3 - Doubt. Shame. Vindication.
“People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism, into deep cynicism.” — Elliot Richardson
Rainbow Dash - 4th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
Four Days Ago
749556.29 A.H.
Lunar Court - Canterlot Palace, Equestria, Equus
Rainbow had been to the Solar Court many times before. The Elements were not permanent members of the Equestrian Guard, nor were they attached to any other official group. Such was not how Equestria treated its heroes. In their eyes, somepony who saved the world shouldn’t be forced into service as a “reward” for their actions.
Of course, heroes do need to make public appearances. There had been many mind-numbing days where Rainbow had to sit with her friends in one of the many booths which lined the sides of Princess Celestia’s throne room. Rainbow had never done or said anything at these functions. The Elements of Harmony had only been there to be the symbols of Equestrian pride, heroism, and honor they had come to be regarded as.
Rainbow had become intimately familiar with the Solar Court while being a flag on the wall. The large chamber had a split-level ceiling, the center of which had a large vaulted ceiling, creating seemingly smaller “wings” where nobles and dignitaries would view the proceedings. Its floors were marble, its walls covered in cream-colored plaster and gold leaf.
Finery was on display everywhere it could be. The large, solid gold throne Celestia sat upon was framed by gold-plated, fluted columns. A large, plush rug knitted in the same fashion as a cashmere sweater formed a warm red line from the twin oaken doors the size of a small house up to the foot of the throne itself. Tapestries, stained glass windows, and oil paintings hung from the walls between the many frescoes.
The Solar Court displayed Equestria’s wealth, history, culture, and power to all who entered it. It logically followed the Lunar Court would be much the same. Rainbow had traveled to the palace at midnight, as Princess Luna’s letter had instructed, fully believing she would be surrounded by opulence while delivering the same report she had to Celestia the previous day.
Rainbow’s eyes nervously tracked across the medium-sized room’s dark, steel-lined granite walls. The construction on display was not by any means crude, or cheap. It was gritty, industrial, and secure.
Some elegance went into the design work of course. The room’s many shelves were held up by crescent moon shaped supporting rods. The metal had been painted dark gray, dark blue, and pale black, invoking a cosmic feel. Small motes of arcane light hung suspended in the air, mimicking stars, while also providing subtle lighting that enhanced the open, circular room’s features.
The center of the room was occupied by a large map table and chairs. The map table was fashioned from a large slab of crystal and was held up by four silver legs which connected to the table at evenly spaced intervals towards the center. The chairs around the table were made from finely carved wood and upholstered in dark blue velvet.
One of the chairs was clearly a throne, but only thanks to its larger backrest and the crescent moon cut through the back. Of course, any chair placed where it sat would seem special, as the Lunar Court’s sole window was located directly behind it, allowing the moon to shine down upon the seat through a large gothic window filled with special glass.
The glass ensured the moonlight always formed a coherent beam. Luna looked even more like a goddess than normal as she sat upon her throne. Her nebulous mane flowed in an ethereal wind, seemingly drinking in the moonlight. Her plumage caught the light, the edges of each feather glowing a pale yellow, like butter dissolved in milk.
Rainbow’s heart began to beat faster and faster as she walked towards the goddess before her. The half-dozen silve-armor-clad thestrals standing guard in the Court may as well have not existed. There was only Rainbow, Luna, and the moon.
Rainbow’s breaths grew shorter and shorter. Princess Celestia had never produced this effect on her before. She felt powerful, influential, ancient, and wise, but mortal. There was a kindness to the way Celestia presented herself: she seemed like a wise leader you could sip tea with and discuss anything.
Princess Luna sat upon her throne as if she wanted nothing more than to get up and do something. Her eyes held a hardness to them, as if you were a problem to be solved, an obstacle in the way of her plans. She presented herself as a higher being, one which cared for bigger things. Nations, cities, industries, not individuals.
Yet she didn’t feel hostile. Nor uncaring or ambivalent. Luna aggressively cared for the institutions which allowed the individuals under her care to thrive, and would do anything to ensure they continued to exist and bettered her peoples’ lives.
Luna’s horn shimmered blue as she levitated the chair across the table from her out for Rainbow. “Welcome. Have a seat.”
Rainbow gulped and sat down. She flicked her tail behind her for a few moments, before her eyes shrank to pinpricks. “I— uh, thank you, ma’am!”
Luna offered the young mare a polite smile. “Relax. You’re not in trouble, Rainbow. You gave your report to Celestia, I only wish to hear the same report from you in person. I’m no worse than my sister, you will be fine.”
Rainbow bit her lip and winced, her ears drooping somewhat. “Can I say something? You know? Off the record?”
Luna nodded politely. “Of course. You’re a Champion of the Realm, Rainbow Dash. You and I are of equal standing. Well, when I am acting in my capacity as the High Commander of the Guard.”
Rainbow took a deep breath and composed herself. The right words would be key to saying what Rainbow knew she had to say without angering the goddess before her. Once they came to her, Rainbow let her breath go free and opened her eyes.
“Princess, you are much worse than your sister. This room is, like... it's intimidating. It’s not like the Solar Court, which is just rich-pony-expensive… Also, uh, I didn’t expect you to be, um, like this. When we freed you from the Nightmare, you… You weren't much bigger than me. Now you’re twice my size. Your mane and tail are made of pure magic, and—”
Princess Luna chuckled as a smile spread across her face. “Rainbow, my sister is the Head of State. I am our nation’s High Commander. Of course our Courts will look quite different. Hers is a room for talking to nobles and diplomats, mitigating problems with words. Mine is for talking to generals, admirals, and marshals. This is a room for solving problems with force.”
Rainbow nodded. “I—I know. But does it have to be so… imposing? It’s like a void.”
“Oh!” Luna’s cheeks brightened almost imperceptibly. “It does, actually. The Nightmare may be gone, but my memories of the last millennium remain. I’m not yet comfortable in terrestrial environments. All my chambers resemble the moon’s surface, to an extent.”
Rainbow blinked as some of her fear blew away like loose papers atop a desk. She had seen a few photographs taken through scrying glasses of the lunar surface in school. “Huh, yeah… This is sort of what the moon is supposed to look like, isn’t it?”
Luna nodded. “It is close. My sister would not allow me to spread dust across the floor, or use reflective flooring material. I’m sorry you are uncomfortable, but I need to feel comfortable in this room more than you do. As for my appearance, I have recovered from the injuries inflicted upon me. My magic has been fully restored. My body adapted to the power and changed form, as all alicorns do.”
Rainbow bit her lip. “It’s not… I know what alicorns are supposed to look like, Princess. It’s… Could you um, stop the moon?”
Luna slowly tilted her head to one side. “Stop… the moon?”
“Yeah, it’s making your mane go all dark, and your feathers glow and uh, that’s... you know…”
Luna snorted and leaned back in her seat, shaking her head. One of the thestral guards near the door snickered. Rainbow’s ears lay back against her head, a burning anger igniting in her heart as she spun around towards the guard. “What’s so funny?”
