Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 13: Mission 21 – Somewhat Worse Than Average Accidents

“Keep pushing, Cadence.”

“I’m trying! Even if I would rather leave her like this!”

“A promise is a promise! A little harder! Luna, ten percent less!”

“This was so much easier with that stupid staff… there!!”

Chrysalis, queen of the changelings, blinked her eyes for the first time in over a month.

Under the bedsheets (wait, what was she doing in a bed?) she could feel little bits of obsidian flaking off her body as her limbs gradually relaxed from a stiff pose she hadn’t known she was holding. Her body gradually warmed as concentrated harmony magic poured through it. She glanced around her to see four alicorns- count ‘em, one two three four- carefully sending their magic into her, clearing away… something.

At first it felt warm and cozy, but after several seconds Chrysalis began to squirm as the spell wriggled its insidious way into corners of her soul she hadn’t ever intended anything, let alone a pony, to investigate. When the four princesses ceased the spell simultaneously, each gasping a bit from the effort of the sustained spell, Chrysalis gasped her own sigh of relief and relaxed even more limply into what she assumed was a hospital bed.

“That should do it,” Twilight Sparkle said, being the first of the alicorns to recover. “Chrysalis, how are you feeling?”

“A little confused.” Was that her own voice? Since when was she so soft? She cleared her throat and forced herself to speak up, “Why exactly am I in a hospital bed? And which hospital bed, exactly?”

“You’re in the infirmary at your own space center,” a more familiar voice spoke up. The four princesses parted to let Cherry Berry, who sported a fetching blue jumpsuit over her pink fur, pass through. Behind her, standing or hovering near the wall, were Goddard the Griffon, Warner von Brawn, Occupant and Lucky Cricket. “Lucky and his recovery team kept you safe during the invasion, and after the yetis withdrew they brought you here.”

“We had a kingdom to put to rights,” Celestia said gently. “The restoration of our magic undid the damage of the Storm King’s tornado, but there was still all the damage his fleet did-“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Chrysalis said, holding up one perforated hoof. “Back up a bit. What invasion? What Storm King?”

Twilight Sparkle raised her eyebrows. “What do you remember, exactly, before waking up here?”

Chrysalis considered lines like This is my space center, I’ll ask the questions, and then reconsidered them in the light of being surrounded by four alicorns, none of whom particularly liked her. She dropped her hoof, leaned back into her pillow, and looked up at the ceiling. “Well,” she said slowly, “the pony took her balloon off to Canterlot for your friendship festival… Goddard and von Brawn were in Appleoosa tinkering with some new rocket design or something… I was only sticking around to oversee delivery of replacement rocket parts after Mission Twenty, and I’d intended to go back to the hive for a few days once they were stored in the VAB…”

“And they’re still there, nice and safe!” Occupant chimed in before Cherry Berry raised a hoof to shush him.

“Yes, my changelings were carrying the newest capsule off the last barge when I saw this big, ugly airship coming up along the southern coast.” Chrysalis raised a hoof and made a slow swooping gesture, demonstrating how it had flown. “And right behind it was a second one just like it, both trailing huge clouds of smoke and lightning. Both of them black and beautiful, almost as if I’d designed them myself.” She smirked a bit as she added, “Of course I knew we were under attack as soon as I saw them.”

“Really,” Cadence drawled. “Because they couldn’t possibly be rich ponies with a taste for gothic fashion?”

“A single airship like that, possibly,” Chrysalis said. “But anybody who deliberately makes two of those things, and then sends both of them somewhere, wants to scare people.” She snorted. “Not a bad tactic if you know your enemy. If the enemy has weak discipline, they’ll hesitate or break outright. But a disciplined force, under good leadership, will know exactly what to attack on sight.” She smirked a self-satisfied smile as she added, “Obviously whoever sent them didn’t know me or my subjects. I knew my changelings could easily repulse two airships, no matter how large.”

“Er, my queen?” Occupant looked a little embarrassed. “I, um, it turned out it wasn’t two airships.”

“It was five,” Lucky Cricket added.

“Five?” Chrysalis said, leaning her head up. “I only remember two.”

“Well, you remember how you led us into battle against the first airship?” Lucky continued. “We forced that one down into the bay. It was a brilliant victory!”

“Yes, I remember that part,” Chrysalis nodded. “I saw the blimp going down, and I was shouting at you to form up for a second attack…” Her face screwed up in concentration. “Something hit me between the shoulders, just here-“ she leaned up and waved a hoof at her spine just below the neck- “and I thought it was some really heavy piece of debris. I tried to shake it off…” Her voice trailed into silence.

“It was a piece of misfortune malachite,” Twilight Sparkle said. “An extremely potent petrification spell. And you were hundreds of meters over the water when it took effect.”

“It came from the third airship,” Lucky Cricket said. “They were hiding in the smoke cloud from the first two ships. We saw you falling, Dragonfly and me, and we caught you before you hit the water. We carried you to the fire swamps to hide, and we didn’t look back.”

“The defense kinda broke up after that,” Occupant said. “I tried to rally some guards to hold the space center, but…”

“They didn’t take you prisoner, did they?” Chrysalis asked.

Occupant’s eyes widened. “No!” he shouted indignantly. “We hid. When their troops surrounded mission control, we knocked a couple of them out and copied them. In about ten minutes we’d replaced fifteen of them- me, Carapace, Plastron, some of the other old hooves.”

“Fifteen?” Chrysalis asked. “What happened to the other three hundred changelings I had here?”

“The rest either followed us into the swamp or fled back to the hive,” Lucky Cricket said softly. “And to be honest I’m still surprised even fifteen stayed. Without you leading us, we were no match for those airships.”

Chrysalis flopped back onto her pillow. On the one hoof, that was sort of a compliment to her leadership and tactical skills, she supposed. On the other hoof, a dozen changelings should have been enough per airship, with any kind of leadership.

And on the back hoof, she was frankly amazed that fourteen of her changelings had voluntarily followed Occupant’s leadership anywhere other than into the line for the Fun Machine.

“And this was all over a month ago?” she asked. “So spring is half over now?”

“That’s right,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And for us it’s been a very busy month. But I’m sure you’ll hear all about it from the others.”

“Yes, we do have to be going,” Celestia agreed. “We have some hard flying ahead if we’re to be in Manehattan for Dragonfly’s big parade.”

Chrysalis stiffened in her bed. A quick glance around revealed that yes, Dragonfly was not in the room. “Parade? Parade for what?”

“For her brilliant rescue of those stranded astronauts,” Celestia continued. “You must get Cherry to tell you about it. It was a marvelous achievement.”

“Dragonlord Ember’s going to personally escort her to the Dragonlands after this for their own celebration,” Luna added. “The yaks already held their own ceremony.”

“Dragons? Yaks?”

“Well, get plenty of rest,” Twilight Sparkle said, easing towards the door. “By tomorrow your post-petrification fatigue should be gone, and you’ll be back to normal!”

The alicorns walked out, followed by Goddard, von Brawn and the two drones. Cherry Berry was about to follow when Chrysalis reached out with her magic and grabbed the earth pony’s tail. “Not so fast, pony,” she hissed, dragging her chief pilot back rump-first to the side of her bed. “You’re not going anywhere until I get an explanation.”

“Um, well,” Cherry Berry flustered, “I was in Canterlot for the invasion and got captured with all the other ponies there, so I don’t-“

“Don’t try to deceive a deceiver,” Chrysalis warned, green fire flickering in her eyes. “You must have been here for whatever Dragonfly did, right?”

“Well…” Most ponies were terrible liars, and Cherry Berry worse than most. Chrysalis could read on the pink pony’s face three blatant fibs considered and rejected in the course of about five seconds before she gave up and settled for the truth. “Yes, I was. I was in charge of the whole flight.”

“Flight, is it?” Chrysalis’s eyes narrowed. “I think you had better tell me everything. Start at the part where you got back to the space center and go from there.”

“Don’t you think this should wait until you’ve rested?”

“Talk,” Chrysalis barked.

Cherry Berry talked.

The much-delayed Friendship Festival turned victory celebration had been a blast(301), but after over a week of terror and imprisonment Cherry Berry was more than ready to get back to work. She felt true gratitude to the changeling air controller standing on top of the makeshift flight tower who waved her balloon through the swirling pattern of changelings returning from hiding to Horseton Space Center, giving her priority landing clearance.

Occupant met her at the hangar. “Welcome back!” he shouted up before she’d even tethered the balloon. “We’ll have things back up and running in no time! Just give the orders!”

Cherry gave the tether ropes a final tug-check and motioned Occupant to walk with her to the admin building. “What happened here?” she asked. “Was anything damaged?”

“They came in and beat the queen,” Occupant said briefly. “Lucky Cricket and Dragonfly took her and escaped. Most of the others ran away, but a few of us stayed and disguised ourselves as guards to keep an eye on things. Most of the invaders left the next day, and the ones that stayed just sort of stood around. They locked the scientists and pony construction crew up, but they didn’t break or steal anything.”

“Good. What about Horseton?’

Occupant flinched. “They didn’t do so well,” he said. “The changelings Lucky and Dragonfly rallied in the swamps did their best to help(302), but keeping the queen safe was more important…”

Cherry Berry nodded. “I understand,” she said. “At least I can call Twilight Sparkle and tell her the space center is intact. The princesses can focus their time on helping Horseton recover.”

“Actually,” Occupant said, “we were hoping you could call Princess Twilight to help with our queen.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Cherry asked. “Where is she? I thought she was the one organizing all this.” She pointed to the literal swarm of changelings converging on the space center, returning to duty stations, bringing in fresh supplies.

“Um, no, that was me,” Occupant said quietly. “Come and see.”

The thing lay in a plush bed, a pile of soft pillows behind its head, covers drawn clear up to the slack-jawed chin.

All of this is ridiculous, Cherry thought. A statue doesn’t belong in a bed. It belongs on a pedestal in a garden or museum.

As statues of Chrysalis went, Cherry supposed it was a good one. The confusion on the changeling queen’s face was too ambiguous for a casual sculptor, who might have gone for wide-eyed non-comprehension instead of the more subtle expression. But the effect was spoiled by the blocky, cubical black crystals that popped up here and there, half-covering the obsidian statue.

Cherry supposed it was the difference between a life-like sculpture and a living sculpture.

“You’re telling me this is her?” she asked, pointing a hoof at the hospital bed.

“This is our queen,” Occupant insisted. “We’ve called in a zebra, but she says this isn’t a normal petrification, like what a cockatrice or a basilisk does. We need alicorn magic to cure her.”

For a brief moment Cherry seriously considered dumping the statue(303). She could have the space program all to herself, without having to worry about the inevitable day when Chrysalis revealed how she was going to use it all to conquer Equestria. That idea had given her more than one nightmare over the previous year, no matter what she’d said to Luna.

