Flashpoint

Chapter Five:

'Cherimoya, Confrontation, and a Controlled Conflagration'

Rainbow Dash blinked sleepily as the sun crested the horizon, thankful she wasn’t flying directly towards it. She let out a yawn, wings casually flicking at the calm air around her, and then cupped them slightly as a gentle thermal gave her a bit of lift. ‘Just a few more minutes, then my nice, fluffy bed.’

She knew it was silly and maybe a tiny bit risky to have flown all night, but after the past ridiculous week of politicking in Cloudsdale, she couldn’t stand to hang around there any longer than she had to. If she had, even to try to find an old friend and hang out, she just knew she would have been pestered by an ambassador looking to curry favor, or a sycophant from her own people trying to make nice-nice with a celebrity. She’d had to fend off a reporter just leaving her parents’ home after dinner, which had convinced even her worrywart mother that Dash wasn’t being entirely unreasonable.

A sigh escaped her lips at the thought that she was running away from what should have been her home town, but she couldn’t be too sad about it. Cloudsdale hadn’t been her real home since childhood, even after her time in the Wonderbolts. She drifted over the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres, and then finally caught sight of it: Home, Sweet Ho-WHY IS IT LEAKING?!

Adrenaline shocked Dash awake, and she flapped frantically, sprinting the rest of the way to her door, mumbling under her breath, “Oh dear, sweet Celestia please, please, please.” She opened the door and entered and-”Phew!”-her small library--containing her collection of first-edition adventure novels--was untouched and undamaged.

Whatever had struck her home had come in through the roof of her kitchen at a steep angle, and went right on through the floor. Both damaged regions were leaking fair amounts of rain, but it was all draining out the lower hole and onto the unoccupied ground below.

She hurriedly tore a few chunks out of her cloud couch and stuffed its remains into the holes, stopping the leaks--it wouldn’t hold up in the long term like structural cloud, but would do for now. Bandaging complete, she swooped downward to try to discover what had injured her poor house.

On the ground she found two of Twilight’s guards, an earth pony and a pegasus. They were just finishing digging something out of the ground. Whatever it was, the angle it had traveled at was enough that it hadn’t been under the small waterfall her house had been leaking, so she had a clean view of it--though as she drew closer, she was baffled as to what it could be.

“Hey, you guys! What the hay is that thing, and why did it punch a hole in my house?!”

Startled, they both looked up at her approach, each taking on a worried look.

The pegasus spoke up, “Ah, Miss Rainbow Dash! Yeah, uh, sorry about your house. I was going to try to patch it up as soon as we finished here, since, we, uh, weren’t expecting you back so soon.”

“I wanted to get back as soon as possible,” she mumbled, as she settled onto the ground. Then her glare sharpened. “You didn’t answer my first question: what is that, and why was it flying through the air fast enough to bust through structural cloud? Somepony could have gotten hurt!”

She examined it up close, but found no further enlightenment. It was obviously a thick sheet of some sort of faded white metal, and a very strong metal at that. If the digging was any indicator, its high-speed impact had embedded it over a foot into the ground, but it didn’t look terribly damaged. There were several holes in it which looked like they might be used as attachment points, and those looked somewhat abused.

“Some...sort of airship component?” She cocked an eyebrow and looked skeptically between the metal plate and the guards.

“I, uh...” began one. They were both looking a bit desperate, and the other finished, “We’re not supposed to tell anypony anything. Just collect it, fix any damages, and take it back to the old keep.”

“The old keep, huh? What’s going on out there?” She draped a foreleg around the earth pony’s shoulder. “I don’t recognize either of your voices, so you must be from that new squad of guards Twilight was getting. You may not know how things go around here, but while you’re not supposed to tell anypony, I’m not just any pony.” She gave him a winning smile. “So come onnn…”

The guard looked mildly affronted, and adroitly stepped back from under her leg. “I am quite aware of who and what you are, ma’am, but the Lieutenant’s orders were very clear. Besides, even if we could tell you, I genuinely have no idea what this is.”

