• Published 14th Aug 2020
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Star Trek: A Knights Gambit - Sparky Brony



The Enterprise is off on another adventure...but this time, sentient quadrupeds?

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Chapter 9.

The turbolift opens up, allowing one human, one android, and two ponies to emerge. Captain Picard turns and heads down the corridor. Princess Celestia and Rainbow Dash walk side by side as they make their way towards the transporter room. The solar princess looks down at Rainbow Dash, finally reaching out a wing and nudging the smaller pony to get her attention. “I noticed how you are very helpful with that human. Mr. Broccoli?”

“It’s Barclay, Princess.” Dash says softly before looking down. “I don’t know, he reminds me of Fluttershy many years ago. I dunno.” She huffs. “I just hope this works.”

Celestia looks at the captain, chatting with his android crewmember as they walk. “With luck this Barley? Barkley’s plan will work.” She looks back down at the pegasus. “But back to this Mister Barclay.” She sticks out her tongue a bit at the unfamiliar word. “Has no one here tried to be friends?”

Dash looks up, “Trying to get used to saying that word?”

She nods, “Many of these names are so different then I am used to.”

“He’s very shy at first, but if you can make friends with him, it’s like he transforms…His genius comes out and…” She smiles brightly.

And gets an answering smile in return. “It’s almost as though…friendship is magic, isn’t it?”

Rainbow Dash’s wings spread in surprise. “You are right, princess.” She looks down. Grumbling, “Oh great, now I’m sounding like an egghead.” She gripes.

Celestia laughs as they enter the transporter room. Captain Picard stops as they wait. He turns and looks at the doors to the transporter room. “The rest should be showing up momentarily.”

Celestia nods. “Your turbolift systems are so much more efficient than the lifts we have in places like Manehattan.”

In moments, Twilight Sparkle and the rest of her friends enter the transporter room. Though only Celestia, Picard, Data and Twilight step onto the pad. Twilight looks at her friends. “I’ll see you home after we’ve talked to Princess Cadance.” With a command from the Captain, they dematerialize.

And appear in the square in front of the Crystal castle. Picard takes a moment to take it in. “How beautiful.” He breathes.

Twilight’s tail is wagging a bit. “My sister-in-law was going to be on one of the ships, but she said she would wait until we have no more choice before she boards.” Her tail droops. “But her husband, my brother, is on board the Farragut with their daughter. That ship is leaving tonight.”

Picard moves up next to her. “Princess, with luck, she will be reunited with him before too long.” She smiles tremulously at him before walking through the great doors and walking up the stairs. It’s only a few minute before Picard gets to witness the two alicorns dance a greeting. He smiles as the pink alicorn turns and looks at him.

“So, this is the human that I’ve heard about. Captain?” She says softly.

He nods, though he’s watching the princess closely, she looks quite tired. Her smile, to the untrained eye, looks genuine and friendly. But he can see she’s barely holding things together. He clears his throat. “Good day, Princess Cadance.”

She nods regally. She’s nearly as well versed as Celestia when it comes to talking to others. He looks at Data and continues. “We may have come across a solution. We can go over the technical specifics at your leisure. But we are here because we have need of something the Crystal Empire can provide.”

She blinks. “But of course, to save our world, we will do anything within our power, Captain.”

He nods. “My officer here, Lt. Commander Data, has the technical specifications of crystals that need to be manufactured as quickly as possible. They will enable the conversion of the energy that our ship produces to what is essentially your magic power. We will need to send that power to Princess Celestia for her to bring the sun along with this graviton ellipse.”

She nods. “I will call our best crystal crafters. You will have your crystals, Captain.”

***

Lemon Hearts is a happy pony, normally she’s called to be a party planner for elite banquets, conventions, and other tasks where she has to worry about hundreds of small things at once. Today however, she only needs to worry about a few things at a time.

She’s heard the humans groan when it comes to moving about in the Jeffries tubes, the connecting tunnels that run through the ship and contain all the technical parts that make a starship run. About them being cramped, taking forever to move through, and the worst thing ever, trying to lay cables. Ducking her head she walks along the tube with ease making sure to watch her horn so she doesn’t bump it on ceiling of the tube, but otherwise it’s no problem. There’s actually enough room for 2 ponies or even 3 foals to walk down these side-by-side if they wanted.

