Twilight's Rose

Chapter 4: Decompression

Twilight smiled. “Just hit the big button on the intercom, and I can hear you from anywhere on the ship. I went into the operator’s room and just plugged everything in.”

Domino looked up from the floor where he was surrounded by an array of mechanical bits. “Wait.” He brushed a multi-colored bundle of wire out of his hair and straightened the rose tucked behind his ear. “You mean like an old fashioned telephone operator? Like a room full of mares in tortoiseshell glasses, chewing gum and plugging wires into a switchboard?”

Long Shot shook his head with a smirk as he leafed through his copy of the installation manual.

Twilight looked at Domino and tilted her head. “Well, I mean, anypony could work there, but yeah. How else would you make an electrical connection between two intercoms that needed to talk to each other?” She scrunched up her face as Domino giggled. “I told you, we don’t have ‘computers’ to run the whole ship. Without central control – which by the way, I totally don’t have at all – we had to communicate with the ponies at each of the control stations.”

Domino held up his hooves defensively. “Hey, keep your socks on, Princess. I just thought it was funny, you know? The, uh, the combination of really old-fashioned tech and these highly-advanced robots.”

“Juxtaposition,” Long Shot said without looking up.

“Thank you,” Twilight and Domino said at the same time. They looked at each other and giggled.

Long Shot peeked over the top of his book with one eyebrow raised. “Well, that was exactly the wrong combination of cute and creepy.” He slapped the manual closed. “Do you mind if I ask a question, Twilight?”

“Not at all!”

“Where is Earth?”

Twilight cleared her throat. “I, um, I don’t actually know. I don’t even know how long I’ve been coasting out here. I don’t know where I am, or where I’ve been. There’s some records in the capital city, in city hall, that should help you find it. Constellation charts and whatnot. If you’ve got star position maps, it should be relatively simple, if tedious, to figure out where those constellations were viewed from. Unfortunately, it’ll be really, really tough to get to them until we reach a planet. That part of the ship just… isn’t in very good condition nowadays.”

Long Shot’s ears drooped as he took a shallow breath and let it out. “Yeah, I figure that’s reasonable. Dunno what I expected, really.” He looked back to Twilight and clutched his hat against his chest. “But, the information is there? We can really find it?”

Twilight’s smile was warm and genuine as she looked him in the eye. “Yes. We just need to get this drive working so we can get to a planet.”

“Do we need to wait for Luminov, or can we go ahead and get started installing?”

Twilight looked around and asked, “Where is Luminov, anyway? And for that matter, why was he acting all weird around me? He seemed pretty friendly until… well, until the—” she curled her feathers into a gun shape and pointed it at her head “—you know.”

“Heh,” Long Shot grunted as he shook his head. “You just answered your own question, lady.”

Twilight glanced from one stallion to the other. “I still don’t understand.”

Long Shot sat down and took off his glasses. “Pointing a gun at somepony isn’t something that any of us does lightly.”

“He seems to be bothered by it more than you guys.”

Long Shot said, “I think you remind him of someone, is all.”

Twilight nodded. “Maybe I should ask him.”

Long Shot glanced at Domino before looking back to Twilight. “Or maybe you should wait until he’s ready to tell you.”

“Fair enough. I want to respect everypony’s boundaries, but we’ll have to work through these issues if we’re going to be friends.” Twilight’s grin faltered as she looked at the floor and rubbed one of her forelegs with the other. “I know it can be uncomfortable to deal with these things, but…”

Long Shot squinted at Twilight. “Y’know, you spend an awful lot of time worryin’ about everypony’s feelings.”

Twilight grinned with all her teeth. “Well, I j-just really don’t want to screw this up. I haven’t had friends in so long. I’d do anything to keep you from leaving me.”

Domino looked up with wide eyes, one hoof still on the page of Twilight’s installation manual. “What?”

“No!” Twilight dragged a hoof down her face and groaned. “I realize how that sounds, now that I hear it out loud. I didn’t mean, like, I’m going to ponynap you. I just didn’t want you to be all like” —she lowered the pitch of her voice and crossed her eyes— “‘You don’t respect my feelings, Twilight. I don’t want to be your friend any more. I’m leaving!’”

Long Shot kept his eyes glued to the alicorn as he sat up straighter. He took a shallow breath and exhaled with a flare of his nostrils. “Well, I’ve said goodbye to a fair number of mares in my day, and I can assure you words to that effect are unlikely to ever leave my lips.”

Twilight frowned. “You’re not exactly making me feel better.”

“Then the feeling’s mutual.” Long Shot stowed the book in his saddle bag. “I’m gonna head out, see if I can’t find Luminov. You think you’ll survive here without me?”

