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1 - Critical Failure4,204 words
2 - Damage Analysis3,661 words
3 - Course of Action3,038 words

3 - Course of Action

Bringing Equus closer to the stars - URSA Motto.

Astral blinked, staring at the featureless grey roof that had been looming over her for the past few hours. She should have been up and about hours ago, but the day was still young. Not to mention the fact that the will needed to pry herself from her mattress eluded her.

Plink!

“Dammit!” The mare buried her face deeper into the pillow in an attempt at blocking out the ticking of the ship’s hull. It worked in reducing the sound to an irritating thumping in the background, but it still wasn’t enough. She rose unhappily from her bunk, defeated by the laws of thermodynamics.

The night had not been kind to her appearance, and the reflection in the mirror made her look like a zombie from a low-budget Nightmare Night costume store, complete with eyebags and bedraggled mane. Merely running a hoof through her clumped together hair managed to free a rather sizeable amount of down.

Still, the comforts provided by her ridiculously soft mattress proved hard to resist and she soon found herself rummaging through the bin she had kept under her bed for days like these. If sleeping in wasn’t possible, then she was going to have breakfast in bed.

Her parents would have been horrified to learn how much of their daughter’s diet consisted of junk food. But today the universe had other plans, and this time Astral wouldn’t be clogging up her arteries with whatever she dug up. Not when several minutes of lazily rummaging about yielded nothing but the crinkling of empty wrappers.

“Great.“ The bin rattled angrily in protest as Astral shoved it back to its spot. “I’m stuck on this planet, I don’t have a way of getting home, and I can’t even have something as trivial as a breakfast go to plan?”

The walls didn’t reply.

Well, at least I'm not going insane. Astral huffed to herself, slipping into her freshly cleaned boots. The shoes would protect her hooves from getting stubbed by anything to nasty, while still remaining thin enough for her to manipulate controls without using her mouth.

She couldn't help but shiver as the changeling made gear shifted around her, moulding itself to a protective outer skin as she walked down the dimly lit corridor. The mare soon found herself fidgeting impatiently at the bulkhead while the overworked door mechanism screeched and strained as it manhandled the heavy slab of metal out of the way.

To say that she was shocked at the sight that greeted her would have been an understatement. The flight deck was gutted clean, with chunks of titanium alloy panels ripped cleanly off the structure and leaving behind the exposed bone-like frames. Strands of gutted wiring laid in the open spaces, the natural lighting making the burnt out insulation look like strands of tentacles dangling haphazardly in the air.

“Great.” Astral groaned. The last thing she was looking forward to was more damage to the hull. There were only two possibilities, and animal attack wasn't even remotely plausible unless there were timberwolves on this planet.

With all her luck thus far, she wouldn’t be surprised if the insurance company ended up using whatever the heck Night Glow did as an excuse to weasel out of paying. It took all her willpower to safely tuck the anger into a deeper part of her brain.

Whatever issues she had with Night Glow could wait. Screaming had never solved any problems in the real world anyway. If they were to pull out of this alive, she had to focus on the long term.

Speaking of the long term, Astral was starving. The mare spread her wings and dropped off the ledge, letting the cool air of the planet catch her mid-fall and glide safely to the ground. It wasn't that much of a problem for the mare to trace the route she had used the day before. Astral would have made a beeline to their stockpile, were it not for the glint of something shiny in the distant grass catching her eye.

The mare frowned. There wasn’t anything shiny that she could remember from yesterday, and whatever it was seemed unnaturally bright. But instead of chancing upon some alien creature, the only thing she found was Night Glow snoozing away beside what she could only describe as a pile of reflective junk.

Night was wrapped in the same kind of reflective material that the remainder of her ship’s skeleton was covered in. It had the appearance of aluminium foil, but thinner. Space blankets? Where the heck did she find those?

The sheets crinkled loudly as the batpony stirred, blinking and stretching lazily in the warmth of the morning sun. “Oh, hello Astral.” Night Glow yawned, pushing away the obnoxiously loud blanket away with a wingtip. “Grass? I guess I must have dozed off back here.”

“Yeah, you dozed off alright." Astral huffed, sweeping a wing at the sight before her. "Care to explain what made you drill holes into my ship and build a junkyard?" She asked, pointing at the panels laid out in the dirt with a wing.

“Huh, that?” The batpony sat up straighter, running a hoof through her mane. “Well, that’s kind of a surprise of sorts.” She said, stretching her membranous wings to the sound of several pops.

The mare fought the urge to facehoof, keeping her legs planted on the ground and scanned Night’s face for any sign that this was all some elaborate prank to keep their spirits high. Nothing. Night Glow’s face was as serious as it could be. “Seriously Night? I’m in no mood for surprises right now. Just what in the name of Celestia is this supposed to be?”

