Heavenly View

by Rambling Writer

5 - Falling Leaf

Agnosipanophobia, the “fear of not knowing which way is up”, is perhaps a phobia unique to pegasi and unusually pervasive. The name is a slight misnomer; it refers specifically to a fear of a disruption of flight, such as a flat spin or a graveyard spiral, that makes it hard to tell where the horizon is due to rapid rotation, and so makes it hard to visually know up and down. Generally speaking, if you’re so disoriented during your flight that you can’t tell which way is up, you’re going to be hitting the ground very very hard very very soon.

As Mesonox spun over and over, the stars whirled around and Equus whizzed past again and again; unable to orient herself, agnosipanophobia set in and panic overtook her. Her every instinct screamed that she was going to hit the ground and die soon. Her heart was running a mile a minute and she couldn’t get her breathing under control. Centrifugal force was pushing all the blood to her head. She screamed, flailed her hooves, beat her wi-

Her wings strained against her suit and yanked Mesonox back to space. She was not in the air. She was not going to hit the ground soon. In fact, she wasn’t going to be hitting anything, ever. (Joy.) She was still alive, so her suit hadn’t been breached. She was as safe as she could hope for the time being.

Okay. Deep breath. Okay. Deep breath. Okay. Deep breath. Okay. The stars kept spinning around and around, but the panic receded. Deep breath. Okay. Deep breath. Okay.

I can get through this.

First order: Where was she? They’d never be able to find her if she couldn’t tell them where to look. (Also, stupid Gimbal for not springing for the suits with tracking.) As her breathing and her heart slowed, Mesonox looked at her HUD and got her coordinates.

Except her HUD wasn’t there. The inside of her helmet was blank.

Mesonox started hyperventilating again and her ears rang. Nothing in her training covered this. Stella had said it was good for every-

Stellar Ride. She’d know what to do. Or somepony on the other end of the comms. Mesonox swallowed, trying to wet her throat. “Uh, uh, Stella? Um, King?” she said. “This, this is the rookie. I, I’m okay, but my HUD’s down and I don’t know my position. What should I do? Over.” She waited for a response. And waited. And waited.

And waited.

“Uh, King? Do you copy? Over.”

The world turned end over end over end. No answer.

“Queen? Pawn? Does anypony read?”

Static. They weren’t saying anything.

In fact, they hadn’t said anything since the collision.

“Alright, uh, guys, this is the rookie. I’m…” What was the term? It wasn’t fair that she needed to use it on her first job. “…I’m transmitting in the, in the blind, I’m off-structure and drifting, and I can’t see my HUD. I’m okay, though, and I think my suit’s intact. I’m gonna try to see what the problem is. Somehow.”

Her hooves were buzzing. Mesonox closed her eyes, desperately trying to ignore the spinning backdrop of stars for just a second, to get some stability. It didn’t work; the sun was part of that backdrop and her eyelids brightened and dimmed as it moved across her field of vision. It was nearly worse than actually seeing it. Mesonox opened her eyes, breathed again, and began examining herself.

She saw it immediately. The computer on her fetlock had been smashed to pieces when she’d been hurled against View. The casing was twisted and the screen was cracked, leaving the terminal unrecognizable. A few bare wires trailed electricity, ordinary current whipped into harmless arcane lightning by the aether. It’d be hard to fix back down on Equus. In space, thrown about by centrifugal force with limited tools? Impossible. She was effectively stranded, unable to talk to anypony and them unable to find her.

But a small part of Mesonox was relieved. Early computers hadn’t reacted well with the aether, so they’d been made hot-swappable with spacesuit systems. If a critical component ever crapped out, an aethernaut could simply remove the old system and stick in a spare. By the time that hurdle had been cleared, tradition had formed, and so aethernauts always carried a backup terminal or two, Just in Case. Mesonox had one in one of her pouches. Switching this would be easy; she just needed to push in on the tabs-

The tab snapped off beneath her hoof.

She didn’t notice as it spun off into space; she was staring at the terminal in shock. It was like her mind had shorted. That was how you got the computer out. If she couldn’t get the computer out, she couldn’t get the new one in. And if she couldn’t get the new one in…

She had nothing.