“I think so,” Twilight and Domino said simultaneously before turning toward each other and giggling.

Long Shot groaned as he pressed the button by the door, then threw one last unamused glance over his shoulder and stepped into the corridor. The door hissed shut behind him, leaving only half-imagined murmurs of conversation echoing through the steel walls. The old stallion turned and looked at the door, listening to a peal of laughter from the other side. He sighed and started walking with a shake of his head. “Careful, kid. I get the feeling she’s broken more than a few hearts.”

[scene break image]

Luminov squinted and leaned forward, his eyes scanning across the pony skins on the wall. The hides had been cleaned expertly, with not even a scrap of flesh remaining. A moist sheen reflected the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. Not even the edges had dried out and hardened into the translucent white of rawhide. He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of his pistol shift against his side as his ribs expanded.

He reached out a hoof and poked at one of the skins. It felt drier than it looked, and far softer than it should have been. He dragged his hoof across the wall as he walked the length of the room. The fur on the back side of each skin was the same unremarkable tan color. Luminov grunted and turned to one of the hulking machines bolted to the floor.

It seemed to be some combination of hydraulic press and automated forge. A rack of familiar-looking parts hung near a pair of buffing wheels. He bumped the rack with a hoof and scrunched his eyebrows, then turned to the next machine.

Hoppers of some kind of chemical feed stock loomed above a mixing tank and a set of shiny steel rollers. Shears, a heat gun, and other hoof tools were dangling from a pegboard on the wall behind the machine. A box that looked something like a waste bin was butted against the edge of the work surface. Luminov leaned closer to the box and reached out with a hoof to tilt it forward. As the box tilted and its contents came into view, a furry ear poked out over the edge.

Luminov grunted and reached into the box, pulling out the scrap of skin by the ears. An eyeless face stared back at him, its mouth wobbling in a soundless facscimile of laughter. Luminov glanced up at the wall of skins. The fur color was the same. He flipped the face over and rubbed his hooves across the bare hide on the flesh side, then brought it closer to his muzzle and sniffed. With another grunt, he tossed it onto the table and pulled open a drawer, rummaging around for a moment before pulling out a wrench.

With a couple of quick turns of the wrench, Luminov loosened one of the steel rollers, then pried it out of the way with the wrench’s handle. In the space between the rollers was a mass of soft material. He used a knife to scrape some of the substance out, then rolled it between his hoof and the table. It had the same color and consistency as the skin tacked to the wall, or the face he’d pulled out of the box.

Luminov glanced back to the rack of parts hanging by the press. He held up a foreleg and squinted, positioning his elbow in front of one of the parts and flexing the joint before turning back to the table and picking up the face by the ears. “Hello, Sparky. I can make guess of who peeled off your face. But why she did?”

He dropped the face and picked up the box, dumping its contents on the table. Scraps of skin, fur trimmings, and entire ears fell off the table as he sorted through the pile. He pulled a long purple feather from the scraps and nodded. “No surprise, Princess.” He glanced back up at the wall where the robotic stallions’ skins still spelled out NOT ALIVE, and took a deep breath. “But why?”

[scene break image]

“Alright,” Twilight said as she stretched upward into the open panel on the wall, “can you see this?”

Domino pressed his face against the bulkhead and squinted past her shoulders. “No, you’re still in the way.”

“Well, maybe if…” Twilight trailed off as she squirmed and turned around in the tiny gap. “Can you magic where you can’t see?”

“What, you mean like I hold it in place from out here while you turn the wrench?” Domino shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that. Can we—” Twilight grunted and twisted her torso, squeezing her ribs against the side of the opening. “Can you get in here?”

“I, um.” He cleared his throat as he looked up to where the purple alicorn’s torso disappeared into the access panel. “I can try.”

Domino scooted up to Twilight and looked at the remaining space. He brushed his bangs away from his face and took a deep breath, then pressed his cheek against Twilight’s flank and maneuvered his ears ears and horn upward into the hatch. With a side-to-side motion, he tilted his head back and forth until he heart Twilight gasp. “Ow, my wings! Hold on, lemme…”

Twilight exhaled, and pulled her wings up into the hatch. “I hope that gives you a bit more room.”

Domino squeezed past Twilight and stood on his hind legs, looking around the cramped space. Twilight’s wings were spread out against the walls, covering every surface and giving the impression that the two ponies were sharing a tiny, conspiratorial hut made of lavender feathers. A single bare light bulb had been wired into a tray of cables, illuminating Twilight’s face in a soft light that seemed to add warmth to her cheeks and the tips of her ears. She wiggled the tips of her wings and chuckled breathily. “Sorry about these things. They’re just kinda in the way sometimes.”

