//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 – Ship // Story: Stella Cetaceae // by Novelle Tale //------------------------------// Ensign’s Log - The Wanderer, Stardate: 11845.1 All things considered, it makes sense that of every possible, potential option available, ponies grow their spaceships. We looked at the vast, starry ether spreading out around us, stretching into eternity, and then we turned back to the soil and magic of our home world to take us to those stars. It wasn’t easy of course, to grow a functioning structure. And honestly, ‘grow’ was a bit of an oversimplification. It was more like...minutely controlled genetic modification of a mana-fuelled pseudo-organism. Potatoes and ponies are both organisms, see? But they’re not the same. Potatoes don’t have Cutie Marks or, you know, souls. Equestrian ships are a bit less like potatoes and a bit more like timber wolves: they don’t come with brains or nervous systems or anything, but they’re made of organic matter and magic working in concert, running on mana and electricity and light instead of food—but certainly more interesting and complicated and nuanced than your average hunk of lifeless metal or even crystal. A marriage of magic and intent to derive form. And of course, form denotes function. It’s part of what makes maintaining them so complicated. “That’s why I like to think of it a little less like being a mechanic and a little more like a conversation,” I mutter thoughtfully around the screwdriver clamped between my teeth. The access tube is far too tight to fly. My wings are mushed beneath me, barely a shade greener than the pearly white paneling all around. But you know what they say: necessity is the mother of progress. My hooves have become one of my most utilized tools, currently poked out above my head and deep into the innards of the ship that, for the uninitiated, are a little too organic-looking for comfort. At least the designers had the forethought to make the channels and conduits and wiring look more like crystalline tree roots than muscle fiber. “I know it’s not exactly up to Academy standard. But they haven’t had the luxury of being in space so long.” There’s no rancor in my voice as I continue, poking delicately at one of the conduits. “I hope Professor Rider will approve my proposal when we get back. I really think we ought to learn more about you lovelies.” I smile slightly up at the ship and its calm, pulsating glow. “But in the meantime.” My eyes flutter shut.  Hooves still in contact with the exposed panel, I press carefully but firmly into the deepest tangle of wiry roots. A slow breath in, a slow breath out, until my own are synced with the ship’s gradual brightening and dimming. I reach out with my senses, feathers twitching against my back and—ah! There it is. Dozens of burned out black husks on either side of a flowing white stream. “There was a power fluctuation in the warp coil during our last jump. It must’ve burned out the fuses in this section of the ship,” I realize, eyes popping open. The image gradually fades from my mind's eye, but my soul remembers the shape of it, and my brain is quick to replace the image with the basic technical knowledge that was drilled into every cadet before graduation. “I’ll make a dozen more and get those replaced for you in a jiffy, Wandy.” I grab the panel and efficiently replace it, the screws spinning in to hold it back in place with practiced motions. The access tube may be too tight for flight to be anywhere near feasible, but I can at least use my straining primaries to spin the screwdriver. Putting panels back by hoof alone was far more arduous. “Don’t worry.” I stow my screwdriver back on my belt and reach up again, holding my hoof to the replaced panel. It’s hard to distinguish the two in the comparative dimness, with the manalight shut away, but I can almost feel it pulsing beneath, if I listen close enough. “I’ll get you back in tip top shape soon. Oh, right–Computer, end log entry. Please.” I carefully shimmy my way out of the tube. Spinning in the chair as I wait for the fuses to replicate is just about the closest thing we get to a breeze in space, and my feathers tingle with the simple pleasure of the wind sliding through them. It takes me back to the academy, before it, even, when all I’d had to slip the surly bonds of earth were the wings on my back. “Focus on a cloud when you spin! It'll help you fly straight when you come out of it,” Sky Stinger offers helpfully. But there aren’t any clouds in space, or at least, none on the ship. Well, the non-regulation cloud bed in Captain Spitfire’s quarter’s didn’t exactly count, but it was technically ‘on the ship’. So I use the poster on the wall instead as I spin around and around and around. It’s an old Wonderbolts recruitment ad, faded and peeling a bit around the edges—one of the first from back when the ship had been crafted into being. A staggered line of pegasi peers proudly up at the spangled sky, a moon-shaped disc of a ship beaming across it above their watchful gaze. SEIZE THE SKY, SEE THE STARS is stamped along the bottom half. I flap my wings once, propelling into a faster spin. The poster flashes past.  