But the thought only lasted the moment. Whatever Chrysalis might do if the roles were reversed- and Cherry knew the changeling queen would take over anything in an instant given the opportunity to do so- Cherry wasn’t Chrysalis. Cherry had made a deal, and she was going to keep it. Chrysalis would get to walk on the moon.

And no, being tastefully arranged on a plinth in a lunar grotto didn’t count.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll try to call Twilight Sparkle. You get everypony organized again. I need an inventory of the rocket parts available and other supplies. Get somepony from the construction crews to do an inventory of the construction materials for the R&D expansions- make sure the Storm King’s goons didn’t loot anything there. And send someone out to Appleoosa to check on Goddard and von Brawn. We need to get the rocket factory there back up and running.”

“Will do, my qu- I mean boss!”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. “Don’t call me boss,” she said. “I’m not your queen and I don’t want the job,” she said. “I fly things and that’s all, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Occupant said, saluting as he left.

Halfway between the astromare complex’s infirmary and the administration building, Cherry had to duck as one of the guard changelings, her uniform spattered with bits of swamp, almost tackled her from the sky. “Pardon me, Miss Berry!” the guard panted. “But the pony princess Twilight is on the telepresence, and she wants to talk to you!”

Cherry blinked. “But I was just on the way to call her,” she muttered.

The guard shrugged. “Maybe pony princess read minds? All I know is, she’s really upset.”

A short gallop later, Cherry saw on the screen that Twilight wasn’t upset. She was frantic. (304) “Cherry!” she shouted. “Thank Celestia you’re there! They won’t let me talk to Chrysalis! We’ve got a big emergency!”

“So do we!” Cherry Berry replied. “We need you here as soon as possible.”

“No, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “We need you here as soon as possible!”

“What are you talking about?”

“If we don’t get you in a rocket and into orbit in three days,” Twilight gasped, “three astronauts are doomed!”

Cherry blinked. “Three astronauts?”

“Doomed!!” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Cherry said, waving a hoof to slow Twilight down. “We didn’t have anypony in orbit this past week, and neither did you, right? So how did these astromares get there?”

“They’re not mares,” Twilight said. “It’s Gordo the Griffon from the Griffonstone Rocket Project, Fireball from the dragon program… and an astronaut from Yakyakistan. All of them launched at the same time three days ago, during the Storm King’s occupation of Canterlot. All of them were attempting a lunar fly-by.”

“But why on- no, not important,” Cherry said. “What went wrong?”

“Lots. The three rockets launched within an hour of each other. The griffons launched first and got an equatorial orbit with their first two stages. But they messed up their staging orders somehow, because when they tried to ignite the third stage, instead it decoupled the third stage. And the heat shield. And the parachute. Everything but the capsule.”

“What were they thinking?” Cherry demanded. “You always check your staging! And check it again, and again, and again! We keep it on a sticky-note in the cockpit for every launch: Check Your Staging!”

“Don’t ask me!” Twilight snapped. “I wouldn’t even have launched the rocket if it were me! But they did!” She waved her hooves wildly as she continued, “Anyway, Gordo’s rocket dropped everything it could drop at once, and one of the pieces of debris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It collided with the dragon rocket on its way up.”

“It what??” Cherry gasped. “You know what the odds are of a collision in space!”

“It happened!” Twilight insisted. “So Fireball lost his engines too, and he’s just as stuck as Gordo.”

“Okay, so what happened to Leonid?” Cherry asked. “More debris?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. The yaks had the worst trajectory for a moon shot, and they didn’t attempt a direct ascent. Their rocket ran out of fuel just getting to an equatorial orbit. But that’s not the worst of it.” Twilight took a deep, steadying breath. “The pilot’s not Leonid. It’s the other yak astronaut. Prince Fauntleroy. Rutherford’s little brother.”

Cherry rememebered the tiny (by yak standards) prince from EVA training at Cape Friendship. “The runt?” she asked. “Why did they send him up? Rutherford loves him like Pinkie loves sugar! He’d never sign off on sending him on a moon flight.”

“He didn’t give them the option,” Twilight reported. “I just spoke with Rutherford. He tells me his brother whacked Leonid on the head and took his place in the rocket. Said he was the better pilot.”

Cherry slowly flopped onto her flanks. “So, just to be clear,” she said, “you’re telling me there are currently three astronauts overhead right now, with no engines, no parachutes, and no way home.”

“And they’ve been up there for three days,” Twilight said. “They all have seven days of food, and of course my life support system will keep them in air and water, but what happens when the food runs out?”

Cherry Berry nodded her head. “I can imagine,” she said. “What have you got for rocket parts, then?”

“That’s another thing!” Twilight replied. “We need you to send us everything you have. We used up all our back stock of parts putting the communications satellites in orbit. We were going to order more after the friendship festival, but… well, anyway, we need more, right now!”

Cherry blinked. “You have nothing at all?” she asked.

“Well, there’s the experimental rocket ship,” Twilight said. “But it needs a lot of rocket boosters to get it into orbit! Of course, once in orbit its magic thrusters should be enough to get to and from each ship, and it has plenty of passenger space…”

“No,” Cherry said flatly. “It’s a beautiful ship, and it’s my favorite color, Twilight. But we can’t possibly put together enough boosters to get it to orbit. Not in three days. It’s just too heavy.” She thought for a moment, looking away from the telepresence projection so she wouldn’t have to see the fidgety, anxious alicorn princess. “No, we’ll have to do it from here. We still have some leftover parts, if the Storm King’s goons haven’t messed with ‘em. And you have princess work to do, fixing the kingdom and un-stonifying innocent ponies and stuff like that.”

“But-but- wait a minute,” Twilight stammered. “I thought everypony that got petrified by Tempest was restored when the Storm King was defeated.”

Cherry sighed. “Look, just get down here as soon as you can, please? We can begin making plans while I explain what our price is for this launch.”

“Price?” Twilight asked. “Three people are about to die in orbit, and you want to send us a bill??”

“I’ll explain when you get down here,” Cherry said, and cut the connection.

Footnotes:



(301) In the literal but fun sense. Not to be confused with the invasion, which had been a blast in the literal and absolutely no fun at all sense. The difference lies in how close you are to ground zero of the detonations.



(302) It’s hard to help defend people when they’re convinced you’re just another enemy attacking from the other side. A year of peaceful coexistence in Horseton hadn’t wiped away a much longer period of dread. But Lucky and Dragonfly did their best, rescuing a large number of the villagers and even wrecking one of the Storm King’s airships before the final armistice came down. A week can do more than a year to rebuild reputations, if it’s the right kind of week.



(303) Several of the changelings were also considering this. Thus far none of them were sure of having enough support to overcome Chrysalis’s loyalists, and therefore they bided their time. The hive needed a leader, after all, and if the current one was spending all her time as a paperweight… well, minds could change… (304) When one lives in Ponyville for any length of time greater than a month, one learns the distinction. To a long-term Ponyville resident, the gradations of distress from mildly anxious to terrified beyond control of one’s bodily functions, and all the points between, are as clear as the different shades on the paint chips at the hardware store. Be prepared, as you are running for your life from this week’s disaster, to be lectured on the difference between “disturbed” and “perturbed”, should you pass that way.

Chrysalis shifted in her bedsheets and sipped a little water through her straw. “So, you made a deal,” she said. “The rescue mission, in exchange for my life. How did Twilight take it?”

“All things considered, pretty good,” Cherry replied. “She wanted to say she would have done it anyway, but I think the words kinda stuck in her throat.” She shrugged, adding, “Anyway, she said she needed the combined power of four alicorns to overcome the curse, and Cadance was going to be the harder sell. So I guess it was a good thing three space programs did stupid things right then.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “That almost sounds like something I would say, pony.”

“I know. It scares me a little.” Cherry Berry sighed.

“And how did those foolish space programs take it when they heard you were going to be the ones rescuing them?”

Cherry cringed. “Not well…”

“You put life of baby brother in hands of changelings?!?” Prince Rutherford looked one step, one very short step, away from saying his favorite five-letter begins-with-S word. (305)

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle began, looking at the yak, griffon, and dragon on the other side of the conference table, “if you’ll just let me explain-”

Cherry Berry, sitting next to Twilight, brought her hoof down on the conference table hard enough to drown out any further words. “The princesses,” she said firmly, “have a continent to rebuild after the Storm King’s rampage. Princess Twilight Sparkle delegated this vital task to the world’s most successful space program because she can’t be in two places at once! Why can’t you appreciate the time she’s sparing for you when there are whole cities still on fire?”(306)

This silenced Prince Rutherford, Dragonlord Ember, and Grampa Gruff. All three had the expressions of creatures with guilty consciences.

“Anyway,” Cherry continued, “what possessed the three of you to launch without a real plan or preparation like that? Especially while Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help?”

“It was because Equestria wasn’t in any condition to help!” Ember snapped. “This was our last shot. I may be Dragonlord, but I can only push so far before the other dragons just blow me off, scepter or not.”

“Gordo’s stupid hobby was bankrupting Griffonstone!” Gruff snapped.

“Weren’t griffons already broke?” Rutherford interrupted.

“DON’T INTERRUPT ME, you young whippersnapper!” The elderly griffon’s shout did what few other things could; it made the prince of the yaks cringe for just a moment. “As I was saying, there wasn’t any money left for rockets and wasn’t gonna be. So he wanted to go out big.”

Rutherford nodded. “Yakyakistan rich in tradition, rich in culture, rich in history and glory and pride,” he said. “In gold we… less rich.”

“Anyway, we figured… I guess we all figured,” Ember said, making the distinction between we dragons and we three space programs, “that the Storm King invasion would delay the ponies and the changelings enough to give any of us one last chance to take the lead in the space race. If we were the first to the moon, maybe that would give us a chance to keep things going.”

Cherry Berry heard Twilight Sparkle’s teeth begin to grind. “Are you telling me,” the purple princess said in a tone Cherry usually heard from Chrysalis’s mouth, “that when we were under the cloven hoof of the Storm King, seeking any possible way to free our people from his subjugation, that you-”

Cherry put a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder, breaking off the impending rant. “Okay, fine,” she said. “But the Storm King was going to come for everybody else next, after he had the princesses’ magic. Why weren’t you getting ready for war?”

Grampa Gruff snorted. “You kiddin’?” he snapped.

“It’s true the Storm King went through you ponies like a claw through gypsum,” Ember said.

“But you’re ponies,” Grampa added. “We knew something would happen-”

“-you hit dumb Storm King with mighty rainbow smashy magic-“ Rutherford said.

“-or recruit a band of unlikely heroes to save the day at the last minute-“ Ember continued.

“-or else that idiot Storm King would do something stupid like betray his chief lieutenant, allowing the ponies to snatch victory from the beak of defeat!” Grampa Gruff finished. “Like always happens!”

Ember and Rutherford nodded solemn agreement.