Her breathing began inching back towards hyperventilation. Her helmet threw her warm, used air back in her face. It barely registered. It didn’t matter. She was going to-

She surprised herself when she grabbed her helmet and forcefully slammed her head against the side of the interior. Or tried to; the helmet moved with her neck and the inside was semi-cushioned, so the impact was light. A thought whizzed through Mesonox’s head of how inept that looked and the absurdity of it arguably did more to jar her out of her panic than actual pain would have.

Stop. Breathe. Think.

She stared out at space. Her visuals told her she was spinning around and around and around, yet none of her other senses agreed with that. She ought to be nauseated, puking her guts out all over the inside of her suit, but that’d never been a problem for her. She hadn’t even needed to train it out; as with most pegasi, keeping down her lunch came naturally.

Not this. She hadn’t even trained for this.

But she could think.

Mesonox let herself slow, examining her computer. She poked and prodded; it wiggled, but her blunt hoof couldn’t do much to work it out. Even if she were a unicorn, she couldn’t do much, not with the aether interfering with whatever magic she’d have. She needed something slimmer, something dexterous.

She ran her tongue across her teeth and swallowed. There was… one way. Dangerous. Risky. She’d only have one shot at it. If it went wrong, she’d be dead in moments.

Better that than starving to death in the void, she supposed.

Another swallow. “O-okay. King. Queen. This is the rookie in the blind. My, my fetlock computer got smashed, but, but I’ve still got my spare, so I think I can replace it. But I’m going to need to open my visor so I can get a good grip on the frame with my teeth, it’s kinda lodged in there. Oh, and, uh, Queen? This is your fault for not getting those flexihel-”

Mesonox cut herself off. If Heavenly View was listening to those words and she died trying to get the computer in, Gimbal would be devastated. “Um, scratch that. Queen, this, this isn’t your fault. Sorry. Bad joke. Wasn’t thinking. So, u-uh… Wish me luck, guys. Out.”

She began taking deep breaths, trying to fill her body with as much oxygen as possible. No way of knowing how long it would take. After several cycles, she put her hoof on the visor release lever. She pressed.

“What in Tartarus am I doing?” she sobbed. She closed her throat and popped her visor open.

---

Unexpected benefits of lowered inertial damping: you could use your inner ear rather than sensors to tell you how quickly the ship was rotating. This was a plus when every sensor was screaming a different warning at you.

“-Wind’s thrust is still climbing, can’t see why, View’s engines are still stable, no hull breach-”

The second Solar Wind had impacted Heavenly View, Queen had stomped on a pedal, disabling the holographic interface. Now, her hooves were dancing across the physical dashboard with more grace than a ballet dancer and more speed than an Equestria Games sprinter. Muscle memory and physical objects worked wonders when the world was falling apart around you.

“-only a few red lights yet, lots of yellow ones, getting worse-”

Knight was giving her reactor updates across the intercom, but Queen didn’t hear the words, just that everything was okay on her end. Queen was rattling off constant notifications about everything that seemed to matter (which was everything). The news report was almost subconscious, a reflex. All of her conscious attention was devoted to keeping View from spinning even more out of control.

“-Wind’s only getting lateral thrust from the stern, no bowwise momentum, trying to compensate-”

The portside of Solar Wind’s stern had smashed directly against Heavenly View’s engine block and done so surprisingly hard. The impulse had knocked View askew and sent her yawing as Wind continued to thrust. Then the tethers that bound Wind to View yanked the latter back like a pendulum, even as she swung across another axis. Half of Queen’s work was devoted to doing her best to keep that pendulum’s swing as small as possible. She kept alternating between topside and keel thrusters, fighting against physics and her undulating sense of balance.

“-high tension in the tethers, stress on the frame, constant oscillating motion-”

But the most she could manage was to slow the rate at which things were deteriorating. Every swing was a little bit further from the middle. Wind kept hitting View’s engine block, over and over and over. Waves reverberated throughout View’s frame, getting larger every time. And there was a twist developing in the two ships’ motion, one that was only going to get worse.

Screw it. Balefire option it was. “-situation uncontrollable, I’m detaching the tethers-”

Several buttons were punched in a blur. One to release the clamps and guidance drones from Wind and let her spin freely. And another to slam View to one side and get her out of Wind’s way.