Luna smiled and nodded towards the thestral. “Tell her.”
The guard cleared his throat. “That is not the effect of the moonlight, Miss Dash. Her Highness returned from her evening trip to the gym and has recently showered.”
Rainbow blinked as the two facts met only to bounce off one another. “Uh, what?”
Luna spread her wings out and flapped them several times. Droplets of water flew from her feathers, lessening the glowing effect. “My fur dries much faster than my mane or plumage. I’m afraid you will need to put up with this corona until I have dried off completely.”
Rainbow pursed her lips, her eyebrows lifted as she strained to see the princess’s plumage in more detail. “I—But, that’s just water?!”
Luna winked at Rainbow and wrung out the tip of her mane with her hooves, leaving behind a lighter patch. “My sister’s magic makes hers appear opalescent when wet. It’s merely the water absorbing some of our ambient mana. I’m sorry it intimidated you. Are you comfortable now that you know what is causing the glow?”
Rainbow didn’t feel any more comfortable. Intimidation had turned into confusion and curiosity. She bit her lip and nodded slowly. “Uh, a bit…” Rainbow cleared her throat to try and disguise her feelings. “I mean, it’s just that I gave the whole report to Princess Celestia already. Didn’t she write it down, or at least tell you?”
Luna nodded. “She did. But she should have called for me immediately, and had you tell me the story directly. I do not care that I was asleep at the time. Five of our nation’s six greatest heroes were kidnapped by an unknown force, in possession of a cloaked aircraft. We have an eyewitness to the events. I am the pony in charge of our military; I need to hear the full report for myself.”
Rainbow frowned for a moment, then her eyes brightened as she came to a realization. “Oh! Because of the ways ponies move when speaking, and their word choices and stuff.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Though I would have been more precise in my wording. I’m going to ask you to give me the most basic summary of the night’s events. What happened?”
Rainbow closed her eyes and thought back. The memory was still crystal clear. The sight of her friends vanishing into the belly of the black ship pulled at her heart and stomach.
I should have moved sooner. If I had gone right as it started to turn visible…
“We had gone camping in Whitetail Woods near Ursa’s Lair. We were at one of the designated campgrounds. Twilight hadn’t wanted to do freeform camping… She said something about not wanting to damage nature, but I think she didn’t have enough money for the permit.”
Luna nodded slowly. “Yes, you had planned to stay for the weekend, correct?”
“Right,” Rainbow shifted in her seat slightly. “I had also planned to… Well, the point of the trip was to get closer to each other. We saved you by luck. We resealed Discord only because we barely knew anything about everypony else… The Elements work by—”
Rainbow stopped midword as Luna’s face twisted into an irritated scowl. Rainbow blushed and rubbed the back of her head. “By uh… Heh heh, right, you used to use them.”
Luna leaned forwards in her throne. “Celestia’s report says you left the campsite to talk to a stallion. Who was he?”
“He said his name was Pandora,” Rainbow looked up into the starfield ceiling for a moment to think. “He was a park ranger. I don’t know his last name, but he’ll be easy to find. He’s a unicorn, but his horn is amputated near the base. His cutie mark was a black oval with a grid and a squiggly line on it. It looked a bit like a screen or something. He was pretty androgynous. Long, black and cream colored mane. Rust red fur. Oh! He likes clothes, especially hoodies. There probably isn’t another pony that fits the description in Equestria.”
Luna nodded twice, her nose scrunching up slightly. She turned to look to one of her guards and frowned. “A park ranger? What’s that? A kind of monster hunter?”
The guard shook her head. “No, Your Highness. Park rangers are government officials meant to maintain parkland property and keep those who use them safe.”
Rainbow nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Pan was assigned to a nearby fire tower. I left the group to talk to him because Fluttershy recognized him as an artist. She’d commissioned him to draw a group picture of us, but didn’t get our permission for it… I kinda objected to being drawn, so I went to ask him privately not to draw me again.”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “You object to being drawn?”
Rainbow bit her lip and inhaled. “Uh, Princess? I kinda feel that I shouldn’t talk about what exactly Pan draws. Not in your company, and well, not to anyone else. He opened up to me for some reason, and the guy’s had a bad enough time without me potentially making things worse for them. You only need to know that I didn’t like what the picture was.”
Luna nodded once. “Ah. I understand. The report indicates you spoke to him while he was having a conversation over the radio with a mare. Can you identify her?”
Rainbow shook her head. “No. All I know is that her name was Penny, she had an accent I have never heard before, and sometimes said words in her own language,” Rainbow tapped her hoof to her chin as she tried to think of some examples. “I think she said… Nyet! That was one. Also, blin? There were more but I don’t remember.”
“Anything else? Not words, but aspects of her nature you gleaned through hearing her through the radio?”
Rainbow frowned, then smiled. “Yes! She wasn’t a pony. She had hands. I could tell because her typing was way faster than a pony could do, and unicorns pushing keys don’t make the same noise as something solid hitting keys. Her keystrokes didn’t sound hard or sharp. They were soft. Which means they were hands and not talons.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. Dash’s report confirmed her suspicions—they had been involved. Or at least, one had. “Minotaurs…”
Rainbow tilted her head. “Well, yeah. What else has hands? But why say it like that?”
Luna grew silent for several moments, before deciding to reveal some classified information. “We have kept it quiet, but over the last seven months, Minos has been ramping up its military production. They have been making increasingly unreasonable demands diplomatically and economically.
“On the night your friends were captured, they demanded we give them Junebug Isle. It’s their new king. He’s young and holding onto the kingdom by a thread. It’s quite clear to us now that he believes a war will help solidify his position as the King of Minos. The minotaurs know Equestria is defended by the Elements once more. If my sister’s diplomacy failed, as she fears it may have this past Moonsday, then taking your friends would be the first step to launching an invasion of Equestria.”
Rainbow’s eyes widened at the news, then narrowed. She could still see the ship hanging in the sky over her. Long. Narrow. Like a cigar.
Or an airship.
An airship with a bit of decoration on the balloon, some illusion enchantments, and very quiet motors could easily look like an alien vessel. An airship could reach Equestria without needing to cross the void between stars. An airship would be crewed by people who might have a motivation to hurt her friends.
How could I think it was aliens? For real! Why would it be aliens? Yeah, random abductions make for good movies but why would real aliens do that?
“That… that’s way more plausible than aliens,” Rainbow admitted with an embarrassed blush.
Luna blinked. “Aliens?”
Rainbow’s cheeks flushed a bright pink. “Uh… Y—yeah. It was a very, very advanced-ooking airship. I sort of um… I thought it was a UFO. I told Celestia. She didn’t tell you?”
Luna sighed and shook her head. “My sister made no mention of aliens. She did say you were traumatized and likely misremembering events to a small degree. Are you saying your friends were abducted by aliens? Like in a science story?”