“What??” Twilight Sparkle wasn’t going to be silenced by a shake of the shoulder now. “We won by a miracle, and you were COUNTING on that? That’s absolutely stupid!!” (307)

“Where ponies concerned-“ Rutherford began.

“- the more stupid it sounds-“ said Ember.

“- the more likely it is to work,” Grampa finished.

“Remember avalanche?” Rutherford pointed out, waving a hoof as if surrounded by the snow-heavy peaks surrounding the land of the yaks.

“Remember the drake who tried to take a nap in Smoky Mountain?” Ember reminded Twilight..

“Remember baking soda?” Grampa muttered. “Who ever thought a powder would change a way of life?”

“Ponies do the stupid and impossible every day,” said Rutherford

“So this was our one and only chance-“ said Ember.

“-to do it before the ponies,” Grampa said.

“The ponies,” Cherry said coolly. “And what about the changelings?”

“Who cares about the changelings?” Grampa grumbled. “The changelings are crazy!”

Once more Ember and Rutherford nodded.

Cherry Berry felt a headache coming on, and she reached both hooves up to rub her temples. I don’t want this job, she thought. I just wanted to fly a rocket. But the sooner this is done, the sooner I get the evil mastermind back on her throne and go back to letting her handle roadapples like these…

Fortunately for the pink earth pony, Twilight Sparkle had regained control of her tongue and her temper. “Well, let’s leave aside arguments about who is crazy and who isn’t, after what happened,” she said. “Cherry Berry already has a plan to rescue your astronauts and-”

“Baby brother!” Rutherford wailed, bringing his hooves down on the conference table and breaking a chunk of it off in his moment of emotion.

“-bring them back safely,” Twilight finished.

I have a plan? Cherry thought. That’s nice- now how about someone tell me what my plan is? Right now all I know is we’re gonna do it.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Ember asked. “I feel responsible for Fireball. I… well, I kinda blackmailed him into this.”

Grampa looked at the blue dragonling. “You mean Fireball didn’t want to go up?”

“He quit after his orbital flight,” Ember said. “Just like he quit after his first flight. But I said that if he didn’t go up on this flight, I would. Without training. That shut him up.” She looked down at her claws and added, “I guess that wasn’t such a hot idea, huh?”

“I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the diamond dogs didn’t manage a launch along with all of you,” Cherry Berry said into the silence that followed (308).

“In any case, you can leave everything in Cherry Berry’s hooves,” Twilight said. “In three days she’ll be on the way to rescue-”

“Four days,” Cherry said. “The first thing we do, we tell all the marooned astronauts to go on two-thirds rations.”

“What?” Rutherford had to stretch his forehooves a little to prop himself up on the broken edge of the table. “You starve baby brother??”

“You packed seven days of the pre-packaged rations into the capsule, right?” Cherry asked.

“Well… yes, yaks think so,” Rutherford admitted. “Whatever you send us. Yaks not make space food.”

“We just add gem sprinkles to mix in with the packs,” Ember said. “For proper nutrition, like Dad always told me.”

“If we’re paying for the capsules,” Gruff grumbled, “why should we blow money on new food packs when yours will do? It’s not like any griffon will pay money to eat that garbage on the ground!”(309)

“Okay,” Cherry said. “Those meals are calculated for a very active astronaut, doing a lot of things in the capsule. They’re heavy in calories. Two meals a day would be enough to live on, on the ground, even for a yak.”

“Yaks have mighty, mighty appetites,” Prince Rutherford said doubtfully.

“But by cutting out one meal a day, we buy the astronauts maybe two days,” Cherry said. “We can use one of those days to build the best rocket we can- one that can get everypony home. The other day is insurance in case we have trouble getting to them.”

“Trouble?” Grampa Gruff snorted again. “You just aim your firecracker at them and keep flying till you catch them! How hard can it be??”

Footnotes:



(305) Which is to say, not all that different from how any yak usually looks.



(306) This was a kind of lie… specifically, the blatant kind. No cities had been set on fire in the first place. Granted, there was other damage that, unlike Canterlot, hadn’t been automatically repaired by the power of Friendship/Love/Dreams/Whatever Celestia Did Besides Delegating To Twilight. But no fires, because the Storm King had gotten as far in the Evil Mastermind’s Handbook as, “Pillage before burning.” (310)



(307) Twilight Sparkle thinks she is a vastly better diplomat than she actually is. She has the handicap of being unable to not say what she’s thinking at the worst possible times.



(308) The dogs had precisely one Flea-powered flight to their name, but the promised Project Stardust was due to launch Any Week Now… and had been for months.



(309) Here, for once, Grampa Gruff seriously underestimated both the willingness of griffons to part with money for something more valuable (to them) than money, like for example a chance to live a little like their space-going heroes, and the willingness of other griffons to seek to make a profit on the first group of griffons. Fortunately for himself, Gordo hadn’t made that error, and he’d kept the food cabinets in the capsule locked until just before liftoff.



(310) Admittedly, this is the first page after the contents, dedication, and preface.

“How hard can it be?” Goddard the Griffon choked. “How hard can it be??”

Cherry and Twilight blinked at the elderly griffon on the telepresence screen, who looked fit to lay an egg. (Which, as he was a tom, would have been something to see.)

“What my colleague means,” Warner von Brawn, standing next to him, interjected before Goddard could overcome his shock, “is that achieving a rendezvous between two orbiting space objects requires careful planning and precision flight. It’s never been done before.”

“What’s so difficult about it?” Twilight asked. “You merely calculate the relative position and trajectories of the two objects, you calculate an orbital insertion burn that produces a close intercept, you plan a second burn that matches velocities between the two objects, and then you use small bursts of power to achieve a final rendezvous. It’s really quite simple!”

“Simple!” Goddard gasped, his feathers bristling, his hackles rising on his back.

“Not everypony can do calculus in their heads,” Cherry replied quietly.

“Princess,” von Brawn said carefully, “look at it from the point of view of an ordinary pony. Supposing you are an earth pony, on the ground, chasing another earth pony. You can’t fly or teleport. Assume the pony you’re chasing maintains a constant speed, what do you do to catch up?”

“Run faster, of course,” Twilight said.

“True. That’s common sense. That’s what any normal person in a normal situation would say.” von Brawn steepled his massive fingers and continued, “But orbital mechanics and common sense don’t operate in the same way. Suppose you are in a ship in orbit. You accelerate prograde, burning straight ahead. What happens?”

“Well, my apoapsis rises,” Twilight said. “The orbit gets higher, bigger, until I achieve escape velocity.”

“Correct,” von Brawn replied. “Now imagine you are in orbit, behind another ship. You burn straight ahead, trying to catch up, the way common sense dictates you catch up to someone else.” The minotaur’s cool blue eyes bored into the princess’s. “Which of you has the longer distance to travel to return to the starting point of your orbit after the burn- you, or the ship that has executed no burn?”

“Er… burning prograde enlarges the orbit… which means I’d have the longer distance to travel,” Twilight said.

“Which means?”

“That the ship that hasn’t made the burn, having the shorter orbit, will complete that orbit faster than the ship that executed the prograde burn,” Twilight said.

“In other words,” Goddard grumbled, “by going faster, you fall farther behind.”

“And this,” von Brawn agreed, “is the fundamental paradox of the mechanics of orbital rendezvous. The entire notion of catching up with your target must be thrown out the window. Instead you have to think of it in terms of achieving a point of intercept and then matching velocities with your target.”

“I think I get it,” Cherry said, feeling obligated to hold up some part of the egghead conversation. “Rather than try to catch the target, you want the target to catch you!”

Both Goddard and von Brawn worked their jaws for a moment, trying to think of a constructive response. Finally von Brawn said, “If it aids you to visualize the problem, so be it. But more properly, the question remains one of intercept: plotting a course that puts two ships in the same place at the same time, on vectors which can be adjusted to keep them in proximity using the minimum fuel possible.”

“Ideally, a direct ascent intercept could do the job,” Twilight said. “One burn from the surface to the target.”

“The first target,” Goddard muttered. “We have three to deal with, Faust help us.”

“Also, a direct ascent intercept would require a level of precision in both calculation and piloting no space program has yet come close to achieving,” von Brawn said. “And we would be doing it with leftover parts and experimental equipment.”

“But can you do it?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, assuredly we can do it,” von Brawn said. “Intercept and rendezvous is merely difficult, not impossible. It helps that we have complete tracking and communications with the stranded ships, courtesy of your satellite network.”

“The two big problems,” Goddard said, “are finding a way to get space for four astronauts into a single capsule, and then finding a way to get that capsule down again safely.”

“Weren’t you working on a three-person capsule?” Cherry asked. “Can’t we just launch that with a Probodobodyne core?”

Goddard shook his head. “Even if we had that capsule ready for flight- which it isn’t and won’t be this week- we haven’t got rocket engines of matching size. We’re still working out the bugs in the next generation of rocket motors.” (311)

“And besides,” Twilight said, “after Shotputnik I don’t think the other space programs will be happy about entrusting their people’s lives to a robot pilot.” She grimaced and added, “In fact, I think even suggesting it might trigger a war. Three wars.”

“The problem is not insoluble,” von Brawn insisted. “Goddard will stay here and complete what can be completed in two days. I will return to Horseton immediately and see what we have to work with. Then we may consult together and find the optimal configuration of resources to achieve the desired ends.”

“Well, okay,” Twilight said. “Remember, all Equestria- all Equus- is counting on you to bring those people home.”

“Relax,” Cherry Berry said confidently. “What space agency is more reliable than the Changeling Space Program?”

“You said that with a straight face?” Chrysalis asked, brushing a little bit of post-petrification sand out of her bedsheets.

“Barely,” Cherry admitted. “I still didn’t have any clue how I was going to make it all work. I’d have to organize the rocket design and assembly, train for the mission, fly the mission, and somehow oversee it from the ground- all while basically reorganizing your kingdom to keep things running while you were napping. I didn’t see how I could do it all.”

“And then Dragonfly came to you,” Chrysalis said.

“That’s right- hey!” Cherry said indignantly. “How do you know it was her idea?”

“I know her, and I know you,” the changeling queen said. “She’s a changeling, and you’re a pony. You’d never think of disobeying me without a very good reason, but a proper changeling thinks about disobedience all the time.”

“That’s… really weird,” Cherry said, her eyes crossing as she tried to figure out how that could even work.(312)

“That’s my children,” Chrysalis said.

“No, I really think that’s just you,” Cherry said.

“Just get on with the story,” Chrysalis grumbled. “You were just about to tell me how Dragonfly talked you into disobeying my express orders…”

Footnotes:



(311) In the Changeling Space Program, “getting the bugs out” is seldom a figure of speech. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little knowledge in a changeling’s head, plus a complicated piece of equipment, is a recipe for explosions.



(312) Of course it doesn’t work at all, except in Chrysalis’s head. But before judging, consider how many “this is stupid, but we do it because this is the way we’ve always done it” things there are in your society/culture/government.

