does not involve bladed weapons of any kind. Even the bull's horns (minotaur or bovine) are covered to prevent accidental goring. Instead the sport is one of agility versus endurance, pony skill versus bovine strength, as each opponent seeks to hurl the other out of the bullring. Bulls are famed for the number of ponies they can throw out before they tire out and leave themselves vulnerable to a well-timed kick or jiu jitsu throw, while ponies are considered heroes even for taking on a bull casco a pata, let alone winning.

Cherry Berry steamed as she walked out into the middle of the space center complex beside Chrysalis. Only the fact that she really didn't want Twilight Sparkle to see her lose her temper again had kept her mouth shut in the conference room. Now that resolve was being aided by a soft but very firm magical grip keeping her jaw shut. That was fine by Cherry: it gave her time to pick which bad words she was going to use first.

Because she was just about ready to use them all.

"Right," Chrysalis said, stopping at a point almost equidistant from all the other buildings in the space center but well off the walkways connecting them. "Let's get this over with."

The magical grip released, and Cherry opened her mouth wide, taking a deep breath. "Now you listen here, you-"

"No, you listen here, pony." Chrysalis said firmly. "You heard the same things I did in there. All Twilight Sparkle wanted was some rocket parts so she could conduct the rescue herself. Rainbow Dash would probably have been just fine cooling her hooves for two weeks waiting for her ride home. And that ride home would have left the pony spaceship abandoned, in orbit, around the moon, while we had a wide open road to victory in the space race. Sparkle was ready to accept all of that, pony." The changeling queen bent her head down, lizard eyes glaring into Cherry's with a stare designed to inspire mortal fear. "And then you opened your big mouth and threw all of it away."

The stare might have worked on Cherry three years before. Here and now, she'd been around Chrysalis too long(467) for it to work on her. "Things happen in space," she said, putting as much snarl into her squeaky voice as she could. "And we agreed that I call the shots on anything space-related. How dare you take my flight away from me-"

"We also agreed," Chrysalis interrupted again, "that you would keep out of political affairs. And you have skirted that line once or twice, as you well know. Well, this is political now, pony. This is me salvaging some sort of advantage out of your monumental blunder."

"It is NOT a blunder to help a pony in distress!!"

"You could have helped by rushing their parts order!" Chrysalis snapped. "You could probably have even given them a Mark 2 capsule, and I would have put up with it! I would have been seriously annoyed, but that's nothing compared to how I feel right now!"

"But we are able to help, here and now!" Cherry insisted, pawing the ground. Even in her anger she knew that was dangerous- a pony openly challenging a changeling queen- but she didn't care. "And you cannot possibly tell me that you really think, in the privacy of your own head, that you're a better pilot than me!"

"I am as good a pilot as you," Chrysalis said, which part of Cherry supposed would be as close as the queen would ever allow herself to admitting Cherry's point. "But as I said in there, you are not a changeling. And I want Twilight Sparkle in my debt, pony. I want something I can hold over her. And, by extension, Celestia as well."

"The Mark 2 isn't flight-tested," Cherry said. "I fly all experimental ships."

"Not this one," Chrysalis said.

"You're breaking our deal!!"

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "Consider your next words very carefully, Cherry Berry," she hissed. "For purposes of publicity I have to fly to the moon with a pink pony. Whether it is the real pink pony is still up to my discretion."

The words you wouldn't dare died on Cherry's lips. Chrysalis absolutely would dare. To be honest, she kind of wondered why she hadn't made the swap long, long ago. A moment's reflection brought the answer. "You're not going to do that," she said quietly. "Because you want me to fly that ship. A lot."

"I would prefer you to fly Mission Twenty-four," Chrysalis corrected. "If circumstances force me to do otherwise... I will be mildly disappointed. But I will still fly. Do I make myself clear?"

"I think so." Cherry didn't like it, but she understood. "Now explain to me why it absolutely has to be you."

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "Didn't you listen to what I've been telling you, pony?" she snapped. "Twilight Sparkle is a princess of Equestria. If she'd actually thought for a moment, she could have ordered you to fly her rescue mission. She has that power, legally, do you understand? She wouldn't owe you anything. Not favors, not respect, nothing. It would be expected of you- by her, by Celestia, by the world!

"But nobody expects anything good of changelings, do they? If you fly the rescue it's normal. But if I fly the rescue it's something special. It's a gesture of trust. Of generosity. It. Is. A. FAVOR." Chrysalis settled on her haunches and looked at Cherry, no longer glaring or intimidating, almost on an equal basis with her. "If we were both ponies there would be no question of taking your flight away. But we're not. And that difference is why I have to fly."

Cherry thought about this. On the one hoof, it was such a selfish point of view that she very nearly couldn't understand it. But on the other... this wasn't just Chrysalis wanting to fly for her own glory, was it? This was about all changelings. This was about a feared species proving itself worthy- as it would probably have to do for many years to come. Put that way, she could almost accept the reasoning.

But she couldn't leave it at that. "I know you're still plotting something."

Chrysalis gave a snort of derision. "When am I not plotting something, pony?" she asked.

"Well, I'm pretty sure you're not plotting anything when you're reading those trashy romance novels."

"Figure of speech, pony."

"And I'm pretty sure you weren't plotting anything on that first spacewalk of yours," Cherry continued. "I remember how you looked on the screen when you were scrabbling to get back into the ship."

"Point made, pony."

"And then there was your first actual flight," Cherry pressed on. "I'll never forget the look on your face when-"

"Drop it right now," Chrysalis said, "and that's a royal command."

"Fine," Cherry said, and she dropped all of it. "So, let's figure out where this leaves Mission Twenty-three, hm?" She waved a hoof at the astromare center and added, "By the way, not it for telling Leonid and Dragonfly they're not going up."

Footnote:

(467) Or, some outside observers would say, not remotely long enough.

Rainbow Dash floated in Amicitas's bridge(468). She didn't exactly have a lot else to do.

There had been some scientific experiments earlier in the flight, but she'd finished all of them except for a couple which could be summed up in a five minute report back to the ground. There had been interviews with reporters and even a couple of live telepresence conferences with schools on the ground, but those had been cancelled hours before, as soon as everypony on the ground had realized that she would be stuck in orbit and not making the moon's newest crater.

All she had to look forward to was the two or three hours in the evening when Fluttershy would read to her(469), and story time was still some hours off. Other than that and the occasional fragment of chit-chat from the ground, she had absolutely nothing to do until she got rescued- which, by her own rough calculations, would take a week at the earliest, depending on how quickly Twilight could slap a rocket together that could reach her.

Dash was already trying to predict what would happen in that evening's chapter of Robo Rock Another World Live! when the beeping of the telepresence comms alert yanked her out of her daydreams. Her reflexive jerk and shout sent her spinning in the cabin for several seconds before she stabilized herself with her wings and found hoof-holds on the flight couches. As she reached down for her discarded comms headset, she heard a voice: "ESA Flight Thirteen, this is Horseton Space Center, comms check, over."

Horseton? Dash thought. What do the changelings want? Does Chrysalis want to gloat at me or something? "Uh, Horseton, Amicitas," she replied as she settled the headset over her ears, "I read you loud and clear. How me?"

"Reading you same. We have you on screen now." As the buzzy voice spoke, Dash recognized it as belonging to that one changeling, the one who had rescued those three other astronauts- Dragonfly, that was the one. "We have someone here who wants to speak with you. We've cleared our Mission Control for this, so this will be a private conversation once I transfer you. Do you copy?"

"Uh... Amicitas copies, Horseton," Dash answered cautiously. "Copy private conversation, no press. Stand by." Rainbow Dash looked at the comms controls, with their regrettably small number of knobs and switches. None of them, so far as she knew, allowed Amicitas to switch the telepresence to limit it to a specific planetside target. There was a private channel for spacesuited personnel, there was a switch between push-button microphone activation and voice-activated ("vox") comms, there was off and on... but she couldn't cut Horseton out of the loop while she talked with Cape Friendship. In fact, any telepresence system that knew how to tune in to Amicitas's specific enchantment could talk to her(470), and she couldn't shut them out.

Sighing, she bent to the inevitable. "Baltimare, Thirteen," she said. "Did you copy my last exchange with Horseton?"

"Affirmative, Thirteen." For some reason Moondancer was at the capcom seat. Dash had guessed Twilight wouldn't have been there, but Spitfire should have been on shift, at least until Fluttershy managed to nerve herself back through the mission control doors. "We are now clearing Mission Control except for flight director. I have to be here no matter what. Sorry, Rainbow Dash."

Okay, so that explained that. "Copy, Baltimare," Dash replied. "Just wanted to make sure you were on board with this."

"Amicitas, Horseton." Dragonfly again, as serious and straight as Dash had ever heard a changeling be- not that she'd spent any time listening to changelings more than necessary.

"Go, Horseton."

"Be advised that Horseton capcom is now Twilight Sparkle," Dragonfly said. A soft rustling sound, as of a headset microphone being jostled, whispered into Rainbow's ears.

"Twilight??" Rainbow Dash squeaked, and then followed it up with a hurried, "Uh, Amicitas copies capcom Twilight Sparkle." I figured she was there- where else would she get rocket parts from at short notice- but why is she calling me from there??

"Hello, Dash," Twilight Sparkle's voice called, loud and clear. "How are you doing up there?"

"How am I doing up here??" Rainbow Dash asked. "I'm going round and round an enormous silver glowing space rock. You know that. It's only been six hours or so! What I want to know is," she said, trying not to shout too much, "what are you doing down there in Horseton??"

"Well..." Twilight Sparkle didn't hesitate much, but Rainbow Dash had known her favorite egghead long enough to recognize the You Aren't Going to Like What I'm About to Tell You tone. "Remember how you said I'd find a way to get you down, no matter what?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the good news is, I should be up there myself to come get you in about twelve days, plus or minus."

"Oh!" That was days and days before Rainbow would run out of food. And she'd been expecting an empty robot-driven capsule just big enough for herself, not an actual crew. "That's great, Twilight!" Only then did she remember that changelings were involved in some way. "Now what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is," Twilight said, dragging it out, "I won't be the one piloting the rescue mission."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Dash said with an extra dash of irony. "So who's flying? Spitfire? Princess Cadance?" Then it clicked. "Of course! You got Cherry Berry to fly it! Hey, that's great news! Did you think I was going to be upset because she's working for Chrysalis? Because she's a great pilot, you know. Trained her myself!"

"Um, no, Dash," Twilight said. "It's not Cherry Berry."

"Oh." Dash prodded the question forward like a tongue investigating the precise location of the aching tooth. "Then who is the pilot, Twilight?"

"Queen Chrysalis."

Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped hard enough to send a pop over the telepresence connection.

"Thirteen, Baltim- I mean Horseton, comms check," Twilight said.

"Twilight, what were you THINKING?!" Everything Rainbow Dash had learned about communications discipline, and then insisted her friends learn about the subject, flew out the window faster than the air in her cabin would have if its windows actually opened. "Chrysalis?? Of all ponies? What's going to stop her from taking us prisoner and then trying to take over Equestria again?"

"Me."

"Besides you," Rainbow Dash insisted. "If this is the real Twilight Sparkle I'm talking to! How do I know you're not some changeling disguised as Twilight?"

"Of the six familiars of Ahuizotl," Twilight said, "Fluffy the Terrible was the only one to lay a claw on Daring Do in two different books."

"So you're a changeling who reads Daring Do," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Big deal!"

"Dash, you're making a scene," Twilight said. "Do you really want me to prove I'm me?"

"I dare you to!"

"O-kaaay." Twilight's voice shifted into her You Asked For This And I Am Going to Enjoy It tone. "Seven weeks ago you went into a certain establishment in Ponyville with Fluttershy and Rarity. I wasn't there, but Rarity told me that cucumber slices were involved. And Bulk Biceps-"

"Okay, okay, OKAY!" Rainbow Dash shouted, her mane standing on end as she realized what Twilight was about to blab. After all, she only had a changeling's word that nopony was listening! "You're Twilight! You're Twilight!" In a softer voice she grumbled, "And when I get down from here I'm going to talk to Rarity about what 'tell absolutely nopony' means!"

"In her defense," Twilight pointed out, "you didn't actually ask her to make a Pinkie Promise on it."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow said. "Anyway, you're you. But how long is it going to stay that way, Twilight? And why is Chrysalis involved at all?"

"Because she insisted," Twilight replied. "She wants the publicity of changelings rescuing ponies. Plus this way I get a ship that docks with Amicitas, without having to risk you transferring ship to ship on EVA like with CSP-20."

"But Twilight," Rainbow pressed, "you know she's going to demand we give up the moon for this! If you do this, we lose the space race!"

"Rainbow Dash," Twilight said quietly,"we lost the moment you had the fuel leak. We can't fix Amicitas or put together a new multi-pony capsule in time. And anyway, I don't care about that now," she added. "I want my friend back safe. And that's more important than a hundred moon landings."

"Oh." Rainbow Dash leaned back, as much as free fall would allow, against her flight couch. "Um, thanks, Twilight."

"What are friends for?"

After an awkward pause, Rainbow Dash asked, "So, what happens now?"

"I spend a few days training with Chrysalis while the changelings tweak their rocket for the new mission," Twilight said. "You'll get a briefing for your part of it, but that's mostly going to be for the docking of the two ships. You'll be a passenger all the way home, really."

"Swell," Dash muttered. "Twilight, evil mastermind stuff aside, I'm a better pilot than Chrysalis."

"But it's her ship," Twilight said. "And so long as she behaves herself, we don't have any right to take it from her. So not another word about that, all right?"

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were about to."

"Prove it."

Long sigh over the comms. "Look, I need to get back to the conference room and begin briefing the CSP staff," Twilight said. "For now just sit tight. We're coming, Dashie. We'll be there soon. Just hang in there."

"Where else am I gonna go?" Rainbow Dash asked.

A long pause, followed by the buzzy voice. "Amicitas," it said, "be advised that Horseton capcom is now Dragonfly."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Amicitas copies, over."

"We'll be monitoring you from here from now on through rendezvous with Mission Twenty-three," Dragonfly continued. "We're going to work out the details with Baltimare later, but as of now you're part of a CSP mission."

"Lucky, lucky me."

"Amicitas, we didn't copy that last, please repeat."

"Nothing, Horseton," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Just waiting for my evening book-reading."

"Oh, we can help with that!" Dragonfly said. "I think we have a book around here somewhere..." Rainbow Dash heard some soft rustle and faint voices not on the comms circuit. Then Dragonfly broke in again, saying, "Found one! I don't know who it belongs to, but it's definitely not one of my queen's books! Definitely not! And it's called Stirrups at Sunset, by Tight Plot. Chapter One. She watched as the massive earth pony's muscles shone with lather, bits of soil falling from his withers as he removed the heavy collar which was his only-"

"Not that kind of book!!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Look, I'll wait for Fluttershy. She's midway through a book now, and I don't want to change midway through, all right?"

"Are you sure?" Dragonfly asked. "Because this is a pretty thin book. I'm pretty sure we could get through the whole thing in a couple hours."

"Positive," Rainbow said. "I'll just wait for- no, wait, there is one thing you can do for me."

"What's that, Amicitas?"

"Take a note for Twilight. I forgot to mention this to her before, but the comms system needs some tweaks. We need better channel controls up here for private conversations. Can you pass that on to her?"

"Will do, Amicitas," Dragonfly said. "And pilot to pilot, I know exactly what you mean."

"Good. Okay," Rainbow Dash said. "Now transfer me to Baltimare, please." With that she relaxed, letting zero-g float her away, satisfied that, for all the flaws Fluttershy's reading material had, at least it was the kind of thing you wouldn't mind fillies getting their hooves on. (472)

Footnotes:

(468) Rainbow Dash had had a little experience with powered flight before the space race- mostly flight-school requirements before she'd dropped out- and she was pretty sure what Amicitas had wasn't a bridge. An airship bridge was open to the elements. An enclosed control center, particularly one where the pilot and/or steerspony sat down, was a cockpit(471). But Twilight had insisted that the Amicitas control compartment, which had space enough in theory for seven flight couches, was too large and roomy to be called a cockpit. Rainbow didn't care enough to keep arguing over it, so Amicitas had a bridge, even if it did annoy Rainbow just a little.

(469) Fluttershy's reading preferences were not the same as Rainbow Dash's. Her oldest and best friend tended to like two kinds of books: century-old romances and translated Neighponese or kirin novels. After almost two weeks of listening to them, Dash had decided the two genres were more or less identical in that they both involved relationships between two or three ponies who, for whatever reason, lacked the capacity to say Hey, I really like you out loud. Given that, Dash preferred the ones where the ponies in question got sent to another world, piloted giant robots, played in rock bands, or did all three at the same time. Sitting around sipping tea and making snarky comments just seemed lame by comparison.

(470) Tuning a telepresence system to a specific target, or "address" as Twilight Sparkle called it, was a non-trivial affair. It was possible to provide telepresence systems with a limited number of pre-programmed addresses, but finding one by just sticking a unicorn horn in and mucking around would leave the unicorn with a headache and some number of lost hours they'd never get back. This fact was why two-way telepresence communication, despite its obvious utility, had not yet taken off in Equestria... and why this massive security hole in space program communications had not, as of this point in time, been nailed shut. Rainbow Dash would shortly correct this oversight.

(471) In some horrible, evil worlds the term cockpit originates from how the tiny, cramped quarters of early aircraft resembled the stinking, blood-covered holes where two young roosters would be unleashed to fight to the death while half-drunk people made bets on which one would win. Not so on Equus, although to the ponies the source of the term was still a bit barbaric. Some communities, when confronted with a cockatrice problem, would dig a narrow, deep hole, one that the monster couldn't get out of quickly, and then place a small mirror on one side of it. At least some of the time the creature would see itself in the mirror, think itself under attack, and use its petrifying glare on its "attacker". At the time of this writing the practice was almost a century out of fashion among ponies, who felt that petrification was a bit cruel even when done to a monster that would quite cheerfully do it to ponies.

(472) This is not to say that Fluttershy's Neighponese novels didn't have their share of fanservice. On the contrary. Fluttershy picked only those books for on-the-air reading which didn't cross a certain line. The more embarrassing books in her collection remained in a little chest locked in the bottom of a bureau in her bedroom. If Stirrups at Sunset had contained magic lockets, martial arts tournaments, or robots of any size whatever, it also might have found a happy home in that bureau. Further details, of course, must be withheld for the sake of Fluttershy's peace of mind... and also to prevent the first recorded case of spontaneous equine liquefaction caused by absolute mortification.

