Just Like Magic of Old

by computerneek

Chapter 3 (Rewritten)

For the third time in a row, Short Flight awakened to the buzzing of her communicator. This time, though, she was forced to resist the urge to whimper in pain; her hooves hurt a lot more than they did the day before. Her entire body did, in fact- though at least it wasn’t as bad. It did mean that the pressure applied by the bed straps was nigh unto torture, though.

As such, even though it hurt a lot to press the release keys on the buckles, she released herself from bed before she even tried to read the message that was sent to her.

Then she groaned. It was her father, informing her they’d be ready to break orbit in half an hour.

She carefully, and very gently, operated the voice compose feature of her communicator, to inform her parents that she would be ready.

At least the straps on her command chair weren’t spring-loaded like the ones on her bed, so they wouldn’t exacerbate the pain.

Then she stopped, and looked up at the blanket, slowly drifting away from her.

Then down, at her hooves.

Then up again, at the door. “What the hay…?”

She was standing, completely unrestrained, in zero gravity. And not floating away from the mattress she was standing on.

She took an experimental step forward, before sending herself drifting towards the door.

A whimper nearly escaped her lips when she landed on the wall next to the control panel, straddling the handhold.

The handhold she didn’t need anymore, because her hooves seemed perfectly fine with sticking to the wall unaided. It only hurt a tiny bit to stand in place like that- and as she stepped carefully to the panel and opened the door, before walking through it, she thanked Equus she’s in a zero-gravity environment.

She walked across the floor to her command chair, for the simple reason that it hurt less than catching herself from drifting across the room. Even if she knew it should be impossible. She carefully placed herself into her seat, then buckled up. Each buckle hurt to push into place, but they didn’t put any pressure on her after that- and she chose to ignore the way the buckles seemed to stick to her flat hooves when she wanted them to, letting her manipulate them as if with Hands.

She waited patiently, in her command chair, for her parents to be done with… whatever they were doing here in Earth orbit. She didn’t know what it was; she only knew they had a scrambled, encrypted comms signal coming out of their module.

Her computer had successfully ID-ed their scramble code, though- and if she wanted it to, it’d also go straight through their encryption- at least partly because it probably already knows the encryption, having been programmed with the entire security database back home, which included all the encryption keys they liked using.

She didn’t bother, though. She may not have known exactly what they’re doing, but she knew generally what they were doing- they were contacting the scouts and informants on the surface here. Not as any sort of plan to overtake the nation, but in an effort to be the first to design a functional Distortion Drive… and, eventually, discover magic.

As for herself, she didn’t think they’d be successful. Ponies had been trying to do that very thing for thousands of years- and the only thing they’d managed to do with any experimental ‘distortion drive’ was to destroy their ships.

She sighed, looking sideways at the environmental panel and increasing the temperature slightly.

Any more, she didn’t get why everypony was so focused on the Distortion Drive. Why not develop their own technology?

It wasn’t that she didn’t know why, though. That was easy enough for anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of pony civilization. Simple, really.

The thing was, many thousands of years ago, ponies weren’t… ponies. Nopony had been able to date any of the records accurately enough to say anything more precise than ‘over ten thousand years’- but they were still largely indisputable. Back in that time, civilization walked on two legs, and manipulated the world with two arms… and biological hands after which the more modern Hands devices were modeled.

This ancient civilization grew, and built… and traveled the stars. They built a Distortion Drive, capable of propelling their ships beyond the speed of light, and traveled further.

Then, on their travels, they encountered Equestria. And with it they found magic that turned them into ponies. But they weren’t the ponies of today- no, these ponies had magic. Pegasi that could fly, unicorns that could do any kind of magic. Earth ponies that… all records to that end were lost, unfortunately.

Those ponies came back home. Civilization was transformed, became ponies. Anyone the magic touched, became one with it.

Then they invented transporters. That’s what they were called in the history books.

These transporters were a way for any pony, not just specially trained unicorns, to teleport around.

But the transporters were something else, something their designers never saw coming.

Ponies that went through the transporters… were damaged. Their magic was damaged. Not gone, though- and it was damaged in a way they couldn’t detect, at the time.

That damage was contagious. It only took a matter of months before every pony was afflicted by it, even the ones that didn’t use the transporters.

But from that point forward, no foal would be born with magic, ever again.

All the remote colonies returned to Earth, once the problem was realized. All the greatest spellsmiths and engineers worked on the problem- but to no avail. When the last of the final generation of magic died out, no solution was in sight.

Civilization floundered. The remaining ponies had been forced to leave assisted living, to try and live on their own, years beforehand. Had they not… civilization would have ended.