The pegasus added, “Yeah, the Princess and the Lieutenant were both too busy to tell us much of anything when they got back from the Bog last night…”

Dash’s eyebrows went up as the earth pony facehoofed. “The Bog, huh? Thanks!” She took off at high speed, leaving a rainbow trail behind her.

***

“-it’s...insane.”

Olivia finished her rant, now just staring blankly at the floor of the engineering bay. She’d greeted the Princess and made nice for a few minutes, accepting the offered apologies as smoothly as possible, but then made some excuses of it being very early and needing to see to a few things before leaving the three ponies with one of the night crew and running off. In reality, she’d just needed some time to come to grips with seeing the moon do something impossible, and she’d come to Engineering and found Anatoly alone, already hard at work--if he’d even slept. He’d taken one look at her and asked what was wrong, and now he was mulling over her tale.

Finally, he nodded. “Is strange, yet...we have seen many strange things in the past day, yes?”

“Sure, but I can deal with small-scale stuff. Hell, before the Failed Eschaton we could probably have done a lot of the same stuff with nanotech and whatever, and if it wasn’t for the library and lexicon that got crammed into my head I’d probably suspect that nanotech is what they’re using, but this? This is...well, this is screwing with basic orbital mechanics!” She shook her head.

“Ehh…” The Russian made a face. “Is seeming larger because of mass, yes, but after deeper looks into reactor failure, am having different perspective.”

She arched an eyebrow. “More fundamental constant differences?”

“Nyet. Are other things going on as well, very strange interactions, signs of missing energy.” He hesitated, then continued, ”I worry about startup. May be unforeseen issues achieving steady state.”

“Really?” She sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. “Not what I want to hear, Tolya. The more delays, the worse this war could be going when we finally get back home.”

“Da.” He paused, then got a thoughtful look and raised an eyebrow. “I wonder if perhaps Sparkle Pony could join us for ignition.”

“The Princess? You think she could help?”

“Is possible. Is smart lady, and claimed knowledge of fusion theory.” He raised his hands in a shrug. “If she is willing, could not hurt.”

Olivia nodded. “I’ll ask her, then. How long until we’re ready?”

“Charging is curiously efficient here, but would like extra in case of difficulties…” He glanced at a readout. “Say, five hours?”

She walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Alright, I’ll let you get back to work. Thanks for listening, Comrade.” As she felt him take the ‘Protocol 17-a’ note from it, she removed her hand and headed for the door.

“Have fun being diplomat, yes?” He called out over his shoulder.

“Oh yes. Every cargo captain’s dream.”

***

Olivia paused for a breath just outside the conference room door, just as a sharp call echoed out of the open door.

“How many bytes?”

She couldn’t stop a smirk from coming to her face. At least the shock of amazing capabilities isn’t one-way. She smoothed her expression, and entered to find Twilight Sparkle looking over the shoulder of the night-shifter, at the screen of a computer terminal. Her two guard ponies were sitting on the other side of the conference table, and looked like they’d just been talking.

The Princess looked to Olivia as she entered, and said, “How can you possibly store seven petabytes of data on this ship?!”

Olivia blinked, then commented, “Something about electron spins in a crystalline lattice? I don’t know, that stuff goes way over my head.” She waved a hand vaguely.

Twilight’s eye twitched a bit, then she shook her head, and took a deep breath. Looking calmer, she stated, “That could store every book on this planet a few thousand times over, it’s amazing!”

“Hmm,” Olivia nodded in agreement, then added, “But remember: it’s not just text in there. Things like databases, video, and three-dimensional blueprints and models can take up a lot more space than a simple text-only book.”

The Princess looked back at the terminal with barely contained avarice. “We’ve got computers based on magical crystals, but it was a huge step for us just to store a few megabytes.” She bit her lip, then ventured, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a ‘how to create a computer’ guide in there?”

Olivia smiled. “Quite possibly. There’s so much space in a ship databank that they tend to toss anything and everything in, these days. We can get you set up to search through there in a bit, once…” she paused, bemused.

“What is it?”

Giving her an appraising look, Olivia sat down across from Twilight, setting a binder down on the table. “Well, I was going to say, ‘once we get you an augmented reality rig’, but I’m not sure how well anything we have would work, given the differences in our eye structures…”

Twilight’s ears perked. “Those are like the device you used to control the weapon against the Hydra?”