The quick burst of attitude thrusters was jerky, but it ended with View being as calm and free of accelerative motion as you’d normally expect. Queen spared herself a moment to breathe, then quickly looked at the readings coming from Wind. She winced; Wind was in a flat spin, rotating at around once every six seconds. Good luck tethering that. Unless they had a miracle, there was a good chance this job was shot.

But she was alive and View was intact. She could focus on the positives for now. Then she looked at the warning lights all around her console and the positives began dribbling away. Some of the engines were okay, but more hadn’t survived Wind’s impact fully intact. Some were registering lower power draws and a few were absolutely nonfunctional. They could get back to Lunar Crown, but it’d be a limp back. And the cost of repairs… yeesh.

And what had caused Wind’s thrusters to start up in the first place? She’d never heard of anything like that. Queen looked at her other readouts-

-and frowned. Whatever energy had been propelling Wind was gone. Was it? The screens were digital and not analog, but they were still physical, so tradition made her tap them. No change. She turned on enough of the holographic interface to run a deeper scan on Wind. No energy detected and its rotation wasn’t accelerating.

She’d run an analysis later. Now… She opened a line on the intercom. “Knight? I had to detach the tethers.”

«I heard you say,» Knight responded. She sounded breathless, but unhurt. «Did it go that bad?»

Queen winced at herself. “Yeah,” she said. “Bad.” Maybe, she heard herself say, maybe, if she’d tried a bit harder to get it under control- “How’re you doing?”

«Everything’s a mess down here, but I’m fine. Still running diagnostics on the reactor, but I don’t think anything broke. I’ll let you know.»

That was something. Not much. But something. “Okay. Good. Checking on the rest of the crew. Out.”

Checking on the rest of the crew. The words had come as easily as the ability to actually do it hadn’t. Queen had never lost a crewmember in her career — never even had one badly hurt — and the thought of having it happen now, because of a freak accident, made her squirm so much even her last meal wanted out. She hadn’t been able to track the crew once they were thrown away. There was no training for that. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. So what was the procedure?

…Check their life signs. Their suits had sensors in them to track their most basic vitals. Queen knew she’d never actually used them, but they were there. She even remembered the macro she’d used to store them, just in case. After bringing her holograms back up and going into her macro list, she reached out for the correct-

…They’d be okay.

She reached out-

…They had to be.

She reached out-

Right?

She… reached…

She set her jaw and stabbed the icon before she could second-guess herself again.

Three entries: King, Pawn, and the rookie. King first. Queen couldn’t even bear to look at the other ones. Heart rate: elevated, but not dangerously so. Okay. Promising. At some point in her reflex dance, Queen had shut down all out-of-ship communications. She couldn’t remember doing it. Concentration, maybe. She opened a channel. “King, this is Queen,” she said. “We’re doing damage reports here in View. How about you?” She nearly, almost reflexively made a Still alive? joke before it withered in her throat.

Nothing came back from the other end of the line for several seconds, the crackle of dead air — don’t think of it like that — filling the cockpit.

Then nothing continued coming back.

“King?” asked Queen. “Do you copy?”

Static.

“Stella?” asked Gimbal. “D-do you hear me?”

Static.

Gimbal blinked twice and wiped down her eyes. Then Queen took a deep breath and continued on. She could break down later. Pawn: more elevated heart rate, even more so than King. Not great, but acceptable, given the circumstances. Channel open. “Pawn?” she asked.

She couldn’t even get another word in before Pawn’s voice cut through the digital haze. “I’m here, Knight.” His voice was pained, but not forced.

A particularly large knot immediately came undone in Queen’s chest and she let out a sigh of relief. “We’re doing damage reports here in View. How about you?”

“I ache like Tartarus, but nothing’s broken or dislocated. Bodywise or suitwise.”

Another knot. “Where are you?”

A chuckle that had more levity in it than hurt. “On the outside of the hull, believe it or not. These magboots are strong. My joints’re gonna hate me tomorrow, though.” A low grunt. “And that’s compared to now. Yikes.”

