5 - Welcome Aboard
"If offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on." — Christa McAuliffe, USS Challenger
Rainbow Dash - 12th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
749,558.23 A.H.
Medical bay, Dawn of Destiny, Solar Escape Trajectory - Equus System, K3 Sector
A faint voice whispered in the distance. It felt like it was calling to Rainbow, even though she could tell it wasn’t speaking to her. Its words sounded alien, yet she understood them perfectly. It was as if a little voice whispered everything to her subconscious in plain Equish.
“I blurred them out because they haven’t consented to being on cam yet.”
The sound of a glass bottle clinking against metal made Rainbow’s ears twitch. Pegasus ears were half magic, half miracle of biology. The sharp click was more than enough for Rainbow to hear the bottle was almost empty. It also made her wince in pain.
Ow… Things shouldn’t sound this sharp.
“Da, you’ll see them soon. I know Pan won't mind. He did agree to be my media technician. Rainbow might say no. I don’t know enough about poni culture to say if they think of being on camera like we do.”
Rainbow moaned and opened her eyes. She regretted it instantly as blindingly bright light was positioned directly above her. Rainbow recognized it as a surgical lamp and gulped. The mare tipped her head down to look at her body, checking for signs of injury.
She was laying on her back. Nothing looked too out of place. Her fur was unusually clean, to the point of being glossy and silky. It’s like I’ve been at a sp—
Rainbow stopped mid sentence as a cramp rippled through her entire body. It wasn’t a bad cramp, just a quick twinge which a normal person would forget after a few moments. Rainbow wasn’t a normal person. She was a highly trained athlete. She understood her skin had pulled away from her muscles in many places recently. Even worse, she could feel the thin layers of nano-glue holding it in place.
Rainbow’s eyes shot open wide despite the lamp shining in them. Luna’s mane, what the buck happened to— Oh yeah, space. I was in space. Naked. Why aren’t I dead? Shouldn’t you just go pop?
Someone laughed. It took Rainbow a moment to recognize the laugh as belonging to Penny. It had an alien sound to it, but reminded her a lot of a pony’s laugh. Specifically Berry Punch’s.
Rainbow turned her head towards the speaking alien, expecting to see her standing around in the light mech she called power armor. Instead, she found the alien to be dressed in a smaller machine. One which was skin-tight.
The off-white machine wrapped around Penny’s arms, legs, shoulders, back, and hips. It looked almost like a minimalist exoskeleton. It covered her spine almost entirely, with her shoulder blades completely covered as well, and had a single rod running down each arm and leg. While there were visible joints in the rods to allow a full range of motion, the joints looked almost identical to the rods.
The frame included a full pair of knee-length boots, but no gloves or visible means of sticking to her skin other than the boots.
Penny’s frame protruded a centimeter away from her skin at the most, and each edge tapered down to meet her skin flush for an organic look and feel. It reminded Rainbow of the mobility constructs made for paralyzed ponies so much, she concluded that’s what it must be. Rainbow’s guess happened to be almost correct.
A lifetime of living in her power armor had left Penny fairly weak. She’d grown up in T-34s, helping advertise her family’s wares at live demos, testing new features, and otherwise piloting a heavy suit at all times. She’d missed most of the five-year window a Chernin has for developing natural muscles, so here she was today: a grown woman almost as feeble as the day she climbed out of her tank to see the world for the first time.
The mobility frame left Penny’s pale skin mostly bare, and she didn’t have anything on over it. Nothing solid, that is.
The mobility frame had internal hologram projectors, which were meant to help it blend into a user’s body. Penny had set it up to project the image of a deep purple sports bra and bike shorts. The holograms covered the slightly-out-of-shape-looking woman’s body with a realistic (albeit glowing) simulation of clothing.
This was the closest Penny ever came to wearing clothes. Her lifetime of piloting her armor was to blame for her preferences. Being touched by anything other than liquid, another living being, or air felt unnatural and disgusting to the young woman.
Penny was sitting in a chair next to a small table covered in medical supplies, along with the remains of an unappetizing-looking ration bar and a mostly empty one-liter bottle of vodka. A small, spherical robot hovered in front of her, projecting a screen Rainbow couldn’t properly see.
Penny’s eyes flicked across the screen, and she shook her head. “Nyet, gorlacli34. She’s not blurred out because she’s naked. From what I’ve been told and seen, they treat clothing like the Iregsin. It's totally optional. I got their permission clip from a royal. The only things she had on were a tiara and a big necklace-thing.”
A moment passed, and Penny read the next message from the chat and laughed. “I don’t know if they will like how I look, so I covered up the bits most likely to gross them out.”
Rainbow sat up slowly and carefully. She didn’t want to rip any of the glue she could feel under her skin. Or her skin itself.
Penny frowned and turned to look over her shoulder at Rainbow. She smiled as she saw the mare sit up. “Opa! Blue, good to see you. One minute, let me stop this stream,” she turned back to her camera bot and smiled. “I have to go, comrades. Pay attention to the public channel. If she'll let you see her the proper introduction will be there later. Cam, end.”
The floating bot hummed, retracting its small camera array and covering it with the protective plate. The camera remained floating near Penny’s side as she stood up, ready to resume its duties.
Rainbow winced and pointed to one of the glue spots on her barrel with her left hoof. “What’s in my body?”
Penny frowned. “Uhhh, well—Blin, I’ll be honest. You’re mostly original. There’s a few cloned organs, a lot of nano-glue, and I—”
Rainbow’s eyes shrank to pinpricks. She jumped up from the bed and landed rear hooves first on the floor. The impact sent a ripple of pain through her gut, which Rainbow ignored as she glared into the alien mare’s eyes. “Clone organs? WHAT?!”
Penny nodded. “Da. You didn’t exhale enough. Oxygen ripped up some of your lungs. Our stimpacks didn’t work on you, so I flash grew you new ones, tuned them to what your original lungs should have been capable of then made some improvements to help space-proof you.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, because it’s okay to just swap someone's organs out for those of somepony else!”
Penny’s face scrunched up. “Other person’s?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow growled. “If you got lungs from a clone of me, you had to clone me, then kill that person to take their lungs and give them to me! That’s not okay.”
Penny snorted, a smile parted her lips as she held in a laugh. “Nyet! I didn’t grow a whole poni. I grew just the lungs, a kidney, a set of eyes, and six centimeters of large intestine.”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow skeptical. “Oh yeah, because you can just grow body parts without making a whole person.”
Penny chuckled and used the remote system in her mobility frame to open the med bay’s flash-tank. The wall to her left hummed as it slid open, and a large bank of eight torso-sized vats filled with a mostly opaque green slime slide out from the wall.
Penny nodded towards the wall. “Flash-Grow system, for growing cloned or engineered biological components. Standard in any long-range ship like the Dawn.”
Rainbow frowned. “Oh. Uh, well good. I’ve never been okay with the idea of organ transplants.”
Penny sent another mental command and the flash-grow tanks retracted back into their stored position. “Don’t worry, we’re not savages. Any part you need replaced will be fresh and just for you.”
Rainbow squirmed awkwardly. “I uh… I’m an athlete. A high-performance one. I’m happy you saved my life but, uh… Will this set my career back?”
Penny squirmed in place for a moment then sighed. “Da, probably… I’m not a doctor. I’m a mechanic. We’ll get you to a Doctor when we reach Tavros. Pan too. I can spare the credits for full service. It’s only fair.”
Rainbow ‘s ears flicked back. “I thought so. I don’t feel a hundred percent. I can feel the glue under my skin… Also, you’re way more um, better sounding. Your Equish isn’t as broken.”
Penny winked. “I’m speaking Chernin. I took the liberty of installing a translator module in you while you were out.”
“You did what?” Rainbow asked, her eyes narrowing.
Penny held up a hand. “Stop. Calm down. All I did is allow you to understand and be understood. Every spacer gets a translator. I gave you speech only. I didn’t mess with your eyes. You will have to learn to read. We can give you that implant later, if you want, but I had to open up part of your head to replace your eye anyways, and you need to understand officials speaking to you, Rainbow.”
Rainbow bit her lip, then sighed as she accepted Penny's logic. “Okay… But don’t do anything else to me without my permission!”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Rainbow’s eyes turned towards the bottle still in Penny’s hand. “And you better not have done any of that stuff while drunk!”
Penny giggled and sat down on a stool placed near the bed Rainbow had been treated on. “Chernin don’t get drunk,” she said as she took a long pull from her bottle. “We digest ethanol. This is lunch.”
Rainbow spent a second processing what she’d heard. “You… Eat… A liquid?”
“Nyet, we drink it,” Penny said with a wink before finishing off her bottle. “But no, my people can get our nutrients from almost anything. Ethanol can be turned right into ATP. I can’t cook, so I drink a liter for every meal along with some halva to get the minerals I need.”