“Correct.” She nodded. “Though those are a simple version. The more complex, full-eye ones can overlay 3D projections, do live object recognition, even access fully immersive interfaces.” She noted that as she went on, the Princess’s lower lip began to quiver. “Uhh...I’m sure we can figure something out for you, but as far as building computers...you do realize that it takes a lot more than simple diagrams and even theoretical knowledge to build that kind of equipment, right? I mean, it took us a century and some, uh, sidetrack incidents, to go from basic computers to this sort of stuff.”

The Princess nodded. “I’ve been realizing more and more that your people must have incredible levels of industry and infrastructure to get the kind of standardized equipment you use. However, I’m pretty sure we have ways to sidestep some of that. Where you might need a series of ever-smaller equipment to get to nanoscale manipulators, we have artisans who can do that stuff directly.”

Olivia stared at her, then shook her head. “Uh, yeah. I guess I can’t really even guess what you will or won’t be able to figure out how to do.” She brooded for a moment. “Along those lines, Anatoly wanted to request your help this afternoon.”

Twilight tilted her head. “With what?”

“Our solar chargers are working a bit better than expected, so we’re about ready to try turning on our auxiliary fusion reactor. Since you seem to be familiar with the theory, and more specifically the theory as it works on your world, he thought maybe you could help if they run into problems--if you’re willing.”

Eyes sparkling, the Princess responded, “Oh, of course! I, er...might be a bit rusty, but I’ll do whatever I can!”

“Thanks.” Olivia nodded. “He said he’d be ready in a few hours.” She then glanced at the binder. “On a more tangible note…”

She glanced over to Kite Shield, catching her attention. “...As your Lieutenant pointed out, we are a cargo ship. While a significant amount of this run is bespoke, we do always carry some free goods for barter and general liquidity. Right now we’re running with our entire cargo under high-grade climate control, and have a significant number of live plants.” She opened the binder to the index, displaying a grid with pictures of plants, fruits, and seeds, all arranged according to optimal growth climate. “They’ve already been through screening, scanning, and hermetic quarantine, and have soil compatibility test kits and allergen scratch tests with them.”

All three ponies drew around the list as Twilight paged through it. “Huh...this is kind of crazy, but a lot of these are familiar, or look very similar to local plants.”

An eyebrow twitched as Olivia processed that statement, then she sighed, and said, “That should probably surprise me more than it does, but maybe I’m just burning out on surprises.” At a curious look from Twilight, she waved her hand, saying, “Our scientists thought they’d ruled out exogenesis, or any significant cross-contamination of life between worlds...seems they’ll need to revisit that.”

Twilight smiled. “I think both of our peoples will be rethinking a lot of things in the coming days.” She then glanced back down at the index, and tilted her head. “What the heck is a mango?”

Olivia gave her best sales smile. “You’d have to wait for the scratch test to clear, but we do have samples…”

***

“Oooog…” Twilight groaned, as she tried to gather the energy to cast a spell to clean off the mixture of a dozen fruits she could feel coating her muzzle.

From across the table, Kite weakly waved a hoof in her direction. “Run, Princess. They’re clearly planning to subdue us through overfeeding, and then...uh…” she trailed off with a mumble. “Buck it.”

The Princess gave her a flat look, then glanced to the side, where Stone Wall was lying hooves-up on the table, tongue lolling out. With a sigh, she looked up at the clock on the wall, then straightened, a panicky gleam in her eye. “They’ll be back any moment now. I’m a princess! I can’t be seen looking like I’ve been in a fruit orgy! This is...this is…”

“Untoward?” Stoney offered.

“I was going to say ‘unseemly’,” retorted Kite.

“What’s the difference, anyway?”

“I always thought of untoward as more pretentious, I guess.”

“I dunno, unseemly is pretty bad too.”

Twilight grit her teeth, a single hair springing out from under her tiara. She glared at it for a second, then took a deep breath, and her horn gave a single bright pulse. She exhaled, once more looking clean and precise.

