Cousins Among the Stars

0/08:57:00 MET

Steady Steel braced himself against a nearby pole as the craft rumbled around him. Once the motion ceased he pushed off the wall and drifted toward the cockpit. The elongated shape of the vessel made it easy to move in the relative weightlessness of space. Seen from outside, the ship bore a passing resemblance to a hammerhead shark. Long and sleek, it had two forward-facing glass domes jutting from either side of the foremost point. Fin-like projections extended from the body in opposite directions at its midpoint, in line with the "eyes." In the rear, two other projections reached for the remaining two cardinal directions.

Continuing that metaphor, Steel slowed his progress toward the left eye by dragging his hoof along what some engineer meant as a floor grating. Much of the ship evidently failed to account for a lack of gravity in its design. After carefully entering the doorless chamber and coming to a halt, he greeted its occupant. "Hey, Trail. We prepped?"

Trail Blazer glanced over his shoulder, only long enough to smile in greeting and brush his slightly-too-long yellow mane away from his eyes and horn. He returned his focus to the levers, buttons, diodes, and displays arrayed before him as he replied. "Most nearly, cap'. Course is figured and Rivet's working to calibrate. We're on schedule for departure at the top of the hour."

"Good, good. Pass me the comm and I'll tell everyone to get settled."

The pilot took his hooves off the controls momentarily and removed a corded device from its mount on the console, passing it to Steel.

"Alright, everypony," Steady Steel began, his voice echoing through the ship. He paused, leaning slightly to get a better view of the dusty planet below. Smiling, he began again. "Blazer says we're minutes from jump, so buckle in and get set. You've all done this before; you know the drill. Take a good look out the starboard windows. It's a sight we won't see for another while yet."

Steel returned the radio and stepped back into the main corridor. He briefly considered checking with Rivet, but decided he valued his life too much to disturb her. He moved toward the back of the ship, pausing just past the open bulkhead that separated the front and back sections. A single window extended the rest of the length of the corridor, offering a greater view of Eris below. Its brownish-orange sands, dulled by the dense atmosphere and almost matching that of Trail Blazer's coat, reflected in his eyes as he reflected on them.

The contemplation was short-lived, with a tinny-sounding variant of Trail's voice declaring over the comms that "We're jumping in fifteen seconds. If you're not ready, I'm not gonna clean you off the wall." Steady Steel hastily pushed himself away from the window and straight into his bunk--one of the six that lined the central hall. A cursory glance revealed nopony else in their bunks, so they had presumably opted to secure themselves in the mess hall. Buckled in, Steel pressed his head against the soft interior lining of the miniature room and shut his eyes.

...

7/03:24:17 MET

"You're telling me we're a week into this and you've already screwed up the ventilation system?!" Rivet raged from the maintenance chamber in the rear of the ship. Her sterling-silver coat shimmered angrily and the red of her mane seemed alight as she stood over a cowering Spanner--a feat which, one should note, is not easily accomplished without gravity.

"B- But you're in charge of-"

"I have to help navigate, you idiot! We're both engineers and you've gotta do your part! On a ship this small, I can't be calibrating the FTL and fighting fires at the same time, now can I?"

Each of them looked at the other expectantly for a moment before Spanner stammered out, "Was that not rhetorical?"

Rivet just groaned and yelled "Get out! I'll fix this."

The stallion pushed off the wall behind him and glided out of the room (narrowly missing the two other ponies who had come to watch the feud). With a final look back at the angry mare, Spanner entered the mess hall and opened a package of freeze-dried rehydrated refried beans marked with Rivet's name. He set one of his more favorable meals in its place as penitence and found a spot to eat.

...

18/14:00:01 MET

Curiosity I shuttered out of FTL, trembling violently and waking Steady Steel from his sleep. "That didn't sound good!" he yelled while clambering out of his bunk. "Was that good?"

"Not good!" Trail Blazer hollered back.

Steel felt a bit unsteady as he pulled himself along the railings to the main cockpit where Trail sat. Once he slid inside, he saw that the entire craft was in a flat spin. "Uh..." he muttered intelligently. "Reckon you might see to righting us?"

"I was rather enjoying the ride, but hey, you're in charge."

The captain reached forward and plucked the microphone from its resting place. "Everypony, sound off if you're not dead. If you're mostly dead, let Scarlet know. Rivet, Spanner, get to the drive chamber now." He exited the room just as Rivet came out of the second cockpit, and they traveled together. Down the central corridor, past the mess-hall and medbay, through the maintenance area. They arrived just in time to see Spanner forcing a crowbar into the inner airlock and leveraging it open.

"Are the hydraulics not working?" Rivet asked with a frown. Spanner grunted in reply.

"Ah!" he cried as the door snapped open, sending him flying into a wall of tools. The Velcro surface kept the assorted sharp objects from flying around the cabin, but that storage method did nothing to keep him from getting thoroughly injured. He did little more than stare in shock as the backside of his white coat turned red.

Steel acted quickly, hollering for Scarlet and then motioning for Rivet to join him in the drive chamber. They entered a spherical room that stood completely barren, save for a single black sphere suspended in the center by two pillars extending from the ceiling and floor. He immediately felt nauseous when looking at it, but choked back the unpleasant sensation and scanned the room for anything amiss.