“Why can’t you cook?” Rainbow raised her eyebrows as she asked her question. Rainbow could cook extremely well. After all, she had to specially prepare most of her meals to stick to her athletically-optimized diet. If she hadn't learned to cook, all her meals would have tasted horrible.
It has to be the same for Penny, right?
Penny waved her hand. The gesture summoned a holoscreen in front of Rainbow. Penny appeared on the screen, wearing her mobility frame and a white apron while standing in a small kitchen made mostly of stainless steel and light wood paneling. “Here, watch a clip from one of my streams.”
Penny commanded the recording to play.
“Okay everyone, I will now make a bowl of cereal,” the recorded Penny said as she poured a box of cereal flakes into a bowl.
She set down the box, picked up a bottle of milk, and held it at arm's length, wincing back away from the bowl as she poured the milk in. The milk hit the bowl. The cereal combusted in a flash of blue-green flames and the Dawn’s fire suppression system kicked in, soaking the entire kitchen until the flames were extinguished.
“That’s why I don’t cook,” the recorded Penny said, before the clip ended.
Rainbow smirked at the totally fake expression Penny had been making in the video. “You staged that.”
“Da, but I burn most everything I cook. Water is at a premium on the ship.”
“Why even use water? Why not foam?”
“Water is used as an emergency heat sink and power system. The gravity engine keeps it circulating and hydraulic turbines help power the ship,” Penny said as she set her empty bottle down. “So every ship has enough water to simply use it to suppress fires. But not enough to do that every meal and still work. So I drink vodka and eat special halva.”
Rainbow sighed and took a few steps to test out her body. Her short walk from the bedside to the shutter covered window told her more than she needed to know. She was in rough shape. Penny’s medical treatment was the equivalent to an adhesive bandage and a splint. “So uh, how long till we get to a doctor?”
Penny quickly checked the Dawn’s helm over her neural link. “We’ll be there in the morning. Are you in pain? I can give you painkillers.”
Rainbow rolled her lips then shook her head. “Nah. I can take this. I’ve been in a lot of crashes. This isn’t anything, really.”
Penny nodded and stood up. She joined Rainbow by the window and nodded towards it, unaware that Rainbow, being belly-high on her, couldn't see the gesture. “Would you like to see out the window?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah. I’m having a hard time really… You know.”
Penny slowly reached out with a finger and placed it on a small black square at the bottom of the window. “These are the manual controls for the windows. Go ahead, open it.”
Rainbow reached out and tapped the button. The window shutters slid upwards, revealing the universe like the curtains upon a stage. A stage upon which a crappy play was being conducted, because all Rainbow could see was a grayish, blurry gradient of nothingness.
Rainbow sputtered and gestured towards the window. “What the hay is this?”
“Space, when traveling at point-eight-six the speed of light.”
“But it’s gray! Space is black,” Rainbow fluffed her wings irritably.
“Da. But we’re moving so fast—just understand the light we see is warped from our speed.” Penny reached out and shut the window.
The meter-thick transparent aluminum was more than sturdy, but the grayness of light-speed space unnerved her. Besides, you didn’t want to see out of your ship when you reached lightspeed. Brains hated it.
Rainbow sighed, turned around, and sat down, resting her back against the wall next to the window. She closed her eyes and did her best to take stock of her situation. Her friends were missing, she had almost died, and space was disappointing to look at when flying super fast.
Wait… I was in space because the shuttle exploded! “Did you recover any of our stu—” Rainbow winced and looked up at Penny, for the first time noticing she had engorged teats. “Eeep! What’s a new mom doing messing with pirates?!”
Penny sputtered, her cheeks turning a bright red. “What in the Way makes you think I have a kid?” Her embarrassed blush twisted into a look of pure horror. “OH, GOD!”
Penny dropped to her knees, the deck rang as she hit it hard. She looked into Rainbow’s eyes over the tops of her glasses. “Do I look old?!”
Rainbows’ ears lay flat against the back of her head. She held up her hooves and waved them. “No, no, no! You look good! You're not old.”
Penny sighed in relief and slumped down. “Blin… Don’t scare a girl like that.”
Rainbow cocked her head. “What’s wrong with getting old?”
Penny’s lips pulled upwards slightly. “We don’t do that. My people were engineered to live on our homeworld. It’s extremely radioactive, so we named it Chern."
Rainbow tilted her head to the left. "Why?"
Penny shrugged. "I don't know. I wasn't alive back then. I'm fourth generation. All I know is the name is short for Chernobyl. We think that was the capital of our ancestor’s homeworld. It was an irradiated hellhole full of bandits and strange psi-rifts. Easy to see why they sent us away to find a new home."
Rainbow shook her head. "No, I meant why is your world so radioactive? Did you have a big war or something?"
Penny snorted. "Nyet. Chern hasn't been invaded in any wars, yet. It's irradiated because of our star. Something about it made it decide to go ape and emit extremely high levels of radiation for the last six thousand years. Chern is so radioactive, most races would die instantly if exposed to the outdoors. We had to be engineered to survive those conditions. That's why most people call our planet 'The Empire of Atomicbombia'."
Rainbow winced. Anywhere with a name like that couldn’t possibly be a nice place. "Wait, like, if I went there, I'd just drop dead from radiation sickness as soon as i went outside? How do you engineer against that? Can you wear-- Oh! That's why your armor is so thick, isn't it?"
Penny shook her head. "Genetic engineering, not mechanical engineer. My people are so resistant to radiation that the amount needed to make us sick is so big, the energy transfer will make us combust. So we either survive radiation exposure without consequence, or turn into Chernin candles.”
Rainbow squinted at Penny, trying to process how any of that would work, and failing. Her trade school hadn't included alien biology in its weather manipulation classes. “Okay, and that’s related to you looking old being bad, how?”
“Well, our radio-resistance works using a few different things together. If one of them fails, it is rapid ageing followed by death. Da, total pizdec in three minutes flat. But, if everything keeps working, since all our cells self-repair instead of dying and duplicating, we don't age at all.”
Rainbow blinked several times. “Uh, then how did you grow up?”
“We don’t. We don’t have children, either. Not like you do. A couple who wants a child has one grown for them. While they’re growing, they whip up memory implants for the whole family, and everyone gets their copy of the memories. A whole childhood experience for everyone. When you get taken out of your tank, it’s like seeing people you’ve known forever despite having never seen them before.”
Rainbow’s frown said it all. That sort of life didn’t sound like anything anypony would ever want to experience. It frankly sounded like something you’d think about subjecting your worst enemy to. “That’s horrible! I’m so sorry!”
Penny threw back her head and laughed. “Everyone says that!” Penny leaned forwards and wrapped her right arm around Rainbow, pulling her over to sit against their side. The Chernin woman gestured to the air in front of them. “The galaxy is vast, Blue. There're all kinds of ways to have kids, each is normal for the people you meet who use it. It’s not bad. I remember sitting in the kitchen, helping babushka make kvass, and she remembers me helping her. True, it didn’t really happen, but that doesn't matter to us.”
Penny let go of Rainbow and pushed herself up off the deck and into a squatting position. “What made you think I was a mother?”
Rainbow politely withheld her opinions on being called Blue again. “Your teats are, you know, showing.”
Penny chuckled and looked down at her chest. “Oh. No, these are always like this for us. Many races you’ll meet have them all the time.”
Rainbow looked at Penny’s chest and imagined having two grapefruit sized lumps of fluid in front of her legs all the time. “No offense, but that seems annoying... And weird. Like, those should be down by your marehood, you know?”
Penny blushed and coughed into her fist to avoid Rainbow noticing her thinking about a partner with all the 'fun bits' in one conveniently accessible location. “Is no problem. Our engineers built in ligaments to make a natural bra. No back pain, no excessive jiggling.”
What the hay is a bra? Rainbow wondered before deciding to avoid that topic for now. “Yeah, but what about like, laying on your stomach? Or reaching for things?”
“Ey,” Penny shrugged. “Not a big deal.”
Rainbow sighed and rested her head against the wall. “If you say so… Oh! Yeah, uh, did you recover our stuff from the shuttle?”
“Mhm. I got almost everything. Your bags are fine. I have them in the hold with Pan’s luggage.”
“Oh, good.” Rainbow trailed off and looked around the medical bay for the first time as she searched for Pan. “Is he okay?”
The bay was fairly spacious. It was built in a rectangular room, had six beds, a number of workstations, and every wall had several compartments built into it which slid in and out to reveal specialty tools that didn’t need to be accessible all the time. The medical bay was intentionally left as empty and open as possible. It had been meant to serve a crew of twenty-five hands and needed a certain amount of space for emergency situations.