As she stood up, she was unable to suppress a slight groan as her overfull stomach settled, but then she just snorted at Kite. “I am a princess!” As she spoke, she lit her horn again. “And you are my entourage!” She fired a blast at the Lieutenant, who wheezed a little as the spell flashed over her. “Time to look the part!” Twilight turned her gaze to Stoney, then just jabbed him in the side with her horn, the spell spreading from there.

He tipped over and fell off the table, somehow landing perfectly on shaky legs.

The two guards glanced at each other, looking clean, but stunned, then shook their heads and saluted Twilight. “Yes Ma’am! Sorry Ma’am!”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything…”

The ponies all jumped, and turned to the door, where Lydia looked torn between concern and amusement.

Twilight grinned sheepishly. “Uhhh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’m here because we seem to have a problem at the perimeter. A blue pegasus just flew in and is now harassing a guard. He’s been trying to calm her down, but but she seems pretty aggressive.”

“Blue?” Twilight gulped. “Uh oh.”

***

“You open that crate up right now, or I’ll bash my way in! You don’t know who you’re dealing with, ya freaky monkeys!”

Rainbow Dash had flown in and found a...giant...metal...airship? Thing? A bunch of two-legged creatures were standing guard around it. She’d only intended to scout the place out and then find Twilight, but then she’d seen the feathers in the nearby mud--pegasus feathers, and some of them an unmistakable shade of lavender. Adrenaline had flooded her sleep-deprived mind, and-

“If you’ve done anything to Twilight, I’ll mess you up! I’ll take all of you on!”

She had backed a group of guards up to what she figured looked like an entrance. Now she just needed to force them to open it up. Grabbing one of them by the front of his shirt, she quickly dragged him over to the door, and pointed at it emphatically.

“Open it up! Let me in there or I’ll, I’ll…”

She paused to consider the fact that the entire thing appeared to be made of metal. Then, another one of them grabbed her around her belly and pulled her away from the door, pushing her downwards once they’d turned back towards the bog.

“Rrrgh, that’s it!”

Dash bounced back up into the air, spun around once to build up some momentum, and socked the one who’d grabbed her right in the face.

“RAINBOW DASH, What Are You DOING?!”

She stabilized herself, looking towards the Royal Voice. “Twilight!” She grinned, but it quickly faded to a nervous smile as the Princess glided over from a nearby entrance, in which Kite Shield, another guardpony, and one of the monkey-things were standing. “Uh...you’re...okay?”

Twilight shot her an exasperated look as she landed, then looked to the two-legger Dash had punched, who was being helped up by its cohorts. She spoke in some goofy sounding foreign language the pegasus didn’t recognize, and the punchee responded calmly, waving one claw while the other held the bruise forming on its cheekbone. It did shoot a nasty look towards Dash, and she winced, tapping her hooves together as she idly hovered.

“Friend of yours?” That was the two-legger that had been with Twilight’s guards--all three of them had now made their way over, and the creature was speaking in Equestrian.

The Princess nodded, and then looked at Dash, arching an eyebrow. “A very good friend who has apparently lost her mind.”

Dash sagged in the air. “I-I-I...I just saw a couple of your feathers over in the mud…” she gestured over her shoulder “...and I guess I jumped to conclusions and I did kinda lose it. Sorry, Twi.”

Twilight’s look softened. “The feathers must have been dropped when we were fighting a Hydra yesterday. Dash, what are you even doing here? You weren’t supposed to be back from Cloudsdale for another couple of days.”

“Uhh I might have run away as soon as the meeting was over,” she said sheepishly, “aaaand I might have flown all night to get here.”

Rubbing her forehead with a hoof, Twilight flatly stated, “Great. Frustrated, sleep deprived Dash. No wonder.” She opened her eyes, looking resigned. “How did you even find this place?”

Dash looked confused for a moment, then blinked, and hovered a bit more upright. “Hey, that’s right!” She pointed at the giant metal thingy. “A piece of this thing hit my house! I ran into a couple of your guards digging it up and they let slip something about the Bog.”

She flew upwards a bit, then swooped back down. “What is this thing, anyway? Some sort of airship? And who are your new, uh, friends?”