The top line of the chalkboard had a series of numbers across it, one to twenty. Under the numeral 1 the word "Today" was scribbled in. A line drawn under the numbers 13 through 20 marked these Reserved For Ship Retrieval. A shorter line ran under numbers 9 through 12, marking these as Transit Time, Equus to Moon. Only the numbers 2 through 8 remained unlabelled- marking the days CSP and ESA had to train and prepare for the rescue of Rainbow Dash.

Twilight Sparkle finished the last stroke on the complex diagram of the three-person capsule with fuel tank and engine attached. Labels pointed to various points on the capsule, connected to a drawing of a not-quite-square box with multiple nozzles extending from it. "The primary goal of the mission is to rescue Rainbow Dash," she said. "But the secondary goal is to fully inspect Amicitas in preparation for a future repair, refueling and retrieval mission. The best way to do this is to have Mission Twenty-Three dock with Amicitas using our new docking port system and remain there during the entire inspection and close-out period."

"And why, exactly, should we bother with this?" Chrysalis asked. "I can understand you wanting to get the ship back. It's yours, after all. But why can't we use the hatch-"

"Airlock."

Chrysalis blinked. "What?"

"Amicitas has airlocks," Twilight said. "Two of them. One in the bridge compartment, behind the co-pilot position, and a larger one for engine repair on orbit."

"Really." Chrysalis gave Twilight a level look. "And you've repaired engines in mid-flight how many times now?"

Twilight blushed. "Well, we'll be able to some day!" she insisted. "And when that day comes, we'll be prepared!" She lifted a pointer in her magic and slapped the chalkboard with it, a little harder than necessary. "And as to why we can't use the airlocks, it's a question of orbital mechanics."

"You mean the orbital mechanics who are going to fix your engines mid-flight someday?"(473)

As Twilight snorted and huffed in indignation, Warner von Brawn rumbled, "The princess, I believe, refers to the fact that two objects in space, separated by any distance at all, technically occupy two different orbits. Over time they will drift together or apart, depending on relative velocity. Station-keeping with any safety would require repeated orbital correction burns, each with the potential for accidents. If you can make the two objects into a single object by linking them together, the need for constant piloting is removed."

"Exactly," Twilight said, having had a moment to calm down. "I want to spend a full day going over Amicitas, first diagnosing the problems that caused the accident, then performing a systematic close-out of the ship to prepare it for a long period of hibernation." Seeing Chrysalis's mouth opening, she added hurriedly, "Because we don't know when we'll be back again, NOT because winter is coming!"

Chrysalis shut her mouth and shrugged.

"So," Twilight continued, "in order to dock safely, the pilot of Mission Twenty-three will need to be able to maintain orientation with the target while controlling trajectory in all three axes of motion simultaneously." She tapped the chalk outline of the rescue ship's main engine. "While this can potentially be done with the main engine alone plus reaction wheels, it would be both inefficient and highly dangerous. Therefore instead we will be using the RCS- the Reaction Control System."

"Maneuvering thrusters," Cherry Berry said helpfully.

"So I had guessed," Chrysalis hissed back.

"ESA will provide eight RCS blocks to be arranged like the corners of a cube around the ship," Twilight continued. "Starlight Glimmer will coordinate with your ship construction team-"

"Could she not?" Chrysalis interrupted.

Twilight snorted again. "What is this about now??" she snapped.

"Oh, it's nothing personal to your student," Chrysalis said. "I'd just rather not risk having a unicorn whacking my rocket with a large rock in some desperate attempt to stop my evil scheme. Unlikely as the prospect is."

Now Chrysalis had every eye in the planning meeting on her. After several seconds of choked silence, Cherry Berry finally said, "I'm pretty sure you didn't intend to use your out-loud voice when you said that."

"Just humor me," Chrysalis said. "Have Moondancer oversee the modifications instead. It will help me keep my mind on the training."

"O... kay?" Twilight Sparkle had three kinds of worry on her face, fighting like three fat stallions over a two-mare train bench. "I... I guess Starlight can focus on preparing the simulator to handle docking exercises?"

"Much better," Chrysalis agreed. "The simulator is much less likely to explode and take the top of my castle off. That I don't have."

Twilight's three kinds of worry formed a united front and unbreakable alliance, using her eyes to silently petition Cherry Berry for foreign aid.

Cherry shrugged. "Long story," she said. "You could try asking Princess Luna about it."

"Oh. Okay." Twilight managed to pull herself together, then pushed on. "Moondancer for installing the thrusters and the docking port, Starlight to oversee simulations. Um... where was I?" She lifted up a stack of index cards in her magic and ruffled through them, muttering, "Covered that... did that... and that... oh!" She straightened up, using the pointer to tap the row of numbers up top. "Now, ideally we want to save four days of food for two ponies to use in the future retrieval mission," she continued. "That means we need to get to Rainbow Dash not later than twelve days from now. Allow four days from launch to lunar orbit and rendezvous, and that leaves us a launch date not later than eight days from now."

"Giving us seven days for training and prep," Cherry nodded. "We've done more with less time. And we've already had training for the other mission items on this flight."

"There will be some changes," von Brawn said. "We were originally going to put the science package on top of the lander. That way it could be jettisoned after the data was collected to lighten the load on the way home. But we can't use that configuration with the docking port. We'll have to contrive an experiments bay to ride below the crew capsule."

"At least this way we'll get the equipment back," Chrysalis muttered. "Less wasted money."

"This will make the ship substantially heavier," von Brawn continued. "All the more reason to test the return stage engines in lunar orbit, to make sure performance is adequate."

"So throw more boosters under it," Chrysalis snapped.

"We may indeed need to do that," von Brawn agreed. "But we'll have to fabricate the cargo bay in less than five days to meet our launch date. I'll speak to Goddard about that."

Cherry shook her head. "Appleoosa's working full steam ahead just building the boosters for Twenty-three and Twenty-four," she said. "Plus the ESA parts restock order. We don't have the floor space, even if we added more skilled workers."

"We could build it," Twilight said. "We have a fabrication shop at Cape Friendship currently doing nothing. All we have to do is scale up the existing cargo bay module for the new tanks and engines, right?"

"And who are you going to get to build it?" Chrysalis asked. "You and Starlight Glimmer are your main engineers, and you're both going to be here."

"I can do it." Dragonfly, who had been in the meeting by virtue of not having been kicked out by the others, raised a perforated hoof. "I know the facilities from working on parachutes and space suits. And I've been sketching out new cargo bay doors that fold up flat and don't get bent or twisted if the rocket's lying on its side."

Chrysalis's eyes narrowed. How dare you interrupt- no, no, not the time. Instead she asked, "Don't we have a fabrication shop here for you to use?"

"Not big enough," Dragonfly said. "We've been building so much for so long at Appleoosa that we never bothered to gear the Horseton fab shop up for large component construction. We mainly use it for computer component testing."

"Hmph," Chrysalis grunted. "What about that Jet Set pony? He keeps sending us passenger compartments to test. Can't he build a cargo one?"

"Not his company's field," Cherry put in. "He invests in pony flight, not freight."

"All right," Twilight said, "then that's what we'll do. I'm sure we have copies of all the same scientific instruments and bays you've been using, so we won't need to ship anything there."

For the first time Chrysalis looked taken aback. "Just like that?" she asked. "Not even thinking of saying no?"

"Why should I?" Twilight asked. "Those instruments will be doing important scientific work for all ponykind!" She smiled a little and added, "And it'll be ready in time. I know it."

Chrysalis gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. "Very well. Are there any other issues we need to know about?" When no one spoke up, she nodded her head. "All right, let's get started. And let's see if we can't launch sooner than eight days from now, hm? I'd like to be back home in time for Nightmare Night."

Footnote:

(473) The time had passed when this question would have been asked by Queen Chrysalis in any sincerity. She knew what orbital mechanics were, even if she didn't give two figs about the math. But needling Twilight Sparkle was too fun to pass up.

“Why do you have a book clipped on that clipboard?”

Twilight Sparkle glanced up at Chrysalis, who wore a set of snazzy blue CSP coveralls(474) contrasting Twilight’s own light violet ESA ones. “What book?” she asked. “This is just the pre-flight checklist.”

“In whose nightmares, princess?” Chrysalis asked. “The capsule preflight checklist is three pages long, and one page is just the mission profile action items. Everything else is checked out by VAB staff before the rocket goes to the pad.”

“I know,” Twilight said. “That’s where I got this from! We have to go over all the switches in the capsule before launch, just in case the VAB crew missed some!”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Chrysalis said. “Getting those switches right is the assembly crew’s job. It’s the whole reason they’re here at all.”(475)

“But everypony makes mistakes,” Twilight insisted.

“Every pony, perhaps.” Chrysalis put her nose in the air and placed a hoof over her heart. “But my changelings are highly trained professionals who know they’re working directly under their queen’s eye. Why, I’ve never been afraid for a moment to trust my life to the unfailing professionalism and skill of my subjects.”

A tiny portion of Chrysalis’s brain examined the boast the instant it left her mouth, found a potential error, and waved a frantic red flag at the rest of the brain.

Wait a moment… I said what?

Pure survival instinct froze her smug, triumphant expression in place (476) while Chrysalis reviewed her last three sentences in detail. Upon examining the evidence, she convened a mental review board to subpoena memories involving her subjects’ laziness, their tendency to squabble among themselves when not watched, their three-second attention spans, and their inability to understand why life-threatening danger was not “fun”. By the time the evidence got to certain rocket flights, and particularly her own narrow escapes from death, the verdict had become crystal clear.

HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID??

I said THAT… and I KNEW better… and oh, sweet Faust, I really HAVEN’T thought about the idiots in the VAB for flights and flights! And I KNOW they screw things up! Even with one of the brain-bulls watching over them!

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle said, not noticing the sweat beginning to run down Chrysalis’s head, “I’d still feel better if we ran a simulated launch with this checklist. Just to be thorough.”

“W-w-well, if you need the security blanket of routine,” Chrysalis said, “I’m sure we can indulge you once or twice.” She levitated the clipboard out of Twilight Sparkle’s magical grasp. “Just a moment while I discuss this with the simulator crew. Won’t be a second!”

“But I’ve already-“

“Just a moment!” Without a second glance at Twilight Chrysalis trotted towards the simulations crew (the usual gang plus one Starlight Glimmer) with what she intended to be a light-hearted step, but which instead became the High-Stepping Canter of Doom. The cheerful smile had enough jagged teeth in it to make the observers afraid for their necks, individually and collectively.

“I-i-i-is something wrong, m-my queen?” Occupant asked on behalf of the group.

“Everything’s juuuust fiiiiiiine,” Chrysalis said as she skipped up to them, her smile getting even more gapey and drooly. “Just a teensy, eensy, weensy little change to the schedule.” She leaned forward, took one glance towards the capsule, and then dropped the cheerful act.(477) “We’re spending the whole morning on launch sims,” she hissed in a rapid-fire whisper. “All morning, nothing but launches, do you understand? And you,” she said, jabbing a hoof at Cherry Berry, “will make sure between one and four switches are set wrong at the start of every sim, to see if Book Princess and I can spot the difference. If we don’t, simulate what happens. Do it.”

Occupant, von Brawn, and Cherry looked at each other. Occupant shrugged. Von Brawn tossed his head noncommittally. Starlight Glimmer, standing too far back to hear, just looked confused. Cherry, having no one else to shrug at, looked at Chrysalis and said, “O… kay?”

“Capital!” Chrysalis said in a fake but less obviously lethal cheerful tone. “Let’s get to it, people!” And in one final menacing hiss she added, “And no matter how many times I mess up, we keep doing it until I get it right.(478) Clear?” With that she turned and trotted back to the sim capsule, singing, “Co-ming!”

Starlight Glimmer leaned forward into the cluster of CSP staff and asked, “What was that all about?”

“Nothing," Occupant said. "Just our queen ordering us to do what we were gonna do anyway.”

Shaking her head, Starlight returned to the simulation computer. “Changelings,” she muttered.

Footnotes:

(474) Marred somewhat by stitching here and there to suggest the holes in the body underneath. Chrysalis couldn’t actually wear a patched spacesuit, no matter what inspirational propaganda posters suggested, but the new astromare duty uniforms provided the next best thing.

(475) This didn’t count the actual assembly of the rocket, the welding and bolting, the inspection of each component, the thwacking over the head of the changelings who thought roller hockey in the parts storage room was a good idea, the chewing out of the ponies who sold them the equipment, the stocking of capsule stores, the strapping down and shutting in of the crew, and above all the lifting of the massive, easily toppled rocket from the VAB all the way out to the launchpad. When it came to Chrysalis and arguments, accuracy only got in the way.

(476) Chrysalis was not as perfect a deceiver as she liked to believe. Had any pony not focused on a critical issue been watching, they would have noticed the moment the eyes widened, the pupils contracted, and the sweat beaded up on her face. Twilight Sparkle, on the other hoof, had decided to tune out Chryssy’s brags in favor of her own agenda, and so she didn’t notice the queen cracking at the seams.

(477) Much to everyone’s relief.

(478) To be fair, out of eight simulations that morning, Chrysalis only missed four switches total, and Twilight caught three of them. The one switch neither of them caught turned out to be relatively harmless; the RCS was turned on in flight, and it took Chrysalis only a second to shut it back down before resuming the practice liftoff.

The next day, simulations continued, this time focusing on docking practice…

… or, as Twilight Sparkle thought of it, teaching a particularly difficult student who should have already known that “good enough” was not actually good enough.

“All I’m saying is,” Chrysalis growled (479), “I targeted the docking port like you told me to. I got the ship oriented at the target, no problem. I flew the ship just like I would an EVA, like you told me to- and like the LAST THREE TIMES!!”

“Indoors voice, please,” Twilight said, trying to be patient.

“And we made contact at zero point four meters per second,” Chrysalis continued, dialing back the volume again. “Perfectly safe speed. And then all the controls go crazy, every single thruster fires at once, and we end up with zero monopropellant and a failed sim! AGAIN! I’m doing it like you TOLD me, princess!” Chrysalis waved a hoof at the red-lit controls. “Now you tell the moronic computer I’m doing it right!”

Twilight sighed. “But you forgot one thing, Chrysalis,” she said, reminding herself not to use a didactic tone.(480) “It’s not enough to hit the target. You have to hit it straight, so the docking couplers can interact. If you hit it at an angle, the docking magnets pull on both ships, the SAS and RCS fight the magnets, and everything goes crazy until the two ships settle down.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” she asked. “So the magnets will pull the ships together if I do nothing, right?”

“If the ships are less than two meters apart, yes,” Twilight said. “And only if the ships are within a certain range of degrees off the perfect-“

“BLAH BLAH BLAH,” Chrysalis interrupted. “I get close, I do nothing, and the magnets dock the ships. Got it.” She leaned from her seat on the left of the three-pony capsule over the empty center seat. “So when were you going to tell me to turn SAS and RCS off right before docking?”

Twilight blinked. “Um… but you want those,” she said. “You want to maintain your ship’s attitude to the target, because if you don’t, the magnets could throw either ship back and forth like a rodeo pony throwing a haybale! You could hit vital components or even breach the hull! That’s why you always want to find a good translation of your ship in relation to the target until-“

“Uuup, uup uup uup!” Chrysalis held up a hoof. “What is this ‘translation’ you’re talking about? Do I have to learn how to speak Spaceship?”

Yes, you do, Twilight groaned mentally. And I don’t know how you haven’t learned it in a year and a half of spaceflight. “In this case,” she said aloud, “translation means shifting your position and orientation in relation to another object, like a targeted ship. It means that, instead of coming straight at the target when your angle is bad, you make a right-angle turn, moving sideways and then turning the ship so you’re on the right line to dock!” She waved the heavy flight checklist(481) in the air and finished, “It’s all right here in the documentation!”

“I haven’t got time to read everything shoved in front of me!” Chrysalis said. “We launch in four days, right?”

“Five,” Twilight corrected.

“As soon as we get this to work,” Chrysalis countered. “And it doesn’t have to be pretty. So long as we don’t actually break anything on either ship and we get a dock, everything will be fine. Right?”

“But it’s important to learn the right way to do-“

“RIGHT??”

Twilight decided to surrender. “Fine,” she sighed. Whatever. The next sim will prove me right anyway.

“Good!” Chrysalis banged a hoof on the inner wall of the simulator. “WE’RE READY!” she shouted. “LET’S DO IT AGAIN!”

“You know they can hear us over the comms, right?” Twilight asked, tapping her headset with one hoof.

“Whatever,” Chrysalis grumbled, resetting the SAS and RCS systems as the simulator internal lighting blinked red, then resumed normal white as the computer verified all switches in their proper position.

A few minutes later, Twilight found herself grinding her teeth as Chrysalis made the same oblique approach as before, then switched off both RCS and SAS at two meters out, and then pumped SAS off and on to reduce the ship’s thrashing until the docking ports registered a solid link.

And then it worked again in the next sim.

And the next.

And the next, with Chrysalis staring smugly at Twilight as she switched the SAS on and off with one hoof.

“It’ll never work this way in real life,” Twilight huffed.

“Watch me, princess,” Chrysalis gloated.

Footnotes:

(479) Which Twilight liked better than the shouting. She’d heard enough of that.

(480) And not a shouty rant either, no matter how very good it would feel at this moment.

(481) On the Operations and Objectives of Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-Three in Conjunction with Equestrian Space Agency Flight Thirteen, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, With Annotations By the Author, Canterlot University Press, printed on demand. Being a princess meant people of lesser authority no longer tried very hard to curb one’s obsessions with checklists.

CSP-23 Mission Day 01

The giant rocket, assembled and early, sat on the launchpad before dawn of what the mission conference had dubbed Day Seven- one day earlier than the target date. The immense Twin Boar liquid-fuel boosters, the newest invention from Goddard and von Brawn, held up a second stage powered by the Skipper engine, cousin to the Mainsail engine which had propelled the rovers R5 and R6 to Minmus and the Moon, respectively. Further up the stack lay a weaker but more efficient Poodle engine on the lunar transfer stage, topped by the experimental lander which would get its orbital testing around Luna’s moon.

And inside the capsule, slowly, methodically, Chrysalis and Twilight Sparkle went down the entire expanded checklist(482). Outside. the sun jumped above the horizon over the Celestial Sea, the almost new moon hovering above it in the early morning sky(483).

“Repeat mission objectives,” Cherry Berry called out from the capcom seat in Mission Control.

