Not a Sunrise, but a Galaxyrise
When they told the story of Equestria’s first steps beyond the sphere of the world, there were many things that they would not talk about.
They would begin with Twilight Sparkle’s great speech before the Assembly in Canterlot, perhaps. Maybe even with the ages-old question: Luna, what is the moon like? The story would shift to the first primitive rockets, fueled as much by hope as they were by the mixed might of magic and technology.
The history books would move on. The first pony to step foot on the moon besides Luna herself was a young batpony mare named Midnight, a former Lunar Ranger. Perhaps there would be, on that page, a picture of her upon that strange and alien plain with wide eyes and a trembling smile. They would miss how she had floated for an hour inside her little detached vehicle, gathering up the courage, clutching her old Ranger’s sigil to herself and meditating upon the words of her patroness. The histories would tell of her bravery, but what of her trepidation? Her basic worries and her primal fears? Those dry histories would try and fail utterly to capture the awe, the tear-inducing awe, that must have struck her like a hammer as she looked up and saw the planetrise.
Time moved on, even past ultimate awe. The histories would miss many things.
And in those things, it would be so easy to lose track of the footsoldiers of progress. A pony had said once, only half in jest, that the poets were silent on the subject of cheese. He could also have said that the histories are curiously silent on the subject of toaster repairponies.
*
Most ponies staring down at what she now saw would have sighed. Silver Spanner just grinned like a maniac.
The Vanstone’s systems were more than just cutting-edge. Silver thought they were beautiful, as well, and the other engineers onboard had to pull her away from work. Even when there was nothing to be done, she could be found, walking the tiny pathways between great pulsing lights. The conduits and the massive magical power plants, carved over with runes.
At the moment, however, Silver was once again learning that most fundamental of lessons: even complex systems sometimes come crashing down because of stupidly simple reasons.
“Bloody hell,” she said, wiping sweat from her brow. She let her magic rest and examined the problem before her.
At some point in the Vanstone’s stop at the new colony, there had been enough rattling in the hull to damage a smaller conduit’s connection. The resulting thaumic leak had corroded a dozen other such small connections before she’d caught it a few hours ago.
They’d been floating in deep space since she’d found the leak, and after two hours all she had managed to do is stop the radiation from spreading. That hadn’t been enough to stop it from being dangerously hot in there, and she was drenched, but it had been enough to render the spill harmless. Well. Harmless as long as nothing else happened.
Now she just had to figure out what to do with a lot of slightly unstable wild-magic and a bunch of corroded circuitry. Also, she had to do this with only a quarter of her magic. The wild magic fought you at every turn.
And she loved it. She loved the challenge. She’d grown up fixing radios and toasters, taking apart clocks to see how they worked and putting them back together bit by bit with insane focus. What was a vessel among the stars but the greatest of all radios or the grandest of all clocks?
*
Silver drank in the lounge. Her muscles were sore. Her head hurt. Her horn felt ticklish from all of the contact with wild magic. She resisted the urge to scratch around it. Her mother’d always said it was a bit crude.
Ensign Hayseed groaned as she started on her third cider.
“How do you stand it?” she asked. “Celestia protect me, it’s hot down there. More so than usual.”
Silver sipped and smiled. The cider onboard was… adequate. It wasn’t exactly Sweet Apple Acres’ Finest, but what was? Nothing, that’s what.
“It’s just heat,” she said. A raised eyebrow. “Where you from, Hay?”
“Fillydelphia.”
“Ah.” More cider. “That explains it. Never worked in the field, have you?”
Hayseed frowned. “Earth ponies aren’t all farmers, you know.”
“I know. I have, before you think that’s what I meant. Lived in Ponyville a long time, before Princess Twilight popped in for her permanent holiday from Celestia’s big shining city. Worked a few seasons for extra bits between construction jobs. You get used to the sun. Same with working onsite.”
She carefully set her mug down. It was harder to do it without her horn. She’d gotten so used to effortless telekinesis, like any unicorn, but especially because of how much she’d used it. It was hard, when you were used to operating machinery, to use too much force. It was also easy, when you were used to working on very, very small things, to find even simple lifting perplexing. Unicorns, they said, could never hide even without their horns--the way they handled everyday objects gave them away. She’d just have to get used to it. Even the thought of doing magic made her head throb.