Twilight sighed, and then nodded. “Yes, a-an airship. Of a sort. And these are humans.” She gestured to the one who had accompanied her, and who seemed to outrank the other guards. “This is Lydia. They’re, uhh…”

“Visiting,” finished the human. “From a very distant place. We’ve had a bit of trouble with our ship, and the Princess has been helping us out with repairs, and we’re hopefully going to do some trading.”

Rubbing the back of her neck, Dash sighed, and muttered, “Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t put much into that punch…” At a flat look from Twilight, she grinned guiltily, then nudged her head towards her victim. “Uhh, tell him I’m sorry, okay? A misunderstanding?”

She watched quietly as Twilight and Lydia had a brief conversation with the one she’d hit. Then, Dash had a thought. “Hey! I know!” She dove in close to the human and pointed at her own face. “Tell him he can hit me back! It’s only fair! I can take it!” She closed her eyes and turned her head.

From behind, she heard a chuckle and a sigh, and she peeked to see Twilight with her face in her hooves, and Lydia covering her mouth. Then her victim said something, and he and Lydia talked briefly.

“Greg says it’s okay,” said Lydia, then she paused as he continued. “And you’ve got a pretty good right hook, and…” she raised an eyebrow at him “...he’d totally be up for some boxing practice later.” She crossed her arms. “I’ll have to run that by the Captain, first.”

Dash grinned at the human. “Sweet! Most ponies won’t fight me anymore, ‘cept for AJ!” She held out a hoof, and Greg examined it, then bumped his fist against it. Then Dash felt the tingle of telekinesis around her, as she was dragged back in front of Twilight.

“Alright, Dash,” she said, “Why don’t you go to the Keep? It’s closer, and you can get some rest. I’ll be back later today, and we can talk more then. I’ve even got some structural cloud in storage I can give you to patch up your house.”

“Cool.” Dash nodded, then blushed slightly, and glanced around. “Sorry again for causing trouble. See you later, Twi!”

She took off towards the Keep at a leisurely pace. The last thing she heard was from Lydia:

“Structural cloud?”

***

“Wakefield accelerators primed and pre-charged...injectors read green.” Engineer Bishop was at the terminal to the right of the sapphire window that provided a direct view of the APU reactor core. He scanned through the long list of subsystems that were slowly coming to life.

“Good, good,” Anatoly murmured. He was standing to the side, wearing a set of full augmented-reality glasses--he had ideas on how to rig something up for ponies, but for now they’d have to make do with viewscreens. Tolya’s eyes flicked over dozens of virtual displays showing full-system status indicators and reduced data visualizations. “Natalie, how are live-simulators?”

His other engineer, sitting to the left, was looking tired but alert. Natalie LaForge had already spent her usual night shift and the morning going over the revisions to the reactor-environment simulation subroutines, and was staying up to make sure they worked right. She took a while to look over her screens, before responding, “All sims are in steady state, safeties on.”

Twilight spoke timidly from beside Tolya, “Simulators?”

He glanced over and nodded, “Is impossible to have infinite probes in reactor, or any probes at all in places where plasma is hottest, da?”

The pony nodded, her ears at odd angles.

“Yet, is real-time reactive fusion system: must know internal status of plasma to adjust field configuration, injectors, heaters, and then all things change when fuel input and power extraction rates modified.”

Twilight bit her lip, then ventured… “So, you use the probes you have, and simulate the rest? That’s incredible...and it would be impossible without your terahertz processors.”

The Russian nodded. “Even with, requires many shortcuts and assumptions.” He paused, then allowed a bit of his worry to edge into his voice. “Is perhaps biggest issue with restarting, if any assumptions are too far off…”

Olivia cut in from where she was slouched in a corner near the Princess’s guards. “The closer we get to this, the less sure you sound about it working. I’m starting to get perturbed.” She raised an eyebrow. “Even if it fails, it’s not the end of the world, right?”

Tolya looked at her, then glanced at Twilight before responding, “Da, is not worst thing. And failure would yield more data, though we do not have infinite fuel.” A hint of a smile came to his face. “Perhaps I am not so comfortable as I pretend, with this bending of physical laws.”