SEIZE. THE. SKY. Another flap. SEE. THE. STARS. Another. SEIZE. THE— “What are you doing, Ensign?” I thrust out a hoof, catching the edge of the lab bench and grinding my spinning to a sudden, dizzying halt, spotting poster be damned. “Oh! Hey, Captain.” My wings snap back in and my definitely not wobbly hoof raises into the sharp salute drilled into every Wonderbolt before they even got through basic training. Captain Spitfire squints. “What are you doing?” “Spinning, m’am!” “No, not the—” She sighs, pushing one goldenrod hoof tiredly through her mane. “At ease, Ensign. I meant the replicator.” “Oh. Oh!” I relax for barely a moment, and then my wings are popping back out again in frenetic excitement. It’s rare to see the Captain in the lab, and rarer still for her to actually ask me a question. I have to make this conversation count. “I was examining the fourth manafold under panel gamma-epsilon-three-nine-two.” Spitfire’s eyebrow arches to join her dubious squint. “Oh. Uhh...the Faust tube, downstream from the warp core? Her eyebrow raises higher. “That little crawlspace in the aft of the ship?” I try. “Oh.” Spitfire’s brow dropped, but she didn’t look any less dubious. It’s a captain’s prerogative to look askance, I decide. It’s probably good to have a healthy amount of skepticism on the crew of any starship. “Wait, that claustrophobic little access space? What in the hay were you doing in there?” The ‘again’ wasn’t said, but I heard it all the same. “I noticed a spike in our mana readings after our last jump,” I say. “The wave’s amplitude has been lower than expected, not quite out of specification yet, but still, I thought I’d take a look.” “Uh huh.” “So I did! A bunch of fuses blew, so I’m making some new ones to replace what got burned out.” Spitfire tsks. “Naturally. How many of the things blew?” “About a dozen,” I say. “So I figured I’d make eighteen.” “Eighteen?” “Just so we have some extra,” I hasten to explain further. “I haven’t gone to check the other three manafolds yet, but my diagnostic indicated that more than just the fourth manafold may be contributing to the shrunken amplitude—” “Equish, Ensign,” Spitfire barks, pressing her hoof to her temple. “More fuses than what I found probably blew,” I simplify. “But I won’t know until I can get my wings and hooves on the problem.” Spitfire’s hoof lowers from her temple. I take that as a sign that my explanation was succinct enough for once. Working with Captain Spitfire isn’t easy, exactly, but it’s rewarding in ways that I never really considered. Learning to whittle technical jargon into more understandable terminology is one of the aspects of my mission that I’m most looking forward to taking back to the Wonderbolts on Equus, once we return home. Maybe Professor Rider will help me put my experience down in writing for future ‘Bolts. “Printing those fuses will take hours, Ensign.” “Oh.” I pause, considering. Replication was still slow on starships. With no leylines to draw from, the ship had to convert ambient starlight into mana for such purposes. “Yes, about…six hours?” I estimate. “Try eighteen,” the captain says, shaking her head and leaning against the doorway. “We’ve been in the black for three cycles, there’s not much for the array to pick up in here.” “I hadn’t even considered,” I mumble. The captain is right, of course. She usually is. “Don’t sweat it too much, kid. Still.” Spitfire straightens, striding into the little shoebox of a lab. “Six or eighteen, that’s an awful lotta hours to be sitting in here.” Her arched, skeptical eyebrow returns. “Dontcha think you should take a break instead?” “O-oh.” Vapor taps her hooves together thoughtfully. “Well, I— I thought about it.” “Sure you did.” “But I figured I should stay by the replicator in case it needed some maintenance.” “Some babying, more like,” Spitfire snorts. As if on cue, the replicator sputters and sparks. “Oh my.” I push off the counter, expertly rolling to a stop directly in front of the replicator: a box of mostly glass and the same pearly-white almost-metal that most of the rest of the ship is made of. The array in the center of the box—beneath the half-printed fuse—darkens, its bright white light fading. “Of course,” the captain mutters sourly behind me. “Not to worry, Captain,” I murmur softly, my hooves already pressed against the crystalline panel inset into the front of the machine. “I’ll have this fixed in two shakes.” My eyes flutter shut and I can feel my expression smoothing into the familiar pensive  searching. Slowly, my wings lever open, the feathers twitching forward and back,  as if tasting the wind. “I’ve no doubt about that,” Spitfire remarks sardonically. But it’s tinny, almost, or maybe warbly is more accurate, like an old radio program. The tone of her words is stripped away as I press my hooves to the panel and look, listening to the darkness. “There is it,” I mumble. Breathe in, breathe out. With a tug, the small branch of the ship’s mana stream that diverts power to the lab sparkles back into life, the replicator whirring back on and picking up right where it left off. “And...done!” I say brightly, opening my eyes and swiveling to face the captain once more. “No harm done.” “Except to your rest schedule,” Spitfire grumbles, still peeved. “If this damned ship wasn’t so bucking complicated, maybe we’d have more leeway to do things like eat and sleep.”  Or an actual crew, she didn’t say. But I hear it. I always do. “It’s alright, Captain,” I say, rubbing my hoof along the counter. “She’s a good girl, really.” “A good bit of unicorn-made nonsense, more like,” Spitfire snorts. But then her ire fades away into its usual slow simmer, overlaid with the tired acceptance that has long since made a home in the captain’s very being. “Ship’s disposition aside, you’re taking a rest period, Ensign.” “I’ve only been on shift since–” A quick glance to the clock, “—Oh-five-hundred, Captain,” I argue weakly. “And seven hours of work is more than enough to fill a day’s quota,” Spitfire bites back. “Did you even take lunch?” “A working lunch,” I hedge. “You’re taking a break, and that’s an order.” “Yes, Captain,” I sigh, standing from my chair. “Don’t you ‘yes, Captain’ me,” Spitfire snarks, stepping back from the doorway and gesturing for Vapor to walk ahead of her down the curving hallway. “You’ll take a break and you’ll like it, or you’ll be resting in the brig.” The captain’s regrets are always so much easier to read than her jokes. I can never quite tell when Spitfire is joking or serious. “Yes, m’am,” I say, hastening my steps towards what passed for the cafeteria. I only glance back at the lab once, but the replicator is happily printing away fuse one of eighteen. Eighteen might be overkill but...I’ll find more that need replacing eventually. Better to be safe than sorry.