Rainbow shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I thought. It’s still possible, I guess. But if we’re on the brink of war with Minos uh, well, that could have been an airship. It’s more likely it was an airship. I know Minotaurs still use them, but I’ve never seen one.”
Luna waved a hoof over the crystal tabletop. The crystal’s enchantments flicked to live, allowing a map of Equestria to appear within its reflection. Luna gestured to the map, which zoomed in on Whitetail Woods. “What were Pan and Penny discussing? Was it anything which may have primed you to think aliens were to blame?”
Rainbow groaned and slapped her face with the flat of her hoof. “Oh my bucking Luna!”
Luna raised an eyebrow and turned to look at one of her guards in disbelief. “Did she just swear at me, by me?”
One of the guards by the doors cleared his throat. “She did, ma’am. I’m certain she doesn't know the proper cursing protocols.”
Rainbow’s ears flattened against her skull. Her eyes shot open. “Eep! I—I’m sorry! It’s just—they totally did!”
Luna raised an eyebrow. “Were they perhaps talking in code?”
Rainbow frowned and looked off into the distance as she thought back through what they had said to each other. “No. I think that they were like, radio pen pals. They were just talking.”
“Are you sure?”
Rainbow nodded. “Mhm. Pan lives in his tower, and said he hadn’t been to town in forever. I’m pretty sure that Penny is like, his special somepony. They were totally roleplaying! I got swept up in it. It felt so real at the time but it had to be roleplaying. Especially because Pan started picking out cute clothes and said she was coming over.”
Luna frowned as her best lead dried up under Rainbow’s testimony. “They were playing make-believe. That’s what roleplaying means, yes?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. Penny was a minotaur pretending to be an alien. Pan was pretending to give her coordinates to land, but in reality Penny was probably at the ranger station and would come over soon for uh, well, you know… But then, right as they were talking about space pirates the ship shows up—”
Luna held up a hoof, her eyes both shining with renewed hope and narrowing with renewed worry. “Pan gave coordinates, then a ship showed up?”
Rainbow nodded, her face falling as she fully recalled the night. “Yeah… He taped Twilight listing off pulse… pulseons? Pulsetors?”
“Pulsars?” A guard suggested.
Rainbow turned to the guard and nodded. “Yeah, that was it. Thank you. He got Twilight to record herself listing off how to find a bunch of those and played it back for Penny.”
Luna hummed and tapped the tabletop with a hoof. “Strange. Astronomers have told me that pulsars could be used for navigation between stars. I asked if they could be put to a more practical purpose, but was told they are not useful for navigation on Equus. Perhaps my suspicions were incorrect.”
Rainbow frowned as she put two and two together. “I don’t think Pan would have led enemies to us, Princess. He definitely doesn't like pony society, but didn’t act like he wanted to destroy it or anything. And he liked us. My friends and I, I mean. He was really shy, got our autographs, and admitted that he thought of us as real heroes.”
Luna nodded. “Very well. I will trust your opinion on his character. I sent troops to find him for questioning, but his tower was abandoned. We attempted to use his radio to contact Penny, but the modulation crystal had been removed. The radio in question having been sabotaged is why I believed he may have been a traitor.”
Rainbow’s face pulled to one side. “No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe he took it so the minotaurs couldn’t use it?”
“We have no way of knowing. Can you tell me how the abduction took place?”
Rainbow hesitated, then looked down and sighed. “Yeah… Penny had warned Pan about space pirates, Pan pulled out an energy gun which could totally have been a prop, or a spellbolt launcher, and then this big black ship with a skull on the front just… appeared.
“It didn’t make a sound… I don’t think. It just was suddenly there. Like when an invisibility charm wears off. It didn’t have any moving parts that I could see. It just floated there, in place. Then it shined spotlights down into the trees, and once it found my friends’ camp, it shot purple beams out which made them fall up to the ship. As soon as they touched the ship, it disappeared again.”
Rainbow resisted the urge to slap herself. Spotlights! It used spotlights. Wouldn’t an alien spaceship have like, super advanced biosignature detectors? They should have just known where ponies were, but they had to look for them.
Luna nodded again. “Can you describe the ship in more detail?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow sighed. “It was huge. Like, as long as a hoofball field, and as tall as a house. A big house. It was kind of like a cigar, but jet black. Like obsidian. There was a big silver skull on the front. I don’t know what animal the skull was supposed to be from, but it wasn’t a pony. There was no muzzle… Actually, it looked sort of like a chimp! Maybe a monkey skull?”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. She growled and slammed a hoof on the table making Rainbow jump. “It was Minotaurs! Their second fleet uses a gorilla skull as its heraldry, and their ships are known for their distinctive figureheads.”
Rainbow’s ears fell. “Uh, but, do they have like, tractor beams? They don’t have unicorns. So they have to buy their magic from ponies, right?”
Luna shook her head. “Not true. Their engineers can create magical devices. They buy unicorn magic for study. I have not heard of any sort of abduction rays before, but they are not out of the question. If I can pull a pony to me, then so can a clever enough machine.” Luna stood up and turned to the guard standing near her doorway. “Halberd! Ready the Air Guard. The airspace between our border and Minos is to become impassable immediately. The Ordos Arcana is to assist them by setting up dispelling nets whenever possible. We will drag that invisible ship out of the sky.”
The guard saluted with one leathery wing. “Yes, ma’am!”
As Halberd turned to leave, Luna amended her order. “Take no aggressive moves except for when the ship is sighted. Be certain you are some distance away from the border as well. If we can catch them in the act without prompting a retaliatory strike, Celestia may yet be able to solve this conflict peacefully.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Halberd said once more, as he opened the courtroom door and ran out to deliver the princess’s orders.
Rainbow felt her stomach churn. War… Such a foreign concept. She’d only read about them in books, watched friends play games about them, and seen them in movies. A real war, one she would live through, and probably fight…
Rainbow gulped. “So uh, Princess? How um, how does us catching the ship stop the war from happening? Is that likely?”
Luna smiled at Rainbow, doing her best to soften her gaze. “Do not worry. If we can prove the minotaurs attacked us by abducting the other Elements, it will cast Minos in a very poor light indeed. International pressure may prevent a proper war on its own, but if it does not, well…”
Luna stood up, pushing her throne back and shutting off the map table with a wave of her hoof, having not needed to try and match the coordinates Pan had used to it. “It will be a very short war if we show the world the mares who saved us all were attacked by a young brat pretending to be a king.”
Rainbow nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense… But like, we saved the minotaurs from an eternal night too. Why would they attack us?”
Luna rolled her eyes. “This started because my sister has refused to execute me. There are many minotaurs who believe the Nightmare and I are one and the same. Their king is one of them.”
“Oh…” Rainbow’s ears fell. “Uh, well… You’re not, right?”