“Oh, no, they’re—” Domino tried to ignore a feather that was tickling one of his ears “—uh, spectacular.” He held his hooves tightly against his upper chest. “Also, wow, you’re really cold!”

“And you’re so warm!” Twilight purred as she wrapped her hooves around his neck and leaned in close to him. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I felt the warmth of another pony?”

Domino let his hooves rest on the back of Twilight’s neck as she nuzzled his chest. The area just behind her left ear was exposed as her mane fell over his shoulders. She smelled like roses, and her fur was soft against his chin. As she tilted her head, he could feel the fur behind her ear brush against his lips. He leaned his head back and squeaked, then cleared his throat and said, “So, uh, where’s this part we’re replacing?”

“Oh, yeah.” Twilight said, pulling her hooves back. “That’s what we were doing.” Her eyes darted all around the compartment, landing everywhere but his eyes. “I, uh, can get distracted easily. I’ve been so alone, you know? I just kinda did what I wanted, when I wanted. And, apparently, I can forget that it’s changed. Adjusting back into normal life is going to be difficult for me, isn’t it? It seems like I’m trying to be romantic, but that’s not what’s happening. I needed a hug. A hug from anypony. Oh, not that I don’t like you, or that I’m not interested in romance. Are… are you…”

Domino swallowed hard, then took as deep of a breath as he could with the princess pressed up against his chest. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here. And it’s not because mares aren’t ever interested in me. Cuz, you know, they are. Totally. It’s just that you, well, you’re way out of my league. You’re beautiful, you’re smart. Then there’s the whole immortal goddess thing.”

“I’m not a—”

“I know,” Domino said, “that when we get back to civilization, you’ll find somepony more like you. A prince, or a president or something. You won’t want to be tied to somepony like me, a nobody from some backwater planet, riding around nowhere in a rust bucket.”

Twilight chuckled softly. “It’s very sweet of you to be worried about me.”

Domino huffed. “I wasn’t trying to make you like me more.”

“I don’t like princes, or high society. I do like backwaters, and ponies from them who care about their friends.” She patted him on the shoulder. “But I’ll try not to marry you before we get back to civilization and I have a chance to shop around. How’s that?”

“I… I’m not completely sure that makes me feel better.”

“Besides. I did learn one important thing about friendship before I left. Nothing lasts forever, so you should enjoy spending time with ponies while they’re here. And right now that means you can warm me up, and we can both enjoy the company.”

Domino nodded. “And by ‘the company’ you mean…”

“The warm snugglies, yes.”

“Alright then.”

Twilight leaned forward and nuzzled Domino’s cheek. “Is that okay?”

Domino nodded rapidly, his lips pinched together in a thin smile.

“The timelike oscillator,” Twilight said, stretching a hoof above her head and tapping on a metal piece projecting from a conduit, “replaces this part here. Unfortunately, we have to shut off the power to this section, replace the part, get everything sealed up, and get the section powered up before the molten carbonate fuel cells freeze solid. I’ve done the math a hundred times. Well, way more than that. But it’s impossible for one pony to do alone. Just the time spent running from here to the power relay and back is too much.”

“And they don’t have cold-start capability?” Domino studied the connections on either side of the part.

“Well, they do, but that requires fuel cells in other sections to be running, and ponies at both ends to coordinate. Which brings us back to the original problem.”

“Uh-huh. So this looks pretty tricky. We’ll have to line it up” —he pointed with a hoof— “here, here, and here. And then hold it in place while inserting the bolts and tightening it.” He glanced at Twilight, then back up to the conduit. “That would be tough to do alone, even without the time pressure.”

Domino sighed. “I can’t imagine being so close to a solution for so long, with it just out of reach.”

Twilight’s eyes sank as she let out a heavy breath. Domino pulled her into a hug and murmured, “I’m sorry.” He felt her tail wrap around one of his hind legs as she squeezed tighter against his chest.

“THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN’!?”

Domino and Twilight both hit their heads as they jumped away from each other in the confined space, then bumped their heads together as they tried to squeeze through the hatch at the same time. Long Shot’s booming laugh echoed through the walls while Domino bit his lip and waited for Twilight to squeeze past his belly.

When Domino pulled himself out of the access panel and dropped to all four hooves, he saw Twlight’s cheeks burning as red as his own while Long Shot continued to chuckle. Luminov somberly stood beside the captain. After several moments, Luminov reached into his saddlebag and pulled something out, then tossed it onto the floor with a wet plop.