Though with the human’s larger bodies, and their strange need to walk bipedal she could see how they would not like crawling through these access corridors. She has a modified saddle bag strapped to her barrel, and spools of optronic data cables is on each side of her body, unreeling as she heads towards the end of the tube. She turns the corner and chief engineer Geordie LaForge is sitting there, a large access hatch open before him. She lights her horn and floats the nearly empty spools off her back. “They are hooked up, just like you asked, right is plugged into R45 the left into R31.”

He looks up at her from the system console opening, holding an isolinear chip in one hand, with an isodyne relay adaptor, and a small crystal attached to the top. Sliding the chip into place it lights up, the crystal glowing a soft pink, “That’s a 150-meter crawl through a several zig zagging tunnels and up two levels. That takes me almost ten minutes to crawl.”

She giggles and shakes her head, “Pegasi might have a problem with this. It’s too cramped for them to use their wings. But keeping my horn down, it’s not too bad.” She floats the spools over to him. “Sides I’m pretty flexible. Though those ladders aren’t the easiest to navigate with hooves.” She holds up a yellow hoof to him with a giggle. “But I managed.”

He nods. “Compared to crawling through the tubes, it’s like you flew through.” He pulls the rest of the cable off the spools and finds the ends before carefully fitting them into a port. “Okay, they are in D18. That should enable x-control of the five emitters once we have the crystals in their frames.” He looks back at the entrance to the Jeffries tube in deflector control and raises his voice. “How are we doing for the frames for the crystals?”

One of his junior engineers pokes her head into the tube. “We are almost ready to do the EVA to mount them. The replicator is finishing up the last one.”

He nods. “And it included the technical specs that I uploaded, the servo controls for focusing that was sent up from the planet?”

She nods. “Most recent modifications to the design were incorporated.” She withdraws quickly.

Minuette steps up next to him, another set of optronic cables strapped to her body, eliciting a smile from the human. “Now we will be able to handle the Y transitions on the frames with that setup.”

Lemon hearts smiles at her friend as they both load up more cables as Lyra comes into the Jeffries tube and sits down easily. “Hey, Geordie. What does this thing do? You called it a navigational deflector.”

He watches as the other two ponies disappear into the rats warren of tubes that spider all over the physical structure of the nav deflector. He gratefully takes the tray of isolinear chips from the magic of the mint green pony. “Well. When the ship is at high sublight, even a single atom moving at that kind of speed can damage the ship. The nav deflector uses a charged particle beam to nudge them out of the way.”

She furrows her brow in thought. “That can’t be it, your phaser output would be more than enough. But this has so much more power capabilities than your phasers.”

He nods. “That’s right, I was just getting to that. At warp, we need to watch for the same things, even transitioning through our warp bubble doesn’t cancel out their momentum, so we have to push a beam through the warp field to do the same thing, at much further distances. That takes a significant amount of energy, hence the capabilities of the deflector.”

She looks thoughtful. “Oh.” Then she blinks. “But what if it’s too big? You are talking about going multiple times the speed of light.”

He nods again. “Oh, inside the deflector are our long range sensors. They track along our course and detect anything possibly in our line of travel, and if it’s too big for the nav deflector to nudge out of the way, we also have navigational shields for the smallest particles that the sensors don’t see, and for the largest obstructions, the computer will adjust our course, at those speeds, the smallest fraction of a degree change will cause us to clear even fairly large debris with a wide margin. Those are input automatically into the helm while we are at warp.”

“That’s pretty cool. And now, you are going to turn your ship into a gigantic mana generator for Princess Celestia, so she can bring the sun along?”

He nods. “Based on the design of the crystals, the conversion rate isn’t going to be perfect, so we are going to generate a lot of excess heat. That will be dumped, though our cryoplant is going to be working overtime, keeping the crystals from cracking from the excess heat, and keeping the warp core from overheating.”

Lyra frowns. “What happens if the warp core overheats?” He brings his fists together and spreads them quickly, simulating an explosion. Getting her to shudder. “So, note to self, don’t let the warp core get too hot. Got it.” She stands up, and turns with a flick of her tail. “I’ll help with getting the frames to the airlock. It’s too bad you don’t have any pony sized space suits. I would love to know what it’s like to walk on the outside of a starship.”