“You’ve been down there a lot, Span,” Hayseed was saying. “We’re all grateful. I just wish we could help with the magic side.”
Silver smiled. “Thanks, but I’ve got it. Besides, you and the lads are doing a fine job. Kept the initial surge from frying the walkways. Only reason I can go down there.”
“I guess.” She took a long drink. “But, like, for real, you know you’re a beast right?”
Silver chuckled. “That’s a bit rude, innit?”
“Ugh. Don’t pretend they don’t say that in Trottingham.”
“Not from there.”
“Sound like it.”
“Now that I take offense at,” Silver said and leaned in. “My mam dropped everythin and brought us down from Marehcester looking for opportunity, you know. Won’t be thought of as some sorta posh Trottinhammer.”
“Right. Like anyone knows the difference.”
“Well, I do.”
“Of course. You should still trade-off shifts with Spark more. I know you love the work, but…”
“Love? Live for it, more like.” Silver drained her glass and stretched. “There’s somethin beautiful about it. Let me tell you…”
*
Those histories won’t mention, for instance, how the great colony ships were kept running only by the bravery and fanatical effort of the ponies working all hours in their great winding corridors. The colony ships had been fantastic as much in their foolhardiness as in their daring.
But Twilight Sparkle had told ponies that the stars awaited, and who were they to slow down?
So, while their sisters and brothers slept in pods during the years, the unsung heroes of Equestria’s new age had their victories and glories and defeats beyond the reach of prying eyes.
And she had been one of these. In those days, signing up for a three year voyage had seemed daunting, but Silver Spanner had jumped at the opportunity. Many ponies like her had. Three years was a long time, yes, but it was a relatively small price to pay for sailing among the stars. Seeing a new world.
And there had, after all, been a bonus.
*
They had been joined by a third and a fourth. Sour Apple was a journeymare, same as Silver. Nothing permanent, moving from ship to ship as the spirit moved. Brunhilde was a griffon with a perpetual frown and a flat look to her. Some of the skittish ponies thought she was intimidating. Silver thought she just needed to drink more and smile a bit wider.
“Of all the gin joints in the world,” Silver said, and lifted her mug. “She arrives.”
“Ah, the drunk,” Brunhilde responded, and then flashed her customary smile--to eyes used to the softness of ponies, it was a predatory and threatening gesture. To those at home with the hard and unforgiving nature of the machine, it was simply a smile and nothing more.
“Not yet, I’m not.”
“Give it a few minutes,” said Hayseed, who lazily scooted over to let Sour Apple settle down on the wide bench.
Sour Apple, true to his name, simply laid his mug on the flat durasteel table and then let his head follow it. He sighed, and then grumbled. “Ugh. Why do they not have anything stronger than this onboard?”
“Cause it’s harder on the horn castin the spell that gets you sober enough to sail this big beautiful ship,” Silver said.
He grunted. “We’re already days behind schedule.”
And Hayseed poked him. “Hey! We’re working as hard as we can. I’m coming off of a nine hour shift, you lazy ass.”
Brunhilde, for her part, shrugged. “It is true. The delay will be unfortunate, and we will probably be two weeks late arriving at New Home.”
And just like that, Silver’s cheer was gone. She took a breath, looking away from the bickering, and out the great duraglass windows into the stars beyond.
Mjolna had been against it at first, the idea of going. They had a life in Ponyville. They had friends, family, jobs. Mjolna had her forge and workshop, but Ponyville was Silver’s workshop, wasn’t it? And so they had gone back in forth.
Adventure. A new world, she’d said.
Stability and home, Mjolna had countered.
“We’ll get it fixed,” she said, in the present. “Hell, I swear to ya we’ll make up the time, if I have a hoof in it.”
Hayseed stopped bothering her boyfriend long enough to look skeptically across the table.
“That’s a tall order. The leak may have been plugged, but--”
“I’ll fix it,” Silver said firmly.
