• Published 17th Oct 2021
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The Warp Core Conspiracy - Unwhole Hole



Captain Kirk and the Enterprise witness the failure of Equestria's first warp attempt, and on investigation find something far more sinister may be afoot.

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Chapter 19: Nighttime Aboard an Alien Starship

At her own instruction, the human crew had departed. It was night, or what their ship’s photocycle considered night. Nights exactly as long as they were on Equestria. They felt as long as Moondancer remembered.

She was left alone in the shuttle bay, because she worked best alone. The humans were ingenious creatures, and they worked quickly. They had a degree of intuition, of mechanical knowledge, but they were loud. Endlessly noisy and endlessly moving. Moondancer needed quiet. To consider what she was doing. Time to think.

The ship's light was only marginally dimmer—and if not dimmer, then different. A harsher color. Like the lights of her own laboratory, the facility where she had built the prototype, deep in the iridescent plains of the dark side of the moon. Few ponies dwelt there, and the silence almost never ended. There had been other ponies at her facility. Other staff. She knew none of their names. She had never met them.

A bluish light that flickered over her, originating from a single tetrahedral crystal flashing with a strange internal glow--a crystal powered by a machine devised at her instruction from the parts the humans had available and powered by her own magic.

Above it sat the image of the cockpit she had spent months painstakingly forging—an looking backward, and slightly to the left, where she had mounted the synchronization crystal to the main control array. And in this image, she saw herself, dressed in her flight suit and staring forward at her readings with terrifying resolve.

There was noise. Interference, and sparking as conduits burst and as the fire suppression attempted to contain part of the smoldering cockpit. She watched herself and, in a small and tinny voice, heard herself speaking.

“This is Moondancer, pilot of the Dancer-One Prototype FTL ship. I am presently being pursued by hostile aliens and my primary drive shell is experiencing a containment collapse. A core breach is imminent unless I redirect power.” She heard herself pause, taking a breath. “I am too far to teleport to safety. The core will survive. I will not be recovered. If any living members of my family can be found, please inform them and provide them with my liquidated estate. I am sorry I failed. . But my work will continue in my absence. Recover the core, and continue my work. Goodbye.”

Then the final spell, charging her desperate shield and diverting all power to the core protection shield—even as the center of her body started to glow with strange alien light and fade as she was pulled apart by their so-called transporter. Then a sudden burst, noise, and a blinding flash of light.

The crystal vibrated slightly, and the recording was replaced once again with the mathematical construct of tits records from the moment of detonation. Moondancer saw them and comprehended the numbers, but did not know how they came to be.

She looked up at the severed core of her starship, now surrounded by a fully constructed scaffold of gray-colored human metal linking to it at various points with sensors and supports. A complex armored device, now burned and charred in places, its central cylinder marked with the symbol that Moondancer had come to hate. It was as if it were mocking her.

“Why?” she said. “Why did you allow yourself to be damaged? Why did you protect me? I’m the only pony with nothing left to go back to. Why jeopardize everything I worked so hard for?”

She heard a footstep and felt her magic clamp around a screwdriver—but she forced herself to release it. She instead turned to find Mr. Scott approaching across the shuttlebay.

“I specifically requested that I be left alone.”

“That ye did, lassie. But I still need to walk down and have a check on you every now and then. I don’t normally tolerate working alone. Especially with unstable parts like this.”

“So you doubt my competence, then.”

Mr. Scott smiled and held up his hand. He was missing one of his fingers. “Everyone makes a mistake once in a while, lassie. And it helps if friends are there to help mop it all up.”

Moondancer grumbled but reluctantly allowed the human to approach.

“Talking to your ship, I see?”

Moondancer frowned. “Don’t you?”

“Aye. No engineer worth his salt would go his career without saying a word to the most important lady in his life, now would he?”

Rather than stand with him, Moondancer approached a badly disrupted hole in the armor and began performing forensic diagnostics to determine the extent of the damage to the control-wire interface for the forward thrust.

“For almost half my life, it’s been the only thing I’ve had to talk to.”

“You didn’t have a crew, then?”

“They would just get in my way. They would make mistakes. It has to be perfect, and I’m the only one who can do it perfectly.” She grimaced. “And even then it wasn’t enough.”

Scottie just nodded. Then he pointed upward at the star insignia. “But you didn’t build this part, did you?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Scottie shrugged. “Fine, then. I’ll leave you to it. But I heard what you said. And it’s not a good thought.”

“What?”

“That you have nothing to go back to.”