“Testing of prototype landing ship in orbit of the moon,” Chrysalis replied. “Suborbital flight test and delta-V verification test. Docking with ESA Amicitas and evaluation of on-board malfunctions. Return of astromare Rainbow Dash safely to Equus.”

“Roger, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry said. “Final fueling in progress; launch countdown now rolling at four minutes… mark!”

“Confirm T minus three fifty-five and counting,” Chrysalis said. She flipped the switch to mute her microphone and muttered, “I miss the days when we could just go.”

Twilight Sparkle blinked. She hadn’t expected conversation from Chrysalis. Bickering, yes- she’d had days of bickering, and she’d come to expect it, even if it did drive her up the wall. “More complex ships require more caution,” she replied.

“It ought to be the other way around,” Chrysalis muttered. “The more we build ships, the easier they ought to be to fly, not harder.”

“We’ll get there,” Twilight said. “That’s what this flight is all about. We’ll get there.”

Twilight saw Chrysalis turn her spacesuit helmet to give her an icy glare. “Yesss,” she hissed. “We will.” With a click the comms switched back to open channel. “Horseton, Twenty-three, fuel reading optimal, please confirm.”

Oh well, Twilight thought, and sat back in her flight couch as the last minute of the countdown ticked down in Cherry Berry’s squeaky voice.

At the count of zero two times the force of Equus gravity shoved Twilight back in her seat- rather more forcefully than her first flight, which even under eight Thumper solid rocket boosters and full main engines had barely topped 1.4 G’s at launch. In a mere thirty seconds the rocket went supersonic, shaking under the forces of aerodynamic pressure ahead and four controlled explosions behind, all kept under skillful control- much to Twilight’s ongoing surprise- by a calm, stern Queen Chrysalis.

The giant rocket shuddered and shook its way through max-Q, tipping slowly in a controlled curve towards the eastern horizon. The forces of acceleration continued pushing Twilight deeper against her spacesuit backpack and flight couch, as two G’s became three. As three G’s reached towards four, plasma began to flicker through the capsule’s hatch window, as Equus’s atmosphere objected to the massive thing plowing through it.

Chrysalis, so far as Twilight could tell, didn’t bat an eye. “Approaching first stage burnout,” she said calmly.

“Confirm, Twenty-three,” the squeaky voice of Mission Control replied.

Then, at a mere one minute and eleven seconds into flight, the ship staged. For a moment Twilight felt herself yanked forward in the straps, her horn tapping the inside of her helmet uncomfortably before, a split second later, she was slammed back into place by the ignition of the second stage’s Skipper engine.

And then, after only a few seconds, Chrysalis shut down the engine. “SECO,” she called out. “Showing a high apoapsis, Horseton. Will circularize orbit once we’re out in space.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “We show all systems GO for space, GO for orbit.”

Twilight saw light flickering in the hatch as something pulled her forward in her straps. She looked down at the nav-ball in front of her and saw it steadily rolling from the blue into the brown. “Chrysalis, what are you doing?” she asked, trying not to panic. “We’re tumbling! The centripetal and aerodynamic forces will-“

“We’re already well into the upper atmosphere,” Chrysalis replied. “The air’s too thin to do more than drag a little. Sit back, shut up, and let me show off.”(484)

A few moments later something went BANG directly in front of the two astromares. “Nosecone separation,” Chrysalis said, as the pointed metal that had shielded the docking port through the launch got sent up and away, well out of the flight path of the rest of the ship. Twilight caught a glimpse of the stack separator ring through one of the capsule windows before the ship’s tumbling took it away again.

“Confirm nosecone separation,” Cherry said. “The bullpen is sending data up to your computer for orbital insertion burn.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, flipping a switch with her hoof and looking with a casual disdain at the diagrams on the little computer screen before her. “Specialist, extend solar panels.”

Twilight blinked, then shook her head. “Solar panels, aye!” she said, finding the switches and flicking them on with her magic. A soft whirr filled the capsule, followed by a snap as the retractable solar panels locked into place.

“Apoapsis in forty-five seconds,” Chrysalis said, pushing slightly on the flight yoke to stop the tumble. “Preparing for manual orbital burn.”

“Roger, Twenty-three.”

Twilight opened her mouth, saw Chrysalis glaring… well, no, not glaring exactly. This time there wasn’t either heat or cold in the expression. There was just this look of… supreme indifference. They locked eyes for a moment, and Twilight’s mouth clicked shut. Without even a nod of recognition Chrysalis returned her attention to her console, tweaking the flight yoke in her hooves before slowly bring the throttle back up to full.

The ship rocked back and forth as Chrysalis sought the optimum trajectory, glancing from one readout to another almost faster than Twilight could follow the motions. The changeling queen’s eyes seemed to narrow slightly, but aside from that Twilight couldn’t read anything in that silent, stoic expression. For a moment she had the impression of a changeling Maud Pie in a spacesuit… except that Maud talked a bit more.

The roar of the engine went silent, and Chrysalis said, “Burnout. Staging.”

Without waiting for confirmation from the ground she hit the staging button, and Twilight felt a harder jolt than before as the decoupler pushed the second stage away. The third stage ignited with a much softer jolt, but only a few seconds later it grew quieter as Chrysalis gradually eased the throttle back, her eyes planted firmly on the computer readouts showing the ship’s projected apoapsis and periapsis. Finally, with a nod, she slapped the throttle all the way to zero and called, “Shutdown! Reading an orbit with an eccentricity of four point six kilometers!”

Cherry Berry’s voice carried only a hint of congratulations. “Well done, Twenty-three. Unfortunately we’re still showing a difference in orbital plane of zero point nine degrees. Stand by for orbital adjustment burn instructions.”

“Roger, Horseton, standing by,” Chrysalis grumbled, reaching down to the communications panel and switching off her microphone. “And that is how we do that, princess,” she added for Twilight’s ears alone.

“Hm-hmm,” Twilight nodded absently. Her hooves were already on the small keyboard in front of her, tapping out instructions and bringing the capsule’s trajectory computer to life. “I’m looking at the position of the moon right now,” she continued. “I think we can get away with a direct ascent without an orbital adjustment, depending on where exactly our orbital plane crosses the moon’s.”

“Ahem.”

The frosty nature of the word(485) brought Twilight up short. She turned her attention away from the tiny computer screen to face the glare of an angry changeling queen on her dignity.(486) “I’m sorry, did I miss something?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, you did, princess,” Chrysalis said. “You missed the part where I ordered you to calculate the trajectory. Because I gave no such order.”

Twilight cocked her head. “Why should you need to?” she asked. “I can do the job up here just as well as the scientists on the ground. This way will be faster.”

Chrysalis’s mouth worked, and for a brief moment Twilight thought the changeling queen might go for her throat, little things like their spacesuit helmets notwithstanding. The moment passed, and Chrysalis slumped a little in her harness, brought up a hoof to her faceplate, and shook her head inside the helmet. “How do you expect to be a princess,” she muttered, “how do you expect to rule Equestria one day, if you don’t understand the most basic concepts of command?”

“But this works- this will- ugh!” It was Twilight’s turn to slump. “Fine. Enlighten me.”

“It is very simple,” Chrysalis said, sounding more patient than Twilight would have expected. “If you were an ordinary pony, say Pinkie- no, bad example,” she muttered, shaking her head again. “Like… um… like an ordinary pony…”

“Like Cherry Berry?” Twilight asked.

Once again Chrysalis’s mouth worked silently for a moment. When sound came, it came as if worked through an old earth pony’s laundry wringer. “Nooooo. Not like Cherry Berry.” After another shake of her head, she continued, “You are a princess. You hold authority. You represent a potential challenge to me for command of this mission. If you were not a princess, not head of another space agency- just an ordinary astromare- then I, as commander, could let you do whatever you liked, secure in my command.”

“But I’m not challenging your command,” Twilight said. “I don’t really want it.”

“They all say that,” Chrysalis muttered dismissively. “And it’s beside the point. A proper ruler cannot encourage initiative without risking their supremacy. So in order to maintain our current modus vivendi-“

“I didn’t know you spoke Old Ponish.”

“Inordertomaintainourcurrentmodusvivendi you will NOT INTERRUPT ME!” Chrysalis shouted.

Twilight flinched, ears trying to flop back under her comms headset. “Sorry!”

“And you will also wait until ordered to do something before you start doing it!” Chrysalis continued. “In so doing you will be showing respect to my position as mission commander! Not doing so is showing disrespect, and disrespect will have consequences! Do you understand now, princess?”

Twilight hesitated. “I understand what you want me to do,” she said slowly. “But it seems just… just so… insecure.”

Now Chrysalis did lean over as far as the flight couch straps would permit. In a soft but lethal hiss she spat out, “I defy you to say that again, pony.”

“Well, it does!” Twilight snapped back, not backing down(487). “You make it sound like you can’t trust anyone except the most lowly servant! Like you’re always looking over your shoulder for someone to backstab you, instead of looking forward! I don’t know what you call it where you come from, but I call that insecure!”

“I call it reality, princess,” Chrysalis replied.

For Twilight Sparkle, the penny finally dropped. “Oooooh,” she said.

Chrysalis settled back in her flight couch again, rolling her eyes. “Oh, Tartarus, princess,” she grumbled. “Don’t throw me the standard pony pity party. I don’t take it from Cherry Berry, and I certainly won’t take it from you.”

“All right,” Twilight said, wondering how she was supposed to stop feeling things on command. That didn’t seem like a thing any healthy person would do, not to her.

After another sigh Chrysalis reached down and reactivated comms. “Horseton, Twenty-three.”

“We read you, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry’s voice answered. “We’re almost ready with that orbital adjustment burn.”

“About that,” Chrysalis said, “we have an idea up here. Have the bulls check two or three orbits from now and see whether or not we can get a moon intercept on the line where our orbital plane and the moon’s intersect.”

Twilight leaned forward in her seat for a better look at Chrysalis, who was no longer looking in her direction at all.

“Uh, we copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “We’ll have something for you on that shortly. In the meantime, we’d like you to begin going through the checklist for trans-lunar injection.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Chrysalis replied. “We’ll get started on that.”

“And tell Twilight that von Brawn said good idea,” Cherry added, a touch of smugness in her voice.

Twilight couldn’t help smirking as Chrysalis, for a moment, lost control of her facial muscles.

“I like that even less than the pity, princess,” the changeling queen muttered once she had her face back under control.

“You’re still on vox,” Twilight pointed out.

“Am I now?” Chrysalis asked. “Booger.”

“It’s not funny the second time, Chrysalis.”

“Oh, bite me,” Chrysalis huffed. “And haul out that brick of a checklist. We may as well get started.”

Footnotes:

(482) It actually went surprisingly quickly once you realized that, if you ignored all the explanations for why these switches needed to be in those positions, there were at most four action items per page. By launch day Chrysalis had mostly gotten over her annoyance at Twilight’s pedantics, especially once she’d privately learned from von Brawn exactly how many ways those switches could get her killed. (Hint: lots.)

(483) Celestia and Luna had actually planned this in advance as a good-luck gesture for the rescue mission. For the large crowd of launch-watchers at Horseton Space Center, the sight was almost as impressive as a Summer Sun Celebration. For the two people actually in the spaceship… the hatches were turned the wrong way, and they missed it completely. Unfortunate, but as Rarity would point out much later, this is why cameras were invented.

(484) Truth be told, Chrysalis didn’t have control of the craft. Without the engines firing, the reaction wheels and tiny fixed-position fins weren’t enough to counter certain aerodynamic forces that caused the second stage to tumble. But there were reasons why Chrysalis didn’t like the phrase, “truth be told.”

(485) When someone says the onomatopoeia “ahem” as a word rather than a sound, it means, “I want your attention.” Depending on tone, it can mean anything from, “I apologize for committing the unforgivable crime of interrupting you,” all the way up to, “Contrary to what you may have thought, nothing in your life, including your life itself, is more important to you than listening to me right now, because if you continue to ignore me I shall end you.” Chrysalis was much closer to the latter end of the spectrum than the former.

(486) More accurately, she was facing the glare of an outraged rocket pilot on her dignity. They’re more dangerous.

(487) More accurately unable to back down, owing to the same straps that held Chrysalis in her own seat.

One translunar injection burn and three hours later, Chrysalis and Twilight Sparkle floated around the capsule with nothing very much to do.

“Maybe we could go through the lunar orbit checklist?” Twilight asked helpfully.

“Or maybe you could shut your mouth,” Chrysalis muttered, staring out the hatch porthole.

“All right, all right,” Twilight said. “I’ll just work on the scientific instruments. Nothing like fresh, new scientific data to stimulate the mind.”

“Fine. You do that,” Chrysalis muttered. “But do it quietly. I’m contemplating the universe.”

“Really?” This was an aspect of Chrysalis Twilight hadn’t imagined could exist. “What have you discovered so far?”

“That it’s noisier than it needs to be,” Chrysalis replied, a bit pointedly.

“Oh. Sorry.” Twilight hesitated, but not for long. “But could we talk about it later? I’d really like to know.”

“And I’d really like to not talk about it,” Chrysalis snapped. “If you want to make philosophical discoveries, do your own contemplating.”

“All right,” Twilight said. “I’ll just be quiet now.”

“Good,” Chrysalis huffed.

Twilight hadn’t quite finished drifting over to the copilot controls containing the readouts for the various scientific instruments around the spaceship when the comms crackled to life. “Twenty-three, Horseton, comms check… if you don’t mind,” whispered a voice on the edge of audibility. “Capcom is now Fluttershy.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Chrysalis pushed herself back from the hatch, spinning with long practice to line up exactly with the pilot’s seat as her hoof hit the vox switch on the comms panel. “Horseton, Twenty-three, didn’t copy that last, over.”

“I said, capcom is now Fluttershy.”

“Negative, Horseton, still did not copy.”

“Oh, let me,” Twilight grumbled, switching her own mike to vox before Chrysalis could stretch the cruel joke out any longer. “Hello, Fluttershy. I didn’t know you were in Horseton.”

“Hello, Twilight. We all are,” Fluttershy said. “I don’t think the changelings are too happy to have us, but we’re here. Mr. Occupant is working out a roster so that we can rotate through the control stations.”

“Is he, now?” Chrysalis replied. Twilight could just see one of the queen’s cheeks twitching.

“Um, yes, um, he’s very helpful, Twenty-three.”

“I just bet he is.”

“It’s good to hear you, Fluttershy,” Twilight continued. “And it’s good to have my friends all helping us out. But, um… do you have any updates or anything?” After a quick glance at Chrysalis, she added, “Because I think our mission commander was on the verge of a great insight into the nature of the universe.”

“Oh, was she? I’m sorry,” Fluttershy whimpered.

“Very funny, both of you,” Chrysalis growled. “And can I please remind capcom of comms discipline, Horseton?”

“Oh, um, I’m sorry, Chr… um, Twenty-three,” Fluttershy continued. “It’s just that I’m about to give Rainbow Dash her book reading, and we’re tying your ship in on the same circuit, so I can read to you both.”

“Be still, my shriveled crusty heart,” Chrysalis muttered. “What will we be treated to tonight?”

“Um,” Fluttershy said quietly, “I’m starting a new book, so that you aren’t going to be lost on the one Rainbow Dash is halfway through. It’s a translated book from the kirin lands.”

“Oh, lovely,” Chrysalis said. “Let’s have it, then.”

“Okay,” Fluttershy said, apparently not so much ignoring the reluctance as not having noticed it at all. “Ahem. That Time I Was Reincarnated as an Alicorn Princess Robot, by Lit Dynamite. Prologue. It was just your typical kind of life. I graduated from college, got a job in a big office building in Manehattan, and with my older brother taking care of my parents for me, I was enjoying all the benefits of an independent single life in the big city. Thirty-seven years old, no significant other…”

Chrysalis switched off her microphone. “Are we really going to listen to this dreck?” she whispered, while Fluttershy continued to drone on in her headset.

“It’s one of the most popular book series in the Far East for the past five years!” Twilight hissed back, her hoof on her own microphone’s kill switch. “Besides, it won’t hurt you to listen!”

“… I turned around to see a delivery wagon skidding towards me. I recognized the pony in the leads, Truck Tripper, his eyes rolling with fear. I could hear the screeching of the metal wheel rims on the cobblestones, and there in front of Truck-kun’s out-of-control wagon was my co-worker Buck Younglove…”

Chrysalis groaned and muttered, “That’s what you think.”

---

CSP-23 Mission Day 02

“For the last time, princess, nopony cares about half a degree temperature discrepancy!” Chrysalis shouted. “If the ship isn’t about to blow up, keep your scientific breakthroughs to yourself!”(488)

“Well, excuse me for experiencing the wonder and majesty of the universe!” Twilight snapped back.

“Half a degree of temperature is neither wonder or majesty! It’s a NUMBER on a STICK!”

“It’s the WRONG number on the stick! And that casts severe doubt on Haypennysworth’s theory of caloric transmission through aether!”

“You keep saying words, but they’re not Ponish!”

“That IS Ponish!”

“Not where I come from!”

“You come out of a hole in the middle of a desert! That hardly qualifies you to be judge of either grammar or science!”

“That’s MY hole in the ground you’re talking about, smart girl!”

“And what’s wrong with being smart anyway??”

Meanwhile, back in Horseton, Applejack and Occupant looked at each other, ears in identical drooping postures. “How long until one of ‘em realizes their mikes’r hot?” Applejack asked.

“Probably not until I tell them,” Occupant said.

“Not it,” Applejack said.

“Not it,” Occupant added.

From the capcom station, Dragonfly added, “Double plus not it backsies.”

“But that’s your job!” Occupant whined.

“It’s also my life,” Dragonfly said. “And I wanna keep it.”

Occupant and Applejack looked at each other again. “Well, somebody has to tell ‘em,” Applejack said.

“Yeah,” Occupant said. “If this keeps up, the reporters are going to run out of note paper.”

Up in the press gallery, the scribbling intensified.

---

CSP-23 Mission Day 03

“… the next thing I knew, I realized that the four dwarves were all staring at me. I don’t like being stared at! What are they expecting from me? I’m just a robot, you know!”

“Here it comes,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Hey!” Rainbow Dash’s voice cut across the channel. “Don’t interrupt the reading!”

“Well, this is the point where the main character, this Roboru, does something impossble, right?” Chrysalis asked. “Can we take it as read and skip ahead? I want to hear more about this evil vizier the dwarves were talking about!”

“I’ll bet you skip ahead to the end of every Daring Do book, too!” Rainbow Dash’s raspy voice barked.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Chrysalis asked. “You read one Daring Do book, you’ve read them all.”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY??”

