Ad Astra Per Derpy Aspera

by SparklingTwilight

Chapter 14: Derpy Saved

Derpy floated for many days. She reached Marred, orbited, then fired her propulsive thrusters, boosting away from the apparently barren planet and back to Equestria, exhausting her fuel except for a bare minimum for emergencies. Her water reserves drew low, her body stopped generating sufficient heat--the only thing preventing a freeze became her suit's warming capabilities, and it became increasingly more difficult for her to naturally process oxygen. She drifted out of consciousness.

---

"I have to care for Dinky tonight," she told the stallion who would become her spouse.

He smiled, "Certainly! We can wait."

"You could find another tester."

"You're perfect!"

Derpy beamed.

"Is it too much pressure?"

"No. I don't want to delay you."

"Nonsense! Executing these tasks with you is delightful. It is absolutely-terrifically special to have you accompany me on this endeavor!"

---

"A griffon poisoned Doctor Hooves!" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed. "They've betrayed us!"

"Yes and no," her agent replied, bowing her head.

"Explain! Please!"

"Remember the safety precautions implemented after we discovered the poisoned sandwiches?"

"Which?"

"The tracking curse."

"Making hooves glow purple?"

"Precisely."

"The spell was never tested on claws."

"We caught the perpetrator purple-clawed while you were negotiating. We released him after your agreement with the griffons... and after Moondancer and Sunburst confirmed their theory.

"Apparently, the purple tracking liquid, made of chlorine and sulfur, combined with essential sweat and oils in griffon-claw-glands, releasing a toxic chemical mix that percolated on Doctor Hooves' desk. He set a sandwich onto it and shut himself in his office, ultimately succumbing to emanant fumes and ingested poison--a terrible tragedy."

---

Derpy fell off the rocket during testing that would have made her the first mare to orbit Equestria.

Sheepishly, she returned to Doctor Hooves. Together, they tracked the rocket as far as they could, eyeballing it, then with a telescope. The rocket ascended up, up, up.

"Escape velocity is being achieved! It is going to orbit."

"Good!" Derpy nodded.

"It should make a circuit of Equestria in about 90 minutes."

"I'm real sorry I let it get away."

"No worries, Dear. We should include some more points of contact. Detachable in an emergency, of course."

"Still, I'm sorry. I'll make muffins. Then, may I tuck Dinky in bed?"

"Of course! No need to stick around to see its return."

Doctor Hooves told her later that the rocket exploded on re-entry.

"Good thing I wasn't on it!" Derpy commented.

"Indeed," Doctor Hooves mulled over how to improve rockets' integrity.

---

And now, Doctor Hooves was in the hospital, fighting for his life.

"We shouldn't mention this to the ponynaut. She'll lose hope," Mrs. Harshwhinny said.

"I understand," Twilight agreed.

Dinky, present because it was the usual time to send a message, spoke up. "She should know. She may want to send him a message."

"It's too sad for her to know what's happened. She needs hope," Twilight Sparkle bent down to look into the daughter's pained eyes.

"Mom's good on hope. Maybe it's her talent. At least, she has experience."

"We can't tell her. It could break her."

Roseluck spoke up. "Dinky may be on to something, with due regard--Princess."

"You do know both of them quite well?" Twilight asked.

"Affirmative."

Twilight sighed, "Fine. Make the contact.... But, try to lighten it a bit. Tell her help is on the way."

---

Rainbow Dash was the first mare to orbit Equestria... and she passed out from oxygen demands on the round trip and almost didn't make it down before hurtling around again in a degraded--and hot--descending trajectory. And that was the last time a mare went up without the Device. Lightning Dust followed her, then Soarin.

Soarin saw something quite peculiar while he was enduring the rocket's gravitational forces. He didn't comment on it at the time, but since he had little else to do while laid-up in the hospital, he related it to Rainbow Dash. "You ever have a vision of fish?"

"Of what?"

"Fish."

"In dreams sometimes. Why?"

"When I was orbiting, I saw fish, flying in a school, with glinting teeth."

"Sure they weren't pelicans?"