Luna paused and looked up into the fake-star-filled ceiling. “I don’t know… It’s hard to separate her from me. We felt the same on many things, though I doubt I would do half of what she did by my own free will. We can discuss this another time, Rainbow. For now, I need to ensure you are properly protected.”
Rainbow’s heart beat a bit faster as she processed Luna’s words. If she had turned evil instead of having been possessed like they had all been told…
Luna turned to face three of her remaining guards. “Iron, Jade, Vein, you are to escort Rainbow to the Brass Room. She is to remain there under your guard until you are told otherwise.”
Rainbow blinked. “Wait, what? I am so not going to stay shut in a room somewhere! My friends are in trouble.”
Luna sighed and closed her eyes before turning to face Rainbow again. “Miss Dash, you are a target of clandestine operations. If there is a spy in our forces, the enemy will quickly learn we know they took your friends. They clearly want them alive, meaning they wish for the Elements to be usable and thus plan to use them for themselves, or they falsely believe if a Bearer dies then someone else will immediately be able to wield an Element of Harmony.
“In either case, they will come for you if they believe they may lose control of your friends. All six of you are required for the Elements to work. Remove one of you and they are as cheap as jewelry.”
Rainbow hung her head. “I… I understand… But, can’t I do anything at all? Please? I failed them already. I should have flown for the ship right as it showed up, but I didn’t…”
Luna’s eyes softened. Stepping over to Rainbow, the alicorn extended a wing to give Rainbow a traditional pegasus side-hug. “Do not worry. The moment the ship is spotted, I will enter battle and retrieve them myself. You have nothing to fear.”
Rainbow took a deep breath. “But… I still got them captured.”
Luna shook her head and looked into Rainbow’s eyes. “You did not. You are why they will be found. Had you not confronted Pan, all six of you would have been captured, and no one would think to look for you until three days from now, when it would be too late.”
Rainbow frowned. “Too late?”
“Yes. Four days. That is how long it will take for an airship to travel from Whitetail Woods to the Minos border at a speed which will keep it from being detected. We have two entire days to find them, and then one day left to stop them. I will put every available soldier on the job. It will be done.
“We have this chance to save them due to you, Rainbow. Without you having escaped capture, we would be at war and unable to find the Elements. Looking for you six would have diverted serious resources away from the front. You have likely singlehoofedly prevented, and most certainly singlehoofedly minimized a war.”
Rainbow’s ears stood back up, but the frown did not leave her lips. “Well, when you put it like that…”
Luna bent down to look Rainbow more directly in her eyes. “Rainbow, will you please allow yourself to be watched and guarded in the Palace to ensure you are safe while we rescue your friends?”
Rainbow closed her eyes and nodded as her wings drooped down her sides. “Yeah… I’ll stay put…”
“Thank you. I know I am asking much you. I can feel your warrior’s spirit. Do not worry, after our friends return… there may well be plenty of opportunities to make things right,” Luna said, before standing back up straight and nodding towards her guards. “Stallions, escort Miss Dash to her room and send somepony to fetch any personal items she desires from her home.”
Sergeant Iron Ore saluted Luna and trotted over to Rainbow’s side. The silver-armored thestral waited until Rainbow looked up at the sound of his approach and then nodded to the doors. “If you’ll just follow me, Miss Dash, we’ll have you squared away in no time… And if I may say so, I’m glad to see you’re as torn up over this as I would be.”
Rainbow smirked and let out a bitter snort. “Well, I am Loyalty.”
Luna shot Iron Ore a disapproving look. He cleared his throat. “Yes… Sorry, miss. Please, follow me.”
Dash followed the guards to her temporary room. The luxurious accommodations did nothing to help sooth the pain in her chest.
Rainbow Dash - 8th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
Four Hours Ago
749556.3 A.H.
Rainbow Dash lay on the large round bed in the Brass Room. She woke up four hours ago and simply had no reason to get out of bed. Her guards wouldn’t let her leave, not even to get a doughnut or something. They would go get it for her.
Captivity gets to you. Four days spent in a gilded cage is still four days spent in a cage. Even when the cage takes the form of a five-star hotel suite.
The Brass Room had been built for visiting ambassadors and nobility. The amenities were all top-notch. Arcane climate control systems kept the room you were in perfectly to your liking, even as you felt too hot or cold. The bathtub was in fact a hot tub and came with a rather skilled masseuse and mane stylist. The bed was soft, enchanted to be as comfortable as one could possibly conceive of.
The room was fit for someone one rank below a king. Dash hated it. She was a simple mare who liked her cloud house. It may have been bigger than she needed, a little drab, poorly decorated, but it was hers. Her place. The way she liked it.
Rainbow hated gaudy decorations like the gold inlay of flowers and ferns which infested the Brass Room’s walls. She’d spent most of her time staring at the ceiling and worrying about her friends simply because the ceiling was the least gaudy thing in the room.
The ceiling was a single sheet of thin silver with a field of clouds etched into it.
“Sure isn’t much brass in here,” Rainbow grumbled to herself as she snuggled up under her blankets.
The blankets were the one good thing about the Brass Room as far as Rainbow cared. One of them was a dark blue silk duvet, so fluffy it was nearly as thick as Rainbow’s wrist. The other blanket was a hoof-knitted light blue comforter with super chunky, soft, non-itchy yarn. Each yarn was about half as thick as Rainbow’s hoof, making the blanket nearly as thick as her upper hind legs.
Rainbow had honestly believed the bed’s mattress was twice as thick as a normal mattress when she first saw the bed. Upon learning those were blankets, she’d worried their weight would squish her flat. In actuality the blankets pressed down with just enough force to feel cozy, warm, and safe.
Rainbow wanted to keep the blankets. The princess didn’t say she could when Rainbow had asked her the other day. Nor did she say no…
The Brass Room’s door rattled as the knob turned. Rainbow’s ears perked at the sound, prompting her to sit up as the door was pushed open. She recognized the thestral entering her room immediately.
Iron Ore was tall and skinny for a bat pony. It made him easy to pick out among the ranks of nearly-identical guards. Rainbow swore guard armor carried some sort of enchantment which made them all look the same.
Of course, the way Iron’s armor hung somewhat loosely from his body put a hole in that theory.
Rainbow frowned as she saw the pained, yet energized look in Iron’s eyes. “What happened?”
Iron cleared his throat and reached into one of his saddlebags to retrieve a small mirror. “You have a message from the Princess.” He tapped a small sapphire set in its brass frame and the mirror sprang to life. “Excuse the quality. This mirror is very old.”
An image of Luna appeared in the mirror. Everything was dull, unfocused, and distorted, as if reflected from a long distance away through fog.
The recording of Luna held a serious expression in its eyes. “Rainbow, we have located a cloaked Minos airship in the skies near Rockville. It matches the description you provided, though it is somewhat smaller than you reported. Its course indicates it is coming from the region near Whitetail Woods, and is trying to flee across the southernmost point of the Equestria-Minos border.
“There can be no mistake: this is the vessel you saw. What small differences exist between your description and this craft are slight, easily explainable by the dark of night and the small tricks one’s mind plays upon itself.
