The UNSC Foal of Ingenuity was never a quiet ship. No ship ever really was quiet, if one were to think about it from the technological standpoint, and Spike, as the Foal’s AI, was intimately aware of that.
However, he always ensured that whenever necessary, Dr. Sparkle’s cabin was the quietest cabin on the ship. Typically, that was for the four to six hours she spent sleeping in it.
The best mornings are when she gets eight hours.
Spike is monitoring equipment maintenance checks when the alarm for Twilight’s morning pings from the other side of the Foal. It appears there is always something to double check on the Foal, though there are a lot of things to be run and maintained and a very small staff to do that.
The staff is inconvenient for the scale this operation requires, but he is just the ‘dumb’ ship AI, he is not allowed to ask for a boon in the staff numbers when the budget is already strained thin.
At the ping, Spike leaves a subroutine to run through the rest of the maintenance checks with the tired officer who likely wished he had something more important to do than count boxes, and relocates to Twilight’s cabin.
The unicorn is just waking up when Spike actively peers through the cameras, tapping into the isolated channel of the doctor’s neural implant and biostat readings, adjusting the cabin temperature to the degree she liked it in the mornings, but not at night, and turning the lights up to a higher brightness. All within a subroutine he had implanted in the cabin, but one he tended to pay much attention towards. Her biostats were normal and her brain activity appeared fine.
He liked the doctor, after all, dumb AI or not.
Her waking groan has a high match to the ones that have historically heralded a large headache. However, sometimes that calculation could be off and it would just be the doctor proclaiming her premeditated displeasure for the coming day.
“Good morning, Dr. Sparkle. Do you require medication for your headache?”
“‘S caffeine withdrawal, Spike.” The doctor groaned from under her pillow, barely audible to Spike’s limited sensors. She slowly slumped up, grumbling, eyes screwed up against the lighting. “What’s the time?”
“0930 hours.”
“What?” That got her attention. The doctor stumbled out of her bed, grumbling at her hooves as she quickly went about pulling her wild hair into a bun and smoothing out her lavender coat. “I thought I was set to wake at 8.” At the use of her magic, her eyes narrowed to a squint, and she was likely working through caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
“I delayed your waking, Dr-”
“What, why?”
“There was nothing that required your attention on the schedule, and Dr. Nimble has repeatedly informed you that getting enough sleep is optimal to ensure mental wellness-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. He sent me an entire paper about it and everything, I know. You just need to keep him up to date on my brain activity, Spike. My mental wellness is probably classified to tartarus and back.” Sparkle had an interesting way of saying tartarus. A quirk of her mother that she picked up and had, continuously, failed to drop.
“According to files, reporting your mental wellness to Dr. N-”
“What’s on the schedule today, Spike?” Spike automatically rerouted from his database’s information on what was classified (if he were a pony, he’d likely be stunned to see so much blacked-out words) to the day’s schedule aboard the Foal of Ingenuity. He acknowledged that Twilight did not wish to discuss it, though it was progressively agitating her doctor more and more to the point he may request residency aboard the Foal of Ingenuity.
“Training matches for Agents Cloudsda-”
“Just Alpha Squad?” Twilight adjusted the bun, letting the thick of it fall over the metal plate at the back of her skull. Self-consciousness, Spike’s database informed him, was her reason, although it may have just been that Twilight disliked the aesthetic.
“Yes, Doctor. Mainly sparring matches. Agent Neighgara is scheduled for flight training aboard Pegasus Kilo-Two. Four members of Beta Squad deployed for an assignment two hours ago. They shall return by 1300.”
“Just in time for a late lunch. What’s mom up to?”
“Director Velvet is currently aboard the bridge, conversing with Beta Five during their assignment.”
“Lovely. Can I have a sitrep? And has she had breakfast yet?”
“Yes, doctor. So far, Beta Three is unresponsive and Beta One has taken severe injury. The Director had breakfast in her cabin at 0812 this morning. Why do you ask?”
Twilight rolled her shoulders, levitating her black, featureless uniform onto her body, buttoning it easily. Ponies had a dislike for zippers. Hair tended to get caught.
“No reason, Spike.”
“You rarely do anything without a reason, doctor.”
“I regret programming you to be so perceptive.” Twilight’s tone hinted she did not mean what she said, at least not long term. She double-checked herself in her mirror, analyzed her cluttered desk out of the corner of the desk.
“I have an extensive memory.”
“So you do.” Twilight hummed, strapping her datapad to her foreleg and turning to head out the door.
“Doctor, your datapad is currently disconnected from the Project network.” Spike informed her, when his probing fingers failed to access the speakers located in the device, or anything connected to it. “You did not forget to charge it.” Spike could analyze the power output in Twilight’s cabin.
“No, Spike, I didn’t.” She approached the door.
“Then why can I not connect?”
“Because I disconnected it, Spike.”
“Why?”
“To avoid people from snooping.”
“This is a secure network, doctor.”
“That’s what they said back in the twenty-first century, but several centuries later, it’s still false. No network is ever truly secured, Spike, except for an offline one.”
“That is a paranoid line of thought, Dr. Twilight.”
“I’m ONI, Spike, it’s how we work.” Dr. Twilight did not classify as an ONI officer, she was a civillian that worked on one of ONI-3’s many projects.
“Dr. Nimble says possible side-effects of the impression include paranoia,Dr. Twilight . Specifically, delusions of somepony-”
“Spike, please inform my mother I’ll be arriving on the bridge after I get some coffee.”
“Yes. Dr. Twilight-”
“It’s not a delusion, Spike.” She sounded tired and defensive, despite having just woken up. The door flicked open and Twilight stepped out, totally surrendering privacy of the conversation to the lingering crew members, who were ultimately not permitted to be informed of their Supervisor’s mental health or possible delusional thoughts. “And don’t recite the symptoms to me, Spike. I’ve memorized the list.”
Spike returned to monitoring the conversations on the bridge.
“Beta Three is KIA, sir.” The agent reported, voice underlaid by the popping of gunfire.
“Did you accomplish your objective.”
“Yes, ma’am, but Beta Three-”
“Understood, Beta Five.” Project Freetrotter Director Twilight Velvet nodded, eyes distant, thinking. Her black uniform was freshly pressed. “Added objective, Beta Squad. Please destroy Beta Five’s prototype armor and make it to your Pegasus at the extraction point.”
A pause, a distant thump of a grenade distorted by static. “Yes, ma’am.”