Rivet clutched at her horn as she followed him into the room, grimacing and shivering visibly. However, she understood the machine far better than Steady Steel, and quickly identified the problem. She nudged him and gestured to a small orifice in the center of the port chamber wall. Once he gave her an affirming nod, she hastily left.

Steady Steel still felt ill, but not to the extent of the departed mare. He climbed along the poles lining the interior and approached the opening to which he'd been directed. A small metal rod sat inside, capped with a lens. He glanced across the narrow room and around the central orb, noting that the device in the opposite hole sat at a lower angle. Steel braced himself and forced the object into a position mirroring the second, and then sealed it in place with a tube from his utility vest. Now that each lens directly faced the center of the room, Steel scrambled outside and mashed the button to shut the door. When that failed, he left it and went for the intercom in the hallway.

"Trail, status?"

The receiving voice sounded shaky. "We're not spinning anymore, I'm sure you've noticed. How's the engine look?"

Steel glanced at the maintenance hatch behind him before answering. "I think we're set. One of the lasers was out of alignment. When will you know if it worked?"

"Next time we make a jump!"

Sighing, he shut off the intercom and entered the medbay. He was the fourth pony inside, with Scarlet Glow treating Spanner's wounds and Rivet waiting nearby. He made eye-contact with Spanner and asked, "You good?" The stallion nodded, and Scarlet gave confirmation without looking up. Steel then turned to Rivet and raised an eyebrow.

"I'll be fine; just waiting for something to help with the pain."

Steel backed out of the cramped space and nearly into another mare. "Sorry!" she squeaked.

He managed to turn around and face Dandelion Tuft, who looked disproportionately apologetic. "Don't worry about it. Where are you heading?"

"I thought I'd help Scarlet... She must really have her hooves full right now and I can't do anything until we reach Curious." She paused after her explanation, brushing her long dandelion-yellow mane away from her eyes. Steel acknowledged the statement with a nod and made his way to the front of the ship where Trail Blazer sat. The seated stallion turned in his chair when he heard Steel arrive.

"What's the engine look like?" he asked.

Steel sighed. "Nothing was badly damaged, near as I can tell. The laser's back in place, and I'm sure that was the problem. Tell me, are we where we should be?"

Trail frowned and pulled a star-chart from a drawer. He turned it around several times, glancing out the window periodically. "No..." He said at length. "We're about half-way from where the jump started and where we should be."

With a nod, Steady Steel turned to leave. "That's what I suspected. Only one laser hit the core last time, so only half the energy was released."

"Ah-" Steel looked back, pausing in the frame. "That is," Trail continued, "I was just wondering how you know all that. Another bad jump could put us in 'We're-all- gonna-die' territory."

Trail received no forthcoming answer, but eventually the captain just replied, "I don't. You know as well as I that we don't understand Draconequum. It works because it works, and that's the only answer that counts out here." With that, he left the room and saw Rivet entering the second cockpit. He raised a hoof in greeting and she nodded.

As he drifted down the hall to clean up the maintenance section, he heard Trail Blazer speaking. "Break out the slide rules and star-charts, Rivet. We've got work to do."

...

67/09:25:12 MET

Laughter rang through the ship as five ponies crowded around a table in the mess hall. The Velcro dining surface crowded with packages of rehydrated cheesecake, berry pies, and assorted other desserts. Each pony was buckled into a chair, passing around containers and talking merrily.

"No, I'm telling you, just like that!" Scarlet Glow continued, speaking in an uncharacteristic show of energy. "I'd only been in general practice for a month, and up comes the chief surgeon and tells me I've gotta do it! I'd never removed so much as a tumor before, let alone a horn!"

Rivet looked over with a grin, leaning across the table to stop her cake from floating away. "So what happened? Did you manage it?"

Scarlet beamed proudly. "Of course! I didn't even have time to find a book on the procedure, so I was going entirely from the memory of a class I'd largely slept through! Still, it worked out. The mare said she rather liked the 'stump look,' as she put it."

Everypony laughed, save for Dandelion Tuft who looked on in shock and protectively cradled her own horn. "Why would anypony do that to themselves?"

Scarlet frowned slightly, unsure how to justify it. "Well, some ponies have the procedure done for medical reasons, like the mare I operated on. The only reason I did it for her was because the surgery was so urgent. But... Other ponies just do it as a fashion statement, or for convenience."

Dandelion nodded dumbly, still unable to grasp why anypony would willingly alter her body, even if the process was harmless. She ultimately decided to let it go and instead picked up her food package in her hooves to resume eating. She paused momentarily and asked, "I just realized, where's the captain?"

"Mmmfn the hrrm," Trail Blazer said through a bite of the apple held in his wing. After swallowing, he made another attempt. "Manning the helm. He wants to be sure everything's set for tomorrow."

"Oh," she said disappointedly. "That's a real shame. He should be here for this."

Spanner just shrugged. "We are only one jump out, after all. He doesn't want any surprises."