*
She was sweating again in the bowels of the Vanstone.
The thing about magic, she was fond of saying, was that it had to go somewhere. It didn’t just vanish. That was a pretty simple, easy thing most of the time back in Equestria. Magic could dissipate in the air or be absorbed by just about anything. When you used it on something, say, lifting a mug--your magic stayed on that mug afterwards. That mug bore your “hornprint” for a time, lingering on like an echo until bit by bit it evaporated away.
It was why she had spent so much time perfecting her telekinetic skill. Never use too much. Only the right amount. Leave too much of your magic on things that weren’t big enough to absorb it and you sped up their corrosion. You undid the good you had done.
Magic collected. It had nowhere else to go, here. It clung to objects and to ponies alike, trying to return. Mostly, it became heat.
So she siphoned it. Bit by bit. Was it risky?
Sure.
But she hummed as she worked, and she smiled when her horn didn’t feel like it was going to vibrate right off her head.
Here, in the half-light of the maintenance shafts, she felt at peace. It reminded her of the backstreets of Marechester, digging for scrap metal and whatever she could use to fashion into the gadget of the week as a foal. She had been a streetrat in all of the ways that mattered--every turn was her own. Once, a young Silver Spanner had boasted that she could navigate blindfolded just by the sound her hooves made against the cobblestones and by the feel of them.
These were her new streets, speaking to a smaller mare who had never lived in the cleaner air of a small village. This was the eternal playground of Marechester. Every turn was hers again, and her skill moved all things.
It wasn’t the Vanstone itself that made her feel this way especially. There had been other ships and other crews, other maintenance shafts and drives. She had learned them all, rooting around in their innards and gleefully diving into their glowing circuitries. She had torn the panels off of a dozen dozen walls and like a foal at Hearth’s Warming she had scoured them for secrets.
Construction had been fun. Tinkering had been a delight. But to live within the thing one tinkered with was its own adventure.
She took in too much magic and it burned. Hissing, gritting her teeth, she danced on aching hooves. Too much! Too much!
“Shite! Damn it!”
The magic burned, and then it only prickled, and then the feeling faded. Still cursing, she sat down and massaged her temples. Couldn’t get too greedy. Couldn’t get too hasty.
But they were so behind. The leak had only been the first problem. The siphoning had been the second. But now the heat was starting to weaken the structural integrity of the containment walls that kept the magical resoirvoirs safe and…
And, well, as had always been since the dawn of time: problems multiplied like coneys in the bush.
Her mother had said that, when she’d been younger. She’d never forgotten it.
*
Silver Spanner didn’t so much as walk into the infirmary as she sagged.
The orderly led her to a bed and she climbed up to lay on it. That’s what beds were for, right? Laying? She had forgotten. She’d also forgotten how to do much of anything beside siphoning raw, wild magic but they’d shaved a day off the job. The non-magical members of the engineering team had managed to repair the physical damage. They were just waiting on her and Spark to clear away the magical hazard… and then home. Home.
One felt the doctor’s approach before he actually came into sight. Chief Medical Officer Rowan was one of those unicorns that exuded an air of carefully studied disdain for everypony he met. Efficient, brilliant, a little cold. But he did the job in front of him, and Silver could respect that. Usually. At the moment she didn’t have the energy to respect much of anything.
She didn’t see him because her eyes were closed. But she did hear his voice cut through the pleasant exhaustion haze right before sleep.
“I don’t even need to look at you, Journeymare. I can feel the raw radiating right off of you.”
“Mrm?” She yawned and groggily looked up at him.
“Unbelievable. Sit up. There, sit up. Stay still.” He leaned in, his brow furrowed. “Dilated eyes, your horn’s glowing lightly, face flushed. Can’t stay awake. You are an absolute idiot, are you aware? How much have you taken in? Just in the last twenty-four hour period?”
“I ‘unno.”
The doctor growled. “Unbelievable. And, knowing you, I assume you’ve taken double shifts.”
“‘Course,” she said. She blinked at him, trying to put words together. “Gotta.”