Decoration wise, the medical bay was bland, sterile, and smelled of bleach. Your standard hospital. All stainless steel, white vinyl cabinets, and extra bright lights.
“Da, he’s fine. He got banged up worse than you did, but I fixed everything,” Penny said with a nervous smile. “I also did some mods for him. Don’t protest. He consented to them a long time ago and has been looking forward to them.”
“Why?” Rainbow asked. “He doesn't strike me as the type of pony who wants to have shiny metal bits poking out of him all the time.”
Penny snorted. “Da, that’s not him at all. Don’t worry about your translator showing. It’s all flush with your skull.”
Rainbow reached up with one hoof to feel around her ears. Nothing seemed out of place. She nodded to herself, happy there wasn’t some antenna sticking out of her, and asked the obvious questions. “Sooo, what did he want? And where is he?”
“He’s in my bed. My cabin is down the corridor a bit. He came off the drugs I had him on and went into a normal sleep instead of waking up. The computer said he was okay, so I put him in a more comfortable bed. He was having a hard time dropping into REM on the medical bed. Don't worry, the Dawn will tell me if he’s waking up, so we can be there for him.
“As for what he got, Pan wants to live here forever. There’s only one other quadruped species I know of, and they don’t leave home. They send holograms out to explore the universe, so they can take the form of anything they like. They tend to like imitating the locals wherever they go, so you don’t see many things built for quads.”
Rainbow frowned. “If that’s true, why would anything be made for us? Back home, there’s only two biped species, and yeah, there’s not much made for them, either.”
“Because transformatives,” Penny said with a nervous laugh. “Ey… I don’t… What’s your culture’s view on body autonomy, the right to live as you wish, gender identity, and art?”
Rainbow's brain shut down in response to Penny’s question. “Uhhhhh…”
Penny sighed. “Other species which don’t constantly regenerate can use drugs, nanomachines, surgery, and/or combinations of those things to alter their body almost in any way they like. There are some people who are quadrupeds who were not born as quadrupeds. Enough for there to be some accommodations for them. But there are no accommodations for hooves of which I know.”
Rainbow bit her lip nervously. “Uh, will that be a problem for me?”
Penny shook her head. “Nyet. I can make you gauntlets which will help you. Pan wanted a more permanent solution. Also, after a while, who knows. Someone might design things for ponies. There’s enough demand for it with a whole planet of you guys.
“Heck, it wouldn’t be the first time something like that’s happened. My last girlfriend was a Legri by birth, but turned herself into a mass of tentacles because—”
Rainbow’s cheeks flushed. “Um, that’s uh… Kinky…”
Penny grinned. “Da! It’s why I dated her. I hadn’t been with a cephalopod before. Though most wouldn’t call her kinky for wanting to be a D’roil. Transrace people are… A thing. I can understand it a little. There’s a lot of very cool species out there. You might find one so beautiful you want to be one yourself; but the world of bodymodding isn’t for Chern. Our regeneration makes us reject implants and alterations.”
Rainbow nodded as Penny continued. That made sense to her. If your body repaired itself so well you didn’t age, and since Penny wasn’t a walking mass of scar tissue from thousands of daily cuts and bruises, that implied Chernin would regrow lost parts. If true, then anything implanted in them would get pushed out of their body as it regenerated. Likewise, their body would fight and overcome any genetic changes made to it.
All of this was quite true. Chernin had to be designed with any implants from day one of their growth cycle onward. Penny’s neural interface had always been a part of her. It had existed before her brain grew around it.
The young woman continued. “As for Pan, he wanted to be able to use tools, vehicles, computers. You know, basic everyday things. I adjusted his hips, so he can stand on all fours or on two legs comfortably. That’s without losing any of his agility or grace. I also replaced his forehooves with some chrome parts I matched to his colors. They work like normal hooves, but can transition to a hand-mode. We worked out the size and style over the comm for months… I wish he could have sent me medical texts. I spent two days trying to install them.”
Rainbow paused, trying to picture what she was being told in her mind's eye. “Sooo, you made him able to turn into a biped?”
“Ey… Kinda?” Penny shrugged. “More like he can stand up if he needs to reach things, or use both forelimbs at once while walking. That’s a normal thing we do daily. He will also need to manipulate things designed for hands… But he won't be a biped. I didn’t do anything to his spine, neck, or other things.
“Ever see a frein?”
Rainbow shook her head. “Can’t say that I have.”
Penny held her hands apart, drawing a box in the air about the size of a cat. “Little scavengers, this big. They are fluffy and have racing stripes. They run around on all fours, but can stand up and walk if they want to. He’s more like that now. I think it’s called a transitory biped.”
“So, he’ll be more comfortable like a normal pony, but can stand up like you?”
“Da,” Penny nodded.
Rainbow looked off into the distance for a moment. She knew Pan wanted to live here forever. He’d left Equus for good. “Why wouldn’t he want to be a biped forever? He’s ditching Equus for... Wherever you live, I guess.”
“I live on the Dawn,” Penny said as she stood up. “Pan wanted to stay as close to himself as possible, in case he wants to visit his parents or sister someday.”
Rainbow stood up, assuming that Penny was going to walk somewhere. The last thing she wanted right now was to be alone on an alien ship.
Penny’s remark about his parents made Rainbow think of family. She blushed slightly as a vague memory of Pan saying he and Penny would be a couple if they liked each other in person entered her mind. “He has a sister?”
Penny nodded. “Da. He talks about her a lot… Funny thing, he only told me her name once. My translator mangled her name, and I’ve been too embarrassed to ask him what her name is.”
Rainbow smirked. Finally, an alien emotion she could relate too. Of course, there was another more burning question on her mind.
“Why him?”
Penny frowned. There were a million things that Rainbow could mean by that. “Mmm?”
Rainbow bit her lip as she did her best to phrase her question diplomatically. “Why Pan? I understand you like other species and want to have one for your special somepony, but—”
Penny blinked, her eyebrows raising. “Excuse me, but there was a translator error. Whatever you said after ‘to have one for your’ translated for me as ‘special someponi’. What did you mean?”
Rainbow smirked. “That’s what we call colt and marefriends as a group if we don’t want to mention their gender.”
Penny winced, groaned, and rested her face against her left palm. “Oh, god. That sounds so dumb…”
“Well, what do you say?”
“Partner.”
Rainbow nodded. “Right, special somepony.” She winked at Penny, glad to find a way to get even for being called Blue.
Penny smiled, amusement making her cheeks dimple. “I get it, I get it. I’m guessing you’re asking why I decided to give Pan a try as my ‘special somepony’?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah! Why him? He’s kinda weird. Not the good kind, either. He isn't coltfriend material, if you ask me. Why not just be friends? He’s still nice, and everypony needs a friend.”
Penny squatted down to look Rainbow in her eyes. The young woman’s youthful front vanished as she presented her words with an ancient wisdom Rainbow had only ever seen in Celestia and very old ponies. “Because he needs more than a friend. He’s a young man who didn’t learn how to finish growing up.”
Rainbow frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. He’s like twenty eight-ish. Stallions are still kinda immature at that age.”
Penny nodded slowly. “Da, but it’s worse than that for him, Blue. He never learned that life is about more than your own wants and needs. He doesn't understand the value of fitting in with your community. True, I don’t fit in with mine… But I understand that value. I would go home and live with my people if I could. But I cannot, and Chernin can’t use modern medical procedures. I’ll never be able to... “
Rainbow’s frown deepened as she tried to understand what Penny was talking about. “To what?”
“I can’t understand my own species’ emotions,” she explained calmly.
Rainbow’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that of all things to be a problem for someone who could grow individual organs to keep someone alive. “What? How!?”
“Nyet! Not entirely. I understand some things. If someone tells me they are mad, I get it. I also get it if they are obviously mad, screaming, waving arms, spouting threats… But if they are just sitting and stewing? I’ll never know there’s anything wrong with them. I am blind to emotions that are not extreme.
“Fortunately for me, it’s not true for aliens’ emotions. I understand you just fine. Your expressions, body language, tone, they all make sense, while Chernins’ do not. I can’t live with my people without being highly stressed, but I still value them. We’re born spacers. Most of us live in space anyways. I just don't attend meetups, is all. But I still send money home and spread the values of my people: peace, love, good food, and fun times!”
Rainbow’s frown vanished. “Okay, I understand now… I’m sorry. That must be rough. When I was little I couldn’t read ponies subtle emotions either. But I tried really hard and learned how. Uh, don't get me wrong, though! I know how mental issues can be. Not everyone can fix them with willpower.”
