It was a bumpy ride.
When the dropship finally came to a stop, Derpy Hooves pushed her helmet off her eyes. The ship still quaked—fading aftershocks from having drilled thousands of meters into the earth.
The protective mesh in front of her grinded open, and Derpy laid one last wistful look at the smart-link computer by the exit. A big neon font flashed on the screen, along with a number of pretty warning lights. Derpy shrugged her harness off, snatched her “CRSPR” flamethrower from the seat adjacent to hers and hauled herself out.
The cave they'd landed in was like a large snow globe made from solid rock. Its dome-like walls and ceiling were all the same gray shade as her fur, except where protruding crystals, radiating a bubbling aura, had turned them green. Twin massive stalactites reached down from the ceiling, almost touching the floor. The air was heavy and thick with particles.
“All right, Derpy!" A chipper voice came from inside her helmet, through the radio-static. "Your job is simple: gather Morkite, put it in Polly, and bring it back to Sugarcube SpaceRig. We’ll send you an escape pod when you’re done. Keep your eyes and ears a-peeled for bugs—there may be a teeny-tiny glyphid nest somewhere down there.”
A quadruped robot, like a plumber’s toolbox on stilts, was unceremoniously dumped from the side of the drop pod onto the ground. The robot beeped. The lights on the drop pod blinked goodbye.
“Good luck! Rock and Stone!”
The ground shook. The dropship began ascending, accelerating back through the hole it had left in the ceiling. Derpy watched it become smaller and smaller until it was only a dot in the distance. Some debris fell on her.
In a mass of hissing hydraulics and robotic beeps, Polly motorized itself over and bumped into her. Derpy sighed.
“Rock and Stone, my little pone," she intoned to the departing spaceship.
Derpy put her right forehoof up. The terrain scanner strapped to her wrist came up double in her vision. Derpy closed her lazy eye and stared into the holo-screen.
She was at the very end of a long and winding cave system. Effectively, it was a several-hundred-meter-long tunnel that coiled in on itself and cut through some larger chasms. How it had formed Derpy had no idea—she wasn’t a geologist or a Twilight Sparkle. But she saw only one way of completing her objective that didn’t risk a collapse or didn’t require her to dig for minutes on end with no guarantee for reward.
Derpy set off in the only direction presented to her.
As common sense would have it, it was also quite dark in the crust of the earth. The dropship'd had ample illumination, but as it had left, it had taken the lighting with it. And since the flashlight in her helmet alone was insufficient to light even a small portion of the cave, Derpy was forced to light timed flares every few moments. It was still dark, but thanks to the occasional radioactive crystal jutting from the walls, and the flares, she could more-or-less see.
How did she know the crystals were radioactive? Well, she knew. She wouldn’t be making that mistake a third time, no matter what Rainbow Dash said.
Derpy paused. Next to a glowing pillar, something red was jutting out from the wall.
Nitra. And it was almost on ground level, well within reach. She hopefully wouldn’t need it, but there was little chance in the you-know-where that she’d leave it behind.
Derpy bounded over and began hacking away with her pickaxe. Unfortunately, the vein ended up being much smaller than it had looked.
An inequine scream echoed from somewhere deeper in the caves. Derpy ignored it and went to drop off what she’d mined into Polly, only to find that the robot-mule, who’d thus far been following her diligently, had stopped some way back for some unfathomable reason. The hunk of steel.
Onward, the tunnel led to a dead-end. It shouldn’t have. According to the scanner, the cave was supposed to continue for quite some distance. Which meant there had been a collapse.
It, of course, made little impression on Derpy, who stuck her pickaxe and her flamethrower on her back and pulled out her driller-gloves. As the name implied, the gloves were, in fact, hoofmittens with powerdrills attached to them.
A less-stupid idea in practice than might seem.
Derpy stuck her gloved hooves against the wall, and pressed the button by flexing her ankle. The drills turned on, and where the gloves were, abra-kadabra, the bedrock was turned into a fine powder. Even a wall that’s solid cobblestone isn’t going to put up much of a fight against nuclear-powered power-drills stuck to one’s forehoof.
Naturally, they were useless for mining precious resources like Nitra. Minerals didn't really like being grinded down to sub-nanoscale. But the mittens were great for anything with a non-positive market value. Really, all she had to watch out for was overheating. Those things took a while to cool off.