Two hours, Cherry Berry thought. Twilight Sparkle’s been gone only two hours.

And they still keep coming.

“Excuse me, Mis Cherry Berry? Ma’am?”

Number forty-five, Cherry thought. “What is it now?” she asked the changeling who had blocked her path to the administration building.

“I need someone to approve the new guard duty roster.” A clipboard wrapped in sickly green-colored magic floated over to the earth pony, along with a pen.

“What?” Cherry asked. “First, I signed one of those less than an hour ago! Second, take it to Occupant! His whole job is signing things!”

“Standing orders from the queen,” the changeling said meekly. “Anything Occupant signs, she has to countersign. And…”

“Yeah, I got it.” Cherry Berry gripped the pen in her teeth, careful not to bite down hard enough to sever the fountain chamber and get a mouth full of ink. A few strokes later, she spat the pen back at the changeling, who didn’t bat an eye. “Now why didn’t the last roster last an hour?”

“Three guards just showed back up,” the changeling in front of her said. “One of them outranks Rhinohide, so his roster got thrown out, and-”

“Right,” Cherry sighed. “Go write up a special order and bring it back to me in two hours- and not sooner, got it? Special orders, any further guards returning to the center are to report to Occupant for special assignments, and the guard duty roster is not to change until the end of the week! Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am!” The changeling saluted, took clipboard and pen, and left.

Cherry managed four steps before another changeling got in front of her. Number forty-six, she thought. Unlucky number fifty is going to get an education. “What?” she asked.

“Um… I’m sorry, ma’am…” This changeling was slightly taller than Cherry. It had fins that looked like sawblades. Its fangs dripped continuously. And yet it was cringing slightly away from her, for reasons Cherry couldn’t possibly understand. “I’m just r-returning from as-as-s-s-assignment, an-n-and I was t-t-told to-to s-s-see you.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before,” Cherry said. “Do you work here?”

“N-no, ma’am,” the fearsome changeling stuttered. “‘M-m-m-i’m an in-in-in-infilt-trator, ma’am.”

Cherry sighed. Each sigh was getting deeper than the last, partly because it wasn’t so much a sigh as the sound of her rage pressure release valve. “Don’t you have another changeling to report to?”

“Th-th-they sent me here.”

“Of course they did.” Cherry counted silently to ten, then said, “Listen… what’s your name anyway?”

“Girdler, ma’am,” the changeling said. “I take the place of d-d-dresser aides in M-m-manehattan stores and-”

“Stop. Stop right there, Girdler,” Cherry said. “Your queen and I have a deal. I work for her so long as she doesn’t do anything illegal or really immoral involving me. Are you about to tell me about illegal or immoral things you’ve done on your queen’s orders?”

The fearsome changeling paused to consider this. “Well,” it said, “what happened in the ch-changing booths wasn’t ex-ex-exactly ordered, n-not as s-such-”

“Yes or no?!”

Girdler thought a little more. “D-does mixing lace with p-pl-pleats count as im-m-m-moral?”

Cherry counted silently to eleven this time. “Go get some paper from Occupant,” she said. “Write up a report, put ‘Burn After Reading’ on the cover, and tell Occupant to give it to the queen when she wakes up. Then do whatever Occupant tells you to do after that. I do NOT want to know, understand? I don’t want to- wait, that’s a lie.” She looked at the changeling, who by all appearances ought to have been a top warrior. “How do you disguise yourself?”

A flash of green fire later, a petite, adorable cream-colored earth pony mare with blue eyes and gray mane blinked up shyly at Cherry. “C-c-can I interest you in our premiere l-l-line of s-saddles for that in-in-in-in-intimate m-moment-”

“NO!!” Cherry bellowed, rearing up to cross her forelegs at the transformed changeling. “I’m sorry I asked! Now go see Occupant like I said!” The shout sent Girdler scurrying in the direction of the mission control building.

She didn’t even get to take one step this time, because Girdler had given two other changelings the opportunity to intercept her. Forty-seven and forty-eight, Cherry thought. I think somepony is sending these changelings to me for some reason. (313)

“Miss Cherry, ma’am,” one changeling said, “Aphid here has a pony and won’t share.”

“Miss Cherry,” the other changeling, presumably Aphid said, “please explain to Styletto here that it is possible for a pony to be a voluntary food source, and at the same time, unwilling to be fed on by more than one changeling.”

Cherry wondered, idly, if the pain in her right temple was a blood vessel about to pop and relieve her of all this stupid stuff. “Aphid,” she said carefully, “is this pony on the grounds right now?”

“No, ma’am,” Aphid said. “After the invasion she went to Trottingham to make sure her parents were okay.”

Cherry looked at Styletto. “And you make this a problem… why?”

“Well… the pony’s gonna come back, right?” Styletto asked. “So why can’t we share? Sharing is the pony way, right?”

So is bucking smart-flanked changelings right in the chin, and although I don’t do that, it is becoming VERY tempting… “Have you considered… I can’t believe I’m asking this… have you considered getting your own pony? In a consensual, no disguises, no cocoons, no venom way?”

Styletto cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

“Try asking them,” Cherry said in a cutting, ironic tone that echoed Chrysalis almost perfectly.

“Oh.” Styletto cocked her head the other way, then looked at Cherry and said, “Ma’am, will you let me suck your-”

“NO!!!” Cherry roared. “Go find ANOTHER pony! And when you ask, don’t use the word ‘suck’!!” She turned her rage on Aphid, shouting, “And you go take a week off in Trottingham and quit bothering me!”

Two changelings saluted smartly, then bolted off in opposite directions. The path to the administration building finally, finally lay open.

Except for changeling number forty-nine. “Hey, bossmare. Can I talk to you for a minute?” Dragonfly asked, standing directly in Cherry Berry’s path.

Cherry let out a long, long sigh of relief, certain muscles finally relaxing. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about stuff,” she said. “As soon as Dr. von Brawn gets back, we’re going into conference on a rocket design for this mission.”

“This is more important.” Dragonfly pointed to a small, as yet untenanted office just down the R&D building hallway. “In private, please?”

Snorting- as if she didn’t have eighteen other jobs on her hooves!- Cherry allowed herself to be led into the office, which had become a large storage closet with a desk inconveniently placed in the middle of it. But there was space for two pony-like creatures to stand and a door that closed, and that was apparently what Dragonfly desired.(314) “All right, what?” Cherry asked the moment the door latch clicked.

“Let me fly the mission,” Dragonfly said, coming straight to the point.

Cherry gawked at the changeling. “I’m sorry, what??” she asked. “You want me to let you fly a mission with three other ponies’- people’s lives at stake?”

“Yes, exactly!” Dragonfly said. “Now I know you might have some problems-”

“Problems??” Cherry asked. “I’m not the one who has problems! The dragons aren’t happy about Twilight not leading the mission herself, you know! Nor the griffons! And especially not the yaks! If they find out a changeling is flying the mission, they’ll go roadapples all over us! And that will be peanuts, peanuts I tell you, compared to what Chrysalis will do when she finds out we disobeyed her direct and unambiguous orders to keep you grounded!”

Dragonfly sighed. “That’s why I’m asking you, now,” she said. “We both know that, given the queen’s wishes, I’d never see the inside of a capsule again. That might change, but when? But right now she’s out of circulation. This is probably my last chance to fly a rocket ever again, as a pilot. And I’ve never yet had an orbital flight. I want that before I move on to whatever else I do next.”

Cherry snorted again. “This isn’t about you,” she said quietly. “This is about three astronauts in very deep trouble. It’s going to take the best we have to get them down safely, and we only get one try at it. Are you gonna tell me, with a straight face- no, let me rephrase that. Can you say, without lying or misleading in any way, that you are the best pilot for the job?”

“The best available one? Yes,” Dragonfly said simply.

“I said no lies,” Cherry replied.

“It’s not a lie!” Dragonfly insisted. “Look, Rainbow Dash is off doing Elements-of-Harmony stuff. She’s not available. Ditto Cadance. No one else has more than two flights experience, and no one else has any familiarity with our space program and facilities. I’m the best candidate out of the astronauts from every service who are available. Plain, honest fact.”(315)

Cherry pondered this for a moment. “Okay, so Rainbow Dash is out,” she agreed. “But I am not out. Do you really think you’re a better pilot than me?”

“No,” Dragonfly admitted. “But I’m counting on two things to change your mind.”

“Really? Okay, what?”

“First....” Somehow Dragonfly contrived to turn featureless glowing bug eyes into the most soulful, doleful, heartbreaking puppy dog eyes Cherry had ever seen, without any actual shapeshifting or changeling magic. “Because if I never get an orbital mission I’ll be awful saaaaaad… and that’s a thing you ponies care about…”

Despite the last eight words of distilled cynicism, Cherry felt herself moved… but not dislodged. “And second?”

Sighing, Dragonfly dropped the poor-pitiable-me act and looked the senior pilot straight on. “Second, you may be a better pilot than me… but ask yourself if either Occupant or me is the better substitute hive queen.”

“What?!”

“How many changelings have bothered you about routine stuff today?” Dragonfly asked. “And how many of them came to you after Occupant told them to do something? Lots, and lots. I know- I’ve been watching and listening.” She took a step closer to the pony and whispered so that her already buzzy voice became almost indistinguishable from insect noises. “Right now the hive doesn’t have a leader. And a changeling hive must have a leader. A clear, undisputed, unquestioned leader. Without a leader we don’t get along. We really don’t.”

Cherry gave some thought to this. There were honest friendships among certain changelings, she knew. She also knew that every changeling thought ninety-nine percent of their fellow changelings were complete idiots (316) and held them in contempt. And, above all, she’d seen how, at least in the short term, changelings without orders to the contrary would follow practically anybody with a loud voice who looked like they knew what they were doing. “Good point,” she said. “But how’s that relevant?”

“It’s relevant because, right now, you are leading the changelings!” Dragonfly insisted. “At least the ones here at the space center. The main hive has a viceroy for now, although Elytron mostly gets obeyed only because he’s loud. Pharynx would be a much better pick if he wasn’t so paranoid…” Dragonfly shook her head. “Anyway, how much training do you think you’re gonna get done with hundreds, maybe thousands of changelings asking you things every minute?”

This gave Cherry another pause for thought. Up to now, she hadn’t thought there was any choice. She had to be the boss and the pilot and, yes, the queen pro tem, because if she didn’t three people would die in orbit. It all had to be done. But if Dragonfly… well, Dragonfly would certainly be able to put her full attention on the problem, no question of that…

… but when Chrysalis found out, there would be Tartarus to pay…

Sensing indecision, Dragonfly asked, “Would it help if I gave you the cute sad eyes again?”

Cherry snorted and pronounced a very filthy Zebrican word (317). “All right, you’re in,” she said. “But I still need you to sit in on the rocket design conference.”