Twilight smiled up at him. “Well, I’ll do my best to help. I know they’re somehow different from what you’re used to, but believe me: there are rules here. Even if I’m not familiar with this equipment, I know the theory.”

He nodded, then glanced up at a display. “Peter?”

Bishop responded, “Confirm: main capacitors charged and linked, cores cooled to nominal. My board is green.”

“Very well.” He gestured to his left. “LaForge, move simulation interlinks and boundaries to switchover-ready status, but leave debug hooks enabled. Begin startup sequence, target for breakeven.”

A subtle humming picked up, transmitted mainly through the floor of the bay. The ponies all shifted uncomfortably as the vibration grew in intensity and frequency, the air in the room throbbing in resonance, until--suddenly--it seemed to disappear in an instant.

“Mag balance calibrated, primary field at sixty percent. Injection startup in fifteen…”

“Heater current enabled.”

Anatoly was silent as the final startup routines kicked in. Within milliseconds of injection a dim glow began to shine through the reactor window. Dozens of virtual screens sprang to life in his view, showing radio power spectral data, density profiles, simulation outputs. Two of the simulations began to destabilize immediately as they tried to accommodate probe data beyond their ken. “Damn.”

LaForge looked grim as she examined her own views. “I’m not getting a clear view of the injection fringes and primary core. The gradients are all wrong.”

“Can it stabilize as is?”

Her response was just a grimace, and deeper concentration.

Bishop spoke up, “Power draw is green, boundary extraction and reinvestment is...okay. Actually it’s weird, it’s like there’s less bremsstrahlung damping than expected. Leech is 63% base spec and falling.”

Only half paying attention, Tolya was flicking through his virtuals like mad, trying to find a smoking gun amongst the wreckage of modern plasma theory. Shaking his head, he turned to the display-covered side wall and started tossing virtuals onto it in order to clear some space, as well as show the Princess what was going on. “Spectral lines being split, missing, or new; density profile has impossible small scale structures; everything is mess!”

Twilight just started to intensely look from display to display.

“Sir,” LaForge interjected, “I’m reading over three times the normal Landau damping, but I can’t get a bead on where the energy is going. It’s like it’s just disappearing!”

“Hrmm...Is a symptom, I think. Stability profile?”

She shook her head, glancing around her workstation. “It’s hard to tell without knowing where the fringe x-points are, but energy-wise I’m curving towards 87% breakeven. Estimated time left on capacitors…two hundred seconds to zero.”

“Hmm…” Tolya started rapidly tapping his foot, then glanced down at the focused Princess. “Am thinking any help is welcome, Sparkles. Otherwise, will shut down to conserve remaining charge.”

Twilight’s face grew pinched as she glanced back over the displays. “I...I don’t know if I can help, because I’m not sure what exactly is wrong. From what I can remember this is all…” she paused for a moment, then looked curiously at him while saying, “Wait a minute, can you show me what these plots would have looked like normally, before you came here?”

Tolya raised an eyebrow, then nodded, and quickly dredged up nominal profiles, rearranging the physical screens for quick comparisons. As the pairs of plots began to fill in, Twilight’s face grew increasingly shocked.

“This...this is impossible!” She waved helplessly at one of the ‘normal’ spectrograms.

“I beg you to remember, this is just what we say about things here.”

She nodded, distracted, then focused, and began pointing from plot to plot. “There, the upper-hybrid triplet is a singlet. That density map, there’s no sign of Primrose’s hierarchy of density depletions. I...I’m not sure I’m reading that one right, but I’d think a simulation should show the parity-swap resonance transfers which I don’t see…”

Tolya stared at her, then asked, “You are saying everything looks different?”

Head tilted, she continued looking for a moment. “No, not everything, but…” She blinked. “No magic. That’s it!” She smiled, then gaped. “You don’t just have no personal connection to magic, it’s like your regions of space don’t have any prime-dimensional magic resonances at all!”

As he glanced at the remaining time on the clock, he just said, “Can you explain quickly?”