While the technology still functioned, ponies did their best. The population dwindled in that unkind age, and all of the survivors focused on finding a way- any way- for any other than the very skilled to survive.

Eventually, they found it. The last dregs of technology were only barely still functional when the first Hands device was produced. It was clumsy, and mechanical, based on the position of the hoof. But it did its job. Ponies could work once again.

It didn’t take long after that for powered Hands to appear- and, finally, be mass-produced. Technology slowly grew back. Unfortunately, most of the databanks left by their magic-wielding ancestors had been damaged, wiped, or lost. Technology backslid so far that it took nearly a thousand years for ponies to develop spacefaring technology once again.

But that gets to the part she just didn’t get. A partial blueprint of the Distortion Drive had survived on a damaged archive chip- and was then stored everywhere. It was fascinating to consider- but the fragments that survived were most decidedly not the entire thing. Her estimate was that, even if she applied rotational symmetry to the little bits that survived- there was enough to suggest that- right around two percent of the overall blueprint still existed. She idly punched the search into her database display. For some reason, ever since they built the powerful Gravity Drive modern ships use to maneuver in deep space- it didn’t work too close to a natural gravity well, those overloaded it- everypony had been dead-set on building the Distortion Drive. Not one wanted to design their own- they wanted to rebuild the one her ancestors left behind.

She paused, staring at the database screen. Her search for ‘Distortion Drive’, one she’d made many times in the past, should have been coming up with exactly three results: The partial blueprint, the tale of what it was used for, and her unpublished dissertation of why ponies needed to quit focusing on it. However, the list of files it found this time went right off the bottom of the screen. She lifted a hoof, pointing it at the screen, and read a few filenames to herself aloud.

“Distortion Drive Type One, Version One. Distortion Drive Type One, Version Two. Distortion Drive Type One, Version Two, Management Software. Distortion Drive Type One, Version Two, Small Craft Edition.”

She blinked a couple of times, listening to her own words, and looked at the file paths. Where were these files?

“A-Acquired?” she stuttered, upon finding the folder name in the path. The folder intended to carry any and all files that had been acquired during a successful Electronic Warfare campaign. The thing was, though, she’d never performed any such campaign. She checked the capture timestamp on each file- the time at which it was downloaded- and looked up her system logs, starting several minutes prior. “... Oh. This would have been during the approach procedure… but why did it-!?”

There it was. She’d expected to see the proximity alert coding- but this most definitely wasn’t what she expected.

Firewall penetration detected from unknown source.

Something had hacked her ship. Something had attacked her with electronic warfare systems. And her very, very expensive electronic warfare suite had been insufficient to stop it.

She continued down the logs.

Outside penetration accessing live sensor data. CAUTION: False detections or non-detections may occur!

ALERT: Collision course! Time to impact, 5s. WARNING: False Detection Likely!

She grit her teeth, and snarled at the log. So that had been a false detection? Someone deliberately made her think she was about to crash?

… She stopped herself. As annoying as that was, it had also let her reach her parking orbit much sooner. That burn to antiradial would have left her on an elliptical orbit, and would have needed lots of extra burns to get her back to her designated orbital slot. And, she wouldn’t have been able to go to bed nearly as soon as she had!

The very next line caught her attention.

WARNING: Defense ineffective! Commencing counterattack.

She smiles. So, that was what attack it was. She reads on.

Counterattack successful: No resistance detected. WARNING: No access points detected in foreign control program! Acquiring database.

She nodded slowly. So that would be it. No access points meant it hadn’t been able to take control of anything, suggesting a very robust computer system with powerful passive defenses on the other side… but it had been able to access the database, and had initiated a full download.

She abandoned the logs, turning back to the search results, and opened a random file.

She instantly recognized a few parts of the blueprint file that came up.

The complete blueprint, with Distortion Drive Type I, Version 2 written in the corner.

She stared at her screen.

Where did that come from? Who, that had these files sitting around in their database, had attacked her? More importantly, how could her computer have not even realized it was being attacked until after the enemy had penetrated its defenses, then made a successful counterattack? Her attacker must have had a very powerful Electronic Warfare system- and either forgotten to install or switched off all the active defenses. Which was stupid. Were they trying to give her these files?

And where did they get- she checked another file, to find a different, but also complete, blueprint for a distortion drive- all these blueprints?

Her comms panel suddenly chirped. She started, turning back to it, and punched the accept key- before flinching back at the jarring force to her hoof. She managed to keep anything from escaping her lips, though.