“…Wow. That’s-”

“Have you tried contacting King yet?” Queen’s stomach only managed half a somersault before Pawn continued, “Because her comms’re down. I think something got loose in the impact. I’m looking at her right now and my radio can’t reach her. We’re heading for the airlock. Yell so they can hear, King.”

A soft but clearly screamed voice filtered through the speaker. “I’m okay!” It was a miracle it could be heard at all, after passing through two helmets, the aether, and the mic.

Queen allowed herself a grin. “Good. Good.” Now for the rookie. She looked at the last entry-

-and saw nothing.

The rookie’s suit wasn’t saying anything.

Something got stuck in Queen’s throat. Losing King or Pawn would’ve been bad, but at least understandable. They’d been doing this job for a long time. You almost expected them to die eventually. But the rookie was- Mesonox was new at this. It was her first sunblasted day, for Celestia’s sake! It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even her fault, just a freak accident they still had to find the cause of.

Swallow. “Uh, Pawn?”

“Talk to me.”

“The rookie’s gone.”

The silence began to stretch.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“King and I are almost at the airlock. We can talk face-to-face soon.”

“Mmhmm.”

But she couldn’t dwell. Gimbal closed Mesonox’s entry, closed her eyes, and took a long, steadying breath. Then Queen opened her eyes and started flitting through damage reports.

---

There wasn’t any wind. In spite of being only slightly under half an atmosphere of pressure, nearly comparable to the tops of some mountains, the superfluidity of aether meant Mesonox felt no drag. She might’ve preferred it. At least it would be something she could feel.

Somehow managing to keep her throat sealed, Mesonox tore into the remains of her computer with her mouth. Sharp plastic and metal jabbed her muzzle, drawing blood, as she yanked dead fragments out of their frame and tossed them away. She cringed at creating yet more space debris, but it couldn’t be helped. She poked her teeth into places and manipulated things in ways a single hoof could never reach, and thank goodness for that, because she’d be screwed otherwise.

All the while, she kept her throat shut like her life depended on it. Because it did.

Aether was a gas, technically, and physically, it was about as inert as nitrogen. But you did not breathe it. Because metaphysically, it was a medium for magic. If you breathed in too much, it would react with the magic in your body and spirit. It would consume you like fire consumed confetti and you’d be on too much of a high to care about stopping it. And in pure aether, “too much” was “the slightest breath”.

It was a bizarre feeling, keeping your throat shut like you were performing some full-body physical exertion while using only your mouth. Mesonox tried not to think about it. If she did, she might forget to keep holding her breath.

Mesonox dug. She recognized some of the pieces as she threw them away. A green stick of RAM, the glittering shards of the CPU, wires connecting everything together. It was all in her way and she tossed it aside all the same. Silicon and plastic felt odd as she moved them around with her teeth, tasted odd when they bumped against her tongue, poked into the insides of her cheeks in uniquely not-exactly-painful ways. Bit by bit, her computer’s frame emptied out.

The aching started in her throat after several moments. It wasn’t even an ache, really, more of an urge. She was a physical creature. She needed — needed — to breathe. Her body was trying to tell her that not breathing was wrong, and she really ought to get a move on and start breathing again. But bodies were stupid; she couldn’t tell hers that breathing at this particular moment was a really bad idea.

She was fighting hard to keep her throat sealed when she ripped the old terminal’s connector out from the frame. What was left behind was a plain socket, a bit battered, but still capable of taking a computer (hopefully). Mesonox dug through one of the pouches on her suit for that computer. She cradled it carefully as she pulled it out, keeping centrifugal force from hurling it out of her grip. Not an easy task when all of her instincts were telling her to ignore that and breathe, but she managed to get it to the frame and insert it-

Something didn’t feel right. The tabs weren’t clicking. Mesonox swore internally, blinked eyes that were much too dry, and did her best to slow down in spite of her increasingly-scratchy throat and examine-

It was backwards. She’d put in the stupid computer the wrong way around. Wishing she could swallow the gunk that had once been saliva in her mouth, Mesonox pulled it back out, flipped it around, and slapped it back in. It felt much better this time around and she hadn’t even taken her hoof off before the screen lit up, the miracle of CSDs letting it start nearly faster than the speed of thought. Okay. Okay, good. She frantically popped her visor back in place, and immediately, a red caution light blocked out her view and screamed in her face:

WARNING! AETHER CONCENTRATION ABOVE 80%!
INHALATION WILL BE FATAL!
PURGING…

Mesonox wanted to scream. Her lungs were already burning. If she hadn’t been a pegasus (variant), she’d never make it to a safe concentration of aether. She’d be pushing the envelope already. She might as well scream; she’d die a lot more quickly from aether inflammation than self-suffocation.

