Coarse Diamonds

by Darkonshadows

-5-

Having been in it for a while, Rarity really wanted out of her EVA suit and Opal wasn’t about to let her disrobe until she was back on the Caravel Boutique. Even with the infestation dealt with and the power was restored to some parts of it, it was still dangerous to be around the larger vessel without a suit.

With the power back on Rarity was able to use the elevators to move between decks, there were nine elevators three in left, right and middle corridors of the ship. The positions of the elevators were at the front, middle and back end of the ship on every deck. The carrier cruiser hybrid was called Derringer.

The other way to move between the decks was the hatches that led to ladders that could also go between decks and the infrastructure between them. The hatches were of a safety design and could not be fully opened if the other side was exposed to open space.

The elevator Rarity took was one of the few working ones at the rear of the ship. The ship had been through several incidents as the Xouj infestation started taking out most of the crew. That wasn’t all that had happened to the ship, the infestation was only the catalyst for paranoia and for various people to start turning on one another. Greta and Gilda had been lucky to not get caught in the cross fire, they had been put in a room with someone who died soon after it was found out the two griffons were not responsible for the deaths of the other crew members.

Opal had given Rarity an abridged version of these events, which is why Rarity wasn’t surprised to see the hangar was empty of its fighter compliment. The hangar was split into four sections that were separated from each other by their own atmosphere barriers which had been recently activated. The reason why they were activated was because life support looked iffy and Opal was still scouring Derringer for drones to fix what was broken.

Atmosphere barriers as the name implied were barriers that prevented atmosphere from leaking out into space, anything else could pass through them but air or other gas. They were used in the launching of fighters, because having to lose atmosphere every time you launched fighters was a bad idea in a ship that will soon take damage and possible leak even more of it. Speaking of atmosphere, a ship like this one had its own gas farm on deck two near the living quarters throughout the three corridors on that deck.

Gas farms were primarily for farming oxygen from plants and storing it for emergency purposes to refill lost atmosphere in a ship. It would be called an oxygen farm, but not all sentient beings in the universe breathed oxygen. A small cargo ship like the Caravel Boutique usually had oxygen scrubbers which recycled air and had a small gas farm that barely produced enough to keep atmosphere in the ship fresh.

The section of the hangar Rarity came into was third one coming in from the left side elevator; the section was marked by the large black square landing area as she walked out of the elevator. To her right was the repair and maintenance section to repair damaged fighters or other things like drones. To Rarity’s left were two more large black squares marking the two other sections, between which were the three elevator pillars in the middle of the wide expansive hangar that were connected to the middle corridors of the other two decks. Her ship was parked at the front of the ship in section one.

The Caravel Boutique looked like it could land in any of the sections which looked to be big enough to comfortably house six fighters each, but it might have had to turn onto its edge slightly to get around the three elevator pillars.

Speaking of things in the way, the Derringer had a lot of things wrong with it. Aside from the slowly failing life support that needed to be quickly repaired, it lost its shield generator to an explosion, with navigations down the ship couldn’t tell which way it was going, the damaged impulse function was needed to even aim the ship in the right direction even if they had navigations, power had problems reaching certain parts of the ship and it needed to be rerouted manually.

Of these problems the navigations was easily solved by using the Caravel Boutique’s navigations, so that left the damaged impulse and life support that were the two big problems that needed immediate attention. Otherwise everything else was perfectly good to leave for later, it was idly noted that Derringer was built with many species, including ponies, in mind. The gravity generator had been brought online within minutes of the last Xouj being turned to ash.

“Opal, if you have the time dear, how would ships like mine have gotten around those pillars?” Her light cargo freighter was small, but it was taking up a bit of space and Rarity was overall curious as to the answer. She turned left and started walking along the wall, there were a few small rooms down here for pilots to use so they could get to their fighters quickly in an emergency. What Rarity couldn’t understand was why they were spaced so far apart, there looked to be six lining the walls with each small room next to the elevators.

Looking about and waiting for an answer, Rarity looked to see there were hangar overview rooms above her head for guiding landings and takeoffs, plus empty catwalks leading up to them. The overview rooms probably had hatches leading up to deck two. There was a lot of equipment lying around for moving fighters around, such as cranes and other various pieces of equipment for refueling, rearming, refitting and recharging fighters. Aside from that the place was quite empty except for the dead Xouj body lying on the floor with bits of it ripped off and consumed by the two hungry desperate griffons.