Penny nodded and offered Rainbow a grateful smile. “Thank you, comrade. As for Pan, he doesn't understand that he should be a part of your people even if he doesn't fit in like a puzzle piece. He can be different and contribute to your race’s story. If he contributed, he would find happiness despite his troubles fitting in. He would even be accepted more.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” Rainbow said as she smiled. “You’re dating him because you can empathize with him.”
“Da, that is a big part of it. It also helps that he’s a fun guy. Not too masculine, not too feminine. It’s refreshing… Of course, your race is cute too! That helps,” Penny returned Rainbow’s smile. “But, it’s not just that. I’ve been where he is before. He needs a loving relationship to grow. He needs to feel like he belongs. When that day comes, we can visit his family, and they can see their son isn’t a failure. That he made it, it just took a bit of time, and a hot alien girlfriend. Or maybe wife, who knows? I want to be with him, and I can help him too. I feel like I should be with him. Make sense?”
Rainbow frowned. “Wait, you plan to make him change? Like, stop drawing kinky stuff, dress in stallion-appropriate clothes, and be a normal guy?”
Penny laughed and shook her head. “Nyet! Why would I make him be someone else? I love him as a person… He’s also stupid-attractive. Blin! Back on topic. It’s not his likes that are the problem. It’s how he thinks they isolate him from others. That is what I will change.”
Before Rainbow could fully reflect on Penny’s words, the pink-haired woman hopped to her feet and began to walk out of the medical bay. She made it six steps before Rainbow took off after her.
“Hey! What’s happening? Where are we going?”
Penny blinked then grinned sheepishly down at Rainbow. “Oh! Sorry, Blue. Forgot you don’t have a HUD. Dawn says Pan is waking up. I want to be there when he does.”
“Oh! Yeah, let’s go,” Rainbow agreed, following along behind Penny as she left the medical bay.
The chrome doors slid open with a quiet hiss, unveiling the Dawn’s interior. Rainbow had a bit of a hard time processing what she was looking at. Years of sci-fi movies, comics, and more recently, books, had conditioned her to accept the idea that all starships were metal boxes decorated with different colors of metal, glass, and ‘science stuff’. The Dawn was anything but.
Rubberized hexagonal tiles formed the ship’s floor. It was the only design choice which fit Rainbow’s expectations.
The walls were metal, but had been painted a cheerful shade of blue and given a nice, dark wood wainscoting, which helped the black floor transition into the brighter blue wall. There was even a baseboard, and it included embedded lights which helped label rooms with a simple color code, as well as illuminate the hallway.
There were no harsh lighting panels embedded in the ceiling. Instead, small, blister-like bubbles protruded downwards from the ceiling at regular intervals, projecting a rich simulation of natural sunlight during mid-afternoon. It helped the somewhat small space feel larger than it was.
Hidden scent emitters and humidifiers added to the experience, creating a relaxed atmosphere. Rainbow felt like she was in someone's house instead of a spacecraft. If it weren't for the alien walking in front of her, she’d have believed she was in a mansion owned by a noble who wasn’t into elegant finery.
The trip from the medbay to Penny’s cabin was short. The two proceeded along the corridor for only forty meters before Penny turned left and tapped a small chrome panel next to another monstrously huge, chrome-plated door with her fingertips. The doors hissed open, revealing her bedroom.
Dash felt a pang of jealousy rush through her as she looked into Penny’s room. Not for the furnishings, or the decor, or the paint scheme. All of that was secondary to her closet.
Penny’s closet ran along half of the room’s circular perimeter. The closet’s many doors were made from transparent aluminum and slid up into the ceiling. Penny’s T-34 was housed in the center, with each of the closet’s wings containing different limbs, modular plating, and other optional quick-link systems.
Rainbow’s eyes lit up at the awesome sight of a literal mech closet and made a beeline for the display. She ignored everything else in the room. The personal bar stocked with vodka, the large round bed with the space behind the headboard serving as a desk, the many awards, letters, and photos hung on the walls.
The only thing which mattered to her was the fact that Penny’s T-34 had a jetpack attachment. It hung on hooks next to the suit itself, its bat-like wings folded up with the holo-membranes switched on at minimal power to provide a cool orange glow. Rainbow couldn’t help but ogle the twin nuclear ramjets on the central pack.
Not that she knew what they were. All Rainbow knew was the pack had energy wings, two turbines as big as she was, and a cool black and yellow dot-and-triangles-symbol on the power supply.
“So awesome!” Rainbow said with a grin as she imagined having a fairer race against her Chernin friend.
Pandora - 749,558.31 A.H.
Captain’s Quarters, Dawn of Destiny, Solar Escape Trajectory - Equus System, K3 Sector
Pan woke up with the distinct feeling of a hangover. He had experienced several proper skull splitters in his life, all of which put the dull ache in his brain to shame. He knew exactly how to cure what felt like a six cider problem.
Okay… Shut eyes extra tight. Take six deep breaths… Pan paused for a moment to execute his instructions. The extra oxygen flowed into his lungs and into his bloodstream, helping to soothe the dull buzzing in his head.
Now, block out the noise with some DJ-Pon3. Pan focused all his attention on remembering the beat, melody, and lyrics of one of his favorite songs: You Boop Me Right (On the Snootle), from DJ-Pon3’s album “Popular Parodies 3”.
The sound of a small motor humming punctured the quiet melody of Pan’s mental music. He frowned, briefly confused by the sound until a female voice shouted a dire warning.
“Oi! Don’t open that unless you want a face full of plutonium, blin!”
“Plu-what-ium?” somepony asked.
That sounded like Rainbow Dash.
“That pack’s nuclear powered. If you open it, you won’t have a good time.”
And that sounded like— Pan’s eyes snapped open. He was laying on a circular bed in a large, round room.
A well-decorated room. If not for the black rubberized floor panels, the cherry-colored reddish wood wainscoting and glossy, creamy-yellow walls would have looked at home in a rich pony’s house. The furniture continued that impression. The blankets he lay under felt like silk, only even better. Penny’s bed itself was made from steel, and decorated with a nice wood veneer with a rich-person-looking type of wood with a nice dark brown color to it.
The same wooden veneer covered every other piece of furniture in the room, all of which was actually made of durasteel so Penny’s T-34 wouldn’t crush it if she stumbled walking in our out of her room. The lovely dark wood layer prevented her bedroom from looking like a prison.
A very unusual prison, which allowed its inmates to have a 255 bottle liquor cabinet, a computer terminal, and an epic bed in their cells… But a prison nonetheless.
Rainbow stopped messing with the T-34’s flight module. “Okay. Can you like, put a warning label on deadly things?”
“It has one, blin! Big, yellow, right on the fuel compartment. Can’t miss it.”
“Oh! That’s what that means.”
“We’ll go over ship safety protocol once Pan’s up. You need to know what not to poke… Don’t touch any of the ammo in my closet, please.”
Rainbow turned and snapped Penny a salute. “I won’t. Junior Wonderbolts’ honor! Uh, what’s the ammo look like?”
“Oi, blin… Touch nothing!”
Pan’s eyes skimmed over the room, searching for the source of the familiar voice. His eyes fell on Penny’s paper-white body and his heart began to beat faster.
She was tall, as bipeds tend to be. Her hips would be about on his eye level, based on how long her slender legs were. Pan spent a few seconds looking at Penny’s feet. He couldn’t see them under her mobility frame’s boots, but their shape was apparent, and very alien.
Not a single species on Equus had feet as far as Pan knew. He only knew the word feet thanks to Penny herself. They shape reminded him of a dragons’ talons, only without any claws or a hallux. Her legs just bent at the end, making a flat spot. Or like a monkey’s hind-paws, but without the grabby bits.
Those are neat!
Pan’s eyes moved upwards. He took in the frame stuck to Penny’s body and simply ignored it. She had said she was a cyborg, and if that’s all she had attached to her, that wasn’t a problem. His eyes took in the black holographic shorts Penny had given herself, and he smiled.
She remembered I find clothes cute! Yay!
Pan smiled and pushed himself upwards from the bed. Penny turned as the blankets rustled, and Pan saw her face. It was flat, with soft features, a cute little nose which reminded Pan of a monkey’s, and small, pink, pony-like eyes. Her face was alien for sure, but her hair was bright pink, with a darker pink streak in it, much like a pony’s mane. Her hair framed her face, making her look at once alien, but familiar. In a word, exotic.
Pan smiled. “Hi, Penny.”
Penny smiled. “Opa!” She reached down and picked Pan up, holding him to her chest in a tight hug made possible only by her frame’s assistance. “How are you?”
Pan’s eyes dilated to pinpricks as he felt Penny’s breasts squished against his chest. “Uh… Wondering why I can’t see through such a thin top.” He admitted with a blush as he returned Penny’s hug.