She only managed to stay silent because the warning light meant her HUD was back up.

An ominous hiss with heartening implications echoed through her helmet and she felt air currents as her suit set to work purging the aether from her atmosphere. In the bottom right corner of her helmet, a little counter began ticking down. As Mesonox’s vision began swimming, she silently urged, pleaded the counter to go faster.

Her HUD flickered.

WARNING! AETHER CONCENTRATION ABOVE 50%!
INHALATION WILL BE FATAL!
PURGING…

Better, but it was hard to think that with her heart pounding in her ears, so hard she could barely think at all. All she needed was one breath. Just one. Maybe, if she just held on a little more…

Flicker.

WARNING! AETHER CONCENTRATION ABOVE 40%!
INHALATION MAY BE FATAL!
PURGING…

Good enough. Mesonox released her breath and gasped once.

The oxygen that flooded her system was like the sweetest wine she’d ever tasted. And yet, the aether was sweeter still. She’d never breathed in aether before and had never imagined it could feel this good. Mesonox imagined this was what a drug high felt like: everything was just mellow and didn’t matter. She was floating on top of the world, after all. She could intensify the feeling; all she had to do was take another breath.

She didn’t take another breath, no matter how much the feeling tugged at her. She kept telling herself the feeling was just a side effect of her own magic and the aether’s reacting in her brain, and getting more of it into her body would start off a more intense reaction that… Yeesh. Mesonox still didn’t want to remember that part of her training.

It was hard to claim that was the truth when the lie felt so damn good.

Flicker.

CAUTION! AETHER CONCENTRATION ABOVE 25%!
INHALATION MAY BE HARMFUL!
PURGING…

Mesonox kept her mouth shut. The bubbly feeling began bubbling away as the reaction ran its course. Her mind cleared. Her lungs still ached, but she could hold on until-

CAUTION. AETHER CONCENTRATION ABOVE 10%.
INHALATION IS SAFE, BUT YOUR SUIT MAY HAVE A RUPTURE.
FOR YOUR CONTINUED SAFETY, COMPLETE YOUR EVA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND RUN A CHECKUP ON YOUR SUIT.
PURGING…

The message froze for several seconds, flashed once, then shrank to a corner of her HUD as the aether concentration continued to drop. Mesonox promptly took deep, gulping breaths to clear her head. No aether high. Perfect. She had her coordinates, she had navigation, she had her suit functionality up, she was all set.

With step one.

Swallowing, Mesonox said, “Uh, Queen. This is the rookie. I’m transmitting in the blind, off-structure, and drifting. But I’ve repaired my- My computer was brok-”

“SWEET TWILIGHT!” Gimbal shrieked.

Mesonox flinched at the static-filled yell. But before she could react, Gimbal coughed. “S-sorry,” she muttered. “You were…”

“My fetlock computer got smashed,” Mesonox said. Just the voice of another pony was like a balm to her mind. “I wasn’t getting anything from you and I don’t think you were getting anything from me.” How did she sound so calm?

“Um. No.” Gimbal’s voice seemed to slip at something before she pulled it back to stoic professionalism. “What’s, what’s your status?”

“I’m fine. Just off-structure. I had to replace my computer and got a little banged up.” Mesonox regretted the last phrase almost immediately; how would Gimbal take it?

“How did- Never mind.” (Well enough.) “Do you have your coordinates?”

“I think so. Gimme a sec…” Mesonox searched through her HUD and rattled off the relevant set of numbers.

The tacking of physical buttons being hit sounded through their audio link. Had View been damaged. “Okay…” murmured Gimbal, “let’s- There you are. We can pick you up, but I’ll need to talk with King. Just sit tight.”