"No. Gilled fish. They saw me. I heard a shriek and they fell."

"Fish don't scream. Never seen anything like that."

---

"Discord..." Fluttershy asked. "Are you sure all the piranhas made it? There seem to be less."

"Oh, Fluttershy," Discord said. "Where would a bunch of fish have been mislaid if, say, a draconequus, choosing the chaotic thing to do and transporting a school of fish by flying rather than teleportation or--yawn--buckets, was shocked to see a rocket-borne pony bearing down on the center of his schoolchildren?"

"I don't know. Where might those hypothetical fish have been mislaid?"

"Nowhere in particular," he said.

"I--suppose that's fine."

---

Derpy was awoken by the buzzing of the Hoarse code signal. She took another sip of her dwindling water reserves and responded. And she heard the news about her husband's illness. Far from ruining her though, it invigorated her. If he was to suffer, then Dinky would be alone. And that would be her fault, for leaving her daughter alone. She'd do anything to return.

She tapped out a message to her husband, "Hang in. We'll bee 2ether sewn 1 way r nother. [multiple sics]"

Then she exhausted her water supplies.

---

"The message is a bit grim..." Twilight Sparkle frowned.

"We shouldn't give it to him," Roseluck said.

"I'll ask her daughter," Twilight Sparkle said.

Dinky passed on the message and stayed at her unconscious stepfather's side for many hours, telling him how Derpy was coming home.

---

Derpy had already taken the drastic life-saving step of bottling her waste in the empty oxygen container Lightning Dust abandoned. And, she disgustingly drained that. That hadn't been something mentioned in planning. It hadn't occurred to the egghead ponies. But she knew she could drink it and live because she'd been harassed in the orphanage for, among other false justifications, "looking at other kids funny." Ponies could be cruel.

Ponies, cruel or kind, could live for several days without water.

Somnambula, a great pegasus, once survived four days without water... in a humid cavernous environment. She gathered humidity in a bowl, and breathed in its fumes.

Derpy didn't know that, but she put on her helmet since it helped her sleep better. And the helmet held her breath, fogged up as usual, and she was able to eke out some life-giving liquid.

---

Derpy was being rescued by supplemental air, jammed roughly against her snout. She didn't remember much, but ponies later said she was buffeted by the rescuing griffon who slammed into her at high speed since he wasn't able to execute a proper deceleration.

They spiraled and the griffon tore at her equipment, eventually activating her fuel reserves and using her momentum to arrest his own and send them back toward Equestria after an amazing looping manoeuver with especially precise ignition of his backup thrusters.

As griffons do for their young, he regurgitated water and food, and Derpy's vitals stabilized. "Victory is near, pony. Elimination and relief will come, dummy," the griffon said, his words regurgitated later in national newspapers.

They threw the griffon a ticker-tape parade in New Griffonstone, honoring his success and the shame he cast upon Equestria by demonstrating the ponies' dependence on others for even basic needs.

Derpy was escorted home by Doctor Ivermectin and Doctor Doctor, who gave her a cure.

Twilight Sparkle proclaimed the day "National Friendship Day with the Griffonian Socialist Creatures Republic." Creatures in both countries celebrated the achievement.

---

Twilight had told Rainbow Dash about Lightning Dust's rescue, about Derpy's situation, and about a report she'd recently received that blood tests confirmed Soarin probably had used performance enhancing drugs and blood doping at the time of the accident. And that the accident hadn't been sabotage.

"Then, what was it?" Rainbow Dash demanded.

Twilight sighed, "We had procedures. And they were followed. But they weren't the right procedures."

"What?"

"Nuts and bolts are supposed to be tightened. So, a pony tightened them every few hours. Problem was, they were overtightened. We never thought to check what might happen if they were tightened too much. The framing cracked, snapped, interfered with the fuselage, and the rocket exploded. It was nothing either of you could have detected."

"Then what's this garbage about Soarin pumping drugs?"

"I figured you could ask him? If he doesn't confess, we'll scour his belongings to see if there's any residue."

"We can trust him."

