[Forlorn Ascension]|[Rites of Dominion]

by Desrium

Defying Gravity

One thing Phineas sorely missed on the Desolus was an observation deck. While such a thing might have been an inefficient use of space for a vessel which was essentially a freighter, it was a part of the Iopteryx he had treasured dearly. Never before had he seen space in such a broad, nearly personal scope. His memories of looking out of that giant screen were pristine in his mind. Starlight twinkling away beyond the glass, space rocks igniting in the atmospheres of wayward worlds...the asteroid field where the stricken Federation ship must have remained even now.

While his memories associated with the grand viewing deck were not all happy ones, it was still something of his past that left a lasting impression on him; something that left him wanting to see Gallopso in a way this line of windows prevented him from seeing. He could certainly look out of them, but only across their length. There was so much more detail to be seen, blocked by the black walls that glowed yellow. Phineas felt almost cheated. He stood reared, his hooves pressed against the orange glass and his face inches away from it.

"What is a stallion to do...?" he thought, the gears in his head turning. Any problem could be solved with just a little time and concentration.

Concentration and a spacesuit.

"... Duh. Have spacesuit, will soar!"

He pushed himself away from the windows and started to gallop down the hallway. He did not bother bringing up the ship's layout, for he was confident he knew the twists and turns of its corridors like the back of his hoof, and it was not his pride at work.

He sped down the ship as if he were back on the academy's field track. He ran up the ramps leading up to the upper levels of the ship, eventually arriving at his destination: an airlock. He raised his PDA and typed in a command. Normally, the hatch would have needed a Shu'badi's Arcane-Manipulator to open, such as Tsubar's store of equipment. To not limit the accessibility of the ship to the new crew member however, Tsubar was sure to grant remote control to the PDA.

The circular paneling slid inwards and turned before splitting apart, sliding into the wall. On the other side of the hatch was a fairly long but skinny vertical shaft. It was lit by the same red light that illuminated the engineering deck. After he stepped through the opening, the hatch shut behind Startrot and the red light intensified in brightness. There was a hiss of air as the shaft was depressurized and Phineas' life support protocols initiated with an electronic beeping. The status of his air supply and environmental readings were on his HUD.

The hatch above him opened once the air had been vacuumed out. Just beyond the length of the chute, there was space. All of it. The huge expanse of existence itself was just one short pulse of his jetpack away. It was a humbling realization for Phineas to say the least.

The two boosters popped out from the side of the suit's pack, swiveling around on the end of silver extensions and then flared up, propelling Phineas up and out of the shaft with a flash of scarlet, a pair of vapor trails left in their wake. He came down at the outer edge of the chute, magnetic clamps on his hooves keeping him bound to the Desolus as it rocketed through the Furosta system at several hundred kilometers.

He stood on an elevated part of the ship near the aft end, where the bright exhaust of the ship's two engines was clearly visible. As bright as they were, the engines drowned in the light of the star. Even as distant as it was, its radiance consumed any other other light with overpowering brilliance.

"All systems nominal. No critical error. My organs have yet to explode..." Phineas muttered to himself as he beheld the sight.

Gallopso, partially cast in a crescent shadow, gradually grew larger and larger with each passing minute. It had three moons all at varying distances from the planet, floating in their orbits like watchful sentinels.

"Possible explanation for abnormal geological disturbances... gravity, you are truly something, aren't you?"

The silver stallion remained outside of the Desolus for a little while longer before he was otherwise forced to return to the safety its hull and magical shielding provided. That was due to the ship angling itself for atmospheric entry...and when fast things hit air, they tend to heat up. Sparing himself the searing pain and highly probable death, Phineas deactivated the clamps and jetted back into the ship. Once he was at the bottom of the shaft, the hatch on top slid shut and the airlock was pressurized again, the chamber filled with a tinny sounding hiss until a loud click became audible and the lower hatch opened.

Phineas stepped out as a very happy pony.

***

The underside of the Desolus' dark hull started to glow bright, a hot red and orange as the ship -for lack of a better choice of words- fell from the sky. It was pointed upwards at a sharp angle when it hit the upper atmosphere of the planet. A wispy, white barrier formed around the lower hull a few feet away from the actual metal; an area of compressed air as the freighter plummeted.

The loud growl of powerful servos marked the rotation of the ship's engines to direct their thrust downwards, the thrusters belching out blinding light with a screech thereafter. The ship's descent slowed gradually until it was nearly hovering in the lower atmosphere of Gallopso. From there the freighter swung about, flying over the planet's ocean. Its shadow wavered across the bobbing seas.