“I have dispatched the 101st Air Guard. and I am leading the attack myself. By the time you receive this message, Faust willing, we will have engaged the enemy. Your friends will be safe very soon.”
Rainbow’s reflection smiled back at her from the mirror as Luna’s image faded away. She flopped backward into the bed, forelegs and wings spread wide. “Thank goodness that’s over.”
Iron drew in a short breath. “Not quite… The operation must still be successful, and we may soon be at war. Faust willing and Sisters working, we may wake up to peace tomorrow.”
Rainbow’s lips pulled into a steep frown. “You… you don’t think they can stop the ship?”
Iron held up his hooves and shook his head. “Oh! Nononono! I didn’t mean that, Miss Dash. The 101st will stop that ship. It’s just a question of where. If they stop it over Minos, that’s war right there. We need to stop it before it crosses into their airspace.”
Rainbow nodded and sat back up. “Got it. I think Luna can do that.”
Iron paused then sighed. “I hope she can… I only signed up for this for college, you know?” The stallion hung his head for a moment before straightening back up. “At least you won't be here much longer, right? I know you hated staying here.”
Rainbow nodded once as an idea took shape in her mind. She wasn’t the only pony who had to have been a mess for the last few days. “Yeah… Don’t worry. Luna will pull it off just fine. I mean, she did beat Celestia a thousand years ago, right? Celestia had to use the Elements to stop her. We both know Celestia could stop that airship.”
Iron blinked. A small grin spread across his face. “You make a good point! Thanks. I needed that.” He turned and began to leave the room. “I’ll let you know when you can go, okay?”
Rainbow slipped out of the bed and stretched her wings and back. “Thanks. I’d say this has been fun, but yeah…”
The thestral stepped outside and closed the door behind him, resuming standing in front of it with his two friends. Rainbow trotted over to the dresser and opened the top drawer with a quick bite and flick of her neck. Her Roughrider saddlebags rested inside the over-decorated cherrywood cabinet.
Iron had been nice enough to bring Rainbow some of her snacks and drinks from home. Canterlot was a unicorn town for rich ponies, with or without a stick up their ass. Getting good jerky, fishcakes, and non-fancy drinks wasn’t a thing you could do here.
Fortunately for Rainbow’s current scheme, Iron had forgotten to take a bag with him to her house.
Rainbow picked up her bags and admired the simple design of the tan leather satchels. The blue and gold Wonderbolt pin she’d stuck on the left bag added just enough decorative flair for her tastes.
These bags were for function, function, and more function. No frills, all form, all solidly built and meant to last a lifetime. Rainbow loved the Deep Pockets brand for that single reason.
Rainbow tossed her bags onto her back and fastened the straps across herself. Then she crossed the room to the bed, opened her right bag, and swept her snacks, drink, and book into the bag with a flick of her wing. The items fell into the satchel, and were immediately organized for optimal storage by the bag’s charms as if they had been carefully packed by the most neurotically obsessive pony in the world.
Rainbow began to fold up the blankets, squeezing them into as small of a bundle as she could. Once the two huge plush blankets were folded, she opened up her left bag and pushed the blankets inside.
One could be forgiven for thinking cramming a pair of blankets the size of a pony when folded into a bag just barely big enough to hold a few books and a bottle of water was futile. Yet the blankets slipped inside just fine, adding no apparent bulk or extra weight to the bag, as far as Rainbow was concerned.
Rainbow’s new blankets were now neatly packed atop all of her camping gear, which had been returned to her by the guard after searching the woods. The bags contained almost all of Rainbow’s personal items on the right side, and everything she might need for work on the left side. The bags didn’t possess limitless space, each bag could hold three cubic meters of stuff before they wouldn’t accept anything else.
Rainbow had also cheaped out on the optional features: he bags didn’t have any air inside, and thus couldn’t be used as an emergency shelter. Nor did they automatically place items you were searching through them for in your hoof. They did have all the basic features of Deep Pocket brand saddlebags, though.
For instance, various charms would keep her stuff from falling out of her bags, even if she turned upside-down.
Rainbow buckled each satchel’s flap with her mouth, then turned to the window, opening it with a quick push from her forehooves. She looked out into the sky over Canterlot. It was a cloudy day. The sunlight didn’t have the strength needed turn the gold-topped roofs of Canterlot into a glowing field of eye-stabbery. It was safe to fly.
Rainbow took a deep breath. She knew she’d probably get in trouble for ditching her guards, but the threat was over, and she had something important to do. The longer she’d thought about it, the more she realized Pan and Penny had to have been roleplaying before hooking up for an evening. Then their fantasy had seemingly come true.
Somepony needed to go tell them that it was just minotaurs in an airship and that everypony would be fine soon. Whitetail Woods was three hours flight for her from Canterlot. Pan was a ranger. He had to have checked in at the ranger station by now.
Rainbow climbed up on the windowsill, spread her wings, and jumped. Her feathers caught the air, pushed down, and carried Rainbow up into the sky. Her Roughrider’s final enchantment kicked in and bent air away from themselves, reducing their drag to nearly zero.
Rainbow’s saddlebags had cost her three months pay. They had paid for themselves a hundred times over.
Penny Hawking - 749556.3 A.H.
CSS Dawn of Destiny - Tau Ceti System, K3 Sector
As Rainbow raced towards Whitetail Woods, the Dawn of Destiny drew near. The wedge-like ship rode atop a wave of tachyon particles, propelled forwards in space by the faster-than-light particles striking the ship’s Dawson field. Or as the majority of the galaxy called it, the ship’s surfboard.
The basic principle behind the Dawson fields were of little importance to the people who used them. You turned the field on, and suddenly a whole family of particles which don’t interact with normal energy and matter have something to push on. The field is attached to a ship, making the particles push the ship. Exactly like the sails of ancient oceangoing vessels.
Unfortunately for Doctor Dawson, “Starsail” had already been trademarked, so the drive was named after its more useful feature.
There are many ways to break the light barrier. There is only one way to break the relativity barrier. The wave of tachyons pushing against the Dawn not only eventually pushed it up to light speed, but also propelled it back in time.
Not enough to be of use to someone who wished to undo the past; the surf drive wasn’t a classical time machine. It was a practical time machine, calibrated by physics itself to almost perfectly cancel out time dilation, arguably much better than a classic time machine.
A ship using a warp drive to travel one star over, a mere five light years, would need to accelerate to light speed. It would begin accelerating in an orbit, and generally hit lightspeed by the time it had traveled 200 AU.
Along the way, special relativity would kick in. From the ship’s perspective, accelerating to cruising speed would take less than a minute. At around forty-four seconds, the ship would hit the speed of light. From the universe's perspective, that same ship would have been accelerating to FTL for one and a half days.
