My Little Engineer

by Soren Mercer

Apologies and Grey Stuff

The single most annoying thing about having crashed on an alien planet with an inhospitable atmosphere is the inhospitable atmosphere. I literally cannot take off my suit or the higher concentrations of xenon in the air would start to poison me to death except in the Medical centre. Therefor, I had traded my Work-class suit for a much lighter Urban-class suit by the same developer as the others.

“Vinyl, would you do me a favour and load up my packs with materials to get this ship in a state that I can walk around inside it?” I requested, not expecting an answer in reply as per usual.

“Of course, loading pack with welding materials.” Vinyl surprisingly responded with that normal female voice I’d grown to ignore.

“Okay, thanks.” I frowned at the change but went about my business anyways before moving to the Hangar to switch out suits for the heavier and modified Worker suit.

Once loaded, I set my regularly used tool to the suit’s hotbar so that with just a press of a button, the tool would be retrieved from the backpack and handed to me by the suit’s VI; it was still Vinyl but I sometimes liked to think it was a different woman. Leave my options open, you know?

“Okay,” I muttered to myself once I was fully suited and the plate was secured over my helmet’s faceplate. “I need to tear down the destroyed shield generators, reverse the gravity on the grav gens, seal up the holes in the ship that’re preventing a seal…” I groaned as my to-do list just grew with everything that I found wrong with the ship. I held my welder over the production equipment and brought up the components list for the reactors, refinery and assemblers to get an idea of how badly damaged they were and what I would need to get them working again. Needless to say, I’d be cannibalizing a lot of my ship to get the important machines up and running again.

Setting to my task, I tore down two of the four shield generators that had replaced one of the smaller reactors in order to dump the resources into the two working ones. I was still suffering from the same blackouts during the welding process; blacking out whenever I put a new resource into place and waking up just as I was sealing it in.

Eventually, I had two completely working shield generators and after fiddling with their specific menus, had my ship cloaked in a fully energized shield that would hopefully keep anything hostile out. It wouldn't let the ship pressurize since they weren’t hard-light shield generators but it would work to keep the locals out at least.

Switching tasks, I crawled out of the hole in the side of the ship, the hole that also divided the bridge from the rest of the craft, to begin grinding down all the decorative pieces that adorned the skin of the ship to put to use sealing in the holes.

Having to frequently stop to deposit the resources I gathered was growing more and more irksome but soon I had approximately four thousand pounds of steel, either in the form of plates or in the form of scrap metal, ready to be used and sitting in the main cargo pod.

The entire time I was crawling across the ship’s surface, I was growing more and more aware of the sets of eyes the locals were watching me with, scrutinizing everything I did.

Partially through cutting down a decoratively placed blast door edge, the staring had grown to a point that I could no longer stand it and stood to address the local things.