“What else can I do?” Why did the joke come so easily after she’d nearly died?

“Think about your place in the universe?”

Mesonox recited her coordinates again.

Gimbal actually laughed. It wasn’t forced, either. Tired, but not forced. “Well, think about that. We’ll get to you. Out.”

Her voice only shook a little as Mesonox said, “Out.”

The comms clicked off and she was alone again.

---

View gave her updates. Everyone else was okay. View was intact. She could still move. They weren’t doomed. Glen was suiting up in an EVA system to get her. The words ran straight through Mesonox’s head without leaving much of a trace. Because alone, she could stew.

She’d seen those weird crystals on the engines. Those plain, obviously unimportant crystals that she’d told herself didn’t do much but were still in a critical place. Wind had been an experimental ship. Experimental in the engines? Maybe. So what if she’d ignored something critical? Should she have gone to Stella and let her know what she’d seen? Almost definitely. And because of that, now View was wrecked. How badly? Enough. It was her fault.

She’d settled into a rut before she’d even gotten started. Assumed everything would always be just as she expected it. She- Sweet Twilight, what had she been thinking? She saw something that had never come up in all of her training, and her first response was to just ignore it? What if it had been even more dangerous? Did she think that she knew best? What could go wrong with getting a second opinion?

She knew the next step. The only logical one. She had to tell Stella and everyone else what she’d neglected to do. And then, if she was lucky, she’d get to keep her job. If she wasn’t, good-bye career. Trawler crews talked and word spread faster than light up here. If she was fired for this sort of negligence — on her first day, no less — no other crew would touch her. But maybe she’d get lucky and-

Glen’s voice suddenly cut through the miasma of her thoughts. “I see you, rookie. Gimme a sec.”

Mesonox didn’t bother looking. It was hard to get a good look at anything when she was still spinning around. She thought she was ready, but she still twitched in shock when something grabbed her and she was suddenly looking Glen in the eye through the visor of his own helmet. They were still both spinning, but more slowly.

“Hey, there, rookie,” he said, grinning. “You’re gonna be alright.”

Upon hearing somepony’s actual voice and not just a digital reproduction, Mesonox suddenly felt very tired. She was going to be okay. She smiled weakly at him and nodded. “I’m gonna be alright.”

Glen’s hooves twitched inside their boots; the two’s spin slowed to the sound of soft bursts of air. Mesonox registered that he was wearing a light exoskeleton. An EVA maneuvering unit, just in case there were pieces of debris outside the reach of their strainers. Or anypony got thrown off-structure.

Their spin came to a complete stop. Glen quickly slapped a carabiner “View’s waiting for us,” he said, pointing at an unusually bright star. “Let’s get home.”

And face the music. Great. Mesonox stayed quiet as the jets fired up.

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

“What in Tartarus am I doing?” she sobbed. She closed her throat and popped her visor open.

Gotta be one of the gutsiest things I've seen someone do in a while now.

Aether was a gas, technically, and physically, it was about as inert as nitrogen.

Wow, saved by unconventional astrodynamics.

[Foxtrot-Mayflower]

You know the music, it’s time to dance…

Beautiful, I really can’t get enough of these space stories. It’s phenomenal at how good this author is at describing danger and near-death experiences. Bravo!

[Booster Spice]

Keep forgetting the name of the Arthur C Clarke short story wher they had to do vaccuum traversal of entire ship crew without suits doe to combat damage, which is the trick used in the movie 2001 to get back in the ship from the pod.

Good line to follow.

[Noble Cause]

I absolutely ate this up with a knife and fork while killing some time, and found myself absolutely captivated. Holy heck, this is amazing...

... and it also makes me want to start up Hardspace: Shipbreaker again.

[Alchemik]

...huh. I'd forgotten that space was filled with Aether in this setting. A peculiarity which definitely saved Mesonox's life there. Though it does make me wonder, if space is filled with a gas, why do the other gasses cluster around planets? Is the drag from Aether why the sun and moon have to be kept in motion manually? But if so, why don't other planets? Or do they?

[AppleTank]

11740322
I think it was said Aether acts as a super fluid with very little, if any, drag. It made the fishing for debris part very strange.