Derpy rubbed the sweat from her forehead. “I could really use an Oily Oat® right about now.”
On the other side of the collapsed tunnel was more of the same. A tubular, gray-walled cave that went on into darkness beyond her flares’ reach.
“Polly!”
The sound of metal legs tramping came quite a distance away. It seemed that Polly had fallen behind, again. DPG engineers must not have been able to give it all that big of a brain. Probably because it would’ve taken too much storage space from all the minerals they mined.
Her last flare chose that moment to run out of juice. Cold blackness swallowed her vision.
Derpy exhaled harshly and ran her right hoof down the side of her suit. Due to "budget constraints", the flares the company endorsed were exclusively of the kind that had to be charged on site. Because, once they were full, they turned on and couldn't be turned off again. They also lasted for only so long before needing a recharge. And Derpy only had enough charging ports for four of them at a time.
She pulled out the first one. It refused to light up. Derpy let out an E-rated swear word.
Something skittered next to her. It seemed Polly had managed to catch up. The robot brushed against her briefly. Except, where Polly was a machine made of metal, what had brushed her side most definitely was not.
Derpy tore the first flare off its holster just as it finished charging, took the flamethrower in her hooves, and fired. A dozen pony-sized arachnids appeared in the burning light, saber-tooth grins on their eyeless and earless faces.
The once cool air rippled like in an oven. The bugs rushed her, even as they were coated in flaming gasoline. They nipped and bit at her, but Derpy leapt back, dodged, and flew. None managed so much as to nick her.
Her flamethrower pumped and pulsed and spat fire like a bellowing dragon. But there was an even greater warmth than the flames inside her chest, in her engine-like heart.
They were indeed a pleasure to burn.
Once all the flames had gone out, not a single arachnid was in sight. Derpy listened closely. No howl, no growl, no skittering. Only a droplet somewhere far, far away, dripping.
The cold metal of Polly’s skin brushed against her leg. The beeping mechanical dunce, possibly impervious.
Derpy flung another flare and followed it into the darkness.
It was quite some time later that anything of note happened. Mission Control resumed contact.
“Heya, Derpy! Listen, I’ve got a one-time offer sort of a deal for you. You remember that flower that Twilight was gushing about earlier?”
Derpy had a vague recollection. A white flower with a thin stem wasn’t exactly anything to write home about.
“Well, our scanners show that that cave is full of them. Get fifteen, and we’ll pay you extra. Got it? Toodles!”
After a moment of carefully looking at her surroundings, Derpy noticed that there were indeed white flowers growing inside the cave, in the oddest of places. Even the ceiling! Although, she wasn’t so much astonished by their location, but rather that they could thrive this deep underground.
Derpy had just collected the last flower in the room when, right next to her, she spotted something she’d actually been sent down there for. A twinkling blackish ore, in the form of a thin scar running down the side of the wall.
The Morkite was easy enough to extract with a pickaxe and some tough love. The gleaming ore felt somehow oily in her hooves. It met its mineral friends inside Polly's guts not much later.
Tiny skittering steps heralded the arrival of Swarmers. Derpy had enough time to flip the flamethrower from her back, when the first one had already leapt at her face. Its burning carapace impacted her chest, and had turned to ash by the time it hit the ground. There were about two dozen more, and they were all equally—flammable.
Exactly two seconds later, there were no more Swarmers, and the cave smelled of barbeque.
Her flamethrower let out a ticking. Derpy scowled down at the ammo counter. The digital display of estimated remaining fuel tank capacity was already in the red. It seemed that that Nitra was going to come in handy, whether she liked it or not.
Further ahead, the tunnel opened up again. Derpy took all four of her charged flares and flung them into the cave’s far corners.
The ceiling above was covered in glistening Morkite, but was going to be tricky to reach. A stalactite hanging slightly above ground had a vein of Nitra on it—she’d probably have to get that too.
Below the stalactite was an orange bug. A huge orange bug. The bigger-and-badder-brother of the school bully -type of bug. The monstrosity looked at her, and let out a sound that would have made a Space Ursa wet itself. Derpy was doubtful she could just ask it to let her have the Nitra.
Then Mission Control contacted her again. “Just a heads up, Derpy. You may have a swarm coming for you.”
The caves started quaking. From out of the walls and the ceiling came dozens of bugs, digging themselves out.