“Not at all. We both know that this can be done safely. I was on the New Home as well, if you’ll recall. I remember you working yourself half to death then, as well. This is a dangerous pattern of behavior, Miss Spanner.”
She winced. “It’s needful.”
“Yes, but not all at once. I’m not even going to ask if you’ll take it easy, because I know you won’t. You’ll be right back in there as soon as you leave here. You’ve forced my hand. On the colony ship you had an excuse, but I will not let you do this. I told the chief engineer you would do this. I told him.”
“Do what?”
He wasn’t looking at her. He lit his horn, and she sluggishly looked around for what he was doing.
When she saw him walking towards the wall-comm, adrenaline raced through her. She stood on wobbling legs. “Wait. I’ll go straight to bed, I swear…”
But they both knew she wouldn’t. He didn’t answer. A few pushes of buttons, and then he was speaking into the speaker grill. Forty-eight hour rest period, mandatory. Doctor’s orders. The only thing that overturn a captain’s demands on an Equestrian ship.
She slumped back onto the sickbed. “We’re late.”
“And we are going to be behind regardless. It’s a matter of a few days. Since when do you care?” The doctor looked at her skeptically. He hesitated, and then sighed. He closed the gap between them and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Silver, please. I know that I come off as… let me be clear. Crystal clear. You are going to hurt yourself if you keep going like this. Yes, we are behind. It is not your fault. There are things more important than schedules.”
She wanted to say that he didn’t understand. Commerce kept the colonies afloat. The influx of supplies and the outgoing wonders kept them alive. The whole web of outposts out among the stars, like a great clock, and she had to fix it.
But she couldn’t. Talking required effort. More than that, it required will and she was fresh out. She looked down at her hooves.
*
“I’m not sure this counts as resting.” Hayseed, she guessed from the voice.
Silver Spanner was leaning against another table this time, the one right up against the viewport out which she could see the vast ocean of night. She did not answer right away. What was there to say, really? She briefly considered telling her to bugger off, but then decided against it. Her mother had raised her better than that.
So, instead, she gracefully and eloquently grumbled and drank a bit more.
Hayseed sat on the stool beside her.
She hadn’t really thought about it before, but if you looked at the glass and not beyond it, you could see the lounge reflected. The comforotable couches and chairs, the tables, the bar lit up with warm lights. The sliding automatic doors leading out to the smooth, professional polish of the maze of corridors. Ponies milling about, talking. It was between shifts, and her isolation had been disturbed. But that would pass. They would leave her alone with her thoughts.
Hayseed tried again. “Silver? Brun told me how bad you were. Why didn’t you say anything? No one was expecting miracles.”
She wanted to be angry about that, but she didn’t say what she wanted to say. “I did.”
“You’ve done amazing work. I mean it. I’m always impressed with your skill. I just work the machine, but you seem to know it.” Hayseed fidgeted. “I guess it’s the magic.”
Silver shook her head. “Nah.” She tapped her head. “In here, really. Yours too. And in here--” she finished as she tapped her chest. “It’s in your heart, in your gut. You learn and learn, but you gotta mean it.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Me neither,” Silver replied and then grinned weakly. She finally looked away from the stars. “How’s it coming?”
“Well, levels are low enough for us earth ponies to go in without hazmats, so we’ve been siphoning some of it off with machinery. It’s really slow going. You have to dump them out every few minutes. We kinda got an assembly line going, where one of us will suck until the machine gets full, and then we’ll hoof it off to someone who runs it to the exhaust ports and then runs it back to get the next used up one. We should be on our way by tomorrow, at this rate.”
The smile on Silver’s face was a little stronger. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
“We’re way ahead because of you. But…”
A questioning look drew the rest out. “Sorry, it’s just… I mean, we were all pretty focused, but you get so intense sometimes. What is it that does that?”
Silver looked back at the stars.
“You know, my first post was on a colony ship,” she began. “New Home. Wife and I were headed to the stars. She slept mostly, and I worked. I learned every single inch of that ship like it was my mam’s face, I did, and we had this problem happen halfway.”