The rocky landscape rose out of the ocean, beaches stripped of sand and instead lined by smoky gray crust. Spikes jutted from the tortured landscape where the surface of Gallopso had been broken and broken again. Ranges of mountains were plentiful with peaks that stabbed high into the air, topped off with snow and ice.

Embedded into the rock was what appeared to be a humungous harpoon, the spear having several other metal extensions branching off and buried into the ground, thoroughly anchoring the gigantic chain which extended from it up to the idle clouds lingering over the craggy coast. The city that rested on the clouds was enormous. It was essentially one gigantic ship with several platforms built out from its hull and each platform had its own puff of cloud under them to keep them afloat.

The ship itself was a huge saucer that was black at the outer rim. Underneath it were strange spires of various lengths extending downwards, some disappearing into the cushion of clouds it rested upon. At the center of the top side, there was a relatively small glass dome which revealed the huge complex that was inside the disk-ship. The superstructure was clearly meant to house thousands inside. In addition to spreading outwards, the Equestrians here also built upwards. Many structures, small and large alike, had been erected on top of the bulk of the craft.

It was as if the refuge was a combination of a Pegasus city and a metropolis the likes of Manehattan. The Desolus was incredibly small in comparison. In fact, it was so small that it was -by proportion- even smaller than the very shuttle it housed in its cargo hold. The floating city's docking area was like an aged and less glamorous version of the Ponyville launch hub with all manner of spacecraft parked in shipyards stacked in tiers, held in place by clamps of many sizes. Ships much larger than the freighter were being tended to comfortably within the city's spaceport.

The Desolus pulled into a shipyard, coming to a stop in between two platforms. From them the clamps reached out and locked onto the ship's hull, anchoring it in place. The ship's engines ceased shortly after and the cargo hold's door was lowered to form an export ramp. At any given time there were hundreds of people inside the spaceport, all working to keep the flow of goods moving. unicorns, pegasi, earth ponies, minotaurs, diamond dogs and many others hauled heavy crates in tandem with each other, using lifting machinery, magic or just their collective might.

The Desolus' hold was emptied promptly after it had docked, with the only incident being a slight confusion over Phineas' shuttle. Romaz was quick to set things straight, however.

"Ah, that's not part of the delivery!" she informed the crew of dockworkers who were perplexed at the craft, a few of them gathering loading machinery so that they could transport it out of the hold.

***

Elsewhere, Phineas looked out of the windows at the hustle and bustle outside, blown away by the scene. It seemed he had been wrong to worry about what had become of his race, if Gallopso was a means to judge from. The remnants of Equestria were far from primitives who would sooner eat a piece of machinery than use it. Or rather, these Equestrians were the ones who were part of the greater whole which kept the city in the condition it was in. They could have been this society's elites for all Phineas knew.

"I had a feeling I'd find you here," he heard Tsubar say to him. Phineas looked to his right and saw the mechanic approaching from further up the hall. "So, what do you think?"

"I don't know what to think," Phineas replied honestly. "When we talked I thought the most my kind had accomplished after the fall of Earth was simply finding new places to live and surviving. But this... super metropolis is anything but! The ponies here have not only survived but they have thrived!"

"A word of warning: don't draw any conclusions without seeing everything first. I said the ponies across these fringe worlds are on point where it counts. It's when you get past the necessities does the splendor wear off and you realize just what's up with these places."

"I don't know what to think," Phineas repeated, shaking his head.

"Come on, I'll help you get your bearings on things. We're on ship leave anyway," Tsubar said.

"Ship leave?" the silver stallion inquired with a cock of his head.

"Yeah, we completed our delivery so we get some time off to do what we please before we have to blast off again. Didn't you ever get time off?"

"I knew it as reassignment. After one completes their time aboard a vessel and return to Earth, they usually got a month or two to themselves before being called to join another ship's crew and completing another round into space. I never got the chance to finish my first," Phineas answered. "Which is why... you know... I'm here right now," he added afterwards.

"Right," Tsubar replied without much else to go on. "On to matters that are more pressing; how about I go show you around this place, to let you see where your kind truly stand. I think it would ease some worries...if not answer a few of your questions."

"I think I'd like that, Tsubar," Phineas said, nodding afterwards. "Yeah. I'd definitely like that."

"Good," the mechanic said as he started to float away from the window. "It will also give me a good opportunity to gauge how well your private studies have worked. You have yet to show that you have beaten our challenge."

"Don't you worry about that. If there's one thing I am certain about, it's the fact I know the Desolus almost as well as I knew the Iopteryx!" Phineas boasted with a surge of pride. With that, he trotted after Tsubar down the corridor.

He was beginning to feel like his old self again.