Derpy flipped around. The way she’d come through was blocked by arachnids. Howling and growling bugs that all crept towards her.
Then all the flares winked out simultaneously, and Derpy upgraded her E-rated swearing to an uncensored M.
Derpy flamed the bugs. She powercharged her pickaxe into their heads. She drilled them with her drill-hooves, albeit it proved far less effective than all the laws of physics recommended. The bugs in turn bit at her. They stung her with their legs, pincers, blades, and things she didn’t want to think about, all sharp as knives. One snuck a love-bite onto her hoof. Derpy just yelled, and fought off as many as she could.
But while the smaller bugs, wave after wave, were repelled, the orange monster of a bug came closer. Its guttural groan was like that of a whale, if there ever was a whale made out of gooey nightmares.
Derpy's flamethrower ticked.
And it ticked.
And when it stopped ticking, only a puff of smoke came out of the muzzle.
Derpy was surprised she had not yet run out of swear words. She smashed the nearest bug with her pickaxe, and punched for Mission Control.
“Can I get a resupply?”
The contact link let out a disappointed buzz, like in a game-show after a wrong answer. “Sorry, Derpy, no can do.”
“I can’t kill all these bugs if I have no ammo!”
“You don’t have enough Nitra.”
“There’s more Nitra here. If you send me the supply now, I’ll gather the Nitra in just a second.”
“You know those are not the rules! I’d love to help, but the company won’t send down anything they aren’t s—”
Derpy lit the cave with her flares again. From the looks of it, most of the “regular” bugs had been dealt with. Some stragglers were still oncoming. They looked hungry, so she fed them her pickaxe.
But the big one was still there, drawing nearer. Derpy had circled around it to the back wall. Now, it was blocking the way she'd come from. At her end of the cave, behind her back, was another collapsed part of the tunnel. Another dead-end.
Derpy inhaled deep. She bit her teeth together and booked it toward the behemoth. Toward the middle, the stalactite, and the vein of Nitra.
She launched herself at the Nitra, and began hacking away. A straggler bug came at her, and Derpy bucked it whilst still trying to gather more minerals.
“Polly!”
Her voice must’ve been getting hoarse. She couldn’t really tell because she didn’t really hear it. All she heard was her own panting, and the massive legs of the orange giant pounding the ground. Getting louder, drawing nearer.
Derpy tore the very last piece of red crystal from the stalactite. She leapt off just as the orange bug’s massive arm came down. The bug’s limb landed on her tail, and she fell face flat against the floor. Her eyes watered, but she managed to spot Polly, sitting comfortably right behind the stalactite. The robot had followed her, the Celestia-send, for once. Derpy pulled her tail free, somersaulted over, and dropped her load inside.
“Now!” she yelled into the intercom.
“Okie-dokie-lokie, coming right up.”
Derpy backed up to the back wall again. The orange monstrosity inched closer to her.
Some moments later, a drilling sound came from somewhere above her. Derpy looked up, and tilted her ears. She looked between the bug and the ceiling, and backed away towards her left sharply. The bug followed her.
Derpy grinned. She kept circling to the left. “That’s it. A little more…”
A metallic pod, like a cast-iron casket but with a drill attached to the bottom, suddenly dropped from the ceiling. It pierced the behemoth’s side, cutting off a mass of fleshy carapace. The bug howled and thrashed, and landed on its side. The ground trembled.
Derpy leapt up to the pod. She yanked at a metallic bit protruding from its side: a slim box that jingled when she yanked it loose. She didn’t spend too much time peering inside, however, because a haphazardly writhing claw almost just took her head off. Instead, she grabbed the first hoof-sized barrel she found, stuck it on her flamethrower, and pulled the trigger.
The bug-monster caught fire surprisingly easily. It became a celebratory wicker pony of old, made entirely of bug. And if being stuck partially under a metal box annoyed it, being on fire made it angrier than a prude schoolmarm. It didn't get up, but it still tried its darndest to squish her.
Derpy backed away. Her back hit the back wall of the cave, and momentarily the breath was punched out from her lungs. The flamethrower remained clutched in her hooves and spitting fire all the while.
The bug raised its humongous claw-like arm high above her—and then it collapsed.
Derpy sighed exhaustedly. She willed her overclocked and overheated heart to slow down.