Hayseed winced beside her. “That early? How in hell are you here? The old drives were so bad about leaks.”
“Yeah. I wrote the report after that got the Princess to put the next expedition on hold ‘till they could fix it.”
“You?”
“It helped that a few of us were from Ponyville. It’s easier to listen when it’s your neighbor.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Silver sighed. “I did this. For twice as long. Was much worse. You know, Rowan was there too.”
“The Doc? He doesn’t strike me as a colonist.”
“He isn’t. He was along for the experience, I guess. Dunno exactly why. He’s always been a bit of a cunt. Means well.”
She wondered if you could see home from here. With slow, sure movement, she raised her hoof to touch the duraglass and felt the immense cold. And then she told Hayseed what it was like.
*
The argument had gone back and forth for a week, in stops and starts. In and around meals and quieter times, in bed and out of it, in the mornings and in the evenings. Each new argument was countered. But the defenses were being worn down.
There was a romance to the idea that she knew appealed to the salt-of-the-earth mare deep down in her heart. But there was so much working against her.
She didn’t want to be too simplistic, but there was some truth to the idea that it was hard to convince an earth pony to abandon her home for even good reasons. Once she set down roots, she meant them to go deep. And no, it wasn’t as if every earth pony fit a certain mold, but Mjolna was attached to the dirt roads of Ponyville and her smiling neighbors.
Until they turned the corner. She had said--darling, look around us. We mend farm equipment and radios.
Those are good things, her wife had answered with a severe tone.
Beautiful things, she’d agreed with enthusiasm. Needful things. Radios, flying machines of all sorts, the plow and the phone, these things spoke to the good in ponies. They created things that connected them to others, that supported others beyond themselves. But they were nothing but a holding action here.
They needed ponies who could do these things out there.
Who was going to kickstart the great engines of commerce in the sky? Who would build the shops that gave birth to towns, like their own? Who would keep the farmer’s plow sharp and straight, and his roads clear? Who would build the tools with which those ponies would tame new lands and multiply the happiness of their homeland a dozen times over?
Well, we can, she’d finished. We owe it to ourselves and to them. I can take apart and mend and you can build and shape, and together...
She’d come around.
The New Home had been the third colony ship, sponsored by Filthy Rich and Lord Fancypants of Canterlot jointly. Expensive, well-built, and beyond reproach. The biggest of the first three, in fact, and Silver Spanner had fallen in love immediately.
She had been with Mjolna when she had gone to sleep for the first time. It hadn’t been scary, not really. Sad, yes, but not scary. The worry and fear were all saved for what lay ahead of them. For the new world and it’s new sun.
They’d shared a kiss. Mjolna had always shied away from being affectionate in public past nuzzles or hugs, but it was a special case. And they both could use the reassurance.
That was how the great adventure had begun. Mjolna woke once every month for three years. The more the colonists slept, the less food that needed to be consumed on the way. It made sense, but it hurt. Even through the childlike glee of having a whole ship to explore and tinker with, it had cut her to the quick. Those moments they spent together were treasured, and towards the end, Silver Spanner began to look forward to those times when she would sleep and pass the time unknowing.
She had found solace in the long, darkened corridors and in the tiny crawlspaces. There was a hypnotic quality to the pulsating lights and the convulted wiring in the walls behind which she moved. She spent months rerouting minor systems to increase their efficency. She would waste entire days figuring out how to squeeze the tiniest of improvements out of vast, complex systems.
The official report would remark that she’d learned more in the first two years, in bits and pieces, than some ponies had learned in their lifetimes.
And then it had happened. There had been a catastrophic accident in the great drives that propelled them towards their new home. A whole deck was flooded with wild, raw thaumic radiation.
She tried to describe what it was like and failed.
Imagine walking down into a glowing sea. Everywhere it touches you, your skin burns. Her horn seemed constantly afire. But she and the other unicorns aboard siphoned and siphoned. But it wasn’t enough. It was too hot. Silver Spanner lost fifteen pounds at least in the first three days from the radiation and her own massive exertions. Only emergency rations kept her walking.
But she had to keep going. Mjolna slept above.