Twilight recoiled immediately, squeezing her eyes shut and turning away. Domino looked at the furry chunk of skin on the floor and then raised his eyes to Long Shot, who scratched his head. Twilight took a shuddering breath, then spoke without opening her eyes. “I forgot they had faces.”

Luminov took a step forward, and kicked the artificial skin a short distance across the floor. “What is this, Princess?”

Twilight whispered, “You know what it is.”

“Okay, sure. But why you do this?”

Twilight inched away from the face and sat down, her flank barely touching Domino’s hoof. She looked up at Luminov with moist eyes. “I was so alone. I… It was getting too easy to see them as real ponies. The Sparkys can turn a wrench, or remember your coffee order, but they’re no good at conversation. And—” she glanced at Domino before lowering her gaze to the floor “—they’re also bad at cuddling.”

Long Shot took off his hat and tapped it against his other foreleg. “You peel a bunch of stallion robots, so you don’t get to thinkin’ they’re friendly?”

Domino wrapped a foreleg around Twilight’s shoulders. “I think that’s, uh, kinda reasonable.”

“How do we know,” Luminov asked as he took half a step forward, “you did not peel the skin off living ponies, too?”

Twilight clutched her hooves to her chest and leaned forward, shouting, “I didn’t, I swear!” She dropped one hoof to the floor and lowered her head. “Well, okay, sort of. But they were already dead. You saw those. I just, I wanted to remember them the way they were. Full of life. My friends.”

Domino let go of Twilight and put his hoof back on the floor. Long Shot was still holding his hat and chewing on nothing in particular. Luminov raised an eyebrow and asked, “How do I know you didn’t kill those ponies?”

Twilight instantly tensed up. She glared at Luminov and lowered her head, snarling words at him. “I did. I murdered every last one of them. I planned the mission, I convinced them to trot on board and doom their descendants to extinction. I’ve killed every single pony who ever set hoof on this ship. I’ve been paying for my mistakes for centuries. The princess of friendship, alone, forever. I’m always paying for my mistakes. This isn’t the first time I’ve been ‘rescued,’ you know. The mind, it can, can… blur the line between fantasy and reality. You know what? I’m just waiting. Waiting for the moment when I’m lucid enough to see you for what you are. You’re n-nothing but corpses, just like everypony else on this ship. Them, you, me. And it hurts! It hurts every time I turn around and see the face of a friend from centuries past, when I thought I was talking to… Say something.” Twilight trembled, tears streaming down her face as she looked from one stallion to another. “SAY SOMETHING!”

Domino wrapped Twilight in a hug, pinning her forelegs against her chest as he pulled her close and rested his chin on top of her head. She melted into his embrace, sobbing into his fur. Long Shot picked up the Sparky skin and stuffed it back into Luminov’s saddle bag.

When the tears had stopped and Twilight pulled away from the hug, Domino said, “Guys, I think you need to go easy on Twilight. I don’t think she’d willingly hurt anypony.”

Long Shot put his cap back on and stared at Domino. “And I don’t think you’d notice if she set your tail afire. We are gonna have a conversation that doesn’t involve googly eyes, while you read a book—” he slapped one of Twilight’s installation manuals against Domino’s chest and used it to push him to the other end of the room “—over here.”

Domino frowned. “I—”

Long Shot lifted the book to the younger stallion’s mouth and jammed it inside. “Read. Grownups are talking now.”

Domino spat out the book and glared at his captain marching away. With a grunt, he sat down and halfheartedly flipped through several pages while keeping his ears trained on the conversation. He stopped when he reached a section on the timelike oscillator. He’d seen the bolts and the place where it was to be installed, but Twilight hadn’t explained how it worked. There were no equations in the manual, but Domino pulled a pencil out of Twilight’s toolbag and began scribbling calculations and notes in the margin. Soon, he’d filled all the available space on three different pages. He dropped the manual and the pencil to the deck and took a deep breath, pulling his hair back with both hooves as he stared into the distance with a slack jaw.

The others were still talking, but Domino had stopped listening when he started doing math. He picked up the oscillator in his hooves and turned it over. Except for the label hoof-scrawled in grease pencil, it appeared to be identical to the existing part. Domino let the part fall from his hooves, then jumped up and marched across the room. He put a hoof on each of the stallions and started pushing them toward the door, throwing a toothy grin toward Twilight as he went past. “Don’t worry, Twilight. I’ll get these guys sorted out.”

When they reached the end of the room, Luminov pressed the button to open the door and the three of them trotted into the hall. Domino cast a glance over his shoulder and watched the door close. He turned aside to the next room on the other side of the hallway, and activated the door, then ushered his shipmates into what looked like a small office.