He smiles. “Don’t worry, Lyra. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” He turns back to his work. “I should call Utopia Planitia fleet yards. I found who the Jeffries tubes were designed for. Ponies.” He grumbles.

***

Princess Luna is a ball of energy. The thought of having a solution to this crisis has excited her. And her role in the solution is daunting. Crystals store and focus energy. The trouble is, they are normally used far differently. The one in the moon is maintaining the barrier that protects their little star system and keeps them safe from the rest of the universe. The Enterprise is going to put warp energy into this crystal from their engines. The humans have shown something that science on Equestria understood as possible, but hadn’t been able to isolate. That is gravitons, the medium as to how gravity is transmitted in the same way photons are the medium as which energy in the electromagnetic spectrum is transmitted. The crystal in the moon can do the job, but it needs an enormous initial charge. Getting that charge to not dissipate as it’s being infused is her job. She looks up at the control crystal in the chamber, her magic encasing the crystal as she works on testing the structure. She smiles as the finally lets go of the magic.

The sound of the Enterprise transporter beam breaks her concentration as a human appears. This one is female, as best as the pony princess can tell. She nods regally as she brings up a clipboard and a quill as she writes a few notes.

“Good day, Princess. How are you feeling?”

She smiles as the finally lets go of the magic.

Luna blinks. “Most humans would be more interested in how goes my work.”

The woman smiles. “I’m not most humans, I’m only half human, actually. I’m also half Betazoid.”

That gets a flinch from the alicorn. “And our world is threatening yours. I’m so…” She stumbles to a stop at her held up hand.

“I know you have no intent to harm my home, Princess. No apologies are necessary. I was asked by Captain Picard to come down and talk to you. I am the ship’s counselor. My duties are to the mental health of the crew and of those we encounter where applicable. Captain Picard was concerned about you. We have no doubt whether you are up to the task ahead. But we want you to know that we are here for you, Princess.”

Luna blinks. “I…”

Troi smiles. “I know, you are royalty, you have obligations. You are not usually encouraged to feel your emotions. Standing here, even without my empathic abilities, we know of the emotional burden this place means to you. A thousand years here, trapped in rage and hate. A thousand years of pain. I want you to know that you can come to myself or Captain Picard any time you need to.”

Luna stands there for a long moment, a single forehoof raised. She deliberately puts it down and bows before the ships counselor. “Thank you. My duties have been consuming me as of late. I would normally confide in my sister.” She looks down. “But with the events of meeting your crew and working to get this plan working. I have been neglecting myself.” She raises her head and tilts it a bit. “Why is it that I feel…?”

A knowing smile from the counselor. “You feel you can open up to me?” At the alicorn’s nod her smile widens. “I wish I could say it’s my nature. And while that is a factor, I’ve been trained to help for many years. I am here to help you, Princess. As we all are. I also know that a few engineers will be beaming to your sanctum here, some monitoring equipment will need to be set up before we work to move your system. Captain Picard wanted me to ensure you were ready for what might seem as a bit of an invasion of your personal space.”

Luna nods. “Thank you, the priority of saving my world supersede anything else, I would think.”

That gets a head tilted slightly. “But this was your prison, Princess. This cannot proceed without your help and your consent.”

That gets the princess to blink. “Wait, what? You are saying that you need my approval to do the work?”

Deanna nods. “Most certainly. There are definite time pressures involved, but we must consider your feelings on the matter. One of the reasons larger starships have counselors aboard. To work with those involved in crisis situations and make sure that we are proceeding ethically and considering the reality of how the host civilization is reacting to the situation. I have spent many days in the last weeks talking to many of the ponies involved in the colonization efforts. I was actually quite excited to meet you personally, Princess.”

“Me?”

“Oh yes, the way the ponies speak of you and your sister. I know you try to discourage the ponies from venerating you as gods, but you are nearly on that high of a pedestal with many of the ponies.”

Luna turns away. “I’m no god.” She grumbles.

“I know that, the ponies know you are not. But your status among them is definitely important. Many are volunteering to join the colonization and evacuation effort not in an effort to save their lives. They firmly believe the planet will be saved, because of you and your sister, along with the Element bearers. Twilight and her friends.”

“Then why agree to disrupt their lives? Move to a whole new world? Get on strange starships to go where they don’t have any idea what’s going to happen?”