“Oh, those are holograms… I must have forgotten to add tactile feedback to them,” Penny said as she set Pan down on the bed in front of her. “I don’t like wearing actual clothing. It feels bad.”
Penny quickly adjusted the projections with a mental command, adding the hardlight tactical simulation to the outer layer of her holographic outfit. She had genuinely forgotten to add one while improvising the outfit in the first place. Penny blushed, realizing it was a good thing she hadn’t hugged Rainbow earlier despite really wanting to squeeze the adorable little pony.
Pan nodded understandingly. “Yeah. Cloth feels weird rubbing on bare skin. I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have fur and wear something.”
“Ey, most handle it just fine. I’ve… Spent too long in my armor. Heh… Too used to air, or water,” she paused for a moment, twiddling her fingers before clearing her throat. “So…”
Penny gestured to herself with both hands and nodded at Pan. “Ey?”
Pan looked her up and down again. “Well… No offense, but you should have told me you were a mom.”
Penny facepalmed and smiled, shaking her head before rolling her eyes at Pan. “Xexe! Rainbow said the same thing. I don’t have any children, Pan. Our breasts are always like this. Most species out here have them all the time.”
Pan’s eyes widened. “Really?”
Rainbow cleared her throat. “Yeah, that’s what she told me, at least.”
Pan smiled almost as wide as he could. “Awesome!”
Penny’s eyes sparkled for a moment. “Chudesnyy! Think we can be a thing, or will you need your own bunk?”
Pan hummed and rubbed his chin as he looked Penny up and down once more. “Honestly, I fell for your personality, Penny. Looks aren't too important to me. It’s you who was worried I’d think you looked gross.”
Penny shrugged. “Some species don’t take to aliens well. Besides, each individual is different.”
Rainbow stepped into Pan’s view and looked up at Penny. “Wait, you were worried we would think you looked gross, so you covered your groin, and your teats? Why not everything?”
Penny snorted. “It’s my ship, Blue. I’ll dress how I like. That usually means I don’t dress at all. I thought you might not want alien pizda in your face all the time. Especially not one that’s been attached to a waste-reclamation system for hundreds of years. So, I put on holo-shorts.”
Rainbow tilted her head, did some mental math to compare heights, realized Penny didn’t have a tail, nor would her marehood be towards her rear for her tail to cover. A blush spread across her cheeks. “Oh. Thank you.”
Pan’s ears drooped slightly. He would have enjoyed that. At least, he would have with the woman he loved. Then Penny’s words clicked in his mind, and his ears perked in alarm. “You never mentioned that! Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself somehow?”
Penny blushed. “Well, da… Slowly. Over many years. My species can only be modified during our first few years of life. I spent mine in armor—”
Pan blinked, wondering why an infant would need armor. “You did? Why?”
Penny chuckled. “My family makes mechs, armor, and weapons. I was made to help with advertising our wares. I enjoyed the work and decided to live in my armor full time as a stunt. That… Had consequences. I spent my developmental stage flooded with medical nanomachines and hooked to life support and waste reclamation systems. The waste hose would suck on things… Tissue would swell and tear, and the nanites would go ‘oh hey, this tore, let’s patch it up.’ Ey, basically, I did additive manufacturing on myself… So I fit the waste-system like a glove. C— Can we not talk about this in front of Blue, please?”
Pan’s ears drooped down. “Of course. I’m sorry. I was only worried about you.”
Penny waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine. Everything works. It’s just, uh… Big. Fits the cup perfectly… At least I can't do any more damage to myself.”
Rainbow held up a hoof. “Is that why you’re in that mobility frame? You didn’t build muscles while you could?”
Penny nodded. “Da. I can get around without this, but doing any real work is out of the question.” She smiled and offered Rainbow a wink. “Upside, I trained my nerves to work cyberware all day every day. It made me an ace mech pilot.”
Pan blinked. “Wait, mech?”
“Da, mech.”
“But you called your suit power armor.”
Penny nodded. “Right. It is Hawking Industries T-34 Power Armor. One of the most popular suits in the Galaxy for my people. We’re only beaten out by the Exo-Sport line by Adidas.”
Rainbow looked over at Penny’s stored armor, then back to her. Then back to the armor. “That thing is four ponies tall. Just how big are your mechs?”
“Eh, four to five times that size?” Penny said with a shrug. “Technically, T-34 is a light mech with neural controls. Papa got it classed as power armor for environmental regulation reasons… Also, there’s more of a market for power armor. Civilians can own it. They can’t own mechs.”
Pan smiled. “Neat! Sooo, um… I don’t remember getting on your ship. When did that happen? I feel hungover. Did— Uh, did we… You know?” Pan clapped his hooves together twice.
Penny snorted and shook her head. “Nyet! Amnesia, ey? Blin… Well, there are worse things to forget. We got spaced. It’s okay, I patched you up, and we’ll see a proper doctor in the morning.”
Pan closed his eyes and tried to remember. The last thing he could remember was seeing Equus drifting beneath him as the Hoatzin left the atmosphere.
“I don’t remember that… How bad was I hurt?”
Penny looked away for a moment. “Badly… You both were unconscious for several days.”
Pan winced, his tail flagging in alarm. “Oh… Uh, well, ponyfeathers.”
“Da,” Penny gently hugged Pan to her chest, then tipped his chin up with one hand and looked into his eyes with a smile. “Do not worry. I was here for you, and I will be until you don’t want me to be. Okay?”
Pan blushed and stretched his neck upwards, planting a kiss on Penny’s little nose. “That sounds wonderful.”
Rainbow bit her lip to keep from saying something inappropriate. She didn’t disapprove of interspecies relationships. After all, she had briefly dated a griffon. That said, saying ‘Oh, that’s why ponies mistook you for a mare.’ Wouldn’t have been appropriate at the moment, even if it would be a good friendly barb to throw Pan’s way.
Penny returned Pan’s kiss and stood up. “Okay! Let’s get things moving. We need to get you two registered before we leave your sector. But first, just so you don’t have a panic attack, Pan, I installed the mods you wanted while you were out. It seemed best. I don’t carry much anesthetic.”
Pan’s ears perked. “You did?!” He held up his forehooves and looked at them closely.
They seemed original at first, until he noticed their slight metallic sheen and the tiny flecks of glitter in the paint. “You did! I love the sparkles. That’s a nice touch.”
“Da! Just enough to make them shine in the light like natural keratin. Can you feel with them?”
Pan reached down and touched the blanket he sat on, the soft feeling of silk flowed under each hoof. He nodded. “Mhm! A bit better than before, I’d say.”
Penny’s brow furrowed as an especially nasty worry came to mind. “Good. Can they still lift things in that form?”
Pan picked up the blanket with each forehoof, and frowned. “The grip feels a little weak, but I am holding things.”
Penny’s brow smoothed as she sighed in relief. “We’ll have a psi-engineer tune them later. I don’t work with psi-tech normally. I’m glad it works at all… Okay, here’s the hard part. You’ve never moved like this before, but think about having a hand.”
Pan closed his eyes and focused as hard as he could. It didn’t take nearly as much effort as he thought it would. The micro controllers in his hooves detected his thoughts through his own nerves just as they were designed to, and activated ‘grasper mode’ by feeding his autonomic nervous system the data it needed.
Pan opened his eyes as he both heard and felt his hooves click. Each hoof separated into five different segments. The seams between which had been completely hidden thanks to Penny’s expert machining and a powerful set of limited-vector electromagnets which held the hooves together.
Once each piece was separated, the hooves unfolded. Frogs became palms and rotated to be inline with his forelegs, while the segments of hoof unfolded into four fingers and a thumb. His hooves didn’t look even remotely organic in their grasper-state. No biological hand would ever look that cartoony and stylized.
Pan’s ears drooped as he wiggled his fingers. “This is weird… Really weird!” He said with a wince.
Rainbow nodded in agreement, her face mirroring his own. “Hooves shouldn’t do that…”
Penny frowned. “I did my best. Sorry.”
Pan shook his head. “No, just uh… They look good. But it’s weird to look at my legs and see robot hands. Way weirder than I thought.”
Penny sighed. “I can clone new hooves for you and install them tomorrow.”
Pan transitioned his hooves back to their normal mode and shook his head. “No! No, it’s okay. I did ask for these. I’ll get used to it. It’s just… Imagining something is different from actually getting it, I guess.”
Pan shivered as the last vestiges of body horror left his mind. With his hooves folded back up, they looked normal again, and the uneasy feeling they’d incited in him was no more. I think I can get used to these… They at least feel like my hooves like this.
Rainbow shivered. “I don’t think I could ever get used to that.”
“Da, that’s why bio-mods are more popular than hardware-mods,” Penny said, nodding in agreement. “Pan’s graspers were not possible with biotech. Uh, for me. I’m sure someone could have done it that way.”