Twilight Sparkle put her head in her hooves and moaned, “It’s going to be a long flight back home, isn’t it?”

“Um,” a soft voice echoed over the comms, “this section’s only got a page or so to go… and then we’ll be done for the night… if you don’t mind… please?”

---

CSP-23 Mission Day 04

“Twenty-three, we show a slight prograde burn at your periapsis will set you up to intercept Amicitas with a closest approach of zero point four kilometers,” Cherry Berry’s voice said inside the headsets of pilot and passenger alike.

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. A nearly perfect orbital insertion burn had put the rescue ship almost perfectly level with Amicitas’s altitude and orbital plane. The next step was to pinpoint a moment where the two ships would pass very close to each other, whereupon Chrysalis could haul in the reins(489) and match speeds with the stranded ship.

“Are you sure it’s a prograde burn?” Twilight asked. “Won’t that just mean we have even more velocity to scrub off for rendezvous?”

Pause. “The bullpen tells me that can’t be helped, Twilight,” Cherry said at last. “On this pass you and Amicitas will be on opposite sides of the moon. Bringing down your apoapsis any farther at this point means no intercept without going suborbital.”

“Which we will eventually do,” Chrysalis pointed out. “That’s one of the tests on the schedule.”

“After you dock with Amicitas, not before,” Cherry replied. “It’s only a few meters per second. You have more than enough delta-V for that.”

Which was true enough. The lunar transfer stage still had more than a third of its original fuel load- not quite enough for a landing on its own, but plenty for orbital maneuvers. “I’m just saying it’s an option we could explore,” Chrysalis stated.

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied, “and we’ll explore it a bit. But we’re not gonna do it. Copy?”

“Copied, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “What’s the story on our burn?”

“You have about one hour and forty-five minutes until periapsis,” Cherry said. “A little less than four hours after that, you should be burning for rendezvous.”

“You should probably tell Rainbow Dash that,” Twilight said. “Is she on this channel?”

“Not right now,” Cherry admitted. “We’ve got her on spacewalk now. Dragonfly is her capcom at the moment. We’ll patch her in once she’s done inspecting Amicitas’s docking port.”

“Right,” Chrysalis said. “Time enough for lunch, then.”

“Excuse me?” Twilight asked. “Since when do-“

“Vox,” Chrysalis hissed.

Twilight switched off her microphone at the same time Chrysalis did. “Since when do you eat food?” she asked.

“I eat sometimes,” Chrysalis said. “I’m just not addicted to the stuff like you ponies are.” She held up her head and added, “Though I am a gracious queen and thus put up with the weaknesses of my inferiors.”

“Ha ha,” Twilight said, pouring enough iron in the two syllables for maybe half an anvil. “Do you want some coffee from the stores, then?”

“Pass me a C ration while you’re in there,” Chrysalis said.

“C ration?” Twilight paused in the act of pulling herself down to the capsule’s storage bays. “We don’t have anything called a C ration.”

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough for me,” she said, opening the cabinet where Pinkie Pie, in defiance of flight rules about crumbly things, had stashed several large heart-shaped sugar cookies with red frosting.(490)

Footnotes:

(488) This was on a hot mic, and so later Chrysalis would have ample opportunities to berate herself for saying something like that in public to the single brightest idiot genius of the last century, if not the entire history of Equestria and every country around it.

(489) Equestria and the other civilized peoples (if you count the changelings as civilized) did have a few devices with brakes installed, but not enough for “hit the brakes” to be a popular metaphor for slowing down. Reins, on the other hoof, were universal wherever you had wagons or trains large enough to require pony teams and a driver to control them.

(490) Strawberry flavor. Cherry Berry wouldn’t have raided the ship stores prior to launch even if they were cherry flavored, but Pinkie Pie hadn’t wanted her to even be tempted.

ESA-13 Mission Day 20 (still CSA-23 Mission Day 04)

Rainbow Dash floated along the length of Amicitas, giving the flattened-tube with fins a careful look-over from above.(491) Everything seemed in order, especially the docking port which, in just a few hours, would need to link up with an identical docking port on the nose of the changeling moon lander.

And that fact still, after almost two weeks, galled Rainbow Dash no end.

Rescued by Chrysalis! she fumed silently as she nudged the controls on her suit’s thruster pack. I know Twilight was under a lot of pressure, but really! What was she THINKING?

After all, what was there to stop Chrysalis from docking, pushing Twilight through the hatch, and then undocking, leaving not one but two ponies stranded for all eternity in moon orbit?

Well… besides the fact that Twilight could probably whip up a spell to teleport the ship home by stages, or push it out of lunar orbit, or get it home somehow in the roughly six days they’d have to do it in, based on the food left in Amicitas. And then Chrysalis would have to deal with the wrath of six reunited Elements of Harmony, plus three other princesses who would be ready to sing line and verse out of the Olde Yakyakistan Smash Hit Song Book.(492)

But aside from those minor considerations… what was there to stop her?

Rainbow Dash knew she wasn’t being fair to Chrysalis. That was kind of the point. Since when had Chrysalis ever been fair to anypony? It didn’t pay to be fair to that kind of person. And it sure didn’t pay to be utterly dependent on that kind of person for your life!

But… well, the fact was, the decision had been made, and there wasn’t much Rainbow Dash could do about it. Fighting inside the spaceships seemed like a good way to not have spaceships anymore, and fighting outside seemed like a mutual suicide pact. The only way she could see out of her situation was to trust Chrysalis and hope Twilight could prevent the much-expected betrayal.

That realization made Rainbow Dash about as happy as you’d expect, which meant she was about as far from happy as you could get.

Maybe I’d like it better, she thought as she made her way to the bridge airlock to reboard Amicitas, if I knew exactly what Chrysalis was plotting. If I knew her evil scheme, maybe I could stop it!

I wish I knew what she was thinking…

---

Meanwhile, on the other side of the moon, Chrysalis was trying and failing to find peace and quiet.

All the time! If it’s not the purple babblemouth here next to me, it’s Mission Control telling me this or that thing I already know! Or it’s some stupid story written to entertain spectacularly lonely pony and kirin stallions! Why won’t these fools be quiet for just ten minutes and let me enjoy some peace and quiet?

Ever since Mission Twenty-Three had broken Equus orbit, Chrysalis had sensed something growing around her, around the ship, around… something. It felt familiar, so familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her hoof on it. It certainly felt like it was putting a hoof on her, though- a gentle touch, even a caress, that left Chrysalis both terrified and longing for more.

But every time Chrysalis tried to concentrate on that feeling, to try to pinpoint it, some loud-mouth annoyance broke her concentration. All she wanted was a few minutes of time to herself, darn it! Why couldn’t those other people read between the lines and figure it out?

And then she heard the laughter.

It wasn’t her own voice. It certainly wasn’t Twilight Sparkle’s. Nor was it any of the people on the ground. It was female, deep and rich, and the humor behind the laughter rolled across her like the tides… and at least as ancient.

She snuck a quick glance at Twilight Sparkle, who was going over readouts from the science gadgets again. She didn’t have to ask if she’d heard the laugh; obviously she hadn’t.(493) And since the capsule’s headsets were both set to receive Mission Control at all times, if the laugh had come from there, she would have heard it.

Who are you? she thought.

And to her shock, a word came back in the same voice as the laugh: Soon.

Soon what?

. . . . .

Soon what?

Laughter and voice were gone, and the sensation of the gentle touch faded almost, but not quite, to nothing again.

Chrysalis snorted. “Soon,” she muttered.

“Hm? Something wrong?” Twilight asked, looking up from the science stuff.

“Soon we can get this stupid rescue over with,” Chrysalis said, careful not to give the slightest indication she was covering up for anything.

“You didn’t have to come, Your Majesty,” Twilight snapped back. “But I’m rescuing my friend, and I don’t find that a stupid thing at all.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” Chrysalis said coldly. “But I have flight tests to conduct. And as soon as we pick up your friend, we can get to the reason I came here in the first place.”

Well… one reason, anyway, she admitted in the privacy of her own head.

And now, as she poked and prodded at the memory of ghostly laughter, she had a brand new reason.

She’d had these feelings before, but now they were speaking to her…

… and she was going to find out what was behind them all, one way or another.

As soon as she figured out how.

Footnotes:

(491) Or below. Or either side. Because space.

(492) In Yakyakistan, “smash hit” has never been a metaphor.

(493) Asking people around you if they heard the laughter only you could hear seemed to Chrysalis an excellent way to get committed. In fact, several of her subjects had used that very tactic to dispose of some nosy pony getting a little too close to sensitive hive matters. The nice stallions in the white coats would have a lot of trouble putting Chrysalis into a padded room, but she would just as soon avoid the annoyance.

“Twenty-three, Horseton, comms check.”

Chrysalis switched on her microphone. “Stand by, Horseton.” She switched it right back off again, shouting, “Hurry it up, Princess, they’re getting impatient down there.”

A voice from behind a not terribly effective plastic curtain snapped, “Have you ever had to use one of these things? In free fall?”

“It’s not my fault I come from a race with markedly superior means of disposing of bodily waste, princess,” Chrysalis chuckled. “But we are coming up on our intercept.”

A groan came from the other side of the curtain.(494) “I’m hurrying, already. Why didn’t Cherry Berry say anything about constipation?”

A minute later Twilight Sparkle shoved the curtain back into its cabinet and shut the lid on the toilet, throwing the lever that clamped the lid on, and hit the switch venting the contents into space. “There,” she said. “How long until closest approach?”

“Computer says less than two minutes,” Chrysalis said. “We’re about seven kilometers out and approaching at a relative speed of sixty-three meters per second.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me??” Twilight rushed to get back into the copilot seat. “We need to brake and adjust trajectory right now!”

“No hurry,” Chrysalis purred. With a flick of her hoof she reactivated the outgoing comms system. “Horseton, Twenty-three, secure from private time.”

“It’s about time, Twenty-three!” Cherry Berry’s voice couldn’t choose between frantic or furious- most unusual for Little Miss Perfect Pilot. “You need to be on braking burn right now!”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said, drawling out her words in the way Twilight was beginning to recognize as Pilotese. “Orienting for deceleration burn now.”

The stars, sun, and the huge dark gray stretch of the night side of the moon traded places in the tiny windows of the capsule. As the ship tumbled, Twilight looked at Chrysalis and asked, “Are you actually trying to wind me up? Because it’s working!”

“Vox,” Chrysalis muttered. She looked at the nav-ball, which now showed the retrograde-relative-to-target marker and the this-way-away-from-ship marker close to, but not touching, each other. “Lining up the precise burn now…”

“Two kilometers and closing.”

“Copy two K, Horseton.” Chrysalis’s eyes never left the navball. Her hooves made small twitches on the flight yoke.

“One point eight. One point six. One point four!” Twilight’s voice rose with each callout.

“I think we can burn now.” At just under eleven hundred meters distance Chrysalis’s hoof dropped to the throttle and eased it forward to twenty-five percent. The ship bucked to life, rocking up and around as the queen matched speeds with the target ship, constantly jockeying to bring the ship closer to its target. The distance-to-target readout on the computer dropped rapidly, seven hundred meters, five hundred, four hundred… three hundred… two hundred fifty…

At two hundred ten meters Chrysalis shut the engines down again. “Approaching target at six meters per second,” she said. “Closest approach at less than one hundred meters.”

“Confirmed, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry said in a somewhat calmer voice. “But next time how about easing the ship in, hm? We don’t really know how much damage rocket thrust can do to another spaceship.”(495)

“I was never pointed directly at the target, Horseton,” Chrysalis said. “So no need to worry. I’m going to fly by the target. Its belly is turned to us.”

“Roger that,” Cherry replied. “Amicitas, be ready to orient on Twenty-three once it flies by.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Rainbow Dash called out.

“All right, Twenty-three, you are go to fly-by Amicitas and match speeds for docking.”

“Already doing, Horseton.” Chrysalis glanced at the nav-ball, where the retrograde marker and anti-target markers were separating from each other quickly. “Looks like no danger of collision. Ninety meters and closing.”

“Looks safe from here, too, Twenty-three,” Cherry said. “You’ll pass just under and in front of Amicitas’s nose.”

“Copy that.”

Twilight sat in silence and waited as the distance to target dropped, then slowed, then finally bottomed out at twenty-two meters distance. As it began rising again Chrysalis’s hoof returned to the throttle, opening it up only a tiny fraction to slow the ship. To Twilight the engine only sounded like someone spraying a tin shed with a hose.

“Visual on CSP-23,” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. Twilight wished she could say likewise, but none of the capsule’s windows pointed at a useful angle for seeing the ship she’d designed and sent off into space… with her friend inside.

“And… shutdown.” The throttle clicked closed as Chrysalis reached up to switch on the reaction control systems. “Ready to target Amicitas’s docking port as soon as it’s halfway pointed at me.”

“Stand by, Twenty-three,” Rainbow Dash said. “Maneuver in progress.”

“Amicitas, we show your solar panel still extended,” Cherry said. “You need to bring that in to clear the docking port.”

“Way ahead of you, Horseton.” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. “Emergency solar array retracting. Reaction wheels hot, RCS active. Pitching down.”

After a couple of seconds, Chrysalis said, “Computer has signal from docking port.”

“Roger, Twenty-three. Stabilizing.” Rainbow Dash went silent for a moment or two longer, then added, “Try not to put too many dents into my ship. I want it in one piece for the retrieval mission.”

“Fat chance,” Chrysalis murmured under her breath, and Twilight shot her a glare. The queen didn’t even notice, continuing in full voice, “Target lock on docking port. Rescue ship attitude go for dock. Orienting for docking run.”

Twilight flinched as loud banging noises filled the capsule. She’d known the thrusters were loud in atmosphere, but standing outside the craft on the ground during a burn test was nothing at all compared to being inside in space while they fired…

… and they were firing a lot. Chrysalis burned through monoprop by the hoofful as she worked to get the fuel-heavy rescue capsule aimed and moving directly at the unseen docking port. After several seconds she reached up, switched the RCS off, and said, “Approaching target, zero point three meters per second.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry said over the comms. “By the way, I want to make a few announcements. Ad Astra of the Royal Astronomical Society is cutting checks to ESA for first spacewalk in orbit of the moon and to both ESA and CSP for conducting the first ship-to-ship rendezvous in lunar orbit. And there’s more money coming when you finish this docking.”

“Copy, Horseton,” Chrysalis said without emotion. She reached up again to activate RCS, made a few more burns, then said, “Zero point three at thirty.”

“Copy. By the way, Twenty-three, check your nav-ball. Wouldn’t it help if your ship was actually pointed at target?”

Twilight noticed Chrysalis’s body absolutely freeze in place for a moment- just a moment. “I’ll defer to the experts on that one,” she said at last, drawling it out.

“Yes,” Twilight spoke up. “Yes, it would!”

“Oh, very well, then.” Chrysalis’s hooves had been moving before she spoke- really before Twilight had spoke, most likely. The navball flickered, spinning slowly until the target marker and prograde marker- the latter laid perfectly over the former- lay in the center of the display. “Zero point three at fifteen. Final approach begun.”

Twilight watched as Chrysalis reactivated RCS, tweaking the reaction controls here and there seemingly at random. Feeling like she ought to be doing something, she began calling out distance to target. “Twelve meters… ten meters…”

“Thank you, Twilight,” Chrysalis said through grit teeth.(496)

Twilight shut up at once.

“Eight meters… getting some drift…” Chrysalis made a couple more bursts with the rockets. “Zero point two at five, RCS and SAS shutdown for docking.”

There came a loud CLANG.

“And contact!” Chrysalis cheered.

“Negative!” Twilight countered. “Red light on dock. No capture, repeat no capture!”

“What??” Chrysalis looked at the controls, noticing the slowly growing distance between ship and ship. “I did it right!” she snapped, cool, calm façade broken. “That would have worked every day in the simulator! Where are the magnets? Where are your stupid magnets, princess??”

“I don’t know! Maybe you just missed!” Twilight snapped back.

“Well, how about you don’t miss again, huh?” Rainbow Dash contributed. “For zero point two meters speed, it sounded like a steam train hitting the hab deck!”

“All ships, Horseton, comms discipline!!” Cherry Berry’s squeak carried a crack like a whip through it. “All of you, take a deep breath and get professional about this! We’re going to have to do this again!”

“Well, no… um…” Twilight watched Chrysalis take a deep breath. When she let it out again, the calm pilot persona was back in control of the queen’s face. She snapped both the SAS and RCS back on, popping a few short bursts of thruster fire. “Zero velocity at ten meters,” she said. “Preparing for second docking attempt.”

“Copy, Twenty-three,” Cherry replied. “Amicitas, how’s your atmosphere?”

“Full pressure, no leaks,” Rainbow Dash replied immediately.

Meanwhile Chrysalis fired the RCS a bit more, then muttered, “Aborting approach. Didn’t have the alignment. Backing up for a better run-up.”

“Take your time,” Cherry Berry said. “Do what you have to. But get it right.”

“Roger.” Chrysalis popped the RCS a few more times. “Zero point two at twelve meters,” she said, and then went silent, with the very occasional pop of thrusters producing the only sound in the capsule.(497)

“Two meters, RCS off!” Chrysalis said suddenly, removing her hooves from the controls.

CLANG.

“And… and… no, no, no!” She switched the RCS back on, immediately firing the thrusters forward again. “Zero at one point nine meters! We should be feeling the electromagnets by now!”

“Did you make contact square on?” Twilight asked.

“Princess, that time I hit it more square on than any time we did it in the sims!” Chrysalis said. “And it just is not working! This is NOT my fault!!”

“All right, Twenty-three, let’s work the problem,” Cherry said over the comms. “Systems check on docking systems. Twenty-three?”

“Princess?” Chrysalis asked. “I’m pretty sure that’s on your side.”

“Right,” Twilight said, scanning the controls in front of her. “Docking system… all green on our side. Plenty of power, no warning indicators.”

“Copy. Amicitas, docking systems check?”

“I’m not seeing any warning lights over here, either!” Rainbow Dash said. “So it must… be…” Her voice trailed off, and after a few moments it came back, much chastened. “… because I had the system deactivated to save power. Whoops. My bad.”

Chrysalis gave Twilight a little glance that didn’t scream so much as say in a quiet, matter of fact matter, I know this is not actually your fault, but I still blame you for this. Aloud she said, “Belay action, Amicitas. Let us back off from you before you reactivate your systems. The sims weren’t kind to us when we had two docking ships improperly aligned.”

“Yeah, that would be bad,” Rainbow Dash’s voice agreed. “Just a little. Standing by.”