The ship would arrive at the end of its total journey after more than five years from the universe's perspective. For the warp-capable ship, the trip would have taken only nineteen hours. The effects of time dilation would be far, far worse if the warp ship decided to go faster than c. This hampered galactic travel for a thousand years until Doctor Dawson came along.
The surf drive’s time dilation correction meant by the time she reached the speed of light, her clock and Pan’s clock would be a mere twenty-three seconds out of sync. Furthermore, the wave of tachyons would push her ship back in time exponentially faster after she reached light speed. As soon as the Dawn reached lightspeed, it would arrive at its destination.
The only downside was waiting for days, or even weeks, for the ship to be pushed up to light speed and needing enough fuel to keep the Dawson Field active for the length of your ride.
The Dawn’s computer beeped. Penny tipped her head down to look at the notifications window on her HUD. The Dawn was currently traveling at .998 c, and she had forty-five seconds before she arrived at Equus.
Penny closed her eyes and sighed. There wasn’t enough time to install the thruster baffling she had wanted to put onto the Hoatzin. She’d spent the last six days of acceleration overhauling her shuttle.
Not that anyone who saw the Hoatzin thought it was a shuttle. The bright yellow, boxy, van-like craft with four rotating VTOL engines (two high up on the rear, two low and forward) appeared to be more of an aircar than a shuttle. Especially as it looked far too beat up to be spaceworthy.
The Hoatzin had done many things over its long life, things no Lada-class shuttle had ever been meant to do. It had carried Penny down to thousands of worlds with a warranty that only covered a hundred and twenty landings. It had crested the edge of a supernova. It had once had its top half sheared off, and made an emergency landing as a convertible.
The top half had been repaired by welding the top half of a different Lada-class shuttle onto the hull, then spray painting everything yellow again. And, of course, adding the shuttle’s signature three black racing stripes.
The Hoatzin had extracted Penny from a nest of ravenous, man-sized insects. The shuttle had once flown across an entire star system to get her back to the Dawn. It had even been used to smuggle Boris Blood Vodka into the Tilctew system.
Despite its storied history, it had never been used to re-enter an atmosphere at the very instant a ship finished an FTL hop to minimize the chance of being spotted by pirates. The residual inertia from the jump without braking via the Dawn’s engines pre-launch would mean entering at roughly twenty-three kilometers per second.
Penny closed the thruster access panel with a quick flick of her wrist. Her Power Armor whined as she moved. Its servos were overdue for some maintenance. Like all Chernin armor, her T-34 was intended for daily wear. It was not intended to be used for wrestling liquid nitrogen breathing lizards twice her size. Not even after her modifications.
Penny knew the Nova Wing ship had to be there still. Even if it had decided to leave immediately, a ship its size would take at least a week to reach light speed. They would detect her arrival, switch off their drive, and cruise over to kill the interloper who spotted them slaving.
Just because officials ships couldn’t enter the K3 Sector didn’t mean they wouldn’t punish you for committing crimes in it. That’s why Penny had Pan get the signatures of multiple prominent members of his people’s government: to forge immigration papers with.
With the panel secured, Penny ran around Hoatzin and sprinted up its boarding ramp. Her armor slammed against the deck, making the shuttle creak and groan amid the heavy metallic thuds of her foot falls. The Hoatzin had been built to accommodate Chernin. It could handle the weight of her armor. Barely. The poor shuttle was almost three hundred years old now.
Penny reached the pilot’s seat and sat down. Her armor mag-locked to the seat as it detected her desire to fly the shuttle. Penny flicked her finger across a switch, and the shuttle’s hatch closed with a metallic whine. As the shuttle began to seal and pressurize the cabin, Penny flicked a second switch to slave the Dawn’s navigation controls and helm to the Hoatzin’s computer.
The Dawn lurched as it hit light speed, and the temporal shock wave created by its jump washed over the ship and everything within it. The shock wave blasted the ship to the end of its flight, and with a streak of silver and a burst of green light, the Dawn of Destiny appeared in low Equus orbit, terrifying the crap out of several students in the Trottingham Observatory who happened to be watching the sky at the time.
The Hoatzin skid backwards by a few millimeters as the Dawn was suddenly thrust into Equus’s gravity well and entered an orbit.
Penny’s armor chirped at her. “Yes, yes, I know. We arrived,” she murmured as she instructed her armor to call Pan with a quick thought.
Her neural interface relayed her wishes to her armor, which happily complied. “Pan? It’s Penny. Please answer.”
No reply.
Penny waited for thirty seconds out of sheer habit before repeating her message.
Still, no reply.
“Pan, pick up. I need to trace your radio. I don’t have landing coordinates.”
Ten seconds of silence passed, then Pan’s voice came through amid a hiss of static. “Penny! Oh thank Celestia! I’ve been so scared. Guards showed up at my tower. I took the crystal out of my radio and hid. I thought they would confiscate my setup. But they didn’t. They took nothing… It’s weird. How quick can you land? The pirates kidnapped the Elements of Harmony. They’re like huge deals! We need to help.”
Penny’s armor began to home in on Pan’s signal. “We’ll help them. It’s the right thing to do. Don’t worry, once we get to civilization I can file a report with the Star League. There are other things we can do, too.”
“The Star League? Those guys are like, space cops, right? Don’t they just control the areas around planets and stuff? How will that help?”
Penny smiled to herself. “They also hunt pirates. Many people do. Nova Wing has many enemies. We will point all our guns at them, comrade.”
“We should look for them ourselves, too, if we can. I mean, we’ll be flying all over the Arm for your job already.”
Penny frowned, closed her eyes, and sighed. She wanted to say no. She really did. Unfortunately, not only was it very likely her talks with Pan had drawn the Wing’s attention, but helping kidnapped primitives was simply the right thing to do. “Da. We’ll look for them. We can at the least do some investigating out in the fringe and pass information to the authorities. I don’t have a warship, Pan. We can’t take them on ourselves. But we can help.”
“As long as we do something… I think… I think that we may have drawn them to Equus.”
Penny sighed again. “That is probably what happened.”
Penny’s armor chimed, a notification popping up to let her know the Hoatzin had located the radio signal. “Okay, I have you. Plotting reentry now.”
“Reentry?” Pan said with a confused tinge to his voice. “Can’t you just go straight down with a gravity drive?”
“I could,” Penny said as she began calculating her descent. “But the Wing is probably still in-system. There’s a chance they haven’t seen me yet. If I crank up the gravity drive to land vertically, their sensors will light up like Christmas time. If I go down old-school, they may think I’m debris or waste.”
“Won't they spot your starship anyways?”
“Yes. But it will be flying to the moon. The idea is they will think I gravity-braked on the planet and then headed for the moon. I have a beacon set up broadcasting a reactor malfunction warning. I don't think they will approach her for an hour at the least. We should have just enough time to pick you up and get back to the ship. I’m also hoping they are still behind your moon. If they are, the moon will have shielded my entry into the system from their sensors, and I’ll be parking the Dawn on the light side of the moon. We’ll know by the time I touch down if the Wing is here or not.”