“Well Meowstress there’s not just one massive door at the front of the ship for fighters to leave from, there are approximately five doors to this flying bricks hangar for ships to come and go from. There are two doors to both sides of sections two and three, section one only has one the door, section three doesn’t have pillar between it and section four.” Ever busy at work was Opal, but she always had enough time for Rarity to answer questions. “Section three and four are used for fighter maintenance and repair, sections one for offensive fighter launches and two for defensive. Three doubles as another defensive launch section. The area around section three outside has heavier turret protection to help damaged fighters retreat safely. Speaking of turrets, they are all fully functional duel energy cannons and if we can’t keep this rather roomy ship where I can spread my digital legs, then please tell me we can at least ‘liberate’ some of those cannons for the Caravel Boutique! This ship has twenty six of them and it could live with missing two of them, we can even sell a few for a good price since we kind of need the money.”

Rarity stopped on her trek through the hangar in the middle of section two, she really hadn’t considered what was going to happen to Derringer once she got it moving and to the Quia System. She still had to go to Ewesen, because her friend and business partner was going to be stuck there until she arrived and she was likely putting them into a pickle by not arriving on time.

“I’ll consider it Opal. Now let’s meet these two griffons face to face shall we? If anything they have more claim to the stuff on this ship than I do.” Rarity turned to the MAT drone that would look intimidating if you didn’t know it was a defanged glorified mobile flashlight. “How goes the drone hunt?”

“There are lots of spare parts, very few intact drones though. I’ve only found two more drones. The Xouj might not like the taste of metal, but they certainly tried to eat them. Both of them are CATs, so that’s five drones to work with when I can get them operational at least Meowstress Rarity.” Opal was happy to at least get more help up and running. The griffons were the last ones on the ship as surviving crew, so everything technically might go to the griffons as long as it was proven that they had nothing to do with the crew being killed off. “I’ll open up the Caravel Boutique for you, Gilda is currently getting med-bed treatment and Greta is in the living quarters eating. They raided your fridge and haven’t had the time to get showers in; Gilda will be bathed by the med-bed on the principle of her injuries. Their health will take some time to improve after what they’ve been eating and the lack of gravity, but they are not doing poorly.”

“Thank you Opal, but please don’t remind me what they had to do to survive such a dreadful situation darling.” Rarity shuddered to think of having to survive off of the creatures that had slaughtered the other people on the ship. Griffons were made of sterner stuff than ponies.

The cargo ramp lowers and Rarity made her way inside Caravel Boutique. After the ramp closed she reached up with her and hit something on the saddle to detach it from her back and then reached up to unlatch her helmet from around her head. She shook her mane out and shivered at the sight of it, what she could see of it at least.

“Finally, oh my poor mane is quite the mess. Helmet hair is unavoidable I suppose, a little sprucing up is in order!” Rarity started to peel the suit off and having done so she started shaking her tail out after pulling it from the hair compression compartment; she laid the suit on top of the MAT drone. “I could use a nice hot shower after all this dreadful business with pirates and monsters. I’ll see to my guests first though, I can’t be a bad host now. Opal please be a dear and have the MAT drone drop my suit off in a corner for cleaning later.”

Walking through the door to the left branch corridor on the Caravel Boutique, she walked into the living area and saw Greta munching on some carrots at the table. The griffon took one look at her and gave an appreciative smile; she swallowed and stood up to meet Rarity.

“Thank you so much for this, technical engineer Greta Gollenfer at your service ma’am!” Greta held out her left claw and Rarity took it into her hoof and shook it. They both then sat at the table. “Didn’t know you were a pony, but I have no problem with that. What my friend Gilda can’t build or do, I can. Need a ship repaired, renovated or need us to build one from scratch? We can do it. So what’s your occupation? I bet you’re some kind of grand adventurer looking for treasure judging by your cutie mark.”