“RCS on. Backing out to twenty meters.” The thrusters banged again.

“We copy twenty meters for third approach,” Cherry said. “At this rate you have enough power for two more attempts.”

“I won’t need more than one,” Chrysalis said. “And…” A loud series of bangs. “Zero at twenty meters. Ready to approach.”

“Hang on… okay!” Rainbow Dash called. “I’m showing green across the board on the docking system now! Ready for docking, Horseton!”

“Roger, you are GO for docking attempt three,” Cherry said.

“Proceeding.” The thrusters barked again. “Zero point four at twenty… seventeen… fifteen, on target…” Chrysalis called out a few more numbers as seconds and distance ticked by. “Seven meters, on target…” Her hooves hovered above the controls, shaking a little bit to Twilight’s eyes. “Four… three meters, RCS off!”

CLANG-CHUNK.

The ship wobbled and shook.

“WHOA!” Rainbow Dash’s voice flooded the comms. “Get that ship under control!”

“Soft capture,” Chrysalis said calmly. “SAS off… SAS on… SAS off…” And under her voice she murmured just barely loud enough for Twilight to hear, “Catch, you stupid pony-cobbled piece of-“

CLANG-CLACK! CHUNK!

The green light for a hard capture and confirmed dock lit up on the control panel.

“We have hard capture!” Chrysalis said triumphantly. “Horseton, Baltimare, this is Changeling Space Program Mission Twenty-three; we have Amicitas, repeat we have Amicitas!”

“Swell, Twenty-three,” Rainbow Dash growled. “Now how about we get these hatches undogged, huh?”

“And why should I open my door to you?” Chrysalis asked, more than a little tease in her voice. “You weren’t very welcoming just now.”

“I can’t help it if my ship wants to be rescued by you even less than I do!”

“Rainbow Dash!!” Twilight shouted. “The world is watching us!!”

“That’s right, ladies and gentleponies,” Chrysalis said, not bothering to hide her smile. “The top diplomats of Equestria, hard at work!”

“Uggggghh!” Twilight groaned, holding her face in her hooves.

It would be a VERY long flight home.

Footnotes:

(494) Ever since Gordon the Griffon first ralphed in full view of the griffon space program’s telepresence projection (and all the media cameras recording it), the system was changed so when the astronauts fully shut off their microphones, it also shuts off all internal views of the spacecraft via telepresence. Obviously this became standard procedure for dealing with bathroom breaks, especially during Cherry Berry’s Minmus flight. Although the plastic curtain helped a little with privacy, its main purpose was to keep droplets of various kinds from escaping the reach of the new suction toilet. For smells, of course, it did very little, and for sounds nothing whatever. It was fortunate for both crewmembers that Chrysalis found the princess’s regular moments of bathroom humiliation hilarious rather than both disgusting and annoying.

(495) In our world the answer is “plenty”. However, space components that have officially been insured by Lloyd’s of Trottingham as “foolproof, waterproof, foalproof, changeling-proof, and yak resistant” tend to stand up to anything short of a full-blast rocket burn at point blank range.

(496) On Earth the Western legends of fairies and elves claim that saying ‘thank you’ to such a creature is a dismissal. Certainly nobles and aristocrats used it as such with their inferiors, usually as a polite but firm order to shut up and butt out. The ponies had no legends of elves as such, but they understood what a sharp “thank you” meant, even one as sheltered and bookish as Twilight Sparkle.

(497) Not true, but the sounds of the air recirculation fans, the coolant pumps, and the dozen or so other sound-making things which kept the interior of the capsule habitable had faded into the background of Twilight Sparkle’s mind. Until and unless one of them stopped making noise, she couldn’t tell that they were making noise anymore, especially in comparison to the hull-pounding bangs of the thrusters.

“I was an idiot!” Twilight Sparkle shouted.

Chrysalis let a little of her gigantic inner smile bleed to the outside world. “No doubt,” she said, “but possibly you could tell us what specifically you’re an idiot about this time?”

“Hey, back off!” Rainbow Dash said, shoving herself between the two. “When was the last time you designed a spaceship without paying someone to do it for you?”

The three of them floated in their spacesuits, the interior of Amicitas depressurized so that Twilight Sparkle could remove the entire fuel system intake assembly from its hole in the engineering cabin. Thus Rainbow Dash’s shove wasn’t much of a shove, but it sent Chrysalis gently drifting back towards a bulkhead while the pegasus’s body carried on along its own new trajectory. Twilight, meanwhile, got shoved a little against the assembly she was inspecting.

“Cut it out, Dash,” Twilight said. “She’s right. This system was a stupid idea, and I did a bad job on it.” She held up the assembly, with its large outer valve and its complicated second valve behind it. “I thought I could adapt a simple air-pressure valve for the purpose, with a second valve behind it to prevent cabin air from leaking out through the valve when the fuel pressure got too low.” She pointed at the large valve with the slightly bent locking ring at one end, then at a smaller metal sphere a bit further along. “But the backup valve doesn’t do anything about backflow from the fuel system, and when the outer valve got damaged-“

“Totally not my fault!” Rainbow Dash interjected.

“-then the only thing holding the fuel in was its own pressure, and when that pressure dropped, it found this weak point in the seal…” She pointed to a tiny, eroded-looking bit on the red circle which formed the inside of the valve. “… and it started leaking, and the more it leaked the faster it leaked, and then all the fuel was in the compartment!” Twilight’s eyes rolled with panic as she pushed away the assembly and drifted over to Rainbow Dash. “If there had been a spark in the cabin, the ship would have been destroyed! Oh, Dash…” She reached forward and slowly wrapped her spacesuit-covered forehooves around her friend. “I almost got you killed for a second time!!”

“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash returned the hug for a moment, then pushed Twilight back a bit. “No, Twilight, you didn’t get me killed. Not even once. I volunteered for this, remember? I got into Flight Five all by myself. And then when it… well, after that, I kept bothering you and pushing you until you got back to work at space stuff! I knew it would be dangerous! But-“

“Httthp.”

The two ponies froze, then carefully pushed on one another so they could turn their suits to face Chrysalis.

“What the…” Twilight said.

Rainbow took one look and curled up laughing, suit shaking with every big, broad belly laugh.

Chrysalis had rather hoped they wouldn’t notice her sneaking her tongue out to suck down a bit of the overflowing love between the two friends at a particularly emotional moment. Unfortunately for her, she’d forgotten she was in a spacesuit, and her long forked tongue had slapped against the plastic visor and its inner coating of anti-condensation material.

And stuck.

And, thus, she had treated the two ponies to the vision of a changeling queen with two feet of long, skinny tongue adhered like spaghetti to the lower half of her visor, while her eyes stared out over it.

“Eeheey uhuhee,” she said, which wasn’t what she wanted to say. “Ow ekk-oo-iie ee ikk oh I eeh akke iih oo-iih ellh-iih orh,” she added, which was even less what she wanted.(498)

“Chrysalis,” Twilight said, shock and surprise rapidly giving way to suspicion, “were you trying to devour our friendship just now?”

“Oh-ee uuh ihh-uul,” Chrysalis grunted. “Uhh iih oo ech-ech?”(499)

Twilight sighed, ignoring the loud paroxysms of Rainbow Dash. “Never mind,” she said. “Anyway, even if we had the fuel, I can’t fix this here. This whole system needs a redesign. The oxygen valve too- it’s built the same. We’ll need to purge that system before we leave.”

Chrysalis shrugged. She wouldn’t have had anything to add to that even if her tongue wasn’t plastered to her helmet.

“Anyway, I better get started.” Twilight’s magic reached out to the ship, and she used it to reorient herself before she caught the assembly in her magic. “Unless you have any questions?”

Chrysalis had tired of trying to grunt her messages. She settled for tapping her helmet while giving Twilight Sparkle as arch a look as she could manage.

“Oh. Right.” Twilight turned to face the refueling console. “I’ll try to hurry this along, then.”

“Ooo ooo akh.”(501)

Footnotes:

(498) “Very funny. Now pressurize the ship so I can take this stupid helmet off.”

(499) “Only a little. What did you expect?”

(500) Some people would argue that five hundred footnotes is far too many for a non-academic work, especially one without a bibliography for attribution. As you can guess, the writer does not hold with this argument.

(501) “You do that.”

“You two get to have a meal,” Chrysalis protested. “Why can’t I?”

“Because neither of us wants to end up a drained husk, that’s why!” Rainbow Dash snapped. “We remember what happened at the wedding!”

“I’ve been trying not to remember what happened at the wedding,” Twilight Sparkle added in a more dangerous tone than Chrysalis could remember her ever using in her presence. “And you trying to feast on us doesn’t help.”

“I wasn’t going to feast!” Chrysalis said defensively. “It was more like a quick snack. Honest!”

Rainbow Dash snorted. “A likely story,” she said.

“Fine,” Chrysalis said. “I’ll just be looking out the window.”

The three of them were still in Amicitas. They’d made two things clear: neither one wanted to leave the ESA vessel until after they’d had a meal there(502); and neither one of them would let Chrysalis back through the docking hatch before both of them were in the ship that was going home. Thus they sat in the bridge, Chrysalis in the copilot seat, Rainbow Dash in the pilot’s position, and Twilight Sparkle behind them both, watching for any sign of treachery.

Despite the fact that Chrysalis genuinely, honestly hadn’t intended to do more than slurp up ambient love when she got her tongue glued to her helmet(503), she couldn’t blame the ponies for their suspicion. But abandoning them in orbit would be saying, “I hereby declare war on Equestria! See you in three days, fools!” That would be a wonderful way to guarantee a welcoming committee on splashdown… and a large prison for every last one of her subjects long before then.

No, she couldn’t afford that, not until she had the mystic power of the moon in her hooves. After that, of course, no holds barred.

She looked out the pony ship’s cockpit windows, out at the stars and galaxies. With the ship turned away from both sun and moon, she could see spots of light and clouds of color no earthbound pony would ever experience… and right now, she didn’t give two bits for all of it. She wanted to look at the moon, at her final goal, so close and yet too far away.

And yet… it didn’t have to be that way, did it? The whole point of this mission before it became a rescue flight was to test a landing-capable craft before the final landing. CSP-23 was ready to go down to the surface, if she so chose.

She could do it.

She could do it right now.

Well, not right now, right now. She’d have to incapacitate Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash first to stop them from meddling. Twilight would have to come first, but that wouldn’t be hard. She was vastly more powerful, but she was also the more naive of the two, and tricking her into a moment of vulnerability would be child’s play. After that, subduing Rainbow Dash would be as much of a breeze as catching a breezie.

And then, with the two of them sleep-toxined in their seats, she could take the ship down, land, and claim the moon for herself… and with that power-

Not yet. Soon.

There was the voice again, and this time it wasn’t laughing.

Who are you? Chrysalis thought as clearly as she could.

No response, but the presence she felt in space seemed stronger than normal. If there was something out there, she had its attention.

I said, who are you? Chrysalis demanded in her mind. You can read my thoughts, whoever you are. So who are you to say it’s not my time for triumph??

No response.

If you don’t give me an explanation right now, Chrysalis said, I’m going to jump in my ship right now, undock from these two fools, and-

The universe blurred.

---

The main engines roared as CSP-23 decelerated, less than ten kilometers above the crater-pocked surface of the moon.

Rainbow Dash, glued firmly to her flight couch, was out like a light, snoring away under the influence of a potent bite of sleep toxin. Twilight Sparkle had resisted, as Chrysalis should have expected an alicorn to resist toxins, so she’d had to go to the trouble of encasing the unicorn’s horn in hard goo. The horn still glowed a bit as Twilight tried to force her way free, but it would take time to burn off- enough time for Chrysalis to land the ship.

But not much more time than that, she thought. She needed to land quickly, which meant she didn’t have time to be too picky about a landing spot.

“You won’t get away with this, Chrysalis!” Twilight Sparkle moaned as she struggled weakly against her bonds. The sleep toxin still had that much effect, at least.

“Why do they always say that?” Chrysalis muttered to herself. She didn’t have time for witty banter with her doomed foe, no matter how much fun that always was. She switched on the surface radar and flinched as the first digit on the altimeter immediately switched from a nine to a four. Less than five kilometers off the surface… and, she noted, now on a suborbital trajectory which would kill her unless she either landed safely or boosted back to orbit right now.

And boosting back to orbit would mean an end to all her plans- likely an end to her rule, for once Twilight Sparkle got free it would be either mutual death when the fight blew up the ship or (more likely) Chrysalis’s defeat and capture. She had no illusions; Twilight Sparkle had been a powerful unicorn when they’d first met, and she was almost certainly the most magically talented alicorn in the universe now. A fair fight wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So- land or bust. And furthermore, land blind, since there were no rear-view mirrors for the ship, nothing but radar distance-finding and feedback from mission control back in Horseton… which she had turned off completely, lest Cherry Berry try to get the other alicorn princesses to stop her. For all she knew, that was in process already, which meant she really did need to land right this very minute if possible.

Of course she couldn’t do that yet. The transfer stage was still attached, still burning. She needed to use it up, then dump it, before she could land.

The altimeter began fluctuating up and down, swinging wildly between three and five kilometers. Vastly uneven territory below, as Chrysalis could verify by looking out the side window at the surface the ship had just passed over. Still she kept the ship slowing down, watching the surface velocity shrink. She just needed to find a small patch of level ground, anything would do…

There. It wasn’t perfect, but it looked better than what came before. And besides, she’d almost totally nulled her lateral momentum, so it was that or nothing.

Taking a deep breath, she committed herself, watching the surface speed drop to a mere twenty-five meters per second, then cutting the throttle and setting the ship’s SAS to orient on retrograde as it began to fall straight moonward. The ship picked up speed, but not enough for her taste; one point six meters per second squared, as opposed to the almost ten meters per second squared she could expect on Equus.

Faster. Faster. Must get down faster!

She kept the engine off, checking with a glance that the staging system was correct, that the next strike of the stage switch would dump the transfer stage and leave the landing legs free to touch the surface. At eighty meters per second, just above two kilometers altitude, she throttled up briefly, slowing her descent to twenty-five meters per second. She throttled back, keeping just enough thrust to drop the descent speed by tenths of a meter each second, as the last of the fuel and oxidizer burned through the transfer stage’s engine.

At thirteen hundred meters she cut the stage loose.

The landing engine lit without a problem. She shut it down immediately, letting the ship drift down below eight hundred before bringing it back up again. First a hard burst to get the speed back down below twenty-five meters per second, then slower. At seven hundred meters she stalled, as a flicker of light on her console advised that the discarded stage had struck the surface. For a second she started going up again, but thankfully the SAS automatically ticked over to attitude control, saving the ship from a tumble before the moon’s gravity reasserted itself.

Chrysalis cut power and let the ship fall a little, then gave the engine just a tiny bit of throttle. At five hundred meters her speed was thirteen meters per second; at four hundred meters, eight. She pulled back more, just barely holding speed with the engines at less than ten percent throttle. She very carefully let the rocket decelerate her- too much, again, stalling out her descent at two hundred thirty meters up.

She cut the power once more, waited for gravity to put her back on course, then relit the engines on lowest power. She would find that happy medium, one way or another. The pony wasn’t the only astronaut who could land a ship!

Six point five at one hundred meters.

“What are you doing??” Twilight Sparkle shouted, fully awake again.

Five point seven at fifty meters.

“That’s too fast!!” Twilight shrieked.

The ship touched down at five point four meters per second.

The landing legs compressed hard, but unevenly, because although Chrysalis had come down on a flatter part of the moon than the crater-pocked hellscape surrounding it, it wasn’t absolutely flat.

The legs rebounded unevenly, tipping the ship hard forward.

Panicked, Chrysalis shoved the throttle to the firewall. No! Must not crash! Must get away!

“NOO!!!” Twilight Sparkle screamed. Her horn glowed brighter, and a tiny crack appeared in the hard gel.

The ship took off, still tumbling, SAS unable to straighten it out.

Chrysalis caught a glimpse of fractured rock and sand through the hatch window as the ship tumbled end over end, still at full throttle.

Then there was a loud crunch, an even louder explosion, a moment of flame-

- and then so much darkness…

---

“Jeez, Chrysalis, what was THAT for?”

Chrysalis’s eyes opened. The darkness in front of her had stars in it, and nebulae, and the Milky Way.

“I think she fell asleep looking out the window,” Twilight said. “Are you all right? That was quite a scream.”

“Er… yes,” Chrysalis managed, her brain rushing to find some acceptable response. “A nightmare, perhaps? If daydreams can become nightmares.”

“I hope not,” Rainbow Dash said firmly. “Look, we’re almost done eating anyway. How about we finish this in the other ship?” Under her voice she added, “The sooner we get away from crazy bug the better.”

“I’m choosing to ignore that,” Chrysalis said. “But no, go ahead and finish. I… need a moment first.”

“Suit yourself,” Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Weirdo.”

As the two ponies finished raking out the dregs of their meal packs, Chrysalis stared out the cockpit window again. All right, voice, she thought, you made your point. But I’m coming back soon. And when I come back I will be prepared. Next time you won’t stop me.

Laughter, but softer and shorter than what Chrysalis had heard before, was her only response.

I don’t appreciate being mocked, Chrysalis thought. Whoever you are, after I’ve dealt with the ponies, you’re next.

Next time, the voice said, you will see all your wishes fulfilled.

And then, almost instantly, the presence faded to as thin as Chrysalis could remember it- not absolutely gone, but definitely shifted elsewhere.

All my wishes fulfilled, voice? Chrysalis thought.

Well… yes, that is the plan.

That’s been the plan for the past two years.

Time is almost up.

Footnotes:

(502) It was the one thing they could do to stretch out the time they had on their own ship, before they became passengers on a ship that not only belonged to a hostile power, but which was piloted by the very hostile ruler of that power.

(503) Removing the tongue had taken twenty minutes, a lot of magic, and eventually some alcohol from Amicitas’s medical stores. This extra time spent aboard was not appreciated by any of the three astromares, who had been too busy with the difficult and unpleasant task to care. Chrysalis’s helmet would be in danger of fogging up on the trip home, but at least she would be able to talk.

CSP-23 Mission Day 05

“… and shutdown in five, four, three, two, one!”

“Shutdown!”

“Twenty-three, we confirm shutdown, stable lunar orbit of twenty-five kilometers with a deviation of less than one kilometer. Good work!”

“Of course it was. It was me doing it.”