“That sounds very risky.”
Penny’s armor chimed again. The reentry course was plotted and the Dawn had maneuvered into position for the shuttle launch.
Penny flipped a switch on the Hoatzin’s dash and the shuttle bay doors beneath it slid open. A quick burst of artificial gravity from the Dawn pushed the shuttle out into space. It was time.
The Hoatzin’s computer flashed half a dozen errors as it entered the vacuum of space. Penny’s eyes flicked across its various displays, taking in everything the ship was telling her. “Oi, blin…”
Pan’s ears drooped. “Why the alien swearing?”
A small part of Penny’s mind wondered if Pan would ever learn she wasn’t actually cursing. The rest of it was fully occupied on the problem at hand. “I… I overhauled my shuttle for this. I knew I’d need to old-school land. I didn’t reconnect the auto-pilot. Need to fly down manually.”
Penny reached towards the controls. Her armored hand pressed the manual override button, and the joystick slid out from the control panel. Penny stared at the stick for several seconds. She had forgotten how old the Hoatzin was and expected the ship to link to her armor to be flown via neural control.
Penny took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and swore properly. “Cyka blyat!”
Pan winced. “Uh, so, it’s not okay, is it?”
Penny took a deep breath to calm herself. “I’ll be fine. It’s a Lada. I’ll talk to you on the ground.”
Penny ordered her armor to sever the radio link. She couldn’t afford any distractions during reentry. Not with her having to use manual controls.
A mental command opened her helmet. She didn’t trust her suit’s visual systems for this. Her helmet rotated back into her suit, letting Penny see out the shuttle’s windshield with her own eyes. The sight of the sun rising over the blue and green planet below brought a smile to Penny’s face. She been to far too many death worlds to not get a little emotional when she got to land on a good old class-M planet.
Penny overrode her neural link for a moment. Her armor froze in place as her body stopped controlling it and resumed controlling itself. Penny wriggled her left hand out from her armor’s torso, past the rubber seal around her upper body. Her pale, ghostly-white skin glistened and dripped as she pulled it out of the fluid-filled center of her armor.
She pulled her second arm free with a little more effort, and shook her limbs as dry as she could. With her hands no longer covered in saline solution and impact absorbing fluid, she reached up, brushed her teal and pink bangs out of her eyes, removed her glasses, and made triple sure the lenses were not dirty.
The last time she had tried to clean her glasses with her armor’s hands, she had to fabricate a new pair. There wasn’t time to make new ones now.
Satisfied her glasses were clean, Penny slipped them back onto her face, pushed them up the bridge of her nose, then slipped her arms back into the sleeves inside her armor’s torso. Like all Chernin armor, the pilot’s limbs never entered the armor’s limbs.
Many species were surprised when they learned Chernin weren't actually twice the size of most races the galaxy had to offer.
With her arms once more stored inside her armor, Penny reactivated her neural link. Her armor returned to life, and her own body returned to ignoring her brain’s movement instructions. The transition was as seamless as always, and remarkably itch-free. Penny took the lack of itching around her neural implant as a good omen and switched on the Hoatzin’s engines.
The shuttle shook as its q-thrusters powered up. Penny closed her eyes once more, doing her best to make peace with herself as she took the shuttle’s control stick and throttle in hand. She started to open the throttle, but her hand froze.
Penny counted to three. Her fear didn’t subside. She sighed and slumped her shoulders, making her armor creak as it moved like her organic body would have.
“I need music.”
Penny let go of the throttle, reached over to the Hoatzin’s entertainment system, and hit play. A calm, soothing, jingly synthesizer melody filled the cabin. Penny sighed, relaxing slightly as her people’s oldest song began to play.
Penny reached forward and gripped the throttle. The song’s warmup was short. Penny mentally counted off the milliseconds, deciding she would open up the throttle as soon as the lyrics began.
A deep male voice speaking English filled the cabin as the singer intoned, “All rise, for Hardbass.”
Penny clenched her teeth. She wasn’t ready. Not yet. The Hoatzin’s shields were barely rated for collisions with small debris. She hadn’t been built to do old-school reentries. This was most likely suicide.
The song continued warming up, its lyrics ironically complementing the situation at hand. “Never fear. Boris is here.”
Penny shook her head at the coincidence. “Heh… And it’s set to shuffle, too.”
“Ready? Let's go!”
Penny threw the throttle open. The Hoatzin’s thrusters burned hot. With the shuttle pointed retrograde, the burning engines rapidly slowed the shuttle. Within mere seconds the shuttle flashed an alert, informing Penny that the periapsis was now below the atmosphere. Another three seconds of burn passed. The shuttle’s HUD lit up with half a dozen warnings, all of which Penny ignored. Except for one.
Her orbit was no longer an orbit. The shuttle was on a suborbital trajectory which should bring her to Pan’s location. It was time to turn around and reenter. Fortunately, she had soothing music to listen too.
Penny spun the shuttle a hundred and eighty degrees, and the Hoatzin hit Equus’s atmosphere just as her song reached the first instrumental segment. The harsh, metallic, distorted, electrical sound of proper hardbass consumed the cabin as burning streaks of orange plasma began to consume the hull.
In the 2300 years of galactic history, no other species had ever called hardbass “soothing”.
Penny’s grip on the Hoatzin’s controls tightened. She could feel the rubber grips through the neural link in her armor. She was about to crush the controls. Penny stopped squeezing and focused on keeping the shuttle’s orientation correct. The rapid, heavy, and powerful baseline pumping in her ears did wonders to focus her mind on the task at hand and shoo away the primal fear of falling while also being on fire.
Falling out of orbit in a Lada-class shuttle piloted by a Chernin who had never qualified as a shuttle pilot without any computer assistance while listening to hardbass was expressly defined as hell in two of the galaxy's smaller religions.
The Hoatzin shook back and forth as it cut through the atmosphere. Its shield sparked and popped under the strain of resisting the plasma surrounding them. The modifications Penny had made to the Hoatzin’s shields held, providing just a hair more power than the bare minimum needed for the shuttle to not become red-hot dust.
Penny kept her eyes focused on the navigation system and the shuttle’s HUD. Every time the Hoatzin hit a pocket of turbulence and bounced around like a ping-pong ball in a clothes dryer, she wrenched it back on course. The shuttle’s control surfaces and thrusters screeched in protest every time, but managed to keep the ship’s descent almost barely controlled.
Two agonizing minutes passed as the Hoatzin burned across the sky as a fireball brighter than any meteor. Ponies below looked up, mouths opening in awe or terror at what they believed to be a meteor burning in. Their mistake was understandable. The Hoatzin was about as controlled as a giant rock flung at the planet from outer space.
The burning plasma subsided as the atmosphere leached away enough of the Hoatzin’s speed to push it down from hypersonic to supersonic flight. Penny let out a held breath and reached for the dash, flipping the switch to cycle from the q-thrusters to the ramjets.