“Would you stop watching me, please!” I shouted, using my suit’s speakers to amplify my voice. The response I got came in the form of blank stares and tilted heads before the entities that Vi had labeled C2 and C4 shared a few incomprehensible words and then turned back to stare at me questioningly. “Of course, you can’t understand me…” I sighed and returned to my work, crouching down with a bit of difficulty to resume my grinding.

~~~

A couple hours later, approximately around dinner-time judging by the clockwork movements of the sun, I sat in the medical centre sans suit with a plate of some kind of grey… slop that would nourish my body.

I had still a few panels of steel to weld into place before the ship could pressurize and purify the air, but the weight of the world and the gravity being pressed down on my suit had worn me out significantly faster than normal. At least I had a window I could watch the pony-like creatures through. The button to close the blast-shields was also at hand, just in case.

In the midst of taking another spoonful of something that, while it certainly didn’t look like it, tasted like a hearty bison steak mixed with mashed potatoes and corn, I noticed the white creature, C1, bring something closer towards the ship with the help of the blue one, C2, and set it down at nearly the halfway point between their camp and my own.

A table? What would they need a table- are they trying to establish a better First Contact scenario? I set my spoon down in the goop I was working through and watched, hands folded before my mouth with elbows posted on the table. Sure enough, both the creatures looked up at me expectantly before sitting down at the table facing me. I knew they couldn’t really see me through the polarized glass between us, but it felt like both their eyes were meeting mine as if they knew exactly where I was.

Thinking hard on things, I figured that if they were intent on causing harm that they wouldn’t have set out their government leaders to lead the charge. Either that or those two creatures were the most powerful warriors of their race and were leading a charge.

Both those thoughts were put aside as three silver domes appeared on the table, two of them appearing before the pair of pony things. Getting right up and against the glass, leaning my forearm on the cold glossy surface, I watched as both lids were telekinetically removed to reveal what I figured was their own dinner. Both creatures nodded towards the third dome before picking up their utensils to dig into what looked like grilled flowers. If that’s what they were trying to feed me, I'll stick with my grey paste.

Still, it’d be rude to decline their invitation of dinner together in peace even if I wouldn’t be eating. Pulling back from the window and shutting the blast-shield, I took to changing into the suit I'd come in with in order to move to the Hangar and change into the worker suit for the trip out.

Cracking open the hangar doors amidst the alarms and flashing lights, neither of which I’d really given thought to turning off till now, I stepped out into the evening light and leapt from the edge of the ramp down to land with a mighty thud with the suit and exo-frame taking the hit for me. Circling around the ship and advancing on the creatures took a bit of work considering the gravity but I eventually made it and stood near to the table, eyeing it warily.

Both creatures had put down their utensils to watch me expectantly before the blue one lifted the lid on the third dome, showing off all manners of food items they had. I stepped up to the table and experimentally poked at each of the food items, sorting out things that looked edible to me from the ones that weren’t; haygrass, flowers and the like. Pushing my finger into each of the food items, I let Vi work at giving a brief analysis of each item, however as I expected, the xenon in the air had fully contaminated everything and rendered them all inedible. A mild shake of the head and I placed the silver dome back over the plate before giving it a light push towards the centre of the table.

Kneeling down at the table took a bit of work with the suit and the frame, but soon I was on padded knees and at eye level with the creatures. Looking them over now, they were certainly equine in nature judging by their features, however the flowing manes and tails threw me for a loop. The white one had a mane of three bright pastel colours flowing against the wind while the blue one had the night sky swirling around as decoration.

Leaning to the side a bit, I took in the figures of both ponies and noticed the two marks imprinted on their flanks as though some kind of strange brand. On the white one, a bright and full sun. On the blue one, a splotch of black with a white crescent moon. Did these two somehow represent the celestial bodies above and below us?

Putting that aside for the time being, I scooted back enough that I figured I could bow when appropriate before beginning my game of charades with the creatures with aims to apologize for injuring the pink one.

Pointing to them, they both lifted a hoof to point back before I shook my head and pointed at them again. They turned the tips of their hooves to themselves and I nodded. Both of them shared a curious look before turning back to me to wait and watch. I pointed to myself before motioning to the right of me, pointing a gun at the ground. Both ponies’ eyes squinted at me in mild concern before one of them drew a picture of the pink one in the air, startling me at the light-show.

Regardless, I pointed at the image and nodded before getting down on my hands and bowed apologetically. Both ponies’ heads rose in surprise before sharing a glance at each other and shared a brief unintelligent conversation of whinnying and neighing.

I felt my head be lifted gently, a blue aura surrounding the face plate that protected my eyes from the welder’s flame as well from flying debris while mining straight up or in space. I sat up and scooted back up to the table as the white one lifted a hoof and held it face down, gently waving it up and down as if, hopefully, to tell me that things were alright. I went through the motions of looking like I was sighing gratefully, hopefully getting the message across.

Standing, with both ponies watching me as I did so before standing themselves, I gave a traditional Japanese bow of thanks before turning away and stomped back towards my ship.

A fairly successful second First Encounter, I suppose. Could’ve been worse.

Comments

[Soren Mercer]

7587018 I can't agree with your last opinion, I was mostly just using her as a method for correcting my own mistakes when I wrote this. I had planned for the pilot to wake up before he got back in the ship when he was surrounded by ponies and then arm himself with a rifle he had in the pod with him, however my fingers took over and wrote something different. Plus, this way, Pilot has a method to prove friendliness by offering to help heal Pinkie with one of the auto-docs in the ship.

[Potato1]

When is the next chapter coming out?

[Soren Mercer]

7587944 I think I'm approximately half-way through writing it so probably later today.

[Grankuwaga]

Is the MC taller/bigger then Tia & Luna?
Cause that would be a bit cool if he turn out to be Space Marine size do to their planet's gravity