That gets a smile from the hybrid officer. “Because they trust your word. You asked for volunteers, to strike out and go boldly where you ask them to go, into the unknown because you believe it’s best for them. They trust you, Princess.”

“They trust my sister.”

“No, Princess, they trust both of you. You are the princess of the night, you are just as vital as your sister when it comes to Equestrian society. If our efforts fail, and she is killed, they all will look to you. They will need your leadership, your guidance, to make the colony work.”

“I don’t want to leave my sister.” Luna mutters softly. “We are equals. She does not command me.”

“You intend to stay? Face the same fate as her?”

Luna turns away. “My sister has implored me, she wants me to go. I refused, so many times. But she insisted, she prevailed upon me. In the end, I promised her. If she must stay, I must go. I don’t like that promise, but I will follow it.” She turns back to Troi. “If the command to fire, to end this world, must be uttered. I will do so, with tears in my eyes, and grief in my heart.”

Troi blinks. “You? Princess? What about Captain Picard?”

“I talked to him. He understands why I must be the one to do it.”

Troi stands there for a long moment before taking a few steps towards the alicorn and placing a hand on the pony’s withers. “We won’t have to have that command be uttered, Princess. Our engineers are working with you ponies. We will save your world.”

Luna glances at the Betazoid. “I’m not going to ask if you promise.”

Troi smiles. “If it’s within our power, it will happen, Princess.”

***

“No! No No No No! It won’t work!” Growls Discord. He’s standing in main engineering of the Enterprise, standing before the main display, showing calculations. Next to him is the purple alicorn he’s disagreeing with. He turns to look at her. “The Enterprise plan can work, but it will turn every pony and most other creatures into toothpaste, and not the fun, tasty, strawberry, herring, jalapeno kind.”

“Wait, what?” Urping once she covers her mouth with a forehoof, “Strawberry, what? Ugh, no, no no, never mind, I don’t want to know.” Twilight shakes her head, her ears flicking back and forth. “Barclay showed me the math, the planet will be enveloped by the field. Princess Celestia will have to ensure the sun is near the moon at the right time, but…”

“But nothing, I’m not contesting that the field will envelop the planet. It most certainly will. But have you considered what will happen as the field expands over the planet? It’s not instantaneous, it’s limited to the speed of light. Gravitons have no mass in and of themselves, so they move at the same speed photons do. But here’s the rub, it’s going to take almost a tenth of a second for the entire planet to be engulfed by the field.”

Twilight blinks. “A tenth of a second isn’t all that bad.”

Discord growls. “It is when you consider how much gravitational shear that would mean.” He taps his screen. Planets aren’t solid rock. They have the core, and the mantle, which we won’t worry about because of how dense they are, all that will do would cause waves in the magma, they’ll dissipate. But the crust, where all the ponies live. Where all the life of the planet lives, will be subject to in excess of fifty times gravity. No matter how short that is, it’s going to crush every building, and every living thing is going to be turned into a puddle of goo.” He whirls away. “If the continuum would allow me the power, I’d just protect the planet, and make sure the field doesn’t affect the planet.” He turns back to the alicorn. “But I CAN’T DO THAT!” He waves a paw and a chair appears for him to flop into, crossing his arms.

“Awww the omnipotent Discord is chafing at the limitations he’s having to work under?” The new voice gets both to turn as a bright flash of white has Eris appearing, sitting in a revolving chair, letting it spin slowly back and forth.

He glances back at the engineers working at their stations, the chief engineer is in his office, apparently monitoring everything going on with the starship’s systems. He bends down and growls menacingly. “As it is, I don’t have enough power. And without protecting the planet, this whole exercise becomes moot.” He turns away, his nose high. “As if the continuum has any care about anything outside their realm of existence. There’s a whole universe out here as our playground. And they don’t care about anything else.”

Eris stands up, the chair disappearing. “You can be as frustrated as you like, Discord. But you have to understand. They aren’t making it impossible to solve this problem. It’s not truly a no-win scenario. We don’t want you to have to lose. We simply want you to have to work hard for the solution.”

Twilight snorts and takes a step forward. “You are playing with pony lives to give Discord a lesson. Just end this. He’s quite aware of his limitations here.”