Pan nodded and slid out of bed onto all fours. “The other thing was just surgical, right? So I should just rear up?”
Penny nodded. Pan reared up. The movement was more fluid than he had expected, and he accidentally fell over backwards onto the bed. “Oof! Hehe, my bad! Usually it takes a lot more thigh power to do that!”
Penny smiled and offered him a hand to help him up. “Try to stand on your hind legs from there.”
Pan took her hand and pulled himself up onto his hind legs, easily finding his balance. In this position his head was right on eye level with Penny’s chest. Pan took a few experimental steps with a nervous frown on his lips. The year of practice he had put in walking upright combined with the slight alterations to his pelvis, hips, and thighs made bipedal locomotion cake.
Rainbow shook her head slowly. “Man… Okay, that’s cool. I know how hard that is!”
Penny cocked her head. “Ey? Is it common for ponies to walk like this?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, the Guard trains to do it, so they can make shield walls and stuff. I did a bit of practice with it because the Wonderbolts are technically part of the Air Guard, so I’d have to do basic to join them. That’s something I want to do.”
“I could do the same surgery for you. It won't hurt your normal walking at all,” Penny said as she began to walk towards her door. “I didn’t invent the procedure, I reversed an existing one. It’s old, tried and true.”
Rainbow thought about it then shrugged her wings. “Maybe one day? Could be a good idea but… I think I’ve been ‘worked on’ enough for a while.”
Penny offered Rainbow an apologetic smile. “I did my best, Blue. Maybe be happy you’re not dead?” Penny tapped the door release and opened her bedroom door. “Anyways, it’s time for a tour. Blue, we will see your cabin first. Pay extra close attention, because until you’re qualified to do another job on my ship, you will be cleaning it.”
Rainbow’s wings flared slightly. “Uh, what?”
Penny squatted down. “This is a starship. There is lots of work to be done. Everyone onboard needs to contribute. Da, cleaning work can be bot work, it’s true, but you don’t know anything which will let you do other work, so I will turn off those bots, and you will clean till you find another job. You want to earn credits, da?”
To Rainbow’s shock, Pan nodded in agreement with Penny. “Trust me, Rainbow, you do! I’m working too. I’m going to help manage her streams and broadcasting while she’s on the ground, and when in space I’ll be the Communication's Officer. She’s been training me at that job for a year now, and before that I was going to school to be a technoarcana communications specialist.”
Rainbow’s ears dropped down. “Oh, uh… I have a degree from a trade school!”
Penny’s eyes brightened. “Da?”
“Yeah! I’m a certified weather manager with five years of experience as a team leader.”
Penny looked over to Pan in confusion. “That means she can… ?”
“She can control the weather, and do it right so it won't mess anything up.”
Rainbow nodded proudly, only for her ears to slowly began to droop. “Yep! I’m also one of the fastest, most agile ponies alive. But, um… I guess athlete isn’t really a uh… Space job. Hmm…”
Penny looked Rainbow in the eyes and smiled. “It is a space job. Tell you what, we will get you started as janitor for now, so you have some credits when we get to Tavros from your hiring bonus. Then I’ll start training you as my squire.”
Rainbow tilted her head to one side. “Squire? Are you a knight? What’s a knight doing driving a fuel truck? I mean, ship.”
Penny waved a hand in dismissal. “The fuel is a side job. Extra credits. I’m also not a knight. Squire isn’t a feudal term in Chernin. I am a Xeno Hunter. I go from planet to planet and hunt dangerous apex predators which threaten local settlements.”
Rainbow triple blinked as her face scrunched into a look of disgust. “Wait, what?! That’s a job?”
Penny nodded. “Da. I also stream each hunt for extra credits.”
Pan’s eyes narrowed as he stepped into Penny’s defense. “Rainbow, it’s not what you think. She’s hunting things like jackalopes. What she does is like that time you and your friends went to stop that dragon. Imagine if dragons were not people, and were very savage predators. Imagine if the only way to keep a town safe from a dragon was to drive it away or kill it. That’s what she does.”
Rainbow raised one eyebrow skeptically. “So… If they were like timberwolves?”
Penny nodded in confirmation. “Da. Now imagine there’s a whole blyat-load of even more dangerous things out there to control. Xeno Hunting is a valid career. It keeps people safe, and it keeps animals safe, too! I don’t just kill things. While in the field, I take notes on the ecosystem, catalog flora and fauna, and if I do have to make a kill, well, it will be dissected to learn about the creature so more effective means of deterring them can be found. Bioscanners aren't as good as sending a body to a lab.
“When I finish a job, people are safe, their livestock is safe, the local animals are no longer being eaten wholesale by an apex predator, and the planet or habitat has a fresh set of environmental data to work with. True, one or two animals will be killed, but nothing will go to waste. Everything I kill is used completely. The meat will be butchered and sold if it can be eaten, and if not it will be turned into useful materials with everything you can’t eat.”
Rainbow frowned. “Wait, so like, you’re not a big game hunter. You’re animal control?”
“From what she’s told me, it’s more like monster control,” Pan said, smiling in relief as Rainbow’s hostile expression softened.
“Da. I also sometimes get to arrest poachers,” Penny added.
Rainbow’s skeptical face remained. “And sending one mare down in some armor with a gun is the best way to solve the problem?”
Penny shook her head. “Nyet. But it works and people have to do something with their lives.”
Rainbow shrugged her wings. “Well, okay. Seems like you could use robots for this, but if that’s how you guys do it, and it works, I guess I can’t complain.”
Penny stood up. “More importantly, my job takes me around to the fringe worlds which don’t have the resources to use automated defenses yet. That’s where Nova Wing likes to operate. It will help us find them. By being my squire, you will learn how my weapons and armor work, what they can do, and when I use them. It will help you learn to fight them if it ever comes to that.”
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed, her lips parted in a sinister smile. “I like the sound of that! What’s this job mean for me? Like, what will I do?”
“Maintain my weapons and armor, fetch me tools when I need them in the field. Go planetside with me and have my back.”
The mare nodded eagerly. “I can do that! But, uh, will I still need to clean?”
“Da. At least till you can perform maintenance on my equipment. Like I said, everyone works on my ship. Don’t worry! There will be time for play too. Time also for searching for your friends. That will be when we’re docked or planetside, mostly. But now, the tour! Come.”
The Dawn of Destiny was a fairly small ship, but to Dash and Pan it seemed huge. The ship was easily the size of a large Manehattan skyscraper and featured four decks. The two ponies had awoken on deck two, the living area.
Deck two was nicely decorated, and was where the ship’s major facilities were located: the captain’s quarters, the conference room, the guest suite, the kitchen and dining hall, the medical bay, and the recreation hall.
The rec hall interested Dash the most. It consisted of a gym with gravity controls, a place to watch movies with friends, and a small room with simulation pods. Much to her relief, the guest suite she was given had more than enough space for her tastes, and Penny promised any furniture or decor she needed could be made on board.
Rainbow got excited at the sight of the Dawn’s full sized industrial kitchen. Meant to cook three meals a day for a crew of up to thirty normal-sized people, the Dawn’s kitchen was a state of the art facility. Rainbow recognised the basic items, the refrigerator, stove top, oven, and prep-station for what they were. What she didn’t recognise was small items like the flavor synthesizer (which could form small amounts of miscellaneous compounds from stored chemicals), Prep-Drone (a small robot which would prepare ingredients for you), and the small hydroponic herb garden.
To everypony’s delight, Rainbow volunteered to be the ship’s cook. Pan had been nervous about living entirely on packaged foods, and while Penny could sustain herself on vodka and rationbars, she still had a sense of taste. Rainbow's pending job was updated, no longer would she be cleaning floors.
Deck three used to be the crew deck. Penny had completely gutted it and redesigned it to be a single, massive workshop. The deck had no decoration at all, and smelled of grease, oils, metal, and chemicals. It was noisy, with automated systems working on various projects the entire time Penny showed them around the deck. Everything she needed for her job, as well as nearly anything else, could be machined, built, grown, or otherwise created in this one room.
Deck four was the heart of the ship. It contained the engines, as well as the ship’s other major systems, the computer core, the surf drive, and the cargo bay. Like deck three, deck four was undecorated. Steel, rubber, glass, like a proper fuel-tanker. The one exception was the cargo bay, which shared deck two’s wood paneling and paint job. Visitors deserved a good first impression after all.
The last deck Penny showed her new friends was deck one, command. The deck consisted entirely of the bridge, which took the form of a transparisteel bubble on the ship’s bow. Both Rainbow and Pan expressed concern about the bridge being separated from the vacuum of space by a grid of hexagon shaped windows. Penny had laughed, assuring them that the hull was thicker here than anywhere else on the ship. It had merely been made transparent. It was perfectly safe against anything likely to hit the ship itself.