But in the light of the flames that lingered, she noticed the giant bug twitch. Its skin was boiling. Bubbling. Pulsating. Its massive stomach—it was all one big torso, really—began expanding rapidly. Derpy had just enough time to throw her forehooves in front of her face, when the bug exploded.
Her time airborne was short. So short that she didn’t have proper time to realise which direction she’d been flung, let alone the speed. The latter she could easily deduce from the impact, however:
Pain. All velocity past a certain point was always pain.
Derpy, shaking, took a flare from her side, and crawled back to the supply pod. Her right side stung. Her left side was numb. That’s why it took her a second to realize there was a bug nibbling on her flank. She gave it a flaming kiss of her own with her flamethrower.
Derpy fished a bag filled with a glowing red crystal from the supply pod. But this wasn't Nitra, no; this crystal was aromatic. It smelled like a hearth, a cinnamon bun, or a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket on a cold night in outer space.
Red Sugar. The second best thing since muffins.
Derpy bit out a chunk of the crystal, chewed, and swallowed. The pain in her right flank alleviated. The feeling in her left returned. Derpy ate, and whilst she ate, she berated herself.
She should’ve known the orange bug was going to explode. She’d heard the tales going around the SpaceRig. Likewise, she should’ve known that at Deep Pony Galactic, they didn’t risk anything. Ammunition was precious. They'd only send supplies if they knew they were netting a profit for their "investment." And the only way they knew that was if they were getting Nitra and that the Nitra was coming home. Inside Polly. And if Polly never got to the SpaceRig, well, that meant she hadn’t made it back either.
Derpy was confident that if DPG was ever forced to choose between the two of them, they’d make sure the machine made it. After all, while it may not have been expensive, or state-of-the-art, at least the robot wasn’t as easy to replace as her.
Derpy finished munching and hauled herself up. Break-time’s over.
She couldn’t quite get to all the Morkite in the ceiling, but she got what she could. Then, past the collapsed back wall, the tunnel continued on for what Derpy guessed was still another hundred meters or so.
A beep came from next to her. The sound reverberated like in a well. Derpy looked down at the mechanical mule.
Down in the caves, there were bugs. Terrifying bugs. Pony-sized monsters that ate anything that moved. And the closest thing she had to a friend in those depths was a brainless metal container on hydraulic legs.
Derpy patted Polly on the back with her pickaxe. “Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
And as the robot followed in her wake, Derpy thought she heard Polly’s beeping rise in pitch for just that one short moment.
“Sooo, how’s it going?” the voice of Mission Control asked.
Derpy exhaled. She’d lost count how many different veins of Morkite she’d dug up. Her forehooves felt clammy and pruney from holding the slippery ore. She deposited her latest findings.
“You tell me. Have I hit my quota?”
“Nah, not yet. But you’re close!”
At least keeping track of the flowers was easier. Derpy was at fourteen, and she had just spotted her fifteenth: above, behind a small ledge just below the ceiling, a flower petal was peeking from over the rim. It took a bit of finagling—Derpy had to use one of her forehooves to drill, while climbing with the other to reach it.
When Derpy'd hauled her head over the rim, she found herself staring straight up at a levitating, beeping, angular pile of metal.
“What the—?!”
The flying robot blinked its cyclopic light. Its head was shaped like a turret. The light turned from orange to red.
The robot shot searing plasma into her chest. Her hooves let go of the cliff.
Derpy plastered herself on the ground, but at least the fall hadn’t reached painful levels of velocity. She clambered back up and punched for Mission Control.
“What in Equestria.Inc is that?”
The robot zoomed out of cover, letting out a whine like a mechanised mosquito. The noise dug into her ears.
“Oh, that. Sorry, forgot to mention. We’ve got some competition.”
“Competition?”
“Yeah. Some rival company has set up mining on Hockses. We’re not particularly happy they are here.”
The robot fired. Derpy sidestepped the shot. “I can tell they’re not happy we’re here either.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Just show them a little—friendship.”
The robot took a lucky shot, and hit her in the flank—a little bit too close to the tail. Derpy scowled. She was going to show it some friendship, all right.
After the robot had been adequately dismantled, and the flaming pieces adequately disrespected, Derpy climbed back up the cliff-face and retrieved the final flower.
“Woohoo! You all got the Alpaca Blooms! Twilight will be so happy!”