“Woo-hoo!!” Dragonfly took flight, making rapid spins around the cluttered enclosed space of the office-turned-closet.

As bits of discarded equipment and junk fell here and there around her, Cherry Berry roared, “Get out of here before I change my mind!!”

“As you command, bossmare!”

“And don’t call me bossmare!”

Footnotes:



(313) They were. Leaving aside the various "dump Chrysalis in the bay and take over" plotters, there was a large faction, particularly among the space center changelings, who thought Cherry Berry had queen potential. And, after all, there were those old rumors about ponies being turned into changelings… you wouldn’t get stories like that if there wasn’t something to them, right? Never mind that none of the Cherry Berry promoters had a clue how you’d go about changing an earth pony into a changeling, never mind into a queen… they thought it was an option, so they were quietly testing Cherry to see how she would rise to the challenge. What rose, mostly, was Cherry’s blood pressure. Since this reminded the changelings of Chrysalis, this was counted as a point in Cherry's favor.



(314) It’s astonishing how many cultures fail to appreciate that privacy when working is good for everybody and not just for those with the most power and fewest duties.



(315) The phrase “plain honest fact”, coming out of a changeling’s mouth, almost universally fails the laugh test, even among other changelings.



(316) This estimate put them, according to certain outside observers, within one percent of accuracy. (317) You don’t need to know the word. This is an uplifting, highly educational history of a critical moment in space history, and as such not a fit place for potty language. Take your bucking curiosity elsewhere.

“And that was all it took?” Chrysalis asked.

“Look, not all of us were born to be queens,” Cherry Berry replied. “And nopony made me princess of the universe. I just fly your ships. But somepony had to hold things together while you were napping, and Dragonfly was right. I couldn’t do that and fly that mission at the same time!”

“Did you try… no, I don’t suppose you could have threatened grievous bodily harm credibly,” Chrysalis mused. “And I don’t think uncertain retribution threefold would be taken all that seriously if you were-”

“Look, would you like to know about the mission or not?”

“Not particularly,” Chrysalis admitted. “Dragonfly went up and came back down without making any major blunders.” She paused, then added, “You did say she got a Manehattan tickertape parade, or something like that?”

“Getting one. Today. In about an hour, I think.” Cherry Berry looked at the clock on the infirmary room wall. “Yes, about that.”

“Then she didn’t screw up. That’s all I…” Chrysalis trailed off, considering. “Honored by the dragons?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Honored by the yaks?? The yaks, the most ungrateful species on the planet besides my own noble lineage?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I lied,” Chrysalis said, sitting up a little straighter in her bed. “Let’s have the rest of the story.”

“Okay, here’s the problem,” Cherry Berry said, looking at the beings gathered around the conference table- Dragonfly, von Brawn, Lucky Cricket, Plastron, and Occupant. “One pilot goes up. That pilot meets one, two, three orbiting vessels and retrieves their pilots. Four people come down. How can we build a vessel that will do that using what we can get here in two days’ time?”

“I can tell you one thing we cannot do,” von Brawn said at once. “Sticking two passenger compartments in-line behind a capsule is out. On re-entry such a craft will invert, come down nose-first, and kill all passengers. The aerodynamics and the relative weight of capsule and passenger cabins make that inevitable.”

“Maybe we could rehabilitate Capsule One,” Dragonfly suggested. “It looks nice as a historical exhibit at the entrance to the space center, but it’s still a perfectly good spaceship. That would give us four capsules, right?”

“A chain of four capsules would be even more aerodynamically unstable,” von Brawn said, shaking his head. “Re-entry in such a craft would be suicide.”

“Not if you send the capsules down one at a time,” Dragonfly said. “Make the command capsule the bottom one in the stack. Give it plenty of orbital maneuvering fuel. Each rescued astronaut gets in an empty capsule as far from the engine as possible. As each capsule is filled, the command pilot slows down the craft until it’s on a re-entry trajectory, then decouples the top capsule. The rescued pilot flies their own re-entry, while the rescue ship boosts back into a stable orbit before they hit atmosphere.”

“Hey, that might actually work,” Occupant said.

“Now I know it’s a bad idea,” Lucky Cricket muttered.

Von Brawn shook his head again. “No, I think not,” he said. “Such a plan adds more complications to an already complex flight plan. We’ll need several orbital adjustment burns as it is. Let’s not add more until we absolutely must.”

Dragonfly threw up her forehooves. “Well, then you tell me where we’re going to get passenger space for four!” she snapped. “Maybe two capsules and a passenger compartment?” She considered this. “No, the pilot would have to go EVA to let the last passenger in. There’s a risk of the ship going into a tumble. That’s bad.”

“I’d certainly say so,” Cherry Berry agreed in a drawl dry enough for Chrysalis.

“Well, there is one other thing,” Occupant said cautiously. “Jet Set sent us a prototype four-pony cabin- he calls it the ‘Hitchhiker’- just before the Storm King’s invasion. It was on the barge that the queen was waiting for.” His face wrinkled in doubt as he added, “But it’s sized to the diameter of our next-generation rocket systems, including the three-crew capsule. It’s way too big for our existing tanks or engines.”

“Can we bodge it to fit?” Cherry asked. “Make, I dunno, adapters or something?”

“Hmmmm… possibly,” von Brawn rumbled. “We have one prototype fuel tank of the same gauge, so that might be useful as an orbital stage fuel tank. But we’ll also need a heat shield of that diameter, and that we don’t have.”

“That’s easy-peasy to fix!” Dragonfly insisted. “Make that the top priority at Appleoosa and we’ll have a heat shield of the right size here in time for vehicle assembly, no problem!”

“And we have plenty of decouplers of that size,” Occupant said. “OMB sent us the new models weeks ago for testing.”

“True,” von Brawn said. “But it would still be a massive vessel to be sent up on a small rocket. We would need more booster rockets than we’ve ever used before. And extreme caution would be required during ascent to prevent such a slender rocket from snapping in half under the aerodynamic forces involved.”

“We only have two of the big SRB’s in stock at the moment, fueled and ready to go,” Plastron reported. “But we have plenty of T-400 fuel tanks and Swivel engines. We could build liquid rocket boosters.”

“Hm… yes,” von Brawn admitted. “Perhaps we could link the liquid boosters to the central stack so that the fuel tanks all acted as a single unit… no, better yet,” he continued, “have the boosters pump fuel into the central stack. All the Swivels could fire at launch to steer while the solid rockets fire, and then once the booster tanks were empty, they could be decoupled while the central motor continued to boost on a full tank.” He nodded to himself. “I suspect the ascent would be slow, especially early on, but considering the instability of the design, that is a feature and not a defect… hm…”

“But will it work?” Cherry asked, putting the stress on the central point.

“Hmmm… well, we can simulate it…” von Brawn said. “We would need the final design, properly weighted, for wind tunnel tests and for calculations in the sim-”

“You’ve got two hours,” Cherry said bluntly. “Two hours and five minutes from now I want Dragonfly in the simulator. If she can get the thing to orbit two times out of three, then that’s the plan.”

Three very busy days passed. More changelings came in to Horseton, both space program staff and infiltrators who didn’t want to deal with Elytron. Cherry Berry kept some as a guard for Chrysalis, put others to work mending the damage done to the space center during the invasion, and sent the bulk of the rest back to the Badlands with the admonition that no, she did not want to hear their reports, yes, they had to put up with the idiot viceroy, and the queen would be up, around, and disenpetrified very, very soon. (318)

There were other things that filled Cherry’s every waking moment. Reporters kept turning up, asking for interviews; after the second such interview running aground on a question about whether Cherry would take the opportunity to drop Chrysalis from a high place and see if she made more pieces than the Storm King, she banned freelancers from the space center. Round-the-clock manufacturing at Appleoosa had to be arranged for, followed by three special trains and a number of barges to get the new components to Horseton. Occupant had to be persuaded, almost on an hourly basis, that he did have permission to sign things again(319). Steel, cement, chemicals had to be ordered and paid for, mostly on credit(320).

And, three or four times each day, Cherry had to spend half an hour on the telepresence tracking down Twilight Sparkle to request some princessly cutting of red tape, each time some bureaucrat somewhere insisted that, no matter how urgent the need, procedures must be followed, even if it took three weeks to process the forms.(321)

By the third day Cherry was thinking at least once every ten minutes: how does Chrysalis manage all of this and train for spaceflight, too?(322)

But if she was worn ragged, so was Dragonfly, who spent the waking portions of two and a half days practically sealed into the simulator. The first two designs had proven lethally unstable and prone to breaking up (323) mid-launch, due to the long, spindly shape of the boosters and the immense size and weight of the orbital stage. Eventually Goddard had been called in to consult, and the result had been several struts tacked on to the design, with mounting points equipped with tiny explosive charges that would fire along with the appropriate stage decouplers.

This, plus every single control fin in storage, produced a ship that could just about make it to orbit. The rest of the simulations had been focused on making sure it did that, with as much fuel remaining in its immense final stage as possible. Sim after sim after sim, Dragonfly repeated the launch over and over until Cherry pulled the changeling pilot out of the sim capsule and forced her to go to bed.

And then time for sims ran out, and as the real, non-simulated ship took shape in the Vehicle Assembly Building, a worn-looking Cherry and Dragonfly joined von Brawn and George Cowley for the final mission briefing.

“Here are the three wrecked ships,” von Brawn said, pointing to a telepresence projection showing three cartoon capsules in a ring around Equus. “Fortunately for us, the ships are practically sharing a single orbit- a very low Equus orbit.” Pointing to each in turn, he said, “Fauntleroy- Gordon- and Fireball. Fauntleroy launched last, but he had so much trouble achieving an equatorial orbit that the other two ships almost caught up to his.”

“We intend to time tomorrow’s launch to intercept Fauntleroy’s craft directly,” Cowley said. “Ideally only a small correction burn will be required to make rendezvous. Once that is done and Fauntleroy is on board, Dragonfly will boost into a more elliptical orbit- but not too great of one.” Using a pointer, the elderly minotaur described an arc outside the orbit shared by the three wrecks. “We don’t want to go too fast or slow- the less difference between our craft’s speed and theirs, the less braking will be required to match speeds again.”

“So rather than go for a rendezvous in a single orbit, we will wait two, three, or four orbits- but not more than that- for the target to catch up with our ship,” von Brawn said. “Then we can make a final adjustment, get the rendezvous, and rescue Gordon. We repeat the process for the third target, and then we de-orbit and come home as close to the space center as possible.”

“But it must be a splashdown,” Cowley insisted wheezily. “The Hitchhiker component hasn’t been impact-tested, and we don’t know what the capsule and adapter on top of it will do to its durability. We’ll have five parachutes on the assembly, but the difference between water and land might be the difference between alive and dead. There must be no chance of a touchdown on land, understood?”

“No land,” Dragonfly muttered, yawning. “Got it. Right.”