Eris turns to look at Twilight. “What value is teaching him a lesson if lives aren’t on the line?” She saunters towards the other draconequus. “He has to face losing something that actually means something to him. Even if your lives are as transient as these pathetic humans, or the other species of this galaxy. You should be grateful, Discord values you ponies enough that the thought of your destruction is abhorrent to him.” She gestures. “Look at him, actual emotion. He is actually upset about this.”

Discord folds his arms. “Merely upset at the idea of losing.” He turns back to Eris. “You know I’ve never lost, anything, ever.”

That gets an evil grin. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. And it must gall you that you have to depend on these barely evolved monkeys.” She gestures to the humans in the compartment. “To save your ‘friends’.” Her mouth twists with the last word.

That gets a glower from Discord. “You know as well as I do the potential the ponies represent. If they can confine a Q against their will…” He stops, looking surprised.

Eris nods. “Their magic is more potent than even they realize. Their Elements can affect a planetary scale. And can capture a god of chaos. What might they be able to do? Given a few tens of millennia.”

“That’s what we want to find out.”

She chuckles. “Your impassioned pleas when the Continuum came to destroy utterly what could be a threat to us were persuasive, Discord. But you know we didn’t put their system into this peril.”

“I know that.” Discord snaps. “But I was lazy, and procrastinating. I should have nudge the system to where it wouldn’t have even gotten close to any inhabited system ages ago.”

“Because you want to be the one to swoop in at the last century, letting them know that you were their savior.” She rolls her eyes. “But that’s not working this time, is it?”

Geordie steps out from his office. “Do you have anything meaningful to contribute, Eris?” When she looks at him in shock. “Because if you don’t, buzz off. We are actually trying to save lives here.”

“Oh, the monkey speaks.” Eris says softly as she walks over to the human. “Have you ever considered replacing those eyes of yours?” She reaches up and snatches the VISOR off of his face, leaving perfectly normal brown eyes looking at her. “Ahh, I like that better.”

Geordie blinks a few times. “What? Huh?”

“Oh, Geordie, your eyes are beautiful.” Twilight says.

Geordie looks wildly around. “I don’t. I’ve…”

Eris twirls the VISOR on a claw. “You are dealing with the infinite. There is nothing we can’t do.” She glances at Discord. “Except when we are limited by others.” She snaps her paw and those eyes disappear, to be replaced with the milky white eyes he was born with. “But value what your species has been able to create. Born just a mere century ago, you would have been left behind.”

Geordie reaches blindly out, feeling for his VISOR. Eris takes a step back, only to have the VISOR enveloped in a purple aura and float towards the human. Eris glances at Twilight. “Spoilsport.” She growls before disappearing.

Geordie fits the visor onto his face, and when it clicks into position. He directs a dirty look at the place where the smaller draconequus was standing. “I was thinking.” He takes a few breaths to steady his emotions before looking at Discord. “We are sending energy to Celestia, to assist her with capturing the sun. Perhaps we can send energy to you as well. We can individually direct each emitter. We can send you as much as you would need.”

Discord shakes his head. “I am limited to chaos magic. And while you can detect and generate the pony’s magic, their thaumic energy. You will find that my magic is superior…”

“Superior, my plot.” Twilight snaps. “You and I both know that Celestia is well versed in chaos magic. She may not have your strength in it. But she knows the magic.”

Discord blinks. “You are saying…”

“It would be taxing for her. But we’ve calculated how much thaumic energy will make it to her. And she will have captured the sun for minutes before the ship is able to initiate the ellipse. More than enough time for her to take the thaums from the Enterprise and send you as much chaos magic as you can handle.”

Discord strokes his beard. “To think I could get charged up by the likes of…” He glances at Geordie. “Humans.” He shakes his head. “Do you think she would consent?”

“To save her ponies? To save our world? She would deal with every creature in tartarus itself gladly. And you know that, Discord.”

Discord turns to Geordie, bowing grandly. “It seems I am once again humbled by what you can do. So, we shall need to talk to the Princess of the Day.” He disappears in a flash of light.

Twilight giggles as Geordie glances at her. He shakes his head. “I think we surprised him. But you do know, with us sending that much power, someone, or some pony, is going to have to monitor the energy stream. Make sure that it’s not too much, and focused correctly.”

Twilight nods. “And I will be happy to do that.”