"We can't treat him different from any other pony.... There are already questions about the contracts we handed out to ponies after deals with the minotaurs fell through--nepotism accusations."

Rainbow Dash grumbled. "He's done a great job for the 'bolts. Don't do this to him."

Twilight Sparkle dissolved the bubble of silence and left the room without saying goodbye to Soarin or even looking in his direction.

"Sooooo... Soarin," Rainbow Dash said.

"Yes, dear roommate?"

"A bit of a delicate question."

"From an indelicate pony?"

"Suck a horn."

"I will!"

Rainbow Dash chuckled. "I'm sorry about asking this, but Twilight said there'd been some sort of mixup with blood testing and you tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in your system. And blood doping."

Soarin was silent for a long time.

"Say it ain't so, Soarin!" Rainbow Dash urged.

"I was... blood doping. It's not allowed in athletics, but it would be helpful for going to space. Doctor Hooves offered it when I asked how I could improve."

"You what?"

"I wasn't good at breathing at altitude--even with the Device, I passed out and had the fish hallucination. I told him I'd do anything to improve. He recommended blood doping to increase my oxygen levels."

"I'm going to beat up that siren scientist--" Rainbow Dash growled. "Leading my best stallion astray!"

"It'd be out of my system by the time we returned to performing. It was just to help with this mission."

"You knew it was prohibited. He knew it too!"

"Maybe."

"I could kill him."

"You may be too late,"

"What?"

"He's next door. Under Royal Guard. Somepony tried to assassinate him--may have succeeded."

"How'd you know?"

"You nap a lot. I chat with our nurses."

"Crap," Rainbow Dash sighed and was silent for a while.

"What about the performance enhancing drugs? That's a lie, right?"

"...I took those before I talked to the Doctor."

"Why do such a stupid thing!"

"I wanted to outperform you... for once. You were badgering me so much about not living up to my full potential. I'd been pushing myself harder and harder, but you would not get off my back."

"This is MY fault?"

"No. It's mine. I should have asked you to knock it off. But that's why I thought I needed the juice to do better."

"You were number two in the Program."

"I thought it'd be funny if I could be number one. The first ponynaut Marred Mare--a stallion."

"Mare actually is used because the seas of Marred--" Rainbow Dash explained.

"And now you're an egghead," Soarin laughed.

"It played a role in the Austreaoddysey," Rainbow Dash mumbled, referring to the great Pegasus epic where a wandering Pegasus, after a great disaster headed East for years among strange lands, fulfilling a strange never-completed quest.

Rainbow Dash swallowed. "You know what this means, though, buddy." She started crying. "I'm gonna have to let you go from the team. I wanna hug you, but I'm--"

"It's all right," Soarin said. "I'm not sure if I'm ever going to fly again, anyway."

"You've been so chipper."

"I can't control my body any more--how it heals. I can't control my job--I figured you were going to find out once I ended up here. But I can control my attitude. And I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not going to fly. But you're Rainbow Sonic Rainboom Dash. You'll be back flying in no time. You're better than me."

"We're both good. I'm so sorry I made you feel awful."

"It's just joshin' and playing. An in-crowd thing."

"Did you feel excluded when us mares were horseplaying?"

"That's why I ran late-night solo practices."

"I didn't know."

Soarin shrugged. "Ponies overlook things. Doesn't matter how good they are."

"I guess ponies get overlooked. Never would have guessed Derpy Hooves would be saving Lightning Dust--the second worst pegasus ever."

"Even your Scootaloo used to be overlooked."

Rainbow sighed through her nose. "Do I really only have capacity to care about one pony?"

"You just got to do what you can. And you have to hope it works out."

"We'll recover," Rainbow Dash said. "We'll get there. Some day, you'll be back on your family farm, dusting the crops."

"That's a nice thought. I always thought that if I did good, things would work out.... If I hadn't been so good at being a ponynaut, it'd have been Spitfire or Lightning Dust testing with you."

"Darn," Rainbow Dash said. "Then you would have flown the rescue mission."

"Yeah. I'd have been the first Marred Mare. Instead, I'm marred in here." He tried to jiggle his shattered wings, but failed.