“One other thing,” von Brawn said. “Even with the rationing, the stranded pilots will eat their last rations the day after tomorrow. We’re packing plenty more food on this ship just in case, but time is an issue. We can’t spend forever waiting for a perfect alignment on each rescue attempt. That’s why we’re sending up the huge tank of fuel in the first place, after all- to ensure there’s enough to get this done and done quickly. Ideally the flight should be over in twenty-four hours.”

“Sure,” Dragonfly grumbled. “No pressure at all.”

“Don’t worry,” Cherry said. “I’ll be on capcom for the whole mission, and you’ll have all of us down here talking you through everything. Just fire the engines when and where we tell you, and everything will be fine.”

“Just what everyone wanted,” Dragonfly said. “Carriage-seat drivers.”(324)

Footnotes: (318) Cherry Berry didn’t know whether hearing someone describe criminal activities made you an accessory under the law, and she didn’t want to find out. (319) Because, under Equestrian law, Cherry didn’t have power of attorney over the changeling hive’s business dealings outside the space program. As it turned out, Occupant was the only bug in Horseton who could sign anything more legally binding than a receipt, Chrysalis’s standing orders notwithstanding. (320) One short year before, any changeling asking for credit would have been laughed out of town before it was brought back into town so it could be run out again on a rail. Times change. (321) It’s probably for the best that Cherry Berry never learned how Chrysalis handled this problem as a matter of routine: (a) do what you want and let the pencil-pushers try to stop her if they dared; (b) if they dared, replace them with an infiltrator; (c) if impersonating them proves impractical, find a bit of quick blackmail to stop the problem; (d) if they’re too clean to blackmail, lawyer up, file bureaucratic counter-claims, and forge ahead while they’re drenched in paperwork. By Chryssy’s own standards, each step in the procedure represented an escalation in evil. (322) As might be apparent by now, she didn’t. The benefits of being an evil changeling tyrant included the ability to scare away anyone who didn’t have legitimate business, the ability to delegate to underlings one didn’t much like, and the instinctual guile and malice to ensure that annoying obstacles ceased to annoy in short order. Had Chrysalis been given a detailed list of all Cherry’s difficulties during this period, she would have been wondered why the pink pony had wasted so much time on unimportant things when she could have had plenty of time for lounging on the throne, eating tiny bits of chocolate, and reading bad adventure novels. (323) Or as von Brawn called it, “rapid unplanned disassembly.” Popular music aside, in rocket science breaking up is extremely easy to do. (324) The ponies having never seen the need for automobiles beyond sports and entertainment, the concept of a “back seat driver” has not yet occurred to them. But the pony (usually a noble) sitting inside the carriage who continually complains about how the steerspony is handling the reins or how the pull team is running? That pony is familiar to practically every pony… and everyone who impersonates ponies. Don’t be that pony.

Dragonfly sat in the capsule the next day, running down pre-flight checklists as the countdown clock for this mission ticked down towards zero. She’d been there for over an hour since the rocket was cautiously carried out to the pad, wobbling under the efforts of almost a hundred changelings to carry it without breaking something. If something went wrong with the systems, they’d have to wait ninety minutes for Fauntleroy’s wreck to make another orbit before they could retry the launch.

While she automatically rattled off one system check after another over the comms to Mission Control, Dragonfly ran through what they’d learned in the simulation. Max Q (325) will kill this ship on a whim, she thought. A slow, almost vertical ascent through the dense lower atmosphere, then a very gradual turn down the ball as the air thins out. And keep burning all the way to space, because this fat-flanked piece of junk is so heavy that it needs every bit of delta-V I can squeeze out of her.

The checklist ran out. The pad crew detached the fuel lines. Dragonfly switched on the ship’s internal power, batteries recharging from two little solar panels mounted midway between the capsule and the Hitchhiker compartment. Seconds ticked by, called out in a calm, professional voice by the blonde-maned earth pony who, Dragonfly admitted to herself, probably should have been in the capsule instead.

But I had to have one more flight, she thought. One more dance with the Pale Mare. And orbit.

The seconds ran out, and on the count of zero Dragonfly hit the staging button, activating the two SRBs and the three Swivel liquid-fuel engines.

With a speed best described as deliberate, Mission Twenty-One lifted off the launchpad.

“What is this?” Dragonfly shouted, mike still live. “This is like riding in an elevator! Where are the G’s?”

“You’re going the same speed you did in the sims,” Cherry Berry replied. “It’s a heavy, underpowered ship. And we don’t want you going fast right now anyway.”

“Roger,” Dragonfly grunted. “Easing her over to ten by ninety. Some excitement this is.”

“I know three people listening in to this in orbit who are a lot excited,” Cherry replied. “Now focus on the job, okay?”

“Copy, Control,” Dragonfly said. “Holding her steady at ten by ninety, awaiting SRB burnout.”

The solid rocket boosters burned out just after the ship reached the speed of sound. Dragonfly decoupled them and looked at the altimeter; still too low to turn down the ball. “Control,” she said, “we’re burning a lot of fuel to be this low and slow.”

“We noticed,” Cherry’s voice came back. “You’ll have to use some of the final stage to get to orbit. And the fuel levels in the liquid-fuel boosters are dropping fast. Time to pitch down while you have the control authority of all three engines.”

“Copy.” Dragonfly began pitching over to the east… and found herself holding the stick hard over. “I’m not getting much of a rate on this turn,” she said. “Thing doesn’t want to go over, even with the fins.”

“Keep trying,” Cherry said.

“What else am I going to do?” the changeling pilot grumbled, watching her instruments as the nav-ball slowly, slowly rotated over past twenty, past thirty, to forty degrees off the vertical.

And then the boosters, having pumped their excess fuel and oxidizer over to the central stack, ran dry. For a moment, as Dragonfly hit the staging button to dump the dead weight, the ship actually slowed down. Then, for a few seconds, the rocket’s velocity held steady, before glacially accelerating once more.

"Control,” Dragonfly said, “are you sure this thing can make orbit?”

“What’s the matter?” Cherry fired back from the ground. “This flight too exciting for you?”

After that Dragonfly restricted her comments to altitude and speed checks. The altitude climbed respectably, the ship’s early vertical momentum carrying it out of Equus’s atmosphere. The ship picked up more and more speed, but not enough for her comfort. She kept pushing the stick over until, finally, the ship’s prograde vector touched the horizon line. “Attitude ninety by ninety,” she reported. “How long until apoapsis?”

“About two minutes,” Cherry’s voice responded. “Keep firing.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel, at her velocity. The central booster was about to go dry, and her velocity wasn’t even close to orbital yet. The sims, she thought, were hopelessly optimistic. “Stand by for first stage burnout and second stage ignition,” she reported.

“Control copies, Twenty-One,” Cherry said. “Ninety seconds to apoapsis. Welcome to space, by the way.”

“I noticed,” Dragonfly muttered. The noise of the main engine ceased. “Burnout, staging now,” she reported. With two slaps of the staging button the last of the boosters fell away from the lozenge-shaped ship and the small Terrier engine lit, not so much pushing the ship forward as nudging it.

Is the throttle set to full? Dragonfly thought.

Unfortunately, yes.

“Sixty seconds to apoapsis.”

“Come on, you big fat…” Dragonfly began easing the nose back up, trying to push the trajectory outwards. In an ideal universe, if you wanted to raise your periapsis, the most efficient point in the orbit to do so is at apoapsis. That point was coming up fast with orbit nowhere in sight… which meant it was time to prolong her stay at the apoapsis as long as possible. That meant thrusting more vertically, which would raise the apoapsis and at the same time push it a little farther into the future of her current trajectory.

“Thirty seconds to apoapsis.”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working for beans this time. The ship didn’t have enough thrust. Given enough time, of course, the Terrier engine would achieve orbital velocity… but Dragonfly’s time was measured in altitude, and it was about-

“Apoapsis in five, four, three, two, one, mark.”

-to run out.

Dragonfly yanked the ship hard up, putting the craft at a forty-five degree angle to the horizon. The maneuver wasted fuel like a rich Manehattan kid wasted bits at the candy store, but it was that or scrub the mission. The top of the atmosphere awaited her only a short distance below, and once the ship fell back into the soup the Terrier wouldn’t be able to climb out again.

Faster!

Dragonfly reached over to key up the new trajectory map display, the newest feature of the control system. Her trajectory lit up on the little screen, showing the high point of her trajectory behind her.

Faster!!

The screen flickered as the computer recalculated the projection, and flicker by flicker the peak of the curve began to catch up with the ship. Meanwhile, the bottom of the arc expanded, leaving the dark circle of the projected planet, forming an almost-orbit.

FASTER!!!

Mission Twenty-One clawed its way slowly, wastefully, away from the border between air and space. It ceased falling and began rising once more, as the indicator marking apoapsis overlapped the ship.

Relieved, Dragonfly began nosing the ship back down, engine sputtering on as she completed the orbital burn. The moment the projection showed a periapsis above atmosphere, she said, “Main engine shutdown!” and pulled the throttle to zero.

“Mission Control copies shutdown,” Cherry said. “With the underperformance of the ship, we show you considerably behind the first target. Stand by for orbital correction burn instructions to match up your apoapsis with their periapsis. With your lower periapsis, you should catch back up to them in a few orbits.”

Dragonfly looked at the fuel readout. One-third of the fuel in the big fat bucking heavy bucking useless fuel tank was gone already. “Standing by, control,” she answered glumly.

Well, she thought, the good news is, I’m in orbit. Yay me.



But will it do anyling else any good?

Footnote:



(325) Max Q is the point in a launch at which aerodynamic forces reach their peak. It’s not a fixed point; it varies according to launch speed and trajectory. Wherever it is, though, it is the place where physics lurks, waiting to pounce on ill-planned rocket launches. And considering how frequently the natives of Equus defy physical laws, that which lurks at the point of Max Q has a massive chip on its shoulder. Even Dragonfly walks (flies) softly there.

Fauntleroy sat in the passenger compartment which was all that remained of his spacecraft and pondered some fundamental truths of existence.

The first fundamental truth that had come to him, in almost a week of nothing to do except contemplate such matters, was he’d erred grossly in claiming himself a superior pilot to Leonid. Leonid would not have attempted a direct flight to the moon without an Equus orbit. Thus, he would not have gone far higher than standard orbit before discovering the trajectory was off. He would not have fiddled around seeking an equatorial orbit for a second attempt with the remaining fuel, because he would have known there would be no remaining fuel after the long burn required to get such an orbit.

And, since he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get in such a situation in the first place, Leonid would not have succumbed to the traditional yak rage and the even more traditional yak rampage. Smashing everything in sight, while momentarily relaxing, did one no good when everything in sight was required to keep you alive.

Fortunately he’d still been wearing his full space suit when the hull breach happened, and he’d been able to get behind the pilot’s flight couch and down into the passenger compartment, with the food and the backup life support, before the capsule more or less fell apart on him. And, even more fortunately, the passenger compartment contained the emergency reserve rations- one week’s worth- provided by the changelings with every capsule and passenger compartment they sold.