Night shrugged indifferently. “Look, Astral. I literally worked all night on this to solve your radio problem. You think whoever’s up there,” she said, pointing to the heavens with a wing. “is going to have me by their side explaining what this is supposed to be?”

Astral raised an eyebrow - if whatever Night Glow cooked up was supposed to get them off this planet and back to civilization, then she was more than willing to entertain her antics. She wouldn’t have given that much leeway to somepony else, but experience had taught her not to question whatever Night Glow suggested.

Unfortunately, taking to the skies still didn’t give her a better idea of whatever purpose Night Glow’s contraption was supposed to be. It was bright, and she had to shield her eyes with a hoof or risk being blinded by the object reflecting every lumen of the sun directly into her eyes. It kind of resembled those solar cooker experiments schoolfillies sometimes assembled for their science project.

In short, there was no way that this contraption was supposed to be the radio that she had wanted. It certainly didn’t look like one; she knew how machines were supposed to work. There was a reason why high power radio arrays were usually attached to the outside of a ship. They generated enough energy over the course of their operation that it would be cheaper to radiate everything directly into space and take advantage of the ship’s shielding.

She was seeing nothing of the sort. As far as Astral could tell, the panels were not even connected to one another to make a sizable transmitter. Whatever this was supposed to be simply eluded her.

“So... what do you think?” Night Glow asked, hovering silently beside the mare.

“Well, you tell me what I’m supposed to think, because I think that if I stared at this any longer I think my eyeballs are going to melt.” the pegasus replied, not even bothering to hide the irritation from her voice. “Is this supposed to be an art project of some kind? It better not be, because I am not in the mood for this.”

The batpony huffed, throwing her arms up in protest. “It’s not an art project!” she said, her silt like eyes narrowing in the sunlight. “You told me to find a way to get a signal up into space, so here it is!”

“And your solution involves creating some kind of sculpture in the open? Are you sure that’s what I wanted?” Astral shot back, crossing her hooves in irritation.

Night Glow looked unfazed. “Alright, look. You didn’t exactly give me much to work with considering how anything useful was either fried, ground to a fine dust or burnt to ash in the fire. I had to make do with whatever we had!” She said, pointing to the still smouldering remains of the engine section. “It took me almost all night before I came up with this, so you know, a word of thanks would be nice.”

Is she serious? Astral clenched her jaw. “Ohh, thanks for tearing down my ship Night Glow.” She deadpanned, using the same sickly sweet voice she normally reserved when bargaining with a stallion. “I really appreciate you turning it into scrap metal. Now please, explain to me how this is going to get us off the planet.”

“Aww, no problem!” Night squeaked. Evidently, the concept of sarcasm was lost on the thestral or her face would not have been widening into a grin. “Well, you see, I decided to improvise since I’m missing quite a few components to build a working radio.”

Night Glow let off another yawn as she started rattling off again. “So naturally, I decided to put myself in the shoes of somepony searching for us instead! You know what’s the one thing that will let them know that we are still alive?”

“Oh, I dunno, maybe a working radio? Are you telling me that this,” Astral gestured at the eye melter resting on the ground. “is supposed to send a radio signal? Because I don’t think I’ve went for the engineering class that taught that.”

Night batted a hoof. “Oh, don’t be stupid, I came up with a really simple solution that doesn’t need a radio!” She beamed, running a hoof through her neatly bunned mane. “Remember The Maretian? More specifically, the part where they figured out that the main character wasn’t dead because they saw all this junk being moved around from orbit? ”

Astral nodded blankly; she was the one who introduced Night to the movie in the first place, and Night had become obsessed with it ever since. Still, she didn’t see how the correlation between the two.

“I figured that if we made something like that and made it super visible from space, then anypony trying to find us will arrive to the same conclusion! And then bam! Rescue!” Night exclaimed, clapping her hooves together.

The pegasus had to make a conscious effort to keep her jaw shut. Like most of the solutions the batpony had devised during their time together, Night’s idea was outright insane and most probably destined to fail. But the universe had a strange sense of humor and she had her fair share of near-catastrophic breakdowns that were magically solved by Night Glow with nothing more than some grease and a wad of used gum. That alone was enough for her to give Night’s proposition some leeway. Still, there was that one part of her brain insisting that Night’s solution was not only absurd, but also a total waste of their time.

“So you’re telling me that you ripped off something you saw on television.” Astral blinked in disbelief, groaning audibly as the batpony nodded proudly. “Damnit Night! You know just as well that movies are fiction. What in Celestia’s mind made you think that it would work?”

Night shrugged. “Well, the science holds up. Besides, don’t you think that whoever’s coming for us is going to notice a great big patch of reflective metal on the surface? I’d notice it for sure.”