Derpy exhaled. At least somepony was.
Up ahead, the tunnel split into a crossroads. According to the terrain scanner, both ways continued deeper, twisting this way and that. But the slightly more open section Derpy was in now also had several smaller alcoves on either side and their walls were covered in Morkite.
But then Mission Control had to ruin the moment.
“Derpy, I don’t wanna alarm you or anything, but you’ve got a huge swarm coming for you. Like, a ginormous one!”
On cue, the ground began shaking again. Behind her back, Derpy heard skittering. Multitudinous skittering.
Derpy ran for the first vein of Morkite and began hacking away.
Every few chops, Derpy flipped around and shot a protective ring of flames around her. But she soon found out that the approaching bugs just walked right through the flames, catching fire and burning while still fighting to get at her. Derpy had to leave the vein unmined as it was overrun.
She dashed to the next one. It, too, was soon overrun. Rinse and repeat.
Her legs were trembling. The pickaxe didn’t want to stay in her hooves. She was all sweaty, and the slippery ore wasn’t doing her any favors. She constantly yelled for Polly, and practically threw the minerals in its confines whenever she could in between switching places. She couldn’t be too far from her quota. She couldn’t. They wouldn’t send her an escape pod before she hit it. But the tank on her flamethrower was getting noticeably lighter too.
Derpy was backed up against a wall. Among the waves of still approaching gray arachnids, Derpy managed to spot little bits of orange peeking through. Them and their bumpy carapaces, shuffling forward. When her flamethrower again puffed empty, the first orange bug reached her.
The bug didn’t even try to bite her. Instead, it stopped, burped, and started bloating. Something beeped next to Derpy. Polly. It had followed her to the back wall. It had bite marks and teeth on its metal frame but was otherwise completely undamaged. It looked like the bugs had learned the hard way that there was one thing down there that wasn’t edible.
Derpy dove behind Polly just as the bug exploded.
Both her and the robot were pushed against the wall. Derpy was shoved into a tiny crevice, a hole that had eroded between crystals, with Polly blocking her from the outside. Derpy hugged the ground. Through the holes left between the walls and Polly’s sides, the bugs were trying to reach her, but quite couldn’t. They tried to bite through the metal mule, and again it resulted in more teeth than teeth marks getting left on the robot.
Derpy felt something slippery under her tail. No, she hadn’t soiled herself. It was more Morkite. Frankly, she was starting to get sick of the stuff.
Derpy had to hold the pickaxe like a pencil to extract anything from the vein. A glyphid managed to snake its knife-like forelimb through the hole and cut her cheek open, but Derpy ignored it. She dropped what little she could gather into Polly.
“That’s enough, Derpy,” Mission Control told her, “we’re coming to get you—and the goods—out!”
Derpy exhaled deep. She was done. She could go back home.
But when Polly suddenly began beeping, Derpy realised how sticky her situation actually was:
For the moment, she was safe. Nothing could reach where she was. Beyond was a wave of bloodthirsty bugs. She had no ammo left. The only thing blocking the bugs from getting to her was Polly. The mechanical Polly, who had been automated to return to the dropship once it arrived.
“Escape-pod landed. Retrieving the mule.”
Which, as it turns out, was now.
What Derpy would’ve preferred was enough time to formulate a plan. What she got was enough time to grab onto Polly as it rose on its mechanical stilts and started wading through the wave of infernal bugs. So her plan ended up consisting solely of holding on for dear life, trying to dodge all the claws, teeth, and other limbs, and yelling. And in all honesty, Derpy hadn’t realized she could yell that loud.
Derpy pulled herself up Polly’s metal chassis and rode the mule like a cowpony. Being a second-grade hydraulic robot, however, Polly was far too slow to actually escape the bugs. When the bugs’ claws struck the metal inches from her, Derpy could only jump and hope to fly.
For a moment, she did actually fly. The dusty air blew past her, cooling her sweaty skin. Below her spread a sea of infestation, a nightmare of any exterminator, and she soared over and above all of them. It was far lighter on her wings than one would imagine, too, because technically she wasn't the one flying. It was the bear-sized fly that had grabbed her.
That’s when Derpy stopped yelling. Because the bug had squeezed all the air from her lungs. Derpy compensated the incapability by thrashing.