“No, I’m not an adventurer; I’m a fashion designer or an entrepreneur if you will. At least I’m trying to start out as one.” Despite the revelation Rarity gave her about her personal occupational choice it didn’t seem to dim Greta’s mood. “Getting attacked by pirates and having my jump module blown to bits was not exactly how I expected things to go starting out, I launched from Desserzon in the Verpo System heading towards Ewesen in the Quia System. You can guess what happened from there.”

“Well that’s a rather underwhelming sounding occupation; you must have had a rough time… hold on a second.” Greta started checking Rarity’s fur and it made the pony self conscious and uncomfortable that she was being touched by the griffon’s rather gentle claws. “You have some pretty bad bruises, most likely whiplash. So I’m assuming your jump module exploded after you got into jump and everyone knows gravity has an adverse effect on those modules and vice versa. As such the gravity generator would have… well you survived it so yeah, you probably already know what it did. I can fix things to prevent it from happening again if you want me to. Say did this ship belong to a Plurt? It’s well maintained except for the jump module being blown to bits, though the lack of weapons and an escape pod doesn’t seem like them.”

“I did get it from a Plurt, the escape pod was used in escaping the pirates and I hadn’t the money to afford the weapons. That would be a nice thing to do for me, but we need to work out some other things first. You need to get cleaned up and I need to make you an EVA suit before you go out to fix the impulse on the Derringer.” To Rarity this griffon was nice and friendly in person as she was over the communications. “In any case, it’d be safer if you had one of my custom made suits to make the repairs with as we can’t trust the life support of the Derringer to keep working at the moment.”

“At least the pirates didn’t get you, you wouldn’t have been here to save us then… or help us so we can help you in any case. Quick question, you wouldn’t happen to need a few new crew members would you? Things kind of went to heck and a hand basket for us on Derringer and we need jobs.” Having a positive outlook no matter the situation was Greta’s thing in life, it beat the alternative of being just another money grubbing griffon. “I mean just traveling around with an AI taking care of everything could be problematic in the long run, plus yes, I would like my very own EVA suit. It would certainly help; there are not many EVA suit designers for Equus physiologies so you’d definitely got a market cornered if you’re good at it and the suits prove effective. So how about it, we’re actually good at what we do when given a chance you know!”

“I’m not exactly sure I could pay you, I’m a little light on money at the moment. I’ll think on it in any case.” It was hard for Rarity to outright say no to Greta’s eager face, it was another thing to add to her think about list. “So want to go see your friend and get in a shower? Only after that can we discuss business while I’m making you an EVA suit.”

“Oh yes! I mean it’s not a yes to hiring us, but still you could use all the help you can get with keeping an old ship like this running.” Following the pony to the door while crunching the last of her carrots, Greta fluffed out her grime covered wings. “Now it’s time to go get the grime out of my feathers.”

As they walked into the medical and cleansing room they could already see Gilda in a med-bed with her arms cross and floating in medical fluids, she didn’t look particularly happy with it. At least she wasn’t strapped down like Rarity had been; it still caused the only pony in the room to shudder.

“I can see your having fun Gilda, hey the med-bed is working so don’t look so grumpy! A Plurt last owned this ship, so it’s safe.” At Greta’s words, Gilda rolled her eyes and held up a claw at her friend. “Well okay then, just get better alright. Be angry if you want to be, you’re going to come out of there physically healthy do you hear me Ms. Gottfrieda?”

Gilda dropped her claw and nodded, she leaned back and put her claws behind her head and closed her eyes. At least she knew she couldn’t talk while under the medical fluids and was getting some rest in.

“She seems… well okay she was actually being rather rude with that gesture.” Rarity didn’t think she was going to get along with Gilda.

“Yeah, she’s like that, all grumpy all the time.” Sighing Greta turned to Rarity as she gathered two towels and passed one off into Greta’s claws. She hung up the towel outside the shower she stepped into. She kept talking to her new friend and savior as she started to bathe herself. “She really wants to be a fighter pilot, but I know she’s just as happy with building and fixing them. In fact I’d be a little scared if she did get a job as a fighter to pilot, the usual life expectancy of a fighter pilot is really low unless you’re really good, like Big Sky Ponies. The Big Sky Ponies are some of the best fighter pilots around and Gilda likes them, but she really doesn’t want to be held down by military obligations so she became a mechanical engineer so she could build her own fighters. I really don’t have that many friends, but Gilda is one of the best ones I have. She’s a good griffon and she kept me safe.”