After all, the Dawn was a civilian ship, not a ship of the line. If anything did breach its shields, the fight was already over.
The bridge itself had a simple layout. The captain’s seat was at the rear center of the bridge, and various stations were arrayed around the edge of the bubble, allowing the ship to be controlled manually. Rainbow had asked how the Dawn could be controlled by one person after seeing the whole ship, the eight bridge stations in particular.
Penny’s answer echoed in Pan’s mind while he sat in the conference room on deck two.
“Right now, the Dawn is automated… Which means she flies a fifth as well as she could be if I had a full crew. But I never wanted to hire one. I always hoped to fill those seats with friends.”
That would be cool. We could make a bunch of alien friends and zip around the stars protecting people from monsters. We'd be real heroes! I should so talk her into it.
Rainbow groaned and leaned back in her chair. “Ugh! What’s taking so long?!”
“Be patient,” Penny said for the fifth time. “It takes time for signals to travel, and it’s not every day a new species needs to get into the legal system… If it helps, any poni who comes after you two will have an easier time thanks to your suffering.”
The lights in the conference room dimmed as its communications system registered they had been taken off hold. The air around the seat located at the head of the conference table flickered as a hologram took shape within it. The projection was of a lower ranking official of the Federated Republic of Orion.
She was an Iregsin. Her species looked much like Penny’s: humanoid, breasts, flat face, feet, hands, four limbs. Rather than two pony-like eyes, she had four inky black orbs which sparkled and shimmered like oil containing glitter. Her eyes were arranged in a two by two grid with one set above the other. Her face lacked a nose, but she had lips, and her face bulged out where a muzzle would be, very slightly. She reminded Pan somewhat of a dolphin, especially since her lavender skin looked much like a dolphin’s rubbery hide.
The only non-aquatic feature the alien woman sported was her ears. They were extremely long and gracefully pointed. Her ears drooped down from the sides of her head, their tips brushing against her shoulder blades. Astonishingly, the ears complemented her overall look, somehow managing to make her look graceful and elegant.
The voluminous, open-front, orange and black robe she wore as a badge of office added to her graceful look.
To Pan’s surprise, Rainbow blushed as the alien’s hologram took shape, and hid her eyes behind her bangs, a sign of arousal in mares.
Pan grinned. HA! I’m not the only pervert on board.
The alien spoke in a refined, feminine voice. “Good evening, Captain Hawking Junior. My name is Meado of Clan Galroi, I will be your passengers’ customs and immigration officer today. Your request for their immigration and right of travel has been approved, pending their interviews reveal nothing objectionable in their personal histories. We have authorized you to fabricate two ID chips. You may implant them upon the conclusion of each interview.”
Rainbow eeped. “I— Implant?”
Meado turned towards Rainbow and gave her a kind, calming smile. Rainbow shivered as the alien’s smile seemed normal. She made a note to ask Penny why both aliens she had seen thus far had expressions that were perfectly understandable.
“It’s only a small microchip. It will be injected with a syringe anywhere you like. You won't notice it at all, but you do need it. It will be your identification, bank account, and permit registry. You may not enter our space without one.”
“Oh...” Rainbow said with a nervous smile. “Uh, well, okay then.”
Penny cleared her throat. “The Dawn has produced the chips. I’ll get them ready to be formatted and implanted.”
The Chernin woman quickly stood up and left the room. Bureaucracy was about to happen…
Rainbow Dash — 13th of Faust, 1st year of Harmony
749,558.59 A.H.
Dining Hall, Dawn of Destiny — K3 Sector
Rainbow wished she could slam the dining hall’s door behind her. The last five hours had been a hell on earth for the poor mare.
Nopony should have to wake up from being spaced only to have a ridiculously sexy alien grill them about their entire life story!
It had indeed been her entire life story. The interview was designed to give the officer a full understanding of the individual before the real questions were asked. That way, they would have long since established an emotional baseline and be able to spot a lie.
Unfortunately for Rainbow, that meant the questions had started with her birth and had her effectively tell Meado everything about herself. Every last secret, every little bit of herself she wanted to keep hidden. She had put it all on the table for the sake of her friends’ lives.
Why did she have to ask if I thought she was hot? Rainbow whimpered. What possible thing does that tell her about me other than, well, yeah… I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life.
The obvious answer was Meado needed to know if Rainbow’s reactions were her baseline, or influenced by an emotion. However, one can hardly blame a pony as fried as Rainbow was for not thinking of the obvious.
At least she helped me file a report when I said I was here because pirates took my friends.
Rainbow looked around the dining hall, ignoring Pan as he walked past her on his hind legs.
The stallion had decided to get in some more practice, just in case he had to walk that way for any important reason in the near future.
“You know, I wish they hadn’t separated us with that forcefield for the interviews. It would have been a cool way to get to know each other,” Pan said as he stepped into the kitchen.
Rainbow shook her head venomously. “Buck the hay NO!” She growled. “It’s bad enough she knows that much about me. That was super uncomfortable. How the hay are you okay with what just happened?”
Pan snorted and winked at Rainbow. “Uh, hello? I’m a nerd with internet access? I’ve been telling strangers all about myself for years. Having radio and net friends is sort of my thing. Besides, RP is fun, you should try it.”
“RP?”
“Roleplaying, in the non-sexual sense. Or that too, if you want. You’re a grown mare.”
Pan opened the kitchen’s refrigerator in search of food. There was no point having Rainbow cook when the ship wasn’t stocked with any ingredients. Tonight’s dinner would either be a Chernin ration bar, or nothing. Rainbow had elected to go hungry. Pan decided to risk the bar.
Pan’s ears drooped as he found nothing in the refrigerator but bottles of vodka. He turned to the nearest cabinet and opened it and sighed as the cabinet he had chosen was filled with yet more vodka.
“Yeah, I don’t think I would have enjoyed that at all if it was anything like that!” Rainbow moaned.
Then she spotted the vodka.
Rainbow pointed to the bottles she couldn’t see clearly with a hoof. “Is that alcohol?”
Pan lowered himself to all fours to check, then nodded. “Yes. Why?”
Rainbow got up from her seat, walked over to the cabinet and took one of the bottles. “I need a drink.”
Pan eeped and put a hoof on Rainbow’s foreleg, his eyes wide. “Rainbow, no! Penny told me about her vodka. It is WAY too strong for us!”
Rainbow looked at the bottle. The alien scrawl was meaningless decoration to her, but the clear liquid inside promised to help her forget she had to tell a cute mare she wet the bed until she was five.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “It's too strong my flanks. I can handle it.”
Pandora winced. “Um, Rainbow? Read the label again.”
“I'm not fluent in alien.”
Pandora snatched the bottle from Rainbow’s hoof and pointed to several sections of the label. “It's called Boris Blood. This star sticker is a ‘Gopnik seal of approval’. It's sold by a company called ‘Tru Slav’, and the alcohol content is somehow a hundred and twenty percent.”
Dash snatched the bottle back. “I said I can handle it!” she said as she popped the cap off the bottle.
Rainbow didn't handle it.
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Whoops someone's ego is getting the better of them.. How in the world did they get 240 proof well if nothing else it could serve as emergency rocket fuel
9065705 One technology unique to the Chernin allows them to compress matter by reducing the space within atoms. It's not actually more than pure, it's that the liter bottle contains 1.2L of compressed vodka which wont decompress when the bottle's opened. IE a given apparent volume contains 20% more alcohol than naturally possible.
9065711 Still make good emergency rocket fuel and that would allow for something other than PURE alcohol IE the impurities intentional or otherwise that all products have
Wow, Meep, you wasted no time getting us up to speed on the space adventure side of this!
I can't wait for this to unfold further.
9065753 Hey, I wanted to tell a space adventure. SO I'm telling a space adventure.
Feeling your own insides being held together by glue, no matter how strong or proper it is, must SUCK. Specially knowing you still need a doctor after that.
That explains a lot. On the other hand, they can't get drunk and that's sad as Dickens.
So Rainbow feels the call if the stars. I wonder who she'll get it in with, when she does. Yeah, let's not delude ourselves, it's bound to happen sooner or later.
Oh I don't envy the hangover Blue Fast is going to have when she wakes up
all i can hear when i read this is
And its great!
Oh, well, that explains that. Also, it strikes me as amusing that Chernobyl's reputation became that infamous that it's gotten used on the galactic scale like this at any time.
(Entirely too much later)...also it now occurs to me that this probably explains Penny's Russian-esque accent.
Heeeey, yeah, good girl Penny for catching onto that!