Rainbow Dash thought she might gag. You didn’t need to be a changeling to sense the smugness radiating out from the pilot’s seat. Chrysalis had just finished the exact same maneuver which had left Rainbow Dash marooned around the moon for two weeks… except that this time there was a transfer stage still twenty percent full attached to the ship, plus a landing-and-return stage with its fuel tank absolutely untouched.

The suborbital flight performance test had been the final test of CSP-23, and like the other tests it had passed with flying colors. The next time Chrysalis came up, it would be to land.

The space race was over. Equestria had lost.

“Twenty-three, just thought you’d like to know,” Cherry Berry’s voice added as Dash sat in the center seat sulking. “The bullpen’s early analysis of the test says our current rocket design is go for landing on any site within at least twenty, maybe thirty degrees of initial orbit. With a massive safety margin.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Chrysalis muttered, in a subdued tone that didn’t seem to Rainbow Dash like the kind of swagger the changeling queen had been enjoying a moment before.

“Sure you did,” Cherry replied. “Well, the scientists confirm it, if you care.”

“Actually,” Chrysalis replied, her voice rising again, “I do care. Ask them if we have enough oomph in this ship to re-dock with the pink paperweight and push it back home.”

“Er, Horseton, cancel that,” Twilight Sparkle spoke up quickly from Rainbow Dash’s other side. “Even if the delta-V is there, we’ve never tested the docking port under acceleration. We’d risk permanent damage to the ship. And besides, Amicitas would have to return through atmosphere without power, as a glider. It’s technically possible, but everything would have to be absolutely perfect. We’d rather come back and get her when we can fix her.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash grunted. Not that it mattered much, but she did want to bring the ship home, if she could. Even after the changelings landed on the moon.

“I see,” Chrysalis said lightly. “If that’s the case, then tell the bulls they’ll have to start designing a new ship. A bigger one.”

Rainbow Dash gaped at Chrysalis, then looked at Twilight, whose jaw was just as slack.

“Er, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry’s voice came slowly from their headsets, “why do we need a bigger ship?”

“Because by my count, Mission Twenty-four is going to need at least four seats,” Chrysalis said. “You piloting, of course. Myself. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, to see to their ship.” A thought occurred to her. “That contraption that was on Dragonfly’s ship, it holds four people, right? So we could get seven seats for Mission Twenty-four. We could bring along Dragonfly and Occupant, since they’re trained. And one more seat… what about Fluttershy?” The queen, for the first time, looked over at the two ponies with honest curiosity. “Do you think Fluttershy would like her first flight to be to the moon?”

“She wouldn’t like her first flight, period,” Rainbow Dash blurted.

“Ah. Well, maybe we’ll draw straws among the other astromares. One of the non-pony, non-changeling flyers, perhaps-“

“Are you saying you’re going to give us a second flight?” Twilight interrupted. “Just to retrieve our ship?”

“No, no,” Chrysalis said. “I’m saying we should end this space race properly… together.” Adding a little smirk, she added, “If you like, princess, you can be the second one down the ladder after me.”

Rainbow Dash hadn’t thought her eyes could get so wide.(504) “You and us landing on the moon together??” she asked. “In the same ship??”

“Well, it does seem a waste to bring you all the way out here twice,” Chrysalis said. “Three hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-five kilometers(505), and then stop to drop you off before the last twenty-five.”

Rainbow’s eyes went from dinner-plate wide to mail-slot narrow. “You’re plotting something.”

Chrysalis sighed. “Yes, I’m plotting something,” she said. “Fish swim in water, pigeons roost on buildings, bees do unspeakable things with flowers, and I plot things. I’ve been plotting this particular thing for the past two years, Rainbow Dash: I’ve been plotting a way to demonstrate that we changelings are not just monsters.”

“Reeeeeally,” Rainbow drawled, ignoring the nudge on her right shoulder from Twilight.

“For two years I’ve been working to show the world exactly what changelings can do,” Chrysalis replied, totally unruffled. “And when the cameras of the world see me step off that ladder first, then I will truly show them all!”

“You could phrase that a little less like a threat,” Twilight muttered.

“But where would the fun be in that?” Chrysalis smirked at the alicorn before returning her attention to Rainbow Dash. “I would prefer that the second pony off the ladder be Cherry Berry, for all she’s done to make this possible. But I wouldn’t insist on it. After all, who cares about the second pony to climb a mountain or sail a sea? History only remembers the first. Which, as we all know now, will be me.”

“You’re still on vox, Twenty-three,” Cherry Berry reminded them from an unimaginable distance away.(506)

“Have I said anything embarrassing yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

Chrysalis snorted. “Anyway, my bringing you two along will serve two functions. It will bring your people and mine much closer together…” The teeth came out, which some might mistake for a smile, but not Rainbow Dash. “…and it will rub my victory in Celestia’s face when the world sees her favorite student setting foot on the moon only by my sufferance.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, “I could almost believe-“

“We accept,” Twilight Sparkle put in before Rainbow could continue.

Rainbow looked at Twilight. “Twilight? Really?”

Twilight put a hoof to her headset, as if to hold it steady. A single tap on an earpiece gave Rainbow a reminder: all of this was being heard by the world. “Leaving aside the obvious gesture of friendship,” she said, “the possibilities for scientific advancement are incalculable! We can’t pass up this opportunity just because of hurt feelings!”

“Of course you can’t!” Chrysalis said, not particularly convincing as a newfound friend.

Twilight shot the queen a glare. “It would help if you’d stop sounding quite so evil.”

“Oh, but can’t I at least gloat about one thing?” Chrysalis asked.

“What?”

Green fire lit up the capsule, and a couple of cameras floated out of a storage bay. “I’m going to get you two to do all the work photographing the moon so we can pick out a smooth landing site!” The cameras dropped into the hooves of the two ponies.

“And what will you be doing?” Twilight asked.

“Why, listening to the next chapter of that Other World Robot business,” Chrysalis said, stretching back on her flight couch. “When those earth ponies started fighting the metal ants, it was getting interesting.”

Footnotes:

(504) Outside observers would claim the Equestrian pony (Equus cutius sapiens) already had a face that was half eyeball. Indeed, at the time of this story the paleontologists of Equestria were debating the causes which gave the modern pony a much narrower range of vision and larger, more forward-facing eye sockets than their distant ancestors Equus cutius majestrix and Equus cutius tertius. These debates tended to end unsettled because the artist reconstructions of said fossil forbears gave everyone the creeps.

(505) The author knows some of you are screaming about the inaccuracy of this number. Suffice to say that people seeking accurate scientific facts and figures should not look for them coming from the mouths of megalomaniacal despots. Pour yourself a calming beverage, sit back, and relax, secure in the knowledge that if you really need to know the exact number there are encyclopedias for that.

(506) Most intelligent species really can’t imagine distances of a very great length at all, not in relation to themselves. Even species like the ponies of Equus can’t easily imagine distances as long as, for example, the circumference of their own world. That circumference, if peeled off the equator in layers and stitched end-to-end, would extend nine times between Equus and its primary moon, with a tenth circumference able to double over and act as a leash. The fact that this barely counts as getting one’s toes wet in interplanetary travel ranks second among Reasons to Stop Even Thinking About Space, just behind Reason #1, namely the number of zeroes between the significant digits and the decimal on the cost of the flight.

CSP-23 Mission Day 06

The end had come.

Not to the mission; Mission Twenty-Three was due for a high-atmosphere aerobraking run in another day and a half, during which it would use up the last of the transfer stage, followed twelve hours later by the final descent into atmosphere. Splashdown was due for late night Horseton time in the waning minutes of Mission Day Eight.

But for the first volume of That Time I Was Reincarnated as an Alicorn Princess Robot, the last page was near at hoof, and the final scene of the story proper deeply affected all three members of the crew.

“Poor Inferno,” Twilight Sparkle sniffled. “At least she’s reunited with her mother now.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, her raspy voice cracking more than usual. “And she was so awesome, having Roboru assimilate her so she’d have all her skills and memories. She was so brave. I hope I can go out like that when the time comes.”

A soft sniffle echoed from the left-hand seat. “Me too.”

Rainbow Dash looked over. “What are you crying about?” she asked. “I thought you hated the mushy stuff!”

“That wasn’t mush,” Chrysalis said, brushing a small tear from one eye. “That was the way every changeling queen would want to go out; defeated in battle by a strong and worthy successor, making the new queen swear to vengeance against her old enemies.”(507) She sighed deeply and said, “I wish I could’ve given my mother that luxury. Stubborn old bat.”

Rainbow Dash and Twilight looked at each other for a long moment.

“Horseton,” Dash eventually said, “we’re ready for that epilogue chapter now.”

---

CSP-23 Mission Day 08

The plan had been for the aerobraking pass to set up a final descent which, thanks to the almost unused landing stage, would bring Mission Twenty-three down just offshore of Horseton Space Center.

Things hadn’t worked out that way.

“I TOLD you to wait until we landed!”

“But I hadda go THEN, Twilight! I couldn’t hold it for six HOURS!”

“And why didn’t you make a correction burn like all the other times?”

“Because, princess, nobody TOLD me I needed to make a correction burn! I thought everything was just fine until ninety seconds ago!”

To be specific, thanks to a tiny but non-trivial thrust provided by flushing the capsule’s suction toilet into space just after the final orbital adjustment burn, the ship’s re-entry trajectory had been altered just enough to bring the ship down earlier than expected. Thus, instead of passing over the space center at thirty kilometers as planned, the three astromares had flown over it just as they entered atmosphere.

“Well… buck it,” Chrysalis muttered. She put her hooves to the controls, slamming the throttle to one hundred percent and igniting the ship’s engines. “We’re coming down now.”

“What??” Twilight looked out the windows, where flickers of re-entry plasma, produced by compression of the thin air around the capsule, shot past them. “What are you doing?? You’re flying directly into our engine exhaust! You’ll cook us!”

“Not if I slow down fast enough,” Chrysalis grunted, keeping her eyes planted on the instruments. “Faster re-entry speed, more heat. Slow down, less heat. Simple.”

“But we don’t have the thrust to do a powered landing!” Twilight insisted.

“I know that!” Chrysalis snapped. “But I can stop us from sailing off downrange to Saddle Arabia!”

“The Poodle engine is designed for vacuum only, not atmosphere!!”

“Then I’d better get all the use I can out of it now, hadn’t I?” Chrysalis looked at the velocity indicator, a rapidly shrinking number just above the navball. “If it drops us straight down now, so much the better!”

“Um, no way, Chrysalis!” Rainbow Dash said. “Straight-down descent is a no-no. Take it from a pony who knows!”

“Ugh! All right, I’ll save some fuel for final descent!” Chrysalis said. “Now shut up and let me make sure we come down in the right ocean!”

“For once,” Twilight muttered.

“It’s not too late for you to get out and walk, pony!”

“I just might!”

“Twenty-three, Horseton,” Cherry Berry’s voice snapped over the comms. “Please refrain from threatening my friends.”

“Fiiiiiine,” Chrysalis groaned.

The engine roared on for over a minute, until finally Chrysalis shut it down with half the fuel remaining. “There,” she said. “Let the air do the rest.”

“Feels like you’re still burning,” Rainbow Dash muttered.

“One g and rising,” Twilight reported. “Air resistance decelerating the ship.”

“Exactly,” Chrysalis said. “Just lay back and wait for the heat to die down.”

“Two g’s. No heat warnings yet,” Twilight said. “Our trajectory has us coming down just short of the Dragonlands, though-“

An alarm began blaring in the capsule.

“Heat warning, fourth stage fuel tank,” Chrysalis said plainly. “If it gets worse I’ll light the engine up again and slow us.”

“Won’t that just make us hotter?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Chrysalis looked at the airspeed indicator and said, “Doubt it. We’re slowing down fast. We should be coming out of the plasma ball in less than a minute anyway.”

“We’re a lot lower than usual,” Twilight pointed out. “Denser air. And we’re still going-“

The alarm claxon began to echo.

“Heat warnings, landing legs one, two, three and four,” Chrysalis confirmed.

“Heat rising on the fuel tank,” Twilight added.

“Fiiiine,” Chrysalis sighed again. “Throttle to full.”

Once again plasma jetted out of the rocket engine, the exhaust smoke adding to the fireball that surrounded the ship. The G-force indicator rose to five G’s, pressing all three astronauts hard back in their couches. After a few seconds the heat claxons stopped, then started, then stopped for good, leaving nothing but the roaring of wind outside and the rattling of the ship inside.

“There,” Chrysalis grunted. “Now we should…” She grunted again as something took hold of the ship and began to rock it. “Three point five G’s and rising fast… ship’s wobbling… off-course… what the hay?”

“Lifting body effect,” Twilight grunted out. “Your ship isn’t… aerodynamically stable… with the engine bells still on.”

“You mean… it’s gonna flip nose-first?” Rainbow Dash grunted back as the G-meter continued to climb.

“No, it’s not!” Chrysalis snapped. “Brace!” Once more she slammed the throttle forwards, and the force pushing them into their seats became Faust’s heavy hoof itself, applying over six times the force of normal gravity for a moment before Chrysalis got the ship back on its proper attitude.

Outside the ship, the plasma cone began to fade, leaving only the orange and red exhaust from the rocket. The G-meter began to drop from its peak, falling below five G’s, then below four. And still the engine burned.

“Status… on parachutes?” Chrysalis grunted.

“Red,” Twilight called back.

The engine continued to burn, as the last of the plasma faded into nothingness.

“Fifteen K,” Rainbow Dash gasped. “Descent rate-“

“I see it,” Chrysalis grunted back.

“Fourteen K.”

“Parachutes?”

“Red,” Twilight said.

“Thirteen K.”

“Parachutes?”

“Yellow- no, green!” Twilight grunted. “Green light on parachutes!”

“Good!” Chrysalis cut the engines, and the crushing forces became merely normal gravity, feeling a bit heavier than normal after eight days of space.

“Um…” Rainbow Dash said, after a couple of moments of deep breaths, “aren’t you going to pop the chutes now?”

“In a moment,” Chrysalis purred. She reached up and hit the switch to lower the landing legs. The sound of four whirring motors echoed through the ship.

“Um… what was that for?” Rainbow Dash asked. “We’re coming down over water.”

“You never know,” Chrysalis said.

“Eight kilometers and descending,” Twilight reminded them.

“No hurry,” Chrysalis said. “Five kilometers will do.”

“Is it me,” Rainbow Dash asked, pointing to the nav-ball, “or is our airspeed starting to tick up again?”

“Or now,” Chrysalis said, hitting the staging button. “Now works, too.”

Four parachutes billowed out around the capsule, rocking it back and forth as they caught the air and decelerated the ship.

Five minutes later, the ship hit the water of the Celestial Ocean, the highest peaks of the Dragonlands just barely visible on the distant horizon.

CSP-23 had come home.

Footnote:

(507) Chrysalis was far less impressed by the epilogue, which had a lot of kindergarten stuff to her mind, all about Roboru experimenting with transforming into Inferno’s flesh-and-blood unicorn body. “Bo-ring. Been there, done that. Why couldn’t the writer just get on with the vengeance?”

“What is this?” Chrysalis asked, as the large air chariot carrying the three space-suited astromares from the ocean landed not on the runway at Horseton but, of all places, next to the fully illuminated launchpad. There, on the pad, sat a fresh three-person Mark 2 capsule, with nothing else attached to it. “Why aren’t we going to the astronaut quarters? My bed is calling me.”

“Public relations!” Cherry Berry said cheerfully, waving a hoof at the army of ponies aiming their flash-bulb cameras at the trio. “Everypony wants a picture of the three brave astromares returned home after a great adventure! So, if you could stand right over there, next to the flag on the capsule-“

“What??” Chrysalis asked. “Now?! It’s three in the morning!”

“Well, of course now!” Cherry insisted. “Everypony’s been waiting for this moment! You just rescued Rainbow Dash, flew within ten kilometers of the moon, and then executed the most daring re-entry profile ever! You’re heroes!”

Chrysalis looked around… and, yes, she could feel the admiration coming off the reporters and cameraponies just barely kept back from crushing the trio by a half-ring of changeling security guards. It felt… delicious…

“-and Twilight, you and Rainbow Dash stand on either side- no, tall, hind hooves, because you’re heroes! Brave astromares who survived a dangerous-”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re awesome,” Rainbow Dash agreed. “No need to rub it in! … and by that I mean you can totally rub it in, by the way!”

“Um, okay, Cherry,” Twilight said. “Give us a minute. We’re not used to normal gravity yet, much less standing on our hind hooves.”

“It’ll only be for a minute,” Cherry reassured her. “And take off your helmets so the world can see your faces!

“All right.”

Two helmets came off.

“Um… Chrysalis? You too. This will be great for your image!”

“Uh-uuuuuh.”

“Well, at least turn around. We can’t see your face.”

“Oh aay.”

Twilight and Rainbow looked at each other. “Did you do it again?” Twilight asked.

“Uuuuuuhhhh,” Chrysalis grunted in a noncommittal tone.

The Princess of Friendship sighed. “Just take the photos,” she said. “And then you might want to take these ponies elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash chuckled. “Or else Chrysalis is gonna be staring at the back of that capsule all night.”

Laugh it up, Chrysalis thought. Your time will come.

After I get my tongue unstuck from this accursed visor. Again.

It’s not my fault I got peckish!

Behind her, the flashbulbs began to pop.

MISSION 23 REPORT

Mission summary: Test moon lander in lunar orbit; execute suborbital moon flight to evaluate delta-V calculations and performance; rescue Rainbow Dash from lunar orbit

Pilot: Chrysalis
Science Officer: Twilight Sparkle (ESA)

Flight duration: 8 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First rendezvous in lunar orbit; first ship docking in lunar orbit; first crew transfer in lunar orbit

Conclusions from flight: We have the data we need! Next stop, moon!

MISSION ASSESSMENT: PENULTIMATELY SUCCESSFUL

Author's Note:

First things first: I'm sorry the screen grabs are so tiny this time around. I did a livestream of this mission back in May and recorded it... but didn't realize until TODAY that the recording was MUCH lower res than I thought. I might have to refly the mission to get better images, or I might just not bother. After all, Amicitas in the pictures is just a bad Shuttle bodge that was as close as I could get in KSP to what I had in my imagination. Hell, I couldn't even make it pink.

There are two main failings in this chapter I regret. First, I wanted to have this chapter entirely without a Chrysalis viewpoint. That didn't last beyond the first two thousand words, because having the first scene from Cherry Berry's POV just didn't have a good hook. In order for that scene to work, we needed to be in Chryssy's head instead. And that opened the door for more scenes... including the vision of the moon crash that never was, which was inspired by a wild impulse during the game livestream. (And that's all I'll say about that whole scene until the next and final chapter is out.)