“Well...resonant, parity-conserving, weak-force couplings are the main driver behind all magic. They should show up all over the place in as vibration-rich an environment as a high-density plasma, but it really does look as if all the standard thaumo-weak resonance modes are gone from your plots. So it’s like you’re missing two entire source terms from your equations!”

The Russian’s eye twitched slightly, then he swept the screens clear and pulled up the standard Vlasov-Musk-Sonata equation. “This is standard plasma dynamics differential equation. Can you modify?”

The purple poindexter stared at it for a moment, then hesitantly said, “Well, sure...but I don’t know the solutions off-hoof, not even the linearized ones.” She fretfully added, “If only we had Lyra here…”

“Is not necessary, computers are set up to decompose and solve…” He frowned. “Although not for weak-force equations.”

“No, it’s conservative within the right time boundaries. The source terms are also sinks within their resonance return times. Uhm…” She waggled a hoof at the screen.

Tolya pulled a stylus out and jotted an example line onto the screen before offering it to her. It floated upwards, and quickly wrote two multi-component terms onto the end of the existing equation, Twilight barely even pausing to think.

“I...I think that’s it. Oh!” She added the values of the three new constants below, each to fifteen decimal places, the nodded with satisfaction. “There!”

Sweeping them up, Anatoly fed the equations to the appropriate functions. They easily read the Princess’s writing, and began the process of solving them and breaking them down into important solution groups. He began sifting through the results until he found one in particular…

“Is madness,” he muttered, “Landau damping becomes heavily cyclic on some timescales.” Before he’d even finished speaking, he was opening a simulation’s debug hook and loading a modified term into one of its control-response loops. “Natalie, commit immediately.”

“Sir?”

“Perhaps it shuts down everything, but I think not...”

She nodded, and keyed in a few commands. “Committing now. Propagating…” Some of her simulations cleared up, as the glow from the reactor window faded slightly. “Well, the views cleared...I’m reading reconnection stats similar to what we got out of the after-action on the shutdown. It’s...it’s not helping enough with the energy balance, though...bremsstrahlung levels have dropped even further, but it’s just not enough. We’ll need more time to get the rest of the changes implemented,” she said, resigned.

“Mmm…” Tolya was still digging through the guts of the new system of equations, as the last few seconds of time ticked away. Then, he spoke up. “Peter, ready core resonance extraction systems and unlock full manual injector control now.”

Bishop’s hands flew over controls, even as he asked, “SIr? What does the fuel rate have to do with-”

“No time.” He synced the controls to his haptic inputs, and his hands began dancing over virtual controls, delicately modifying plasma injection rates, pitch-angles, and frequencies, the fuel injection rates rising from minimal, breakeven levels towards low-operational outputs.

LaForge chewed her lip, then said, “Fifteen seconds to containment loss. I’m not-” She trailed off, staring, as prismatic light began streaming from the reactor. She then looked down at her readings, and jolted upright. “Pete, ramp up those extractors, now!” She adjusted a few controls, and watched as several plots jumped upwards, edging into the green.

“We...we just passed breakeven,” Bishop stated, his tone unbelieving. “Holding at seventeen percent gain, now.”

Twilight peered at the reactor window with a pleased look on her face, wings fluttering slightly at her sides. “I wondered if Rule’s Prismatic Effect would show up. It’ll probably damp out once you get things adjusted right.”

Tolya finished some final adjustments of his controls, then flicked them away, and flipped up his AR lenses. As Bishop and LaForge made additional tweaks and began working on the remaining parts of the new equations, he leaned back against a wall, staring at his hands.

“Is...should not have been possible.”

Olivia and the ponies looked over at him curiously.

He glanced to them, then muttered, “Manual adjustment of something like that. Fine tuning a live reactor. Even to see the high-density resonance in the equations.” He raised an eyebrow sardonically. “I am good, but...this good? Nyet.”

Olivia snorted. “Clearly the facts disagree, Ruskie.”

Twilight looked at her, then nodded. “People do amazing things when under stress. All it takes is a spark of inspiration to see how things can come together…” She smiled. “Even sets of multi-dimensional coupled equations!”

Author's Note

Alamais is absolutely a super hero.