I certain hope you can help him with that in some way. I think he'd be a happier pony for it.
That makes sense too. It would at least explain Rainbow's open-mouth, insert-hoof tendencies.
What, you mean like...
And with that, I'm picturing the Dawn's bridge as the TOS-era bridge, but with see-through walls and ceiling. Even if this is inaccurate, it's too late, you cannot stop this now.
9066786
Yeah, it's meant to be a Slavic accent :3 If any of the "Russian" seems off it's because I am using a few of the languages from that region, given the origin of Chernin culture. Lore spoilers, but: They were engineered to value family and friendship above all else to make colonizing easier. As a result, they become obsessed with finding their ancestors to let them know they were okay. Their colony ship was a junker when it was new, one way sleeper, barely got there in one piece. The computers were mostly fried by the rads from their homestar, and all of their creators died and rotted before the first gen got out of their tanks.
That first gen did their absolute best to piece together computer records to see who they were and what they were doing. Most of the intact data was technical stuff, and what they did find some novels, archived form threads, a few old youtube channels with cooking tutorials, and a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. None of which could be identified as from an entertainment module due to data corruption. Their entire culture was reverse engineered from Russian memes they mistook for "what our ancestors ate" and "a simulation meant to show what life was like there and why they sent out out here."
It's not that they are too stupid, it's that the game is barely functional due to damage to the files, and was repaired... So the inishal assumption of "this is a sim!" had the people repairing it take the very damaged fragments and well, make them into a realistic computer simulation ("... That cant' eb the finished model of grass! it's so low poly. we must be missing some more data.") which was later updated into a proper engram sim and holo sims that look completely realistic. Which is what they though tit was, and so everyone else has believed that mistake.
So can I :3
Funny thing, if you pay very close attention to Dash's characterization, she has most of the major symptoms of asburgers syndrome. Extremely focused in one area of interest while caring about little if nothing else. Extreme resistance to change only to jump on board with something it tirusn out she likes instantly and whole heartedly (reading Daring do). Hard time socializing properly, coming across as rude or blunt most of the time, poor academic career, isn't able to understand why others get mad if she boasts about her skills because they are not boasts but facts... The only thing we dont see is difficulty reading microexpressions, and that's one of many symptoms that they can grow out of. It makes for a much more intresting characterization, or at least a means of explaining her character at the start of her growth.
Trek is one of the big reasons I want to do a proper planet-hopper :3 and yes, it is similar to a federation bridge, but with clear walls (the clear canopy helps with docking the ship in the event it must be done manualy. it's a cargo and fuel transport after all.)
I really love the backstory for this. A whole planet of stereotyped Russians is hilarious. The whole accidental-mooning thing, even if it didn't happen but was only described, was mentally scarring, however.
o_0
Was the 120% vodka a reference to Dash's own talent?
Poor Dash, though. That would have to be awkward as all heck.
Here's hoping that they can set out to find her friends soon. (It would also be more interesting if said friends manage to escape, take over the ship, and/or become Space Pirates of Friendship and Justice (TM) in the meantime. Twilight alone, especially since they apparently have both the Internet AND magic, can probably unleash Holy Howling Hell on them if she gets the chance. Probably like this. It might be a bit more cliche to do the escape-and-ships-pass-in-the-night spiel, but it lets you do something with the characters, and is less stressful because you know they'll be fine.)
Are you also planning on getting Dash patched up better? She's already complained that she's past her prime (something kinda sad I prefer not to consider in stories), and the Galactics apparently have crazy-good doctors if Penny is any indication, so perhaps they can improve on that...
I so want to see this conclude with a ridiculously OP Rainboom stunt. Better yet, major uplift for everypony if possible. Or maybe a few crates of technical data chips that get "misplaced," if the government wouldn't allow the previous option. Immortality (and eternal youth) to go... Let's solve the Twilicorn debate! :D
Pan: Penny, what have you dooooooone?!
Rainbow Dash:
9067019
Yes, but it's also a unique CHernin technology. Their heavily irradiated planet provides some unique opportunities for scientific study. One of their unique things is the ability to reduce the space an atom takes up without impacting the function of that atom. IE they can compress mater without changing its properties in a significant way. That "vodka" is pure ethanol compressed at a rate of 120%. Each 1L bottle contains 1.2Ls worth of mass. (It weighs more, contains more energy, and so on, but take sup less space. They use the same trick for armor, ship hulls, support materials...)
She will :3
I agree :3 It's also far more realistic. I can promise you that next chapter will contain information on the prisoners.
Yes, literally next chapter. All Penny realy did was stabilize her (and Pan, but Pan as a non-eliete athlete cant feel the uh... patch job)
Let me put it this way, once Dash has seen a proper doctor and someone who can do a proper genesequenceing has had a chance to take a crack at analyzing the new xenos in the neighborhood... Well... Spoilers ;)
9067212
I do find it a bit odd that she could ONLY do a patch job. With flash-cloning, I would have thought it would be a full fix and it would just need a bit of time to heal.
How does she suddenly have the funds to take them to a real doctor?
But of course Dashie arrows in on the jetpack for Penny's T-34 armor the first time she enters her cabin.
They need to have a recording of Dash performing a rainboom at some public show. That will really get the galaxy's attention to see an organic being with no cybernetic augmentation break the sound barrier. Maybe then they'll really start buying that everyone from her homeworld would be considered a high end psyker by the rest of the galaxy.
Not just the ponies, either. We always focus on the ponies, but griffons have some of the weather control magic that they share with pegasi and likely have something devoted to their predatory natures which lets pegasi be stronger with the flight and weather magics. Changelings...well, Meep's gone into changeling magic pretty in-depth in her other stories. Diamond Dogs definitely have some earth-based magic. Where earth ponies' magic seems to focus more on plants and animals, though there are some that focus on rocks, diamond dogs' magic likely is entirely based around moving earth and rock and growing/shaping rock, ore, and crystal. Buffalo magic and zebra magic both seem similar to earth pony magic, just with a native American or tribal African mysticism leaning, with all of the new strengths that those origins provide. Minotaurs...we really have seen next to nothing of in canon, but I would not be surprised if they've got tech-based magic from what's been shown in the story so far. And dragons are dragons.
Wonderful work, as always, Meep. I was smiling to myself the whole time I read it. Your chapters never fail to brighten my day.
9067868
It's more of an available equipment thing. It's not like she's got a hospital ship, she's got a converted fule tanker with a light duty medical bay.
1. Insurance covers passenger injuries, 2. She's not poor, her money is just tied up in lots of things, one of which is an emergency medical fund, 3. Basic medical services are free in the Orion Arm, period. It has to do with what the Credit is backed by.
The Credit is the unit of currency for the Satisfaction Economy. It's an answer to people being bored in a post-labor setting. Tech is good enough where no one would have to do anything ever, and stuff would still get done... But that's not a satisfying life for most people. Work provides a sence of purpose for almost everyone. The solution? Create fun work for people, let the bots do the grunt work. Howeaver, this means any and all goods and services are worthless as they can be done for free, completely automated, even the maintenance on those bots.
The answer is to create a currency that's backed by the seance of satisfaction itself. That's because feeling satisfied and useful has become a scarce resource which everyone wants. You get one company who found a simple way to quantify that sort of thing and boom, you have the Credit. You do something which makes another person feel satisfied or useful, you get credits. The transaction of services itself creates wealth, and inflation isn't a problem because there's basically an infinite supply of everything thanks to the bots behind the scenes... Except for, you know, organic satisfaction.
This means people like doctors get some income even if they charge nothing for their services because it's impossible for a customer to walk away unhappy after being healed from an injury. Though most do charge some credits upfront because the system is naturally more complicated than I've said here, after all without SOME artificial scarcity implemented on certain randomly chosen goods and services which changes over time people would get bored with the system and it would fail.
9068715
Huh. Cool!
Dash? Don't try to drink the pan-galactic gargle blaster. Just don't.
9073993 Actually, this is just the main liquid component of the Pan.
9074033
Well that's even WORSE, they're clearly diluting it down before they go to sell it.
Well, presumably Russia, so maybe.
The biological built-in bra sounds like a nice addition.
Sounds cute.
Neat hand hooves.
Oooo, neat. Seems like a good fit for Rainbow once a few things were clarified.
Is Rainbow going to find every alien they run into hot? Because that would be funny.
9076303
For you DJ, it shall be so :3
Well no wonder they sound Russian. now it all makes sense. LOL
XD
Soon to be featured on Pennys streams
"Cooking with Dash"
Because let's face it, we would all want to watch adorable poni making food, and maybe learn how to make some as well
9166702 FOr you, It shall be so :3
Man, somebody nerfed humans again.
Also, conceivably, one would wear a bodysuit when in powered exoskeletons.