The other thing I wasn't able to do and regret is this: Twilight Sparkle doesn't come off as Chrysalis's equal here. She has a couple moments, but she never really gets a solid triumph, and I wish I'd found a way for that to happen. But then, Twilight Sparkle as a character doesn't lend herself to that all that well. She's not someone who shoots for petty victories over others; given her choice, she'd like everyone to be a winner. (Granted, she's not above enjoying a petty victory when she stumbles on one, but that's her limit.) Also, she's a guest on Chrysalis's ship and, compared to Chryssy, she's a space tyro. So her opportunities to show herself more competent are drastically limited, especially when the whole mission comes down to her screwing up a ship part design.

Docking in Kerbal Space Program is almost NOTHING like real life. KSP makes it LUDICROUSLY easy and forgiving. For one thing, in real life docking ports are male and female, whereas in KSP they're flat. Anything can dock to anything, provided it's the same size of docking port on both sides.

During the livestream I did, indeed, fail twice to dock. Only at the prompting of viewers did I find out I'd failed to put the right docking port on the rescue ship. I wanted to keep the bungles in the story, but I couldn't explain them away except by having one side's docking system deactivated. (Sorry, Rainbow Dash.) And even that doesn't make logical sense, because you'd think electromagnets would glomp onto any ferrous material, even if the target was NOT generating its own magnetic field. In fact, magnetic docking ports would just grab for the nearest metal, period, making actual docking almost impossible. So the more I go round this rabbit hole.... ugh, let's just move on.

The way Twilight Sparkle describes rendezvous and docking in this story is much closer to real life. For one thing, main engines of ships are NEVER burned anywhere within MANY kilometers of each other. The International Space Station has a large no-fly zone with a specific exception corridor for ships heading to it. This is because engine exhaust might disperse with distance, but it does NOT slow down in space, and it DOES damage other ships even at distance. So approach to the ISS is set up long in advance so as to be done with a glacial slowness that makes a KSP docking approach look like the race car driver who does a three-sixty drift to a perfect stop in his pit.

Then there's the docking itself. The ship doing the docking lines itself up perfectly straight on target before it even THINKS of making final approach. This is from simple necessity; real life docking ports won't engage properly at anything less than perfect approach angles. (RL docking does take place a bit faster than what I do in KSP, though- over a meter per second- but still very slowly.) The whole process is done with excruciating caution, because thanks to the masses of the ships docking, orbital speeds, and other conditions, it is very easy to screw up in such a way that one or both ships have something break- or, worst case scenario, a hull breach.

Two of the three books mentioned in this chapter are made up from whole cloth, but the third is more or less a direct ripoff of That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime, which isn't a bad series... but the manga and anime, for a change, are better than the novels unless you LIKE someone describing the fiddly little details of RPG-style skills and power levels to the point that the story comes to a screeching halt. And, of course, "Scare Master" makes it canon that Fluttershy is an anime fan.

Now on to the FINAL CHAPTER. The moon awaits...

EDIT: Oh, BTW, plugs:

Online store (since cons won't be a thing again until 2021 at least) - https://wlpcomics.com/shop
T-shirt listings - http://wlpshirts.com/
Twitch channel (game streams M-W-Sat, other streams as announced) - https://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin

Comments

[TerribleSpeller]

The Moon Awaits Indeed.

[Gym Quirk]

Only got as far as trans-lunar injection as of this note, but my initial mis-read of chapter title (“The Snark Supplies...”) seems eminently apropos so far...

[Kris Overstreet]

10415654 When CSP-Chrysalis runs short of snark, things have gone distinctly pear-shaped.

[Production Run]

Amicitas just can't catch a break, can it? I feel like if you wrote another story set after The Maretian, some piece of Amicitas taken on board another mission as a memento or good luck charm or something would wind up left around Alpha Centauri, in keeping with its habit of getting stranded in exotic places and left there by its crew.

Regarding docking ports, androgynous docking systems do exist, with the first being APAS-75, used for the Soyuz side of the Apollo-Soyuz mission (the Apollo side used the normal gendered Apollo docking system, since it launched with the Apollo spacecraft- the Saturn IB had room to carry additional hardware up with it, since it used the same upper stage as the Saturn V. The Soyuz did not). The later APAS-89 and APAS-95 were developed from that, and APAS-95, the only one that saw operational use unless you count mounting an adapter on an APAS-89 to convert it to an APAS-95, is androgynous (APAS-89 was meant for the Buran, and while two such docking ports were installed on Mir, the only mission to actually use it was a test flight of one mounted to a Soyuz. After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Shuttle-Mir program started, the new APAS-95 system was designed for it and one of Mir's APAS-89 ports got an adapter attached to it). In addition to APAS, the modern International Docking System Standard used by the Crew Dragon, Starliner, Orion, and Dream Chaser is also androgynous.

[Kris Overstreet]

10415707 Huh. Did not know that. I'll have to do some research tomorrow and correct the author note.

[gerov]

When I was reading about failed docking attempts, I was thinking: “Rotate ship 180°, you out of rotational alignment margin”. Too bad you didn’t use that feature of KSP docking ports.

P.S. How did you change kerbal models, and why you didn’t change Amicitas color? It’s quite easy - just use any mod parts, maybe mod that have just all stock parts if you want go full stock, open mod folder/parts/name of part used in Amicitas, open it texture (.dds or .png) in any redactor (for example paint.net), and place semitransparent pink rectangle over whole texture.

[NotMyUsualUsername]

Footnotes:

(491) Or below. Or either side. Because space.

(492) In Yakyakistan, “smash hit” has never been a metaphor.

(493) Asking people around you if they heard the laughter only you could hear seemed to Chrysalis an excellent way to get committed. In fact, several of her subjects had used that very tactic to dispose of some nosy pony getting a little too close to sensitive hive matters. The nice stallions in the white coats would have a lot of trouble putting Chrysalis into a padded room, but she would just as soon avoid the annoyance.

Footnotes:

(490) Ever since Gordon the Griffon first ralphed in full view of the griffon space program’s telepresence projection (and all the media cameras recording it), the system was changed so when the astronauts fully shut off their microphones, it also shuts off all internal views of the spacecraft via telepresence. Obviously this became standard procedure for dealing with bathroom breaks, especially during Cherry Berry’s Minmus flight. Although the plastic curtain helped a little with privacy, its main purpose was to keep droplets of various kinds from escaping the reach of the new suction toilet. For smells, of course, it did very little, and for sounds nothing whatever. It was fortunate for both crewmembers that Chrysalis found the princess’s regular moments of bathroom humiliation hilarious rather than both disgusting and annoying.

(491) In our world the answer is “plenty”. However, space components that have officially been insured by Lloyd’s of Trottingham as “foolproof, waterproof, foalproof, changeling-proof, and yak resistant” tend to stand up to anything short of a full-blast rocket burn at point blank range.

(492) On Earth the Western legends of fairies and elves claim that saying ‘thank you’ to such a creature is a dismissal. Certainly nobles and aristocrats used it as such with their inferiors, usually as a polite but firm order to shut up and butt out. The ponies had no legends of elves as such, but they understood what a sharp “thank you” meant, even one as sheltered and bookish as Twilight Sparkle.

(493) Not true, but the sounds of the air recirculation fans, the coolant pumps, and the dozen or so other sound-making things which kept the interior of the capsule habitable had faded into the background of Twilight Sparkle’s mind. Until and unless one of them stopped making noise, she couldn’t tell that they were making noise anymore, especially in comparison to the hull-pounding bangs of the thrusters.

You seem to have messed up your footnote numbering a bit.

[Valhuir]

10415654
Sounds like a good title for the NEXT mission. :D

[Promeign]

When the stars don't aid her escape, Nightmare Moon calls the changeling Uber.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

Well, this came to mind

[ShadowLDrago]

Twilight Sparkle didn't flinch. She stared back at Chrysalis with pleading eyes and said simply, "We have a pony stranded in orbit around the moon."

That's bad.

"We have a stable orbit, but the ship has zero fuel, zero oxidizer, and not enough power in the thrusters to break orbit and return home before food supplies run out."

That's worse.

"Rainbow Dash wouldn't even get half a meter per second of delta-V by getting out and pushing," Twilight said. "We already did the math. Three pushes in twenty-four hours, about 1.3 meters per second total. It might shave about two days total off the return flight. That's still longer than Dash has, even on half rations."

And with the rocket partly damaged, who knows what further damage could be done by reentry.

"After all," Chrysalis continued, reaching a hoof to the side to firmly push Cherry back in her chair, "the Changeling Space Program is the preeminent organization where it comes to in-space rescues! And we have a reputation to uphold!"

Since when?

"No offense, Cherry," Twilight added quickly, "but it's true. I was wrong about not accepting you as a pilot, but I'm not wrong about this."

Knowing how the ship works is all well and good, but I have no idea if you have actual training to be IN the rocket.

It was Twilight's turn to raise an eyebrow. "I think," she said quietly, "that the list of enemies I've defeated over the years speaks to that. I'm no filly anymore, Chrysalis." She rested her forehooves on the table and leaned a little farther forwards. "And I am going. I am going to see my friend rescued for myself, and you're not going to stop me."

She has you there. She's been punching above her weight class since day one. This is just another case.

And my chief pilot and I," she said, putting a hoof on the trembling shoulder of a pink pony ready to explode at any moment, "need to assess the changes we will need to make in our flight program to include the rescue."

Oh boy.

Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "Consider your next words very carefully, Cherry Berry," she hissed. "For purposes of publicity I have to fly to the moon with a pink pony. Whether it is the real pink pony is still up to my discretion."

Chrysalis, careful.

The words you wouldn't dare died on Cherry's lips. Chrysalis absolutely would dare.

She 100% would.

But she couldn't leave it at that. "I know you're still plotting something."

Chrysalis gave a snort of derision. "When am I not plotting something, pony?" she asked.

She has you there, Cherry.

Rainbow Dash floated in Amicitas's bridge(468). She didn't exactly have a lot else to do.

Sounds boring.

"We have someone here who wants to speak with you. We've cleared our Mission Control for this, so this will be a private conversation once I transfer you. Do you copy?"

Oh?

After almost two weeks of listening to them, Dash had decided the two genres were more or less identical in that they both involved relationships between two or three ponies who, for whatever reason, lacked the capacity to say Hey, I really like you out loud.

... You know, she's not wrong.

Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped hard enough to send a pop over the telepresence connection.

Impressive.

"Dash, you're making a scene," Twilight said. "Do you really want me to prove I'm me?"

"I dare you to!"

Your funeral.

"You mean the orbital mechanics who are going to fix your engines mid-flight someday?"(473)

Is this really the time to needle her?

Now Chrysalis had every eye in the planning meeting on her. After several seconds of choked silence, Cherry Berry finally said, "I'm pretty sure you didn't intend to use your out-loud voice when you said that."

Eh...

"Not big enough," Dragonfly said. "We've been building so much for so long at Appleoosa that we never bothered to gear the Horseton fab shop up for large component construction. We mainly use it for computer component testing."

I see.

“Every pony, perhaps.” Chrysalis put her nose in the air and placed a hoof over her heart. “But my changelings are highly trained professionals who know they’re working directly under their queen’s eye. Why, I’ve never been afraid for a moment to trust my life to the unfailing professionalism and skill of my subjects.”

Bullshit.

The cheerful smile had enough jagged teeth in it to make the observers afraid for their necks, individually and collectively.

As it should.

“Uuup, uup uup uup!” Chrysalis held up a hoof. “What is this ‘translation’ you’re talking about? Do I have to learn how to speak Spaceship?”

Yes.

“It’ll never work this way in real life,” Twilight huffed.

“Watch me, princess,” Chrysalis gloated.

For your sake, you'd best be right.

“It ought to be the other way around,” Chrysalis muttered. “The more we build ships, the easier they ought to be to fly, not harder.”

In time.

And then, after only a few seconds, Chrysalis shut down the engine. “SECO,” she called out. “Showing a high apoapsis, Horseton. Will circularize orbit once we’re out in space.”

She's very good at being stone faced.

“Inordertomaintainourcurrentmodusvivendi you will NOT INTERRUPT ME!” Chrysalis shouted.

You have a positively hair trigger temper.

Now Chrysalis did lean over as far as the flight couch straps would permit. In a soft but lethal hiss she spat out, “I defy you to say that again, pony.”

Oh no.

That didn’t seem like a thing any healthy person would do, not to her.

Nope. But she is paranoid, regardless.

“Fine. You do that,” Chrysalis muttered. “But do it quietly. I’m contemplating the universe.”

She means brooding.

“Hello, Twilight. We all are,” Fluttershy said. “I don’t think the changelings are too happy to have us, but we’re here. Mr. Occupant is working out a roster so that we can rotate through the control stations.”

Oh dear.

That Time I Was Reincarnated as an Alicorn Princess Robot,

That DOES sound like an LN Isekai.

“You keep saying words, but they’re not Ponish!”

“That IS Ponish!”

“Not where I come from!”

This is going splendidly.

“It’s also my life,” Dragonfly said. “And I wanna keep it.”

She has a point.

I want to hear more about this evil vizier the dwarves were talking about!”

You would.

Twilight Sparkle put her head in her hooves and moaned, “It’s going to be a long flight back home, isn’t it?”

Yep.

“I eat sometimes,” Chrysalis said. “I’m just not addicted to the stuff like you ponies are.” She held up her head and added, “Though I am a gracious queen and thus put up with the weaknesses of my inferiors.”

Quite.

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

She has you there.

“I’m not seeing any warning lights over here, either!” Rainbow Dash said. “So it must… be…” Her voice trailed off, and after a few moments it came back, much chastened. “… because I had the system deactivated to save power. Whoops. My bad.”

Rainbow.

“That’s right, ladies and gentleponies,” Chrysalis said, not bothering to hide her smile. “The top diplomats of Equestria, hard at work!”

You're enjoying this.

Chrysalis had rather hoped they wouldn’t notice her sneaking her tongue out to suck down a bit of the overflowing love between the two friends at a particularly emotional moment. Unfortunately for her, she’d forgotten she was in a spacesuit, and her long forked tongue had slapped against the plastic visor and its inner coating of anti-condensation material.

HAH!

“I wasn’t going to feast!” Chrysalis said defensively. “It was more like a quick snack. Honest!”

Your entire shtick is deception.

Not yet. Soon.

There was the voice again, and this time it wasn’t laughing.

Who ARE you?

The pony wasn’t the only astronaut who could land a ship!

We'll see.

“Jeez, Chrysalis, what was THAT for?”

A hallucination? The voice showing her what'd happen if she DID try it now?

Next time, the voice said, you will see all your wishes fulfilled.

That's, unnerving.

“I see,” Chrysalis said lightly. “If that’s the case, then tell the bulls they’ll have to start designing a new ship. A bigger one.”

A bigger ship?

“Because by my count, Mission Twenty-four is going to need at least four seats,” Chrysalis said. “You piloting, of course. Myself. Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, to see to their ship.” A thought occurred to her. “That contraption that was on Dragonfly’s ship, it holds four people, right? So we could get seven seats for Mission Twenty-four. We could bring along Dragonfly and Occupant, since they’re trained. And one more seat… what about Fluttershy?” The queen, for the first time, looked over at the two ponies with honest curiosity. “Do you think Fluttershy would like her first flight to be to the moon?”

What are you planning?

“No, no,” Chrysalis said. “I’m saying we should end this space race properly… together.” Adding a little smirk, she added, “If you like, princess, you can be the second one down the ladder after me.”

Odd.

Rainbow’s eyes went from dinner-plate wide to mail-slot narrow. “You’re plotting something.”

Of course she is.

“You could phrase that a little less like a threat,” Twilight muttered.

Where's the fun in that?

History only remembers the first. Which, as we all know now, will be me.”

There it is.

Chrysalis snorted. “Anyway, my bringing you two along will serve two functions. It will bring your people and mine much closer together…” The teeth came out, which some might mistake for a smile, but not Rainbow Dash. “…and it will rub my victory in Celestia’s face when the world sees her favorite student setting foot on the moon only by my sufferance.”

You wonderfully smug bitch.

“Why, listening to the next chapter of that Other World Robot business,” Chrysalis said, stretching back on her flight couch. “When those earth ponies started fighting the metal ants, it was getting interesting.”

Friggin' Weeb.

“That wasn’t mush,” Chrysalis said, brushing a small tear from one eye. “That was the way every changeling queen would want to go out; defeated in battle by a strong and worthy successor, making the new queen swear to vengeance against her old enemies.”(503) She sighed deeply and said, “I wish I could’ve given my mother that luxury. Stubborn old bat.”

... I don't know how to feel about that.

“The Poodle engine is designed for vacuum only, not atmosphere!!”

That's a dumb name.

“Twenty-three, Horseton,” Cherry Berry’s voice snapped over the comms. “Please refrain from threatening my friends.”

Aw, you're no fun.

“There,” Chrysalis grunted. “Now we should…” She grunted again as something took hold of the ship and began to rock it. “Three point five G’s and rising fast… ship’s wobbling… off-course… what the hay?”

Oh no.

CSP-23 had come home.

With everyone alive.

“Public relations!” Cherry Berry said cheerfully, waving a hoof at the army of ponies aiming their flash-bulb cameras at the trio. “Everypony wants a picture of the three brave astromares returned home after a great adventure! So, if you could stand right over there, next to the flag on the capsule-“

Her acting skills are going to be put to the test to NOT look like she wants to kill everypony there.

Chrysalis looked around… and, yes, she could feel the admiration coming off the reporters and cameraponies just barely kept back from crushing the trio by a half-ring of changeling security guards. It felt… delicious…

Or maybe not.

After I get my tongue unstuck from this accursed visor. Again.

It’s not my fault I got peckish!

Of course.

[Misplaced Mage]

(502[?]) Most intelligent species really can’t imagine distances of a very great length at all, not in relation to themselves. Even species like the ponies of Equus can’t easily imagine distances as long as, for example, the circumference of their own world. That circumference, if peeled off the equator in layers and stitched end-to-end, would extend nine times between Equus and its primary moon, with a tenth circumference able to double over and act as a leash. The fact that this barely counts as getting one’s toes wet in interplanetary travel ranks second among Reasons to Stop Even Thinking About Space, just behind Reason #1, namely the number of zeroes between the significant digits and the decimal on the cost of the flight.

i.imgur.com/u7mNUpo.jpg

[RainbowDoubleDash]

You know, something just occurred to me, and I realize that it would short-circuit the entire story if it happened so I know why it doesn’t happen but it occurred to me anyway. Not a complaint, just an engaged audience member

So Luna can control the position of her Moon, as established when she suddenly moved the entire thing back when she was acting pissy about everyone having raced to land on it without even asking her. The actual text was a tiny bit unclear but I’m going to assume that she’s physically moving the Moon and not teleporting it because if she could teleport something that mass any appreciable distance then there’s no reason why she couldn’t put on a space suit and teleport herself to the Moon and be like, “forsooth this be in thy FACE Chrysalis, thou most malignant knave!” or something.