It was no use. Astral threw her hooves in the air in defeat. “You know what? I’m not even going to argue with you anymore. We’ll wait and see if this stupid mirror idea of yours works.” She huffed, flicking sweat off her brow and settled back down on the ground. “I’ve got more important things to deal with than your glorified solar cooker anyway.”

Which was true. There wasn’t a cloud in sight over the past few days, and she was starting to have doubts about them being a stable source of water. Whether clouds could even form naturally was another question in itself, since nopony really knew how the weather was supposed to function without supervision.

Hopefully, this planet’s version of a weather factory didn’t mind them snagging a few clouds for themselves. If not, then they would have to act fast. They could survive on their stockpile of water for the next few weeks, but she didn’t like leaving something so basic to their survival to chance. It could be months before the Lunar Fleet decided it was worth sending a ship to look for them at this rate. Until then, they were on their own.

“Hey, Night, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” Astral coughed, keeping her ears pinned to the back of her head. “I was wondering… just randomly thinking about how long it would take for rescue to come and I thought to check if you’re comfortable with the stockpile that we have right now.”

Night blinked, her eyes darting to the pile of provisions Astral had scrooged up, sheltered from sunlight under the ship as per the instructions. “I think we have enough to last until rescue comes. Why?”

Astral dug a hoof into the dirt, tracing circles in the ground. “Well.. I just don’t like the idea of putting all our eggs in one basket. It’s true that we probably have more than enough supplies until rescue comes to fetch us.” She said, flicking the mud off her hoof. "But what if something happened to us? This survival guide thing I’ve been reading kept emphasizing how we need to focus on our immediate needs, and apparently water was pretty high on the list. I think… it’s time we considered going into the forest?”

Night Glow shrugged. “I don’t know Astral. I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again. What you’re suggesting sounds like an awfully big risk to take, considering that we don’t know anything about the environment here.”

Astral groaned. “Yes, yes. That is a good point, but hear me out!” Astral said, pointing at the sky in exasperation. “There hasn’t been a cloud in the sky for the past two days, and that’s gotten me slightly worried. What if there’s another fire that eats up our water supply, or if our stockpile starts to go bad? It’s not as if I could conjure a cloud out of thin air. It’ll be safer if we at least try to find another source of water.”

“I still don’t see how that is more urgent than learning what we are going to be facing against.” Night retorted, her silky smooth voice starting to fracture from constantly repeating herself. “I don’t fault you wanting to prepare for the long term, but shouldn’t we be moving whatever we have to higher ground first? We won’t have any food left to worry about if the animals got to it first.”

Yeah, easy for you to say. Astral dug her hoof deeper into the dirt, pulling out clumps of organic detritus as Night’s words sunk in. At least she wasn’t the one who tried to pass off a slapdash art project as a viable solution for the transmitter.

She didn’t see any reason for them to dally around any longer. Waiting around if their ship was disabled in space would have made sense, since it meant less resources being burnt, but they were on a planet with a biosphere that they had no idea of how it worked. The only way to safeguard themselves against whatever calamity that might hit them out of the blue was to ensure that they had something to fall back on.

Besides, she was fairly confident that there wasn’t going to be some big scary monster waiting to gobble them up in the forest. If the predators here were anything like the ones back on Equus, then they would have been attacked the moment they crashed.

If there was anything that she had picked up from her time with the batponies in the Lunar Fleet, it was that being loud and noisy was a surefire way to drive off anything that might have been worth looking. Astral didn’t have any practical knowledge about hunting, but she liked to think that she knew more than the average pony after sitting through more conversations about stalking technique than she would have liked.

‘Loud and noisy’ was exactly what the crash site was right now. No animals were going to cozy up to some foreign object from space overnight. If Night wanted to get a grasp of what dangers awaited them in the wilderness, then they would have to venture into the forest.

Astral sighed. She wasn’t particularly keen to debate with Night on animal behaviour, but the batpony wasn’t giving her any leeway either. “Alright, fine. How about this, we wait for three days. No more, no less. If nothing shows up after three days, we’re going in there, like it or not.”

“Well… that would give us time to move whatever we need to a safer location in the meantime. What do you think about moving it up to the flight deck? We could cover it up with the leftover survival blankets,” Night Glow said, stifling another yawn. “I’d help you but I think I’ll get some rest first.”

Great, more work. Astral stomped her hoof deeper into the ground. Still, that wasn’t a no. She could always guilt trip Night into tagging along after her deadline after they were done with whatever trivialities that arose.

She forced her muzzle into the most genuine looking grin she could. “Sounds great! I’ll get to work after lunch.” That shouldn’t be too hard. She just needed to pretend to agree with whatever Night said for the next three days and keep the batpony happy.

Author's Note:

Man, I really need to work on these updates harder huh? I'm 45 days behind my schedule.

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