So he’d had time enough to come to terms with his inevitable demise… and then, when his demise became evitable, time enough to come to terms with that as well. Oh, he could still die up here, and if he lost his temper again he certainly would die up here. Yak culture, with its glories and follies alike, was such a hard thing to escape, lamentably. But there was a chance…

“Horseton, Twenty-one… we have zero relative velocity to target at six hundred thirty-eight meters. We have rendezvous, over.”

“We confirm, Twenty-one. We still want you to ease in as close as you can to make it easy for Fauntleroy to get to the ship. This will be his first spacewalk, after all.”

“No problem, boss. Didn’t I tell you I could do careful and delicate?”

“Don’t call me boss.”

And there was that chance now, close enough that his suit comms could pick up chatter directly from the rescue ship. Up until now his only communications had been through the pony communications satellite network. “Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” he said aloud. “Standing by for instructions on rescue.”

“We read you, Four,” the unmistakable voice of Cherry Berry called back. “Keep the channel clear until we’re ready for you. Twenty-one, go ahead for five meters per second towards the target.”

“Copy, Horseton.” That sounded like a changeling- probably their third-tier pilot, what was her name? Oh yes, Dragonfly. They’d met in EVA training at Cape Friendship. She was the one who was… what was the kirin phrase? Gung-ho, that was it. Excessively eager.

“Horseton, this is Yak Shot Four,” Fauntleroy said again. “I’m quite sure I could cover half a kilometer by suit thrusters. There’s no need-”

“Four, please keep the channel clear.” Cherry Berry’s voice had gone from light and friendly to hard steel, while somehow retaining its little squeak. Only a pony, Fauntleroy thought, could pull that off. “We are coming to you. Sit tight. Twenty-one, proceed.”

“Five hundred meters and closing.”

Fauntleroy’s life flashed before his eyes. It was very short, and most of it was books, smashing, and snow. He’d hoped for a little more before the end…

“One hundred meters and closing. Slowing to two meters per second… wait a minute.” The changeling voice went silent, and then came back filled with obvious consternation. “Yak Shot Four, is that a passenger capsule you’re in? What were you doing bringing up that dead weight for a one-person flight? What were you thinking?”

“As I understand it, the griffons and the dragons launched passenger compartments as a test to see if they could sell tourist flights around the moon,” Fauntleroy said. “But I think my compatriots threw this on the stack because we had it in the barn. No other reason, really, except using everything up in one last glorious flight.” Which, of course, was a foolish thing to have done, but it was also a very yak thing to do.

“Eh, makes sense,” the changeling pilot replied. “Fifty meters.”

And, evidently, also a very changeling thing to do, except the changelings had more sensible people to keep them in line. A most enviable condition, Fauntleroy thought.

“One meter per second,” Dragonfly called out. “Going to stop at about ten meters separation. I don’t want to bump into you by mistake.”

“I’d be most grateful if you didn’t, miss,” Fauntleroy replied politely. He’d put his spacesuit on as soon as he’d heard the first buzzing of Mission Twenty-One over the comms, and now he slipped his helmet over his radio headset and locked it into place. “Standing by.”

“And… there!” A ring of satisfaction. “Zero relative velocity at eight point eight meters! It’s a shame there’s no way for me to just grab on to your ship. I could probably just kiss that can with this ship, easy. And it’d make ship-to-ship transfer a lot easier if the two ships could, I dunno, connect somehow.”

“The bulls like your idea, Twenty-One,” Cherry replied over the comms. “Four, we’d like you to exit your craft in your own time. Once you’re free of your craft, we want you to use your thrusters to translate over to the rescue ship. There are handholds all over the ship, including ladders leading to the pressure doors of the passenger cabin. Do not, repeat, do not go for the capsule; there is no internal connection between the capsule and the passenger cabin. Copy that, Four?”

“Four copies,” Fauntleroy said, double-checking his suit life support, then reaching for a handle near the passenger cabin hatch. “Depressurizing cabin now.”

Air hissed out of the cabin, vented to space. The cabin backup life support shut down as the pressure inside the cabin dropped. When Fauntleroy couldn’t hear the hiss anymore, he said, “Cabin depressurized. I’m coming out now.”

He reached up and rotated the latch for the airtight door which, under happier circumstances, would have taken him through to the capsule. The instant the latch released, Fauntleroy discovered two things: first, that the air had not all left the compartment; second, he was indeed coming out now, much faster than expected.

The now-dead passenger compartment which was all that remained of Yak Shot Four tumbled slowly away behind him, while Fauntleroy tumbled swiftly forward, popped out like a cork from a pony popgun.

Well, he thought. This is exactly like the training, isn’t it? Take a deep breath. Resist the urge to smash things, because it will not help. Bring arms down and back to activate the suit thruster controls.

Twin armrests, each ending in a control joystick, popped out of the suit backpack and under Fauntleroy’s spacesuit-covered hooves.

Good. Activate controls. The inertial system will sense the spin and automatically stabilize me.

The system did so, firing thrusters in what seemed like a frantic, random series of bursts, then settling down as the tumbling stopped.

“I’m all right,” he reported. “It appears I was wrong about the cabin being fully depressurized.”

“Yeah, we got that,” Dragonfly’s voice said dryly. “Bossmare, we need to make a note of that- the passenger cabin needs indicators to show pressure level.”

“Roger, Twenty-one, and don’t call me bossmare,” the voice of Horseton Mission Control answered. “Four, can you see our ship?”

“Stand by…” Fauntleroy checked the navigation ball in his suit’s little cluster of readouts. “The ship appears to be right above my head.”

“Copy,” Dragonfly said, and a moment later she said, “I see Fauntleroy. Repeat, visual on Fauntleroy.”

Fauntleroy worked the controls, pivoting his suit to face upwards. “Visual on rescue ship,” he repeated. “I understand I am to go to the large hatch amidships?”

“Affirmative, Four,” Cherry replied. “Just take it easy and float on up.”

“Understood.” Fauntleroy touched the controls with un-yaklike gentleness. His suit glided forwards, up towards the massive bulk of the changeling rescue ship. Minor adjustments left, right, backwards, forwards, zeroed him in on his target- not the hatch itself, but the ladder rungs above it. “Ten meters… five meters… I’m reaching for a grip…”

It was just that easy. Spacesuit hooves hooked over rungs, thrusters shut down, and Fauntleroy swung himself upside down and, as it happened, almost on top of the hatch. Two rungs down, and he was on the hatch, its controls directly in front of him.

“Firm contact,” he reported. “I’m coming in, and thank you, CSP.”

And as the yak space program came to a close, its last pilot thought, Leonid might have done the rest of it better, but I bet he couldn’t have done this as smoothly. Not in a million winters.

“Horseton, this is Mission Twenty-One,” Dragonfly reported. “Two crew safe aboard, two to go. Let’s talk about that.”

“Good job, Dragonfly,” Cherry replied. “We’re working on the burn for the next rescue, and we’ll have that up to you in a bit.”

“Yeah, about that, bossmare.”

“I keep telling you not to call me that.”

“It took three orbits for me to catch up to Fauntleroy,” Dragonfly pressed on, as she reached over to the trajectory plotter and began hitting keys. “And I was only a little behind him. Now Gordon is way, way behind me in orbit. It took me five hours to rescue Fauntleroy- how long is it going to take to get to Gordo?”

“We’re working the problem-”

“What I’m saying, Control,” Dragonfly continued, “is that I’ve got a computer and an interface up here, too. And all I need to do is make a long burn to get a bigger orbit, right? Bigger orbit is slower orbit, right? So I’ll just do that now, and we can fine-tune it for the final intercept later.”

“If you’ll be patient, we can tell you exactly how long that burn needs to be,” Cherry said.

“Eh, whatever,” Dragonfly said. “We’ll make it work. Stand by for prograde burn… targeting Gordon’s wreckage… ship oriented for prograde burn… five, four, three, two, one!”

Dragonfly’s hooves worked the magic born partly from long practice with the simulators and partly from designing several of the controls herself, including the trajectory computer interface. She’d learned a lot in the past year, and especially in the past few months, from the bulls and Goddard and even that loony Pinkie Pie. It was amazing how easy it all was, once you had a not-quite-lack of hunger and people willing to explain, in words of three syllables or fewer, anything you asked about(326).

From what Dragonfly half-remembered from some lesson or other about geometry, the circumference of a circle was three and a bit times the diameter. If you wanted to enlarge the circumference by a certain amount, you enlarged the diameter by slightly less than one-third that amount, or something like that. She could do the math if she sat down and took a long time, but so long as she had plenty of fuel, she could fudge things and make corrections and do it fast and sloppy.

And, as she’d had drilled into her head the past three days, fast was the important thing.

So she watched the trajectory plot creep up in a higher arc above the low orbit of the space wrecks, noting the difference between apoapsis and periapsis growing… and noticing the fuel levels in that fat fuel tank barely dropping at all. The Terrier might be the weakest of the first generation liquid-fuel engines, but it also provided the most bang for the buck… and, after all, once you were in orbit, ninety percent of the job was done anyway, wasn’t it?

There. That seemed like about the right number.

“Shutdown,” Dragonfly called out. “Successful burn. Now let’s see what that gets us…”

“Dra… Twenty-one,” Cherry said, the exasperation beginning to show in her professional tone, “we show your first close intercept with Griffonstone Five… excuse me, Griffon ship Nickel… in three orbits. That’s assuming you conduct two correction burns which we’re putting together now.”

“Three orbits??” Dragonfly shouted. “That can’t be right!” She tapped out commands on the vector plotter… and, sure enough, there was no intercept market on the plot where she’d expected it to be, coming back around to her planned intercept point.

“It’s good enough,” Cherry said. “Gordon and Fireball still have food through tomorrow. We have the time for a careful intercept. Sit back and let us go through it step by step, all right?”

“But it should have been… I mean, I had it…”

“Dr. von Brawn says he’ll explain it to you once everyone’s on the ground, Twenty-one. Stand by for instructions on the first correction burn to line up the intercept point. That will be in thirty-seven minutes… mark.”

“Standing by for detailed instructions,” Dragonfly said grumpily.

Darnit, it should have worked...

Footnote: (326) The example of Dragonfly demonstrates the possibility that changeling foolishness is not an inborn condition, but rather a result of poverty, cultural stasis, and extremely limited educational horizons. For the counterargument that even educated changelings can be prize idiots, see Occupant.

Dragonfly had to admit, though the slow and careful way was slow, it got the job done.

“Griffon ship Nickel, this is CSP Mission Twenty-One,” she called out. “Holding station at one point one kilometers and preparing for final approach. How’s it going, Gordo?”

“Hey, great to see ya, Dragonfly!” a cheerful, brash cry came over the comms. “Well, you know what I mean. I don’t have visual yet.”