So...is there any way Luna could have helped with Rainbow Dash’s situation? 

and the successful test of the Chickadee lander

Chickadees are my state bird. GO PATS!

Chrysalis felt Cherry's head snap round

Oof, if Chrysalis, who is next to Cherry, felt the pony’s head twist like that, then Cherry is going to need a few days with a chiropractor.

At the time of this writing the practice was almost a century out of fashion among ponies, who felt that petrification was a bit cruel even when done to a monster that would quite cheerfully do it to ponies.

...good. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

“And it doesn’t have to be pretty. So long as we don’t actually break anything on either ship and we get a dock, everything will be fine. Right?”

A nice reminder that Chrysalis is Queen of the Changelings, which invariably means that she is still a Changeling. If she didn’t have Royal Decorum to think about she’d probably be breaking carapace in poorly conceived test flights and using the Fun Machine with the rest of them.

I still remember back at the start of this that Chrysalis fully agreed that if things are red, they go faster.

And to her shock, a word came back in the same voice as the laugh: Soon.

The Moon of Equus seems a lot more friendly than Mars. I hope.

In Yakyakistan, “smash hit” has never been a metaphor.

~Yak song, YAK SONG
~Not very long — song again!

We don’t really know how much damage rocket thrust can do to another spaceship.

Something-something Kzinti Lesson.

These debates tended to end unsettled because the artist reconstructions of said fossil forbears gave everyone the creeps.

“Well, not me!” — Petunia Paleo

[Ad2018]

I'm not sure but I feel like that voice she keeps hearing is ethier nightmare moon looking for a ride home or luna screwing with chrysalis for daring to touch her moon.

[FordPrefect]

10415710
There is also the current docking system used by dragon, starliner and the ISS which is technically universal... but some vehicles have left out a few of the components to make it cheaper, which makes it have a gender. (They are what NASA calls the active and passive components)

[Kris Overstreet]

10415878 Dammit. Fixed, I think.

[Reese]

There appears to be a problem with the footnote numbering, starting with 490 and running through some cases of two footnotes sharing the same number before dropping back to one footnote per number but with an incorrectly low number, as far as I'm making out at the moment.

Though I'm guessing, from the text, that footnote number five hundred was meant to not connect to a point in the main body. :D

"the ship’s re-entry trajectory had been altered just enough to bring the ship down earlier than expected"
Shouldn't that be later than expected, from the descriptions? Or am I missing something?

And I enjoyed the chapter; thanks for writing! :D

[Kris Overstreet]

10416106 Slightly earlier, in that Equus hasn't rotated enough for Horseton to be under the periapsis of their trajectory.

[azrael2001]

two years of scheming would go up in smoke.

2-years man if you like 4

[Booster Spice]

For some reason Im now thinking of Changelings selling plushies of certain green vegetables called Monty?

Horseton? We are ready for the mid transfer orbit trim burn. Horseton here, no need for the trim, that last burrito ejection did the trick.

[Vindicar]

Twilight's three kinds of worry formed a united front and unbreakable alliance, using her eyes to silently signal Cherry Berry for foreign aid.

How do you come up with this shit, goddammit! 🤣

[azrael2001]

In some horrible, evil worlds the term cockpit originates from how the tiny, cramped quarters of early aircraft resembled the stinking, blood-covered holes where two young roosters would be unleashed to fight to the death while half-drunk people made bets on which one would win

Or as some of those half-drunk people call it the good old days

[borgvicugna]

“It’s not my fault I come from a race with markedly superior means of disposing of bodily waste, princess,” Chrysalis chuckled. “But we are coming up on our intercept.”

A groan came from the other side of the curtain.(494) “I’m hurrying, already. Why didn’t Cherry Berry say anything about constipation?”

SFW- You may have to enable Adobe Flash player temporarily, but it's hilarious.
Or this?

[Hakar]

The nice stallions in the white coats would have a lot of trouble putting Chrysalis into a padded room, but she would just as soon avoid the annoyance.

What's wrong Buzzalis? You don't want to visit the happy home with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket weavers who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes?

[Kris Overstreet]

10416014 Anything in orbit of the Moon stays with the moon when Luna moves it. So no, she can't help much.

I was going to bring that up in a scene in which Twilight and her friends discuss the lack of options other than going to CSP, but I cut it because it was all exposition and padding. The chapter started stronger with the meeting between Chrysalis and Twilight.

[RainbowDoubleDash]

10416492
...my inner Twilight now wants to test how far this sympathetic orbital field extends. After all, technically speaking the Moon doesn’t orbit Equus, they both orbit each other around a center of mass about 3,000 miles beneath the crust of Equus, but Equus doesn’t appear to move when Luna moves her Moon.

10416390
Ha ha, ho ho, hee hee!

[Eroraf86]

(489) Equestria and the other civilized peoples (if you count the changelings as civilized) did have a few devices with brakes installed, but not enough for “hit the brakes” to be a popular metaphor for slowing down. Reins, on the other hoof, were universal wherever you had wagons or trains large enough to require pony teams and a driver to control them.

That just raises even MORE questions!

[erictheblue]

The way Twilight Sparkle describes rendezvous and docking in this story is much closer to real life. For one thing, main engines of ships are NEVER burned anywhere within MANY kilometers of each other. The International Space Station has a large no-fly zone with a specific exception corridor for ships heading to it. This is because engine exhaust might disperse with distance, but it does NOT slow down in space, and it DOES damage other ships even at distance. So approach to the ISS is set up long in advance so as to be done with a glacial slowness that makes a KSP docking approach look like the race car driver who does a three-sixty drift to a perfect stop in his pit.

this reminds me of a VERY silly story:
https://thedailywtf.com/articles/radio-wtf-space-for-guests

[Shrink Laureate]

I needed this. I had a bad day*, and this made me laugh. It was appreciated.

* Money.

[Kris Overstreet]

10416723 Sorry to hear about the downer. Glad the chapter cheered you up!

[mishun]

Rainbow Dash would probably have been just fine cooling her hooves for two weeks waiting for her ride home.

Well, there could be a tiny problem here:

"Not this one," Chrysalis said.

"You're breaking our deal!!"

[Aariadon]

... Did you create the whole "tongue stuck to helmet" subplot solely to hide the lack of Chrysalis mod for KSP? Nice.

[Kris Overstreet]

10416956 Pretty much, yes. I had intended Chrysalis to be sulking about not wanting to be in the picture, but that would go against her cover story.

[Iron Comet]

Great chapter and I'm definitely stoked for the next. The public relations aspect at the end was good but now I want to see a Kerbal Cherry Berry, Rarity (I know, not a Astromare sue me, and Dragonfly.) Because I bet they would look great! As for the small pics, anything is great. Most stories dont even do what this story does!

[ShadwSonic]

Soon... soon I'll feel free to read the sequel...

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough for me,” she said, opening the cabinet where Pinkie Pie, in defiance of flight rules about crumbly things, had stashed several large heart-shaped sugar cookies with red frosting.

[mrk]

Trunk-Kun!!!

[Reese]

10416130
Ah! That makes sense; thanks!

[Bahamuttone]

A line drawn under the numbers 13 through 30 marked these Reserved For Ship Retrieval.

Hm shouldn’t this be “20” as that is how high it goes?

once you ignored ignore all the explanations for why these switches needed

Remove

[Kris Overstreet]

10416551 https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Roundup/Gallery?file=Applejack_ultra_confident_S2E14.png

[PartTimePegasister]

I don't know what to make of Chryssy's decision here to turn the moon landing into a joint affair. It's doubtful she's suddenly learned a lesson about friendship and cooperation, and she's taking a huge risk by allowing an alicorn to be anywhere near the moon when she tries to steal its power.

[FanOfMostEverything]

"Drop it right now," Chrysalis said, "and that's a royal command."
"Fine," Cherry said, and she dropped all of it.

Sorry, which royalty is Cherry subject to again?

Her oldest and best friend tended to like two kinds of books: century-old romances and translated Neighponese or kirin novels. After almost two weeks of listening to them, Dash had decided the two genres were more or less identical in that they both involved relationships between two or three ponies who, for whatever reason, lacked the capacity to say Hey, I really like you out loud.

This may be the most brilliant rationale for Fluttershy reading manga that I've ever seen.

One should never underestimate Fluffy the Terrible.

Seven weeks ago you went into a certain establishment in Ponyville with Fluttershy and Rarity. I wasn't there, but Rarity told me that cucumber slices were involved. And Bulk Biceps-

I have to love how this sounds so much worse than just mentioning the spa by name.

Because we don't know when we'll be back again, NOT because winter is coming!

(Sad Stark noises)

"Much better," Chrysalis agreed. "The simulator is much less likely to explode and take the top of my castle off. That I don't have."

Poor Chrysalis. Probably still sees pastels out of the corner of her eye.

Good to see some common sense can peek out behind Chrysalis's instinctive need to goad Twilight whenever possible.

The one switch neither of them caught turned out to be relatively harmless; the RCS was turned on in flight, and it took Chrysalis only a second to shut it back down before resuming the practice liftoff.

I have a feeling that will be important later.

Being a princess meant people of lesser authority no longer tried very hard to curb one’s obsessions with checklists.

Even when they really, really should.

Chrysalis may have made a terrible mistake when explaining the chain of command. She just taught Twilight Sparkle how to understand her mindset. From there, a diplomatic solution may not be far behind...

If this keeps up, the reporters are going to run out of note paper.

Would that really be so bad?

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

Good enough for—

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough for me,”

... Well, good to know we're on the same wavelength.

And to her shock, a word came back in the same voice as the laugh: Soon.

Generally not the sort of thing you want to hear from mysterious, sourceless voices.

I have to appreciate how the best Equestrian rocket parts can offer is yak resistant. A determined yak can do great and terrible things.

Next time, the voice said, you will see all your wishes fulfilled.

The question, of course, is what those wishes even are at this point.

We don't talk about E. cutius tertius.

That was the way every changeling queen would want to go out; defeated in battle by a strong and worthy successor, making the new queen swear to vengeance against her old enemies.

I wonder if they're still on vox. And if Cherry's taking notes. (I know, she doesn't want the hive, but the hive may end up wanting her.)

As for Twilight getting triumphs over Chrysalis, I'd say you managed that several times. She may not be the better rocketmare, but she is the better person. And she's not the one who got her tongue stuck to her helmet.

Here's looking forward to the thrilling finale.

[Kris Overstreet]

10417056 Lamentably, the mod doesn't have Cherry Berry, nor does it have changelings of any kind, and it's no longer being updated.

[harts fire]

O the banter this chapter is amazing totally amazing.

[Scyphi]

"But if you're going, then I have to go too. Because otherwise everypony will think you've replaced Rainbow Dash with a changeling."

Oh, that's a good point, hadn't even thought of that. If we're really playing the publicity card here, then that's going to be a difficult point for Chryssie to bypass anytime soon, and they don't really have the time for that.

"Well, this is political now, pony. This is me salvaging some sort of advantage out of your monumental blunder."

Kinda have to agree with Chrysalis here. Things probably would've worked out just fine too had they given Twilight's crew the needed parts and launched their own rescue flight, in fact I'd bet Twilight probably would've preferred it because then she'd have total control over that rescue flight than have to cooperate with a second party she'd rather not and didn't especially trust, but Cherry jumped the gun and her agreed upon authority without consulting with Chrysalis first. Granted, Cherry did it out of a sense of compassion that Chrysalis definitely wouldn't have shown and that's still praiseworthy, but it wasn't Cherry's place to make that call, especially not when they both had plenty of options to consider and the possibility Twilight had come having already conceded defeat and was willing to hand them that so-sought for victory.

Frankly, it was rather reckless of Cherry, especially as she hadn't also double-checked to make sure if the CSP was even in a position to do it. Obviously, it can, but just assuming that's the case and there won't be any potential hiccups and proceeding to promise the moon (pretty much literally in this case) without double-checking to make sure that's even a promise that can be kept first is just not smart, no matter how you cut it.

Chrysalis's approach to the problem might be just as sneaky and underhanded as it always is with her, but at least she had taken into consideration all of this and now has to make good on a promise she hadn't agreed to or even been consulted on. I'd be a bit peeved too.

"You're breaking our deal!!"

No, she's altering the deal. Pray that she doesn't alter it any further.

"By the way, not it for telling Leonid and Dragonfly they're not going up."

Eh...a small price to pay by comparison.

Given that, Dash preferred the ones where the ponies in question got sent to another world, piloted giant robots, played in rock bands, or did all three at the same time.

Must be the translated Neighponese and kirin novels we're talking about here then.

I don't know who it belongs to, but it's definitely not one of my queen's books! Definitely not!

It definitely is.

"Amicitas has airlocks," Twilight said. "Two of them. One in the bridge compartment, behind the co-pilot position, and a larger one for engine repair on orbit."

"Really." Chrysalis gave Twilight a level look. "And you've repaired engines in mid-flight how many times now?"

Twilight blushed. "Well, we'll be able to some day!" she insisted.

You know, I have to applaud Twilight for her ambitions, but she really does think a little too far ahead on these sort of things, thinking and implementing things that would really only be applicable on flights further in the future still, not for the mission needs of the here and now.

But then again, that was part of the reason why she was so insistent on trying to do a first-time moon landing with a flippin' space shuttle in the first place, so...

I mean, Scotty said it best:

Cherry shrugged. "Long story," she said. "You could try asking Princess Luna about it."

Short version is that the dream still haunts Chrysalis to this day.

Meanwhile, I still say all parties should just accept it happened and move on already.

"We were originally going to put the science package on top of the lander. That way it could be jettisoned after the data was collected to lighten the load on the way home. But we can't use that configuration with the docking port. We'll have to contrive an experiments bay to ride below the crew capsule."

Or, you know, just not include the science package for this flight at all. I know, I know, they're trying to make the most of this mission still and they still have a space race they want to win...but I really think the science package really wouldn't be a priority at all given the situation here.

Especially since it's only going to add extra weight they hadn't planned for, requiring additional boosters to compensate, further adding to the weight...to me, the pay off just wouldn't be worth it at this point. It'd really be smarter to save it for another mission, but I digress...

And the next, with Chrysalis staring smugly at Twilight as she switched the SAS on and off with one hoof.

“It’ll never work this way in real life,” Twilight huffed.

“Watch me, princess,” Chrysalis gloated.

Case in point to my earlier argument. Overlooking that this obviously wouldn't work that way in actual real life for the moment, Twilight's rightly cautious about this but is still overthinking it. Chrysalis, not one to be bothered with such things, is more capable of seeing the easier, and thereby arguably more efficient, way of doing it successfully.

Still, Twilight has a point--just because it works in the simulator doesn't mean it will in real life. But if it works that consistently in the simulator, then unless there's some major detail the simulator is overlooking, the odds would be in Chrysalis's favor on this.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Chrysalis asked. “You read one Daring Do book, you’ve read them all.”

Kinda have to agree with Chrysalis on that--judging from what we've seen of Daring adventures on the show, with the additional consideration that whatever gets printed in the books is apparently still pretty close to accurate to what really happened to the point you just need to read the relevant book to know the important details of the actual adventure...they are all rather routine and even predictable after a certain point. Would it have killed Daring or her enemies to try to add a little variety to the routine now and again?

“C. C for cookie,” Chrysalis explained, as an adult explaining to a very little child.

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough for me,”

I see what you did there. And I approve.

And to her shock, a word came back in the same voice as the laugh: Soon.

So this raises questions. And some potential theories to explain it, though no way to be sure currently if any are even close to the truth. Do have one I'd rather like to see be true, but...again, we'll just have to wait and see.

“I’m hurrying, already. Why didn’t Cherry Berry say anything about constipation?”

TMI, Twilight!

“Oh-ee uuh ihh-uul,” Chrysalis grunted. “Uhh iih oo ech-ech?”

Seriously. What did you expect? Even reformed, changelings still feed on love and positive emotion, so it was always going to be seen as a prime snacking opportunity. I'm very sure quite a few changelings would've done it and not thought twice about it too.

Despite the fact that Chrysalis genuinely, honestly hadn’t intended to do more than slurp up ambient love when she got her tongue glued to her helmet(503), she couldn’t blame the ponies for their suspicion. But abandoning them in orbit would be saying, “I hereby declare war on Equestria! See you in three days, fools!” That would be a wonderful way to guarantee a welcoming committee on splashdown… and a large prison for every last one of her subjects long before then.

See, the thing the ponies keep forgetting here is that Chrysalis may be evil (and even then "evil" may not totally be the right word for it), but she's not dumb. She can see bad tactics for what they are. If she were to pull a double-cross (and I do not expect her to try at all on this flight), she'd be way smarter and cleverer about it than that.

“Er… yes,” Chrysalis managed, her brain rushing to find some acceptable response. “A nightmare, perhaps? If daydreams can become nightmares.”

Oh. Wait. Ohhhhhhhhh waaaaaait...a VERY interesting possibility just struck me...about a certain other nightmare from some chapters back...

So approach to the ISS is set up long in advance so as to be done with a glacial slowness that makes a KSP docking approach look like the race car driver who does a three-sixty drift to a perfect stop in his pit

Maybe, but it does make for a pretty cool mental image, if only it was actually possible.

[FridayPie]

Hmm, that cockpit etymology is only half correct. Cockpit is orinally a naval term, a triage compartment, a "pit" on man-o-war ships. Later a "pit" or "well" was a lowered semi-open compartment on yachts from where it is steered. Plane's cockpit received name by analogy.

[UrsaMajor]

casco a pata

Interesting choice of words - do the different Spanish words for "hoof" have different meanings?

Penultimately successful ‐ because the next mission will be the last?
The voice... it's the Nightmare, isn't it?

[Kris Overstreet]

10428355 Casco, as far as I can tell, is a Spanish word specifically for horse hooves. Pata is the word for a hoof in general.

[Blaster M]

Looks like we could use someone to dust off that pony mod for KSP and fix it up so the final chapter can have proper visuals.