The caves passed by. Derpy completely lost the idea of what was up and what was down. She punched her hooves against the bug’s grabby limbs. They were thickly carapaced, and made her hooves ache. She tried to reach for her pickaxe, but it was smooshed between her back and the fly's hairy front.
The last thing she could think to do, before the lack of oxygen started making her head spin, was grabbing a flare. She twisted it in her hooves. Every muscle in her upper body tensed. Her teeth ground together.
The flare broke in two very sharp, glassy pieces, and some leaking yellow ooze. Derpy shoved the pieces deep into the flying bug’s chest.
Their flight turned erratic. Like drunken airborne waltzing, swooping this way and that. She was first upside down, then downside up. Then the bug crashed into something and its hold on her was released and then she was falling.
Derpy tried to catch air with her wings, but she wasn’t quite quick enough. The ground came up at her at a semi-painful velocity. There was a crack from her left wing, which upgraded the semi-painful to a litany of internally spoken beyond M-rated swear words, none of which she would ever be allowing Dinky to hear.
“Polly has been retrieved. Make it snappy, Derpy, or the pod will leave without you!” Mission Control chimed in. “Drop pod leaving in 5 minutes.”
5 minutes?!
Derpy lit her surroundings with her remaining charged flares. She had no idea where she was. She looked at the terrain scanner.
Oh, CEO-lestia, she was so far away from the drop pod.
A wave of harrowing noise came from her right. The bugs had found her again, and were swarming to get closer. They were hundreds of feet away, cramping the tunnel so that she would not be able to just fly past them. Behind them was her route back up to the landing zone.
Derpy kicked the ground. Her wing pulsed with pain. Her head ached with a nuclear migraine. She was sweaty and she smelled like death. Her body begged her to just collapse, and not get up, because she wouldn’t make it into the pod in time anyways. Derpy then did something that she almost never did:
She got a little angry. Because this planet was not going to make her daughter an orphan, if she had anything to say about it.
Derpy took one look at the scanner and started drilling straight up. She punched her power-drill-harnessed hooves through the rock, alternating between hooves so the drills didn’t overheat. Every dozen-or-so meters she stopped to check her scanner and course-correct.
“Drop pod leaving in 3 minutes.”
A bug nipped at her back side. Derpy swung her hooves and crushed its head. White steam billowed out from the drills.
“Drop pod leaving in 2 minutes.”
The steam turned black, and the drills no longer drilled.
Derpy growled, dropped her drill-mittens, and grabbed the pickaxe in her hooves. Her shoulders ached, but she cleaved furiously at the rock nonetheless.
“Drop pod leaving in 1 minute.”
The wall caved in and Derpy found herself back in the dome where she’d started. Across, was a massive drop pod. The metal grid covering the entrance was open.
Between her and the ship were two massive, obese bugs. Their chitin was the colour of ashen titanium and was as thick as her hoof. They growled at her.
Derpy reached into her backpack. She had a little something she’d been saving up for them.
Derpy tossed the satchel charge. The giant bugs rushed forward.
“10 seconds.”
The explosion shook the cave, and left behind nothing but pieces of carapace, and a cloud of radioactive gas. Derpy launched herself through the cloud.
“3.”
Derpy landed on the entrance ramp.
“2.”
She leapt up again…
“1.”
…and slid in past the closing mesh.
“Nicely done, Derpy. Whew! For a second there I thought you weren’t gonna make it.” The sound of hooves clapping came through the intercom. “That’s one for the books.”
The ship shook and accelerated up like an elevator that smelled worse than a locker room.
The metal floor under her was cold. Her stomach began a one-sided fight with the concept of gravity. But if anypony asked, especially if it was Rainbow Dash, Derpy’d say that it was all because of the g-forces pulling her down, and nothing else.
Derpy looked down from within the open hatch of the drop pod.
Digital workstations, tables with massive computer screens and keyboards, mechanical appliances and tools were on all corners of the main hall. The floor underneath was concrete-colored, with iron-grid-ramps leading to all their private quarters and the much more sanitary-looking med bay. Down on her right, huddled in the corner with most of their surplus gear, sat Twilight Sparkle, hard at work on something robotic. Or perhaps it was a flower—she had a vase with one of the ‘Alpaca Blooms’ beside her. On the far left, on the dance floor of Berry’s Bar, Rainbow Dash was performing some drunken rendition of the moonwalk, a stein in hoof. In the middle of the room was a holographic projection of the planet. Several lights flashed within it. Nopony seemed to give it any due attention.