“I don’t.” She gestured upward. “Everything I ever had is right here. Blown to bits.” She paused, her eyes once again catching the star insignia—and she stared at it for much longer this time as Scottie turned to leave the shuttle bay.

“She was my friend,” she said.

Scottie stopped walking. He said nothing, but turned to listen.

“My best friend. My...only friend. We went to Celestia’s university together since we were children. I...didn’t get along well with other ponies. Spells and machines, I understand those. But not what to say when somepony is sad, or when to laugh at the right time, or how to ask a mare to a dance without looking like an idiot...it was easy for everypony else. But not for me. But her...she...”

“I see. But what happened, lass, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“She left me.” Moondancer looked over her shoulders. She felt the urge to cry, but did not. There were no tears left. “She left me all alone. My only friend, the only pony who understood me, and she left. She went to go work for Division 51. To built this.” She gestured to the core. “And did she ever come to see me? Did she ever visit me, even once, or even write me a letter? No. As if I stopped existing. She forgot me, and it was that easy.” She paused, looking down at the hole in the machinery. “She...was the thing that mattered most to me in the whole world. But now I only have my work. I left Equestria. To the moon. And never bothered to have a friend ever again.”

Scottie paused, then sighed. “Lass, I might not be the best person to be having this chat with. Some of the larger ships have counselors, but the best I can do is send you to the yeoman...”

“No,” snapped Moondancer, probing the hole and grasping part of the ruined machinery, trying to get deeper, to where the cable had retracted and jammed. “This is fine. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I have a job to do, and I’m—doing—IT!”

She pulled hard, and was suddenly thrown backward as the part she was holding broke loose entirely, gutting itself on the floor. Scottie was barely close enough to catch her, but she stood up and waved him off—and then stared at what she had pulled out.

“That, lass, is why we don’t work alone, if ye had fallen on some machinery you’d be sliced to ribbons--”

“What is this?”

“What do you mean ‘what is this’, I’ve been asking that every second since I laid eyes on your damn wooden ship--”

Moondancer held the part up to him. “NO. What is THIS?”

Scottie stared at it, then the look of agitation vanished from his face. It was replaced with one of great surprise and interest. He took the hunk of burned machinery and wires from Moondancer, turning it over in his hands. Then, seeming to understand it, he grasped one of Moondancer’s borrowed tools and pried part of it out. He held it up to the light, and then up to her.

“This...this is a duotronic enhancer.”

Moondancer’s brow creased. “Are you sure?”

“Aye, lass, I’d know it anywhere I’d seen it!"

He started walking suddenly to a set of diagnostic benches that had been set up for the humans to help analyze and organize the debris from the prototype ship. He set it under one of the microscopes and immediately lit the light system and engaged the focus.

“Lassie, you said your planet was still on vacuum-tube computers!”

“We are.” Moondancer shivered. “Mr. Scott, what is that thing doing in my ship? Where did it come from?”

“That’s the harder question to answer, isn’t it?” He pulled his eyes back from the scope. “Duotronics is a universal technology, every planet has at least one manufacturer, sometimes hundreds. I don’t recognize this one. It’s not any of the main Federation sources, though. I’m sure on that at least.”

He picked up the hunk of metal and began probing it with various sparking tools. Moondancer stood on her hind legs, bracing herself against the table, watching—and the more he took it apart, the more she saw that it was and exceedingly complex system. Far more complex than it should have been.

Scottie stopped. “Lassie,” he said. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No. But...”

“But?”

“But I think there’s something I’m not being told.”

Scottie pointed at the damaged core. “How, exactly, does that thing function?”

Moondancer looked over her shoulder at the core, and took a breath. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’? It’s your ship, you talk to it--”

“It isn’t about to tell me, it’s a hunk of wood and metal, it’s not alive!” She pushed herself back from the table, staring at the hole. A hole that had been allowed to exist in the otherwise inviolable surface by a mistake. It should not have existed—and those parts should never have been exposed.

“The core was built by Division 51, as part of the collaborative effort between Equestria and the Lunar Colonies. It was built as a module, in one piece. I received documentation on the control scheme and interface parameters but...” But she had never thought to question beyond that. “...the documentation never said what was on the inside.”

“Maybe you just missed--”

“I do NOT miss things. I read every page I was given, and I have no idea what is in there. I never had a need to.”

“And you never thought to open it?”

“The documents stated that the core is exceedingly fragile and unstable. Piercing the containment shell could cause a fatal collapse. The radiation levels were listed as extreme and, more importantly, we only have the one. I wasn’t about to risk my life's work for curiosity’s sake.”