“What about you, what’s your story or dream as if it were? I grew up mostly on Desserzon, nice planet and not many dangers to speak of. Got dragged halfway across it to find my cutie mark, I have a special talent for finding gems and an eye for detail or beauty.” As she washed Rarity wondered about these two while squeezing some of the soapy substance onto her mane.

“Well I was hatched in aerie in Griffonstone by my mother and father and I grew up being one of the more educated griffons out there. I got into technical engineering when it came to watching spaceships come and go from our spaceport, I was always more interested in the finer details of the technology that went into it. I met Gilda after she went to summer camp and met her friend a pony named Rainbow Dash, the two were interested in flying to such a degree that they both wanted to fly whether with their own wings or with a spaceship.” A whimsical tone entered Greta’s voice as she scrubbed away behind a door. “Gilda was more interested in the physical stuff and how to put it together, had a part time job as a mechanic’s assistant while we were still in school. I personally preferred studying the idea of longer distance communications and theoretical stuff like warp travel. In any case I also learned how to repair computer systems; wiring, gravity generators and whatever else I thought would be useful to know when traveling out to space. Gilda and I teamed up with me working as her assistant; I’m looking for adventure and to study the technology of other cultures. Gilda on the other claw is looking to build and fly her own fighters, we’ve been running around in space ever since. Haven’t been able to get enough resources or materials to start our own workshop given we spend most of what we earn on living expenses and tools.”

“Well you two technically own Derringer, you were the last survivors of the crew and provided you had nothing to do with their deaths the ownership should fall to you.” Hearing a bubbling noise, Rarity poked her head out of the shower and saw Gilda looking a bit shocked. “The authorities still need to be notified for life insurance policies belonging to the families of the crew.”

“Hey yeah, that sounds about right. We didn’t have anything to do with the infestation, all I know is that it started after a supply run and the resulting infighting led to the state the ship is in now.” Greta leaned against the wall of the shower while hot water ran over her flexing feathers. “We didn’t know how long we’ve been stuck in this situation until you came along, things were pretty bad and now it’s much better. You can have whatever you want, maybe the Derringer itself if Gilda is in a good mood. I know she won’t give up this hangar without a fight knowing it belongs to us though; it certainly would be a good place for us to set up and build fighters with. I still think you’ll get salvage rights however.”

“We’ll hash it out darling and might I say that was a most wonderful shower.” After drying herself off with a towel, Rarity made her way over to a mirror and pulled out a brush and come to style her hair with. “It feels so good to get my mane back into shape.”

“Getting grease stuck between my feathers for weeks has been unpleasant, but it comes with the work me and Gilda do.” Greta walked out of the shower and started to preen her feathers, tugging at them gently with her beak.

“Well when you’re done meet me in the cargo room where I have my workshop, by the way your feathers look gorgeous darling.” It seemed that Greta didn’t care about preening in front of others and Rarity thought that it was a private thing that winged folk do.

-

Greta stood absolutely still watching as Rarity started constructing the Eva suits underwear and mask for her, after a moment of indecision she decided to move forward.

“Can I help you with that? I’d be better at installing the more technological aspects of the suit and I must say the breach gel stuff is ingenious, who designed it?” After having heard Greta come up to her the pony turned and smiled.

“I came up with it; it’s a flexible substance that becomes rubbery under certain conditions. I made it when designing super hero costumes on a Nightmare Night on Desserzon for my little sister, but at the time it was not quite as airtight as it is now. Oh, the places you can get inspiration from.” Rarity moved aside and let Greta have a crack at getting the more technical aspects of her EVA suit in place and made a few helpful comments as she did so to not mess up things with the suit.

“So the suit would have to cover my wings as well… two compression pouches should work, but you can’t put too much stress on the wings like you can hair. As for the faceplate HUD that’s something I can install, but what’s with these ports you have on the back here?” Greta pointed out the saddle ports and Rarity pointed out the saddle she disconnected from her suit for cleaning. The griffon padded over and started to check the saddle over. “Huh, this saddle has impulse technology in it? Beats those limited use jetpacks by miles… it also carries its own oxygen supply? I’m assuming you didn’t make it considering technology is not your expertise. Also it being detachable is a good idea, especially if it’s compromised and going to explode.”