Derpy breathed in the air. It was cosy at SugarCube SpaceRig—as cosy as they could make what was effectively the insides of a giant rusted soup can.
Derpy trotted down the ramp, taking support from the guardrails on her sides. Getting down the ladder, her wing touched something, and she let out a hiss.
“Hey, Derpy! Welcome back,” Rainbow Dash hollered over the music of Miracle Buckson. Her voice slurred audibly. “Come hang out with the gals.”
Derpy waved her good wing at her and kept walking by. “Maybe later.”
“Gotcha.”
The med-bay’s off-white doors opened with a hiss of steam as Derpy approached. The smell of disinfectant took over the previous stench of iron, dust, sweat, and gear oil.
Across the room, Nurse Redheart raised her head from her position near an open medicine cabinet. Her eyes briefly met Derpy's. They then moved to her side, to Derpy's sagging wing, and finally to the watch on her own hoof. Redheart sighed, and started pulling stuff out of the cabinet—stuff which ended up including a liquid filled syringe, some gauze, a bottle with viciously brown liquid sloshing inside, and a splint.
Redheart was also muttering something under her breath. Something most unsuitable to minors. Derpy didn’t pay it any mind—you didn’t want to get on her bad side. You messed with bugs. You didn’t mess with Nurse Redheart.
“On the bed,” Redheart commanded.
Derpy got on. It was surprisingly comfortable. Her plot sank an inch and a half into the mattress. It also smelled faintly of flowers. Shame that it became spotted with gray the moment she sat on it.
Redheart carefully unfolded Derpy’s wing.
“This is going to hurt a lot.”
Derpy looked at her incredulously. “What a way to talk to a patient.”
“Your own damn fault. Try not to be so reckless next time. I can’t help you, if you’re dead.” Redheart took the gauze and the bottle in her hooves. “Now, hold still.”
Derpy exhaled and went limp. On the wall, there was a neon bulletin board. Some new announcements were being displayed.
Hygiene is important! Remember to shower at least once every 30 planetary cycles.
And:
The management advises you not to attempt to enter the dropship via the exhaust port. That means you, Rainbow Dash!
And:
Please flush after using the restrooms. We don’t want a repeat of the Incident.
Derpy hissed and straightened up. Redheart’s antiseptic must’ve been as fond of her as she was of bugs. Then again, at least Redheart had been honest about the pain.
“You’ll be good as new tomorrow.” Redheart finished tying the splint in place and put her hooves to her hips. “Now, are you going to rest willingly, or do I have to break out the horse tranquilisers?”
In case there was anything unclear about it: she wasn’t joking. Not even a little bit.
You don’t mess with Nurse Redheart.
“I’ll behave.”
“Good.” Redheart dropped off the syringe back in the cabinet. “Now, I’m going to go unwind. You mares drive me crazy with these moronic stunts you pull.”
She left, muttering to herself still, and made a turn towards the bar. The door hissed with steam and closed behind her.
Derpy waited a few minutes. The announcements repeated on the display screen. The music of Miracle Buckson reverberated through the walls. Somepony had turned it louder. There were enough beds in the ward for every designated pony on the platform. Right now Derpy found herself as its sole occupant. Even Redheart’s helper bots were out of commission—onboard the ship, R&D could mean two very different things both of which spelled imminent destruction.
Derpy dropped down from the bed and crept up to the door. Redheart must not have thought to lock it, because it popped open the moment she got close enough.
Derpy peeked her head out from behind the doorframe. Berry’s Bar was beyond a corner, out of sight, but she could hear ponies' revelling. She thought she heard Redheart’s voice among them. Derpy tippy-hooved to her own quarters next door.
It smelled like home. It was cramped, and a little dingy, but it was the closest thing to a home she’d had in quite some time. The vents kept the air as fresh as they could, which wasn’t very, considering the SpaceRig recycled the same air that had been inside it since the station had entered orbit. Up against the wall, Derpy had a metal wardrobe, the doors of which she kept closed, because the SpaceRig had no washing machine either. In the overhead compartments, and the miscellaneous chests lying around, Derpy kept what little possessions she had: mostly tools and minerals, and Dinky’s old school projects, including the now abandoned ones. The ‘crowning jewels’ of decor were a small holographic display of a swarmer glyphid, a loudspeaker, a torn motivational sales poster, some spare parts for her CRISPR flamethrower, empty beer steins nicked from the bar, and a fire-extinguisher, much-loved.