"You'll get better," Rainbow Dash encouraged Soarin, smiling wide, but Soarin couldn't quite see that with the angle of the beds. Still, Soarin smiled and peacefully closed his eyes.

---

Lightning Dust stood at the doorway. She didn't approach. Her voice, still raspy, growled. "Derpy Hooves, it's me. Lightning Dust. I'm not coming in. I don't think I should. Maybe I carry some disease. I don't want to take chances. I owe you my life."

Derpy couldn't say anything with all the tubes hooked to her.

"You should have had my spot. We should have spoken up. If not at first when we didn't know what was going on, then we should have after your talks. I wasn't thankful. I barely paid attention and I cheated. Yeah!" Lightning Dust looked down the hall. "I cheated on Hoarse Code. I had no bucking idea what Mission Control was sending. The receiver wasn't broken. Write that down. Lightning Dust cheated on Hoarse Code. And she bucking regrets it.

"I also--I shouldn't have teased you. You didn't need to save me. I could just forget what you did. But, you're better than the Wonderbolts. You gave me a second chance. I wasn't perfect and they kicked me out. I kicked you out, but you saved me.

"If, when you get better, you still want to find me, do it. I'll make things up to you--if I'm not in jail. I endangered the program. I embarrassed the Princess by having her ask those griffons for help. I put your life at risk. I'm a disaster. First pony beyond Equestria's orbit. First pony rescued from beyond Equestria's orbit. What's the more memorable achievement? First rescuer in space: Derpy Hooves. I owe you my life."

---

Derpy was successfully discharged after a few weeks.

Her husband was still connected to life support. Derpy and Dinky waited at his side as often as they could. Lightning Dust, head hung abashed, joined them on one pleasant afternoon marred only by Roseluck showing up and sneering.

"Don't crowd him. Don't crowd," she shooed them away.

Derpy, shocked by the violence of Roseluck's gesture and annoyance in her tone, stumbled and accidentally disconnected the medical injection tube, jerking at her husband's IV. The system monitoring his heartbeat disconnected and it let out a warning flatline. Everypony stood in horror. And then her husband arose.

"I felt quite a shock," he said.

Derpy hugged him softly.

"Get back. Get back!" Roseluck screeched. "Hospital protocol says to not--"

Lightning Dust, street-smart pony that she was, roughly led Roseluck away. "Give the couple some space."

"I'm only thinking of what's best for him!" Roseluck said.

"Not your responsibility," Lightning Dust said. "Let friendship work its healing magic."

And, although there had been difficulties in their struggles to attain the stars, and although the outcome, for Marred Mare and everypony, would have been different if friendship had not been victorious, everypony lived.

Author's Note:

Reader Questions:
- Would you have done anything different? For example, would you leave Lightning Dust?
- Should Twilight have endangered Equestria by going herself?

If You Like This, You May Also Like:

The Right Stuff (Film and Book): True-life history of the early space program. Chuck Yeager is probably Lightning Dust and/or Derpy. Debate!
Apollo 13 (Film) : True-life space disaster.
The Martian (Film and Book) : Marooned on Mars and getting back.
Project Hail Mary (Book) : Space drama told in a disjointed fashion.
Gravity (Film) : Space disaster drama told in a disjointed fashion.
Interstellar (Film) : Space drama told in a disjointed fashion.

Pony Stories
The Maretian: Classic adaptation of the Martian, morphing it into a First Contact Survival story. Ponies and Mark Watney are marooned on Mars.
Changeling Space Program: How do ponies and other creatures get to space? An adaptation of the author's Kerbal Space Program woes.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Why didn’t you reply to my comment?

[SparklingTwilight]

There was nothing to respond to. No question was asked. If you read through the comments section, you may also note I do not respond to every comment.

[owlicious]

If you meant me by "you", I originally forgot to click the reply button, but then it felt like an unwanted notification if you didn't have plans to read the story, and redundant if you had already read the story. The original comment was an ambiguous rhetorical question (somewhat of a funny joke, but would confuse new readers about the story contents), and I didn't want to start a discussion unrelated to the story.