Sleipnir Colony - A Short Story Collection

Vector Thrust had never heard a sound like it in his life, the only way to describe it would ear-splitting.

Sirens immediately sounded, his bridge crew jostled and jiggled around in their seats as without any warning the ship suddenly came to a complete stop in the void of space. The incredible noise was the hull straining under the pressure of dropping out of warp speeds without properly dropping into sublight. Normally when ships were about to drop out of warp there was a gradual slowing so the ship wasn’t under as much pressure. What had happened to the E.T.F Starflier had just come to a complete dead stop. Vector sat for a moment in complete panic. Internally his brain was screaming wondering what the heck he should do. This was one of those moments in training they said might happen, was somewhat of a possibility but kind of skimmed over it and how you should handle the situation because it was so rare. Outside however, he kept his calm demeanour.

“Captain?”

The voice came from one of his navigation officers. He wanted orders. The ship settled, the loud and horrific screech of the hull finally stopping as the ship got used to its now idle position in realspace.

“Damage report. What the hell pulled us out of warp!?” was Vector’s first words.

There was a tapping of fat hooves on screens as the bridge crew began to disseminate data from the ships internal and external sensory systems. After a few moments he had an answer come to him from another member of the crew.

“We are nowhere captain, as in, we are in the void of space between star systems. Externally there are no anomalies, ships or anything unaccounted for that our sensors are able to register. At least not from the outside…”

“You say that as if there is a cause, but not from there.” Vector asked.

“Possibly sir. The core...there is a reading on the output monitor that displays we had a momentary drop from its power transfer to the warp drive. It would be enough to cause this.” he explained. Vector frowned, getting up from his command chair. He knew where he had to go.

“Dispatch repair teams to firstly survey the damage and then patch up what we can. We’re going nowhere until I’ve um, been down to the core. This ship doesn’t move another inch until I say it can.” Vector said, leaving the bridge and his officers to handle the situation. It was time for another chat with Starflier.

Entering the observation room nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There she was, the biggest ball of lard the captain had ever had the pleasure of setting eyes on. This time however it was with anger and fire in them that he almost screamed down the communication device. Firstly however, some pleasantries.

“Starflier? I expect you know why I’m here.”

There was no response. But all monitoring on the small display read normal.

“I just have one question… WHAT IN CELESTIA DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Vector shouted, seeing if he could elicit any sort of response from her. Absolutely nothing. It was probably best he vent his frustrations without her giving any sort of reply.

“We’re in deep space Starflier. Are you TRYING to get us all killed? I know you dropped the energy transfer to the warp engines. The readings don’t lie.” he paused for a moment and sighed. Perhaps reason would work better, the pony he was talking to was a former scientist after all.

“Look. I know you hate this, I can still feel your anger even through this glass. But do you not understand? There is nothing you can do. Pulling what you did just makes it even worse. If you destroy this ship and its crew, you’ll be doomed yourself. You can’t survive out here alone. If you want my advice? Cooperate with us, finish the mission and let us get through this. Then when we get back to Equestria you can pull some sort of revenge then. But for Celestia’s sake don’t endanger innocent ponies in your rage. You’d sacrifice the lives of everypony aboard this vessel just so you could escape somehow? Then what? We’re in the middle of nowhere, literally. You may be the size of a small meteor but you’re still a pony with no survival suit. Not that there’d be any big enough to encompass your enormous mass. What do you expect? To drift through the void for a few mere moments before you freeze to death?” Vector was getting on for a lecture, he thought he had better stop.

“Anything to say for yourself?”

“...Fine.” was all Starflier responded with a lot of wheezing.

“Good enough for me.” Vector huffed back, slamming his chubby hoof on the display to shut it off and heading back into the elevator up to the bridge. As soon as he waddled in he was met by one of his officers.

“She’s damaged sir, but nothing we can’t repair. We’ll be sitting here for a few days though whilst the repair teams get to work.”

“Fine, at least we’re not in any immediately danger. I attended to our core, this shouldn’t happen again. Just a minor blip.” his words seemed to put the bridge crew at ease at least. “Now then get us moving again as soon as possible. We’ve a mission to complete.”

The captain sat back in his chair. This was not turning out to be the easy routine terraforming mission he had signed up for, the core was becoming more problematic than he had hoped.

A few floors below him, a message was being sent through one of the terminals back to Equestria.

++Your Majesty.

Mission nearly compromised, core unstable. Captain appears to have resolved, for now. Await instructions, terminate mission?++

Short and sweet, why give a lot of detail? All the agent had to do now was wait, the message had been sent on a secure channel to Celestia’s people. She was doing exactly what she had been tasked to do, watch the core. Flicking the screen off just in the nick of time she felt a hoof tapping on her shoulder.

“Come on, we’re on damage repair. Gotta get the ship going again. Now isn’t the time to be sending a message home but I know how you feel.”

“R-right, lead the way.”

The two ponies vanished. The future of the E.T.F Starflier just that little bit more uncertain.