“I understand, but...”

Moondancer stared at the piece of machinery. “But now I need to know. That piece. It's alien technology. It isn’t Equestrian. What is it doing in my ship?”

“Well...it’s not easy to tell, is it?” Scottie poked at the hunk and it sparked slightly. “It’s right destroyed. But...in my opinion, the structure is mostly consistent with a kind of in-line replicator or sorts."

"A replicator?"

"Aye, lass, a synthesizing machine. Klingon technology. Bloody daft things most of the time, takes ten times the power as the parts fabricator and makes the foulest coffee you've ever tasted." He pointed at the damaged components. "If I'm right, and I usually am, these are the projector heads, and the matter source-feed on the back. Which means...” He picked up the duotronic chip between a pair of forcepts. “Which means that if it is, this must be its memory center. Which means...”

An idea occurred to him, and he nearly ran across the room. Moondancer had to gallop to follow.

“Means what?”

Scottie opened the front of a large machine, removing a similar chip from the internal hardware and inserting the one he had taken from the Moondancer’s ship. “Replicators all use a common code for matter generation, so it ought to be comparable with the parts fabricator.”

“Meaning what?”

“A replicator is a device which converts one form of matter to another, lassie. It can make virtually anything given the right code.”

Moondancer understood. “You’re trying to see what it was programmed to make.”

Scottie smiled. “Aye, lass. The version won't be perfect, but it ought to shed a light on this whole strange situation, eh?”

Moondancer nodded, and Scottie pressed the activation button. The space below the forge shimmered, and then the light condensed into something—and that something fell to the floor with a sickening splat, splattering across Scottie’s boots and Moondancer’s armored shoes.

“Ugh!” groaned Scottie, stepping back. “The program must’ve corrupted, it smells awful! Hold on, I can make adjustments to the system, we need a better resolution--the fabricator simply isn't designed for organic molecules like this--”

“No it doesn’t. Smell bad, I mean.” Moondancer looked at the brown liquid, poking her hoof into it and picking some up. She sniffed it.

“Lass, no, you’re making me queasy--”

“It doesn’t smell good, no, but not bad. Just...” She stuck out her tongue and licked the solution. Scottie gulped, nearly vomiting.

Moondancer’s eyes widened. “This is food.”

“Lass, just because you eat it doesn’t mean--”

“No. This is food. You can do an assay on it, but I can already taste it. Sugar. Amino acids. Salts. This is food. I’m sure of it.”

Scottie nodded, then looked back at the reactor. “Which begs the question, doesn’t it?”

Moondancer nodded, her expression growing grim. “Why there is alien technology in my core...dedicated to manufacturing food.” She paused, then sighed. “Mr. Scott, how competent would you say your crew is?”

Scottie seemed somewhat offended, but also proud. “I’d say they’re the best crew I’ve ever served with. The best in all of Starfleet on the best ship in all of Starfleet.”

“They had better be. I need them in here. Now.”

“Why, lass?”

“Because we’re going to open it.”

“But lass, you just said it’s desperately unstable, and you have no idea what’s inside--”

“I know, Mr. Scott. But I need to know. And it’s about time I did.” She started walking toward it, taking mental inventory of her tools. “Because I’ve been lied to. And I need to see what that horse Twilight Sparkle is up to.”

Scottie nodded, and joined her. “Aye, lass. Aye indeed.”

Author's Note:

On replicators:


Earlier, it was noted that replicators did not exist in the Original Series and constitute an anachronism. Since they serve a plot point, I did not eliminate them from the earlier portions of the story. That might be an oversight on my part.

However, I do not think that it is inconceivable that they could exist. Instead of being a reliable food source, I image them either as an advanced 3D printer for small metallic components (you never want to run out of bolts when your ship keeps getting shot up by Klingons) or as a new-fangled luxury reserved for senior officers to dispense treats. Considering that even the replicators in Next Generation are kind of terrible, these would be even worse--and consequently little used. Why drink gross pseudo-coffee when you can drink as much yeoman coffee as you want?

That, and I posit (partially facetiously) that some of the advanced technology present in Next Generation may actually be Klingon in origin. A replicator makes far more sense on a Klingon ship. Considering that the Klingon diet is largely alive or very freshly killed, they would need something to feed their provisions until slaughter. A nice mush of random protein and sugars should keep the gagh and racht fresh longer. That, and I can hardly imagine Kligons being willing to farm vegetables when a technological solution would free up more time for various forms of violence.

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