The atmospheric engines refused to start.
Penny wordlessly mashed the controls, checking half a dozen systems as the Hoatzin plumited like the brick it was. Switches clicked, buttons pressed, valves released—a month’s worth of panicked cursing was burned up inside of thirty seconds.
The ramjets finally lit, one after the other, plunging the Hoatzin into the clouds in a flat spin. Penny throttled down and let the Hoatzin drop for several seconds, using the flaps alone to slowly pull out of the death spiral, and bring herself into a level glide just below the cloud layer.
The Hoatzin stabilized at last, slipping into a nice, level glide at a fairly low altitude. Penny could see a large mountain range below, a rather worrying fact since she was close enough to it to see a large, gold-roofed city built on to the mountainside.
Even primitive weapons posed a threat to the Hoatzin. The Lada-class shuttles had always been known for being the space vans they were. Not wanting to accidentally hit the mountain or be spotted by the locals with access to missiles, Penny opened up the throttle and brought her shuttle to a nice cruising speed of Mach 0.8 and dropped altitude until she was certain she would be flying below whatever primitive radar technology ponies had available to them.
A smile spread across Penny’s face. She slumped back in her seat with a happy sigh. “I did it!”
Penny reached over to the radio and cranked up the volume, her armored finger bumping the switch to activate the shuttle’s external speakers. The harsh metallic music filling her cabin thus leaked into the outside world, managing to make itself heard over the roar of the Hoatzin’s ramjets.
Penny allowed herself a few moments to get lost in the music while also quietly being grateful for her armor’s waste disposal system. Penny opened her eyes and turned to her left to check her navigation screen and froze.
Looking back at her through the cockpit window, not three meters from the Hoatzin, was a rainbow-maned, cyan-colored, cartoonishly adorable winged quadruped with massive eyes.
Penny took several seconds to process the fact that a flying pony was keeping up with her at just under the speed of sound and did the only thing she could do: grin like an idiot and flash the pony an approving hand gesture. “You go, tiny pony! Show physics who's boss!”
Rainbow did the only thing a pony can do when a bright yellow, Slavic space-brick blasting hardbass loud enough to be heard over jet engines pulls up alongside you in mid-air at speeds no Equestrian aircraft had ever obtained: stare wide-eyed and slack jawed into the pilot’s eyes and try to process what was going on.
For our convenience, this is a Lada-class Shuttle. Yes, this was made using Kerbal. Yes it flies. It shouldn't but it does. It also survives reentry, somehow XD
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I may steal the Chernin and hastily duct tape them into other settings.
Well, it's always fun reading your stories, and this is no exeption
9037435 Tiz the internet, do as you will :3 (Seriously, I'm writing fanfic. What right have i to say other's cant use my creations?)
YES just YES
pics.me.me/in-soviet-russia-physics-obey-our-laws-27549109.png
Ok i rely like this story, and Space Russian for the win
Oh, silly Penny, just wait until you spend some time on that planet...
I find myself intensely doubting anything that square could ever reach anything near supersonic, let alone reentry speeds... in space it would be fine, yeah. But physics is a mean mean god.
Good chapter though, looking forward to more. Story has definitely improved since the first chapter, to be honest, glad I stuck around.
9038525 Well, we can assume that it's shields would help with the areodynamics. But for fun I built one in Kerbal. It worked XD
The whole part with Penny and the Hoatzin was great! I loved the energy of it all, As well as the clear way her thoughts and actions are explained. I was really drawn in and enjoyed it intensely!
Nice exploration of Luna's room. Its only fair that one thousand years leave something on the mind of someone. At least Luna is trying to do something nice about it.
Here's hoping that in convincing themselves that it was the minotaurs when it really was aliens all along that they don't actually start the war they think the minotaurs are starting.
Dash, this is terrible safehouse behavior.
Whoops. That air pocket would have been convenient a bit later on.
Hah!
Nice.
9038944 It dosent even need to be a decade to do that. I lived in Germany for two years as a teenager. When I got back to the states, the US felt alien. The houses looked wrong, it was so weird that beer wasn't on sale next to soda, and hearing people speak English in public blew my mind. It felt even weirder when I was liked "Dude, you were living here 2 years ago..." I can't imagine how much more pronounced the effect would be after 10 centuries. Hell, Luna might find Equus's flora and fauna as depressing and dismal as most humans find the gray dust fields of the Moon.
9037872
IKR. Great picture, by the way.
There's just so much well-done here. Quite a few sneaky jokes and references, and it's good to disillusion Dash quickly. Ironic that the minotaurs actually DID have a ship out, though! Still, space Lada for the win!
You should have made a mention of seeing C-beams over the Tannhauser Gate. :D
(I've never seen the movie, but I like the image of the reference. :P)
9039850 I'm actualy saving that for a letter from Rainbow to home XD
That was fun.
Interesting though Rainbow Dash in the previous chapter is unfamiliar with airships judging how fast others ships are would be hard
Rather like how Celestia's the one who does all the diplomatic and ambassadorial stuff, while it's Luna who serves as basically commander and chief for the country's military. I'm sure Celestia could totally step up to the same tasks herself no problem (it's been vaguely implied that she has done so in the past), but only reluctantly. Luna's always been the one who seemed more gung-ho about it.
Don't have much else to comment on other than the story continues to be intriguing.
They think it's Minotaur's hah that's precious. I'd like to know how long it takes for them to settle this snafu... It looks like Dash is going to vanish, but with that re-entry what are the chances Luna is going to find out it was actually aliens.
Lunar space program begin!
(Also didn't realise you could do that with the Kerbal Lynx, looks cool, making me want to back to Kerbal.)
9046274 If you do it, make sure you reenter at a fairly shallow angle, and go backwards. Going steep and forwards almost vaporized the cabin. Almost...
If you are referring to warp as FTL then you would be correct, but a true warp drive would not have this effect as the ship is not moving at all. The space around the ship is being made to move by the compression and expansion of space-time.
9094828 In most settings, yes. But here your warp drive requires you to accelerate to around 0.4 C before it can be switched on. Turns out you need a certain amount of inirsha to get exotic mater to do its thing. This means warp-ships in this universe get a little time dilation while getting up to speed.
So there is this older anime called "Gunbuster" that revolves around the concept of relativity in space, this chapter reminded me of it and both have my approval
Now how in the name of Newton did you get that can to fly and land? I understand kerbal takes some liberty's but not that !uch, regardless that is awesome that you put that kind of work into the Lord of your story
9126302
My copy has FAR installed, so uh, actually less liberties were taken than you'd think. As for how I did it, very slowly. Long, long, LONG climb up out of atmo, very shallow angles, followed by burning the engines to near-dry to reduce speed while reentering in the early stages, then using rotation to ensure no one part stayed hot for long for the rest. This induced a stall, and one of the engines was shot due to intake failure, but she was still able to land. She wouldn't take off again even if she had the gas, but she landed XD