Derpy sat down on her bed. It was actually a cryo-chamber for keeping its occupant in stasis so they didn’t break down into subatomic particles while the ship traversed between stars. It was also made of galvanised metal. The point was that the bed wasn’t exactly as comfy as the one in Medbay.
Derpy took a display pad from her nightstand. It asked for some numbers, which she punched from memory. Then it asked for some coordinates. In all honesty, Derpy had never been good with numbers, but she’d fed them into the computer enough many times that she hadn’t needed to look at her cheat sheet in a long, long time.
The pad displayed some rolling numbers and codes. Moments later, the insides of another spaceship and the face of a unicorn filly appeared on screen, slightly tinted green by the screen’s discolouring.
“Hi, mom!” Dinky said.
“Hi, sweetie! How was school?”
The voice coming from the tiny speaker was dipped in radio static. “It was ok. We had a pop quiz. I got a B.”
“That’s nothing to scoff at. Well done, Dinky.”
“Scootaloo fell asleep and got an F.”
Dinky chortled. Derpy put up a smiley front. She and Rainbow Dash would be having some words later. Most likely after the latter was done with her presumable future hangover, but preferably in the middle of it.
“So, have you found Dad yet?” Dinky asked.
“No, sweetie. It’s a big planet, and an even bigger galaxy. But I’ll find him, don’t you worry.”
“Couldn’t you find him faster if you weren’t with the big-pony-corpo-whatchamacallit?”
Derpy’s wing twitched. She sighed, but didn’t show it to Dinky. “Dinky, dear, everypony needs to work.”
“But why?”
“Well, everything costs something. Your school. Your food. And things like this pad-thing.” Derpy tapped the screen. The thing flickered, the outdated model it was. “Somepony has to pay for all of it.”
“Work’s dumb.”
No comments there.
“What did you do after school?”
“We went on an adventure!”
“Ooh, an adventure. Sounds exciting.”
“It was!" Dinky gushed. "Scootaloo took us into this old launch bay where we could look at all the shuttles taking off. Then we crawled through the vent system, and we spied on all the adults. They were all boring. They had no secret plans to take over the world or anything!”
Derpy couldn’t imagine why. She probably just lacked imagination.
“Apple Bloom was a little worried that the airlock would break or there’d be a leak—” as she had every right to be. “But I wasn’t scared. Scootaloo and I had been there a bunch of times already.”
“Hmm. You’ve been spending a lot of time with Scootaloo lately.” Derpy’s lip drew into a slight smirk. “Sounds like somepony has a bit of a crush.”
Dinky sputtered. “What? Mom, no!”
“Aww, my little baby is all grown up. She has a special somepony.”
“Mom!”
Outside Derpy’s room, the med-bay doors hissed open. Hoofsteps going in. Derpy sighed. She hated having to cut this so short.
“Mommy needs to go now, Dinky. I’ll talk to you again later. Play nice with Scootaloo. Mommy loves you!”
“Bye mom! I love you!”
The screen winked black. Derpy laid it down and slumped on her back. The cryo-bed underneath was as cold as bedrock.
Her back was sore. Her legs had turned to mush. Lactic acid buildup, a lot of it—she’d definitely feel that in the morning.
Derpy braced herself when the hoofsteps came running from the med bay, hammering violently on the floor. They were headed straight towards her door. Derpy wondered if she would dream, or if she would just feel Redheart shove the needle in her, blink, and then wake up the next morning. Redheart obviously wasn’t going to tell her—she probably wouldn’t even give her the time to ask. Not like it mattered—she was going to find out soon enough either way.
The door to her quarters opened. Derpy thought to herself that even after seeing the downright terrifying look on Redheart’s face, it was still all worth it.
Derpy chuckled. What a mother wouldn’t do for her daughter.
Author's Note
The Oily Oat® - brand is what you get when you mix Barnyard Bargain pastries with the moisture-eradicating conditions of outer space: a muffin so dry it breaks down into crumbs from being looked at the wrong way. Not unlike most teenagers with self-esteem issues.
Also, Derpy's favorite. The muffin, not the teenagers.