Luminov scanned the room, his eyes dwelling on each door for a split second before he returned his attention to Domino. “What is wrong?”

Domino hung his head, then looked back up. “It’s not real. The FTL drive. It can’t work.”

Long Shot cursed. “Well, her understanding of quantum physics is what, a thousand years old? We figured this might happen.”

“No,” Domino said as he looked from one stallion to the other. “I mean, she knows it can’t work.”

Luminov took a deep breath and looked at his captain. Long Shot returned his gaze, then turned to Domino. “How do you know that?”

“Her entire drive is based on the idea of a 4-brane, which requires resonance in a fourth dimension to reduce the nine spatial dimensions to a noninteger—”

Long Shot held up a hoof. “I immediately regret asking. Cut to the chase.”

“Oh. Well, when she sold us the idea, she showed us the math for our dash drive, then said she could do it a hundred times better with her timelike oscillator. Scientists have known that a four-brane would work better since the concept of a dash drive was first thought up, but the hard part is making the oscillator work in four dimensions. She completely skipped that part. I did a basic dimensional analysis on the oscillator, and the units don’t match. It’s like measuring speed in kilograms.”

A stony frown weighed down the captain’s face. “Could it be a mistake?”

“No way. Not only is she too smart to make a mistake like that, but that’s the only part she left out. Everything else was explained perfectly, right up until this part, then it’s all hoof-waving for a second, and it goes back to legit math.”

Luminov nodded and adjusted his tool belt. “So, what? Is trap?”

“I don’t think so. I think she believes that it’s real. I mean, she knows it isn’t, but I don’t think she understands. She’s not trying to lie to us, she’s trying to convince herself. Maybe she already has. I don’t know. Maybe it started as a game with her, uh, imaginary friends or whatever, and since then she’s forgotten. She kind of seems to shift back and forth between being here and… being somewhere else. Remember when we first saw her?”

Long Shot reached up to Domino’s ear and poked Twilight’s rose. “How could we forget?”

“Question is,” Luminov said quietly, keeping one eye on the door, “what is plan now?”

“Plan A’s out the window, ain’t it?” Long Shot said. He put a hoof on top of his head and swirled his hat around between his ears. “There’s no drive, so there’s no reason to stay here. We can’t take the ship with us. Ain’t got the fuel to come back unless we grab somethin’ to sell. We’ll have to take enough to buy a set of dash cables. I’ve been doin’ the math on this since we first set hoof on board.

“I don’t think we can even get that kinda cable installed on Ain’t Home. Nobody makes a set of standalone cables that long, either. Hell, it might be the longest set of dash cables ever made. We’ll have to get one’a them asteroid-dragging jobbers. That’s custom fab territory. At that point, we’re basically commissioning an entirely new ship. That’ll take a year, at least - once we place the order. Or, rather, once we pay up front.

“Ain’t any orbital shipyards we can reach without stopping to refuel. That’s two months to the nearest port, sell some loot, another four months to a shipyard. Figure eighteen months for design and construction of the largest tug ever made. Five months back here.” He sighed and shook his head. “We’re looking at nearly three years before we can get back.”

Luminov scanned the room again. “Should we get contract with her? In case other salvage ship find her first?”

Domino shook his head. “No court would enforce it. She’s not mentally competent to enter into a contract.”

Long Shot chuckled and poked Domino in the ribs. “So you admit she’s crazy? You still got the hots for her or what?”

Domino rolled his eyes. “She’s cute, she’s smart, and with a year or two of normal social interaction, I’m sure she’d be fine. But no court in the galaxy would uphold a contract she signed.”

“True, but it don’t have to convince a court. We just gotta wave the contract at anypony who shows up - since nopony else is going to be able to drag it back without making the same trip we’re gonna. They don’t know she’s crazy.”

Luminov grunted. “Do you think we can get her to sign contract?”

Long Shot looked at Domino. Domino shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what she’ll do if we shatter her fantasy. She could agree to come back with us, or wait for us to get back, or freak out and… I don’t know. I don’t think she’s… I don’t think she’d hurt us. I think she genuinely wants to be friends. But I don’t think it’ll be pretty.”

“Hmmm.” Long Shot lifted his hat and ran a hoof through his mane, then replaced the hat and hitched up his tool belt. “So that’s the plan, then. We grab enough high-value loot to commission the biggest tug in history, and we get out of here. Then—”

A deep boom resonated through the walls, its echoes drowned out by a wailing alarm as red lights in each corner of the ceiling began to flash.