“No problem,” Dragonfly said. “I’m tracking you just fine. Are you ready for some larger accommodations?”

“Well, I kinda like it here,” Gordo chuckled. “It’s private. Would you believe you’re the first person to come up and pester me since I got here?”

“Well, if you don’t want a ride home,” Dragonfly said teasingly, “I can go get Fireball, and you can wait for the next door-to-door rocket salesling to come by.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind having a look at your wares,” Gordo said. “Looking forward to the trip.”

“Twenty-One, Nickel, this is Mission Control, Horseton,” Cherry Berry broke in. “Before you two drift apart again, how about we get this rendezvous finished?”

“Well, hello there, Cherry Berry,” Gordo said. “And how’s Equestria’s second-best pilot doing today?”

“Ask Rainbow Dash that,” Cherry said. “Or who do you think is the best pilot?”

“You’re talking to him,” the griffon said smugly. “Who else could have got a stable orbit out of a rocket that was falling to pieces all the way up?”

“The way I understand… never mind,” Cherry Berry said, and Dragonfly could hear the ripping sound of the earth pony tearing herself away from the badinage to be professional again. “Twenty-one, you are go for close approach.”

“Roger, Horseton,” Dragonfly said. “Going to ten meters per second towards target.”

Three minutes later, it was done, with CSP-21 floating a mere ten meters away from the can-shaped wreck of Griffonstone Rocket Project Ship Nickel. “There. Relative velocity at zero,” Dragonfly said. “Gordo, remember to make sure your ship is fully depressurized before you open the hatch. It’s important.”

“No worries, Twenty-one,” Gordon the Griffon said over the comms. “Depressurizing now.”

A short period of time passed.

“Okay, that seems to be it,” Gordon said. “I’m leaving the hatch now.”

“Wait a minute, Gordon,” Dragonfly said, anxiety rising in her barrel. “That’s not even as long as Faunt-”

“WHOO-HA!”

Dragonfly blinked. She looked up through the tiny windows of the capsule, seeing only blackness in both. “Gordon? Nickel, this is Twenty-one, what-”

WHANG.

Something hit the rescue ship hard enough to shake the interior. Dragonfly immediately used her magic to grab her helmet, which was floating loose in the capsule, and jam it over her head. A quick shove of the locking collar, a flip of the switch to activate the suit life support, and she was safe. “Fauntleroy, you okay back there?” she asked.

“I’m well,” the yak in the passenger compartment said over the comms. “And the pressure in this compartment appears to be holding steady, assuming the instruments here are correct.”

“Good.” Seems like some smart pony put the kind of gauges in the Hitchhiker compartment that ought to have been in the tourist pods. But then, the Hitchhiker had an exterior hatch, didn’t it? You had to have pressure sensors so the chamber could be cycled for astronauts going in and out. “Gordon? You all right out there? Talk to us!”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the griffon said. “I took one heck of a tumble, though. I guess the air wasn’t gone as far as I thought.”

“Something hit us right after you opened your hatch,” Dragonfly said. “Any idea what it was?”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that,” Gordon said. “Equal and opposite reaction thing. When I went flying, my ship went flying back the other direction. It kind of glanced off the side of your ship just above the engine. Doesn’t seem to be any external damage. At least, you still have an engine.”

“While you’re out there, could you take a closer look?” Dragonfly said.

“Will do,” Gordon said. “I’m looking at the impact point now, and I don’t even see a dent. Well, maybe a little one. I don’t think it struck at much more than two, maybe three meters per second. And it was only a glancing hit, really.”

“Gordon,” Dragonfly hissed, feeling quite justified in her anxiety, “this ship has to get the three of us down, plus Fireball if at all possible. Give it to me straight- is it broken or not?”

“Dragonfly, honey, I’m giving you the facts,” Gordon said. “No visible exterior damage to speak of. A little paint scraped, a dent about the size of my talons about two hooves above the weld joining the engine to this weird fuel tank you have.”

“Is the dent on the angled part?”

“Yeah, like I said, a couple hooves above the seam with the engine assembly.”

Dragonfly let out a long sigh of relief. The conical adapter made to mount the Terrier engine on the massive fuel tank was empty except for the fuel and oxidizer lines at its very center. So long as the seams held firm on both ends, a dent there damaged nothing. “Okay, thanks, Gordo. Come on inside and take a load off. Wait until Fauntleroy depressurizes the passenger compartment, though.”

“Don’t worry, Gordon,” Fauntleroy said. “I made the same mistake you did, and I won’t make it twice.”

“Sounds good to me,” Gordon said. “I’m drifting over to the ladder now. Just say when.”

Relaxing on the flight couch, Dragonfly reached up to remove her helmet. “Horseton, this is Twenty-one,” she said. “We had a little drama up here, but it’s all sorted out.”

Silence.

“Horseton, Twenty-one, comms check,” Dragonfly said.

More silence.

“Mission Control Horseton, this is CSP Mission Twenty-one,” Dragonfly said, her little black heart sinking as she spoke. “Communications check, please respond.”

Son of return of the silence.

Dragonfly hit the release on her straps, pushed herself out of her flight seat, and reached over to the small tool box mounted on the capsule wall next to the hatch. She dug out a ratchet, fitted the socket for the standard bolt used to hold together the consoles, and unscrewed the bolts holding down the access panel beneath the main control panel. Among other things, that was where the crystal that held the telepresence enchantment was kept. That crystal linked all the suits nearby to itself, and from there to Twilight Sparkle’s comm-sats and to the tracking stations at Horseton and Baltimare and at each of the other space programs’ home bases.

When she removed the cover, two bits of crystal floated up along with it. More fragments of crystal clung to the mounting point, which apparently had been just a little too close to the cover. Dragonfly reached out with a hoof, plucked the mount, and noted the unacceptably large range of play in what ought to have been a rigid, solid bracket.

“Horseton,” she said, knowing nobody could hear her, “we have a problem.”

“Twenty-one, Horseton, comms check,” Cherry Berry said, as all eyes in Mission Control looked her way.

“Cherry,” Occupant said from the flight director station, “you’ve tried for five minutes straight. We lost comms at the same time we lost telemetry.” The changeling pointed to the projector screen, which showed nothing except the orbital diagram showing the relative positions of the rescue ship, the three derelicts, and the satellites orbiting Equus. “We can’t hear them, and they probably can’t hear us.”

Cherry sighed. “Right, I know,” she said. “Do we know what happened?”

“Based on tracking data,” von Brawn said from the bullpen at the front of the control room, “it appears that the same problem occurred as with Fauntleroy’s craft. The loss of air propelled the ship into the rescue ship, where it impacted in some fashion. The two ships are now drifting apart at about one and a half meters per second.”

“The good news,” George Bull said, standing beside von Brawn, “is that tracking indicates Gordon stablized his own drift, maneuvered to the rescue ship, and boarded. That suggests our ship is still functional.”

“Won’t know for sure until it makes some sort of maneuver,” Goddard the Griffon added. “Worst comes to worst, the Hitchhiker has food for four people for seven days each. If we don’t see the ship move, we know to put together a second rescue mission. Or possibly a resupply run.”

“And where does that leave Fireball?” Cherry asked. She turned around and looked up at the VIP observation booth, where Dragonlord Ember sat next to Grampa Gruff, Prince Rutherford, and Princess Twilight Sparkle. All of them wore expressions ranging from dread to barely-checked rage.

“Fireball’s in Dragonfly’s hooves now,” Occupant said quietly. “Without comms, we’re out of it now.”

“Do we still have comms with Dragon XL-3?” Cherry asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Then let’s… no, let’s wait a little longer,” Cherry said. “If the ship can move, Dragonfly won’t wait around. She’ll try to rescue Fireball herself… as soon as possible.”

“Okay, I’m inside,” Gordon said over the comms. “What now?”

Dragonfly had spent a few minutes thinking that exact point over. Under the flight protocols laid down from practically the first flight, if a ship lost communications, it came down at once- as soon as it could land safely. She hadn’t tested the engines yet, but the reaction wheels worked fine, and the solar panels were recharging the batteries, and the parachutes showed as functional.

But if they came down now, Fireball was as good as gone. Not that she knew Fireball all that well- she’d only seen him at astronaut events and the EVA training, and he was always at the fringes of things, staying as far away as he could from everyone else, saying practically nothing. But in his place, she wouldn’t want her rescue ship to give up.

And more to the point, she didn’t want to give up. This was her mission. This was the last flight she’d begged Cherry for, the one she’d risked Chrysalis’s future wrath to get. And she wasn’t going to end it at only two-thirds successful.

“Now,” she said, “we go get Fireball. Strap in and prepare for acceleration.”

Losing the telepresence spell would make the job tough, but not impossible. Suit-to-suit comms worked for about two and a half kilometers even without a proper telepresence crystal linking them. Horseton could probably still talk to Fireball and keep him informed. And, as she’d pointed out to Cherry five hours and loose change before, the trajectory plotting system could be used by an astromare in the capsule- by Dragonfly, in other words- to plot her own course without referring to Mission Control.

And the first step, of course, was simple: repeat what she had done to make a rendezvous with Gordon. That meant a long acceleration burn to get a high orbit and allow Fireball’s capsule to catch up.

“How’s it coming back there?” she asked.

“Stand by, commander,” Fauntleroy’s voice said. “Gordon is strapping in now.”

“Excuse me?” Dragonfly asked. “What did you call me?”

“I said commander,” Fauntleroy answered, matter-of-factly. “This is your ship, after all. We are merely supernumeraries, under your authority. That makes you commander of the vessel and of the mission, does it not?”

Huh.

Dragonfly rolled the phrase Commander Dragonfly around her mind to see how it felt.

One third of her liked the sound of it.

The other two thirds cringed and said, My queen is going to go berserk.

“Okay, I’m in,” Gordo said. “Straps nice and tight. Ready for acceleration.”

“Okay, here we go.”

With a pressure much lighter than the sudden weight of responsibility bearing down on her mind, Dragonfly’s hoof pushed the throttle forwards, and the Terrier engine reignited and began boosting Mission Twenty-One higher once more.

“XL-3, this is Horseton Mission Control,” Cherry Berry said. “We’ve got some news for you, please respond.”

A growly voice came back over the magic comms network. “Lemme guess,” it said, “Celestia’s gotten bored with raising and lowering the sun. She’s decided to raise and lower the ground instead, so all I have to do is step outside the hatch and she’ll be waiting there with a medal and a box of rubies for me to snack on as I ride her home. Is that it?”

There was a long, awkward silence in the control room.(327)

“Nnnnnnnnooooooooo,” Cherry said carefully. “What I was going to say, Fireball, is Dragonfly is piloting a rescue ship to get you. She’s already picked up Fauntleroy and Gordon. But there’s a… contingency.”

This time the long, awkward silence echoed down from many miles above them. “When a pony starts using euphemism