It was her father, starting without preamble- not even waiting for her to say anything. Possibly because she’d answered it from the bridge. “Alright shorty, we’re ready to go.”

She nodded. “Understood.” And cut the signal.

She took a deep breath.

“Short Flight to Orbital Control.”

Silence.

“Short Flight to Orbital Control, do you copy?”

More silence.

“Short Flight to Orbital Control, are you there?”

Finally, a voice came back.

“Sorry, kid, but Control hasn’t been responding at all for the last five hours or so. Nightshift probably didn’t bother showing up… again. What’re you looking to do?”

She blinked. That was… rather careless. Though, if she really thought about it, the same thing would happen over in Equineothame all the time if she didn’t hound them for it. “Departure.”

“Ahh… Well, I don’t know how it might differ elsewhere, but standard procedure for departing without Control is to signal departure, burn one to antiradial, wait six hundred seconds, and make your escape burn to prograde.”

She nodded. “Alright, thank you.”

Her intercom chirped. She punched the accept key.

Her mother barked out of it instantly. “Why aren’t we moving?”

She sighed, striking a few keys to signal departure. “Because Orbital Control went on holiday. I’ll be making a short, low-gee burn, then waiting ten minutes for the escape burn.”

Her mother scowled. “Make it quick. These straps aren’t the most comfortable.”

She managed to contain a snort, and nodded, after which her mother cut the connection.

They had the standard ‘high-comfort, spring-loaded’ passenger seats in their module- the cheap ones, of course, with overtightened springs on the straps- that hurt even without whatever it was that was happening to her body. She’d been a little more spendy for her command chair, but her mother didn’t need to know that.

She took the helm in her hooves- funny, it behaved as if she were wearing her Hands- and reoriented the ship, before ordering a one second burn out of her computer, for one meter per second squared. She waited for the burn to finish- it hurt, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle- before aligning it with her orbit once again, and watching the timer tick slowly down… painfully slowly. At the unvoiced zero, she slammed the throttle to maximum, hardly flinching at the spike of pain in her hoof.

Then the engines light, and she let out a cry of pain as just shy of seven gees slammed her suddenly against her command chair.

Hardly a few seconds later, she let out a piercing scream as something pierced her chest with excruciating pain. She didn’t think there was anything actually piercing it, but it felt like somepony had stabbed her with a red-hot fuel rod straight out of her ship’s reactor core.

She nearly passed out, but managed to hold onto her consciousness. The massive thrusters would automatically shut down once she has an optimal departure trajectory- and as soon as she gets a safe distance from the planet, the ship will- also automatically- transition to the Gravity Drive. Which she did not want to do at full throttle.

While her ship was operating under Gravity Drive, its Drive could generate a shipboard gravity field… which she had disabled, in part because she hadn’t had the power to spare on the way in; before the resupply, she’d run the Gravity Drive almost entirely on stored power, and very nearly run out before she’d transitioned back to the main thrusters. In any case, it was also capable of behaving as an inertial compensator- and accelerating the ship at up to a hundred and fifty gees. Above a hundred, though, it couldn’t fully compensate for the acceleration- twenty percent of acceleration beyond that point would be felt by the passengers. As such, at full throttle, she’d experience a wealthy ten gees towards the back of her ship.

She didn’t think she could survive that right now- and knew her parents would get hurt when the ship suddenly started accelerating again, with absolutely no warning.

Author's Note:

Ack! I missed Monday! Sorry about that, ladies and gentlecolts, I had a bad day. On the other hoof, thanks to the automated nature, this chapter went up on schedule- at noon EST on Monday- on my Patreon. Future chapters will there as well- and, hopefully, I won't miss the planned publication time by fourteen hours again, so it won't lag quite so far behind on here... In any case, at this point, the next three chapters are already available for my patrons- and that's not counting the three more in the pipeline, due to go up for patrons in the next couple of days.

You're also welcome to come join us on my Discord server- though beware that future content may be discussed there, spoiler alert. Also, I've had it mentioned once, and can agree- if it's a question, or discussion, that another reader might be able to benefit from (which is, quite frankly, most of them), it may be preferred to post it in the comments here- or on Patreon, that supports comments too- rather than on my Discord. Don't worry, I read them in both places, it's just easier to carry out a conversation on Dissy.

"Rewritten" 6/21/2020 for translation to past tense, and a little rewording for better flow.

Patreon, Discord.

Comments

[Argentyros]

Hmmm, interesting background you've chosen to go with (assuming the historical records are accurate).

Quick note, during the burn, you wrote conscience when you meant consciousness.