“A friend of mine designed the space saddle; she gave me a few copies to work with and I’ve recently gave it a test run that she’ll probably want the data from. It’s why I’m heading to Ewesen; she’s the utilities designer for my suits and we’re trying to go into business together.” At this Rarity paused watching as Greta shaped her faceplate mask, while she toiled away on the sealing underwear. “I do hope the poor dear is alright, she gets awfully skittish about things even if she’s a very bright young mare.”

“I’m sure things will be fine, now help me with the connections to the suit, I’m assuming your suit is controlled by your horn. I’m going to need a dummy AI to diagnose my suit and work it with voice activation and some biometric controls.” It was apparent to Greta that Rarity hadn’t thought that far ahead when it came to other species using the EVA suits she designs, otherwise she wouldn’t have given her a blank look like she did. “It’s the stuff that’ll key the suit in to work only for me so it can’t be used without my express permission. Also can my suit come in turquoise with bright purple stripes? I also have a few designs I want to decal mine with.”

“I believe I can hire you, I definitely need help with the more technical aspects of engineering EVA suits.” It looked like Rarity had made Greta’s day when the griffon beamed proudly.

-

Out in space Greta sat running through several checks to make sure her brand new suit was secure; she didn’t believe an EVA suit could be made so quickly. Especially considering it had five layers and was made just shy of less than three hours. First layer was the underwear and helmet, the helmet was created with all the layers already included in it including a breach gel layer that would activate the moment the faceplate was damaged. The second was the temperature layer, third and fourth was the breach gel compressing layer and the final layer was the outside of the suit. It was all so thin yet very tough. Turning about she flew into the hangar.

Greta’s suit in particular had been designed with the camera idea Rarity and Opal had come up with for cases where the faceplate is compromised, they still hadn’t worked out how to clean off the faceplate and Greta immediately jumped on the opportunity to think on it. The emergency camera’s for her suit came from damaged drone parts and would activate as needed.

“If the outside of the vessel isn’t damaged then it’s an internal problem, should be easy enough to fix.” Suddenly the warning signs blared on her suit. “Well Derringer’s life support just failed, so that means the atmosphere in the ship is now to be considered compromised. Good thing I don’t need to worry about that anymore, now to work on fixing the impulse drive. Opal can I borrow a CAT please?”

-

The Derringer was soon departing for Quia System and the planet of Ewesen by entering jump, sitting at a table narrowing her eyes at Rarity was Gilda. They had been working on the details of what to do with Derringer.

“You can have ownership of the Derringer, but we want the hangar and we will handle the upkeep of Derringer or whatever you’ll call it if you change its name. You can probably rent it out as a transport to people or have it as a mobile factory for your business ideas; I don’t freaking care what you do. This ship is inevitably going to need a lot more supplies; we’ll give you a list a things if and when we need it by order of urgency. As for building my own fighters, that’ll come from my own pocket and since we already worked out our salaries if you gain ownership of Derringer...” After a moment Gilda decided to move her face close to Rarity’s, it was quickly learned that Gilda was quite the negotiator as she stared the pony down. “If you can trust us to do our jobs, then we’ll trust you to do yours Captain Belle. Don’t get us killed!”

Comments

[Razzy]

Bigger ship get!

Gryphon Eva suits should totally have blades along the wings.

[Fool]

This is a neat little story. I enjoy all the sci-fi elements and the fact that it's quite different then most stories I've read on here.

[Darkonshadows]

7455590

Not exactly, they still have to run the ownership claim by the nearest authorities first.

7457199

It might come off as a bit dry though, I have multiple species to introduce and describe. I'm inventive at the very least. Not many people would sit around for that. After enough of the sentient species are are described and given world building background information, they won't need much more description afterwards unless it's important and the focus can slowly shift more onto the plot without world building getting in the way since it's been established earlier on.

I should probably include a list of simple things to remember in the authors note every chapter.

[Fool]

7465761

This is very true, and admittedly, they are a bit dry but I love sci-fi stuff so it tends to not bother me. Have you considered turning the authors note section into some kind of codex for whatever needs in-depth explaining? That way the reader can choose to read it or not and you can safely move some of the dryer language out of the story itself.