They were going home. A new home and a new sun. She could see it. When she descended time and time again, she saw in the shining fog of magic that first sunrise. Every single time, she paused and stared at the radiation below, the radiation that would have killed any but a unicorn in minutes at best, and thought: it’s like staring into the sun.
But then she would move her legs and dive in to work, because she wanted to see a real sunrise, and not this false light. She wanted to sit and watch it with her wife on some alien hill. A Dawn was waiting for the two of them, more glorious than any shining magical death, more beautiful than even Celestia’s, because it would be hers. She would earn it with her effort.
They gambled in the end. Isolate a large enough section of the deck and then expose it to the void. Would it work? Maybe. Maybe was the best the chief engineer could do. But they did it anyway.
She had volunteered to leave the ship, encased in the old style bulk suits.
Stepping into the airlock, waiting for the door, she wondered if it had all been a mistake. She wondered if she had dragged her family of two out into the vastness of the unknown, out past where any sane pony would and should go, only to die in her sleep.
And then the door opened, and she looked out and saw--
Stars. Endless. Thousands. More than thousands, far apart and shining and beautiful.
They tore a hole in the ship. They vented air and radiation alike. She sealed the leak herself.
And she never forgot it. The stars. All of them. She woke Mjolna up and dragged her, groggy and confused, and together they walked on the surface of the drifting colony hulk and there was only silence and each other. She knew that it had been the right choice.
*
The Vanstone reached New Home’s little spaceport a week and a half late.
She got a commendation. She forgot about it three times while waiting for her shuttle. It was one of many. She’d collected dozens of them.
Honestly, Silver Spanner thought they weren’t worth much. Just words. Her tour was over. The only thing that mattered was home.
She didn’t have long to wait, which was excellent as she had been waiting for a week and a half too long already. Every day had crawled along, until even the ringing, humming innards of the great vessel had begun to lose their appeal. She’d kept dreaming of the clanging of a forge and somepony stealing her sheets in the morning when they turned over, grumbling in the alien dawn.
She stepped out of the shuttle when it landed and stretched. It was a bit before before dawn, and she was delighted to note that the sun would be rising when she finally arrived home. It was almost too perfect, wasn’t it? But she wouldn’t argue. If the world wanted to give her a gift, she would take it. Some things were for poking and tinkering with, and some things were for enjoying.
The walk from the shuttle port to town was pleasant as always. New Home was, in so many ways, much like the Equestria they had left. The trees were different, and the flowers were different, but they were still trees and they were still flowers.
She passed a few farms on the way, not much different from those back home. The planet had been strange, yes, but not as strange as some she had seen or heard of. New Home had been just that.
And the town of New Ponyville had become as familiar as old Ponyville had been. It’s buildings were steel and duracrete, not thatch and wood, but she didn’t mind. It was the place that mattered, not what it looked like, in the end. The place and who lived there.
Two streets, than a turn. Her own street, and then her neighbors’ houses, and then her own, with the attached workshop.
She paused at the door, feeling jumpy and nervous like a filly before her school dance. It had been almost two months. Her tours were far between, but they were long. Every time was strange and new, both in the going and in the returning.
She raised her hoof and then stopped.
What if Mjolna was angry? She’d tried. Surely that would mean something. She had worked and worked until it drove her to near-collapse to get home. Surely that would mean something.
And then she heard it: the clang of the hammer she had missed.
A grin spread across her face and she left the door behind, and stepped into the darkened workshop to find her wife at the forge again.
She whistled, and Mjolna almost dropped her hammer in shock. They stood there, staring at each other for a moment.
It was the blacksmith that moved first, charging her without words or preamble, bowling her over and kissing her as deeply as perhaps she knew how.
And, somewhere between the ecstatic greetings and the kisses and what came after, Silver Spanner didn’t see the sun finally rise. But she decided that it didn’t matter. She’d already earned another.
Author's Note
Written for Ninecaliber's lil contest, and also because she's been fun to talk to, and also 'cause she's been a boon. As have all of you.
Thank you, all of you out there, in your homes, in your ways and days.
