Stella Cetaceae

by Novelle Tale

Rating: everyone
Tags: Science Fiction, Vapor Trail, Spitfire, Alternate Universe, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 12042

In deep space there's plenty of time for old wounds to fester. But maybe, just maybe...there's also time enough to heal.

Co-authored with Shaslan & Novelle Tale

SEIZE THE DAY, SEEK THE STARS

Spitfire: a curmudgeonly ex-Captain of the Wonderbolts ( normal flight division).

Vapor Trail: young, fresh-faced Ensign of the Wonderbolts (spaceflight division).

On a years-long, meandering supply run aboard The Wanderer to Equestria's outlying colonies, there's plenty of time for new discoveries, both mundane and never-before-seen alike.

There's also plenty of time for old wounds to fester.

But maybe, just maybe... there's also time enough to heal.

Written for the 2024 Wonderbolts Sitewide Contest, sponsored by Quills & Sofas Speedwriting, and the Science Fiction Contest III.

Cover art by the incomparable Shaslan (naturally).

Published 2024-05-01 04:40:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-05-01 04:40:00 UTC

Chapter 1 – Stars

Stars. So many stars. Points of white light in an infinite cosmos, each one a wonder orbited by planets and moons, a universe in miniature. And thousands of them scroll past us every minute, like images on a screen.

It's strange how quickly the wondrous can become mundane.

I roll my neck, listening to the vertebrae crackle. Fan my wings out and try to remember the feeling of wind in my feathers. Things were different once. I remember when every day mattered. Every mission. Every wingbeat.

Things change.

“See anything interesting?” a voice asks. Bright and chipper and about a million years younger than I feel right now.

Vapor is good like that. You can lock her in a box for nine hundred days, and she'll still come out smiling on the nine hundred and first.

With effort, I summon a smile for her. “Nope. Not yet.”

Not yet. The story of my second life. In my old life, before the dislocated wing that downed me temporarily and then permanently, every morning brought something new. The sky was always a different colour, if you see what I mean.

And maybe the starship could have been that, in another life. When they first gave me the offer, my heart skipped a beat. A chance to fly again – not wonky flapping around town, limping where once I soared. But a chance to be once more a part of the elite, breaking new frontiers and building something glorious. A second chance.

In the early days, when we were pioneers pushing the boundaries of the known universe, carving uncharted space into the map...maybe it was different for a while there. More like what being a Wonderbolt is supposed to be. But look at me now – Captain Spitfire, supply run champion. Daring the abyss to bring the colonies their latest shipment of hay bales.

Cut off from the teammates who once felt like a second pair of wings. Trapped in a tin can where every day is the same, down to the minute and second where my recycled bowl of oats is served.

It’s not what I imagined, that day the recruiter leaned in close to me and whispered we need you out there, Captain. In the stars.

I glance back out at the stars, once so rich with promise. All they promise now is another few mind-numbing years before I’m shuttled off to some princess-forsaken retirement colony. Maybe they’ll let me go back to Equus, at least. I could get a bunk in the ‘bolts retirement village. Try to make up for lost time with my old squad; pretend that they don’t have an extra twenty years of shared history that I’ll never be part of.

The cockpit is empty. Vapor’s vanished while I was thinking. Celestia only knows where she’ll be. Probably off in a vent somewhere, up to her wingtips in the ship’s innards. Or lying down like a dead thing, trying to breathe at the same time as the ship...breathes? I don’t know what she thinks it does. One time I called it a hunk of junk in front of her, and she asked me to be mindful of its feelings. I told her it wasn’t alive, and she actually asked me if I was sure.

It’s like weather, she says. If you concentrate and reach out, you can feel it in the filaments of your feathers.

I look sourly at the dashboard and wish this lump of crystal-tree-space garbage was like weather, instead of a mashup of the worst of earth pony and unicorn magic. It was supposed to be intuitive. This new model was crafted for all three races, with threads of cloud and wind and root and rune weaving it together. I preferred the earlier models, built on the logic that if a spaceship flies, a pegasus is the only possible pilot. The command deck had two huge metal wings that were custom-made to fit mine, and every twitch of a primary meant something.

I never thought I’d miss the Goose – my first ship, named for the ancient Wonderbolt callname that nopony at space command knew – but after four years aboard, the Wanderer is a mystery to me. One I feel further from solving with every year that passes.

I rise from my chair and stretch again. There’s nothing visible, nothing on the sensors apart from a sun a few light-klicks away that’s flaring up a bit. The ship can hold this course for an hour or so without me. I need to track down that stupid kid and make her take a breather that doesn’t involve meditating herself into a ship-hyperfocus coma.

Chapter 2 – Ship

Ensign’s Log - The Wanderer, Stardate: 11845.1

All things considered, it makes sense that of every possible, potential option available, ponies grow their spaceships. We looked at the vast, starry ether spreading out around us, stretching into eternity, and then we turned back to the soil and magic of our home world to take us to those stars.

It wasn’t easy of course, to grow a functioning structure. And honestly, ‘grow’ was a bit of an oversimplification. It was more like...minutely controlled genetic modification of a mana-fuelled pseudo-organism. Potatoes and ponies are both organisms, see? But they’re not the same. Potatoes don’t have Cutie Marks or, you know, souls.

Equestrian ships are a bit less like potatoes and a bit more like timber wolves: they don’t come with brains or nervous systems or anything, but they’re made of organic matter and magic working in concert, running on mana and electricity and light instead of food—but certainly more interesting and complicated and nuanced than your average hunk of lifeless metal or even crystal. A marriage of magic and intent to derive form. And of course, form denotes function.

It’s part of what makes maintaining them so complicated.

“That’s why I like to think of it a little less like being a mechanic and a little more like a conversation,” I mutter thoughtfully around the screwdriver clamped between my teeth. The access tube is far too tight to fly. My wings are mushed beneath me, barely a shade greener than the pearly white paneling all around. But you know what they say: necessity is the mother of progress. My hooves have become one of my most utilized tools, currently poked out above my head and deep into the innards of the ship that, for the uninitiated, are a little too organic-looking for comfort. At least the designers had the forethought to make the channels and conduits and wiring look more like crystalline tree roots than muscle fiber.

“I know it’s not exactly up to Academy standard. But they haven’t had the luxury of being in space so long.” There’s no rancor in my voice as I continue, poking delicately at one of the conduits. “I hope Professor Rider will approve my proposal when we get back. I really think we ought to learn more about you lovelies.” I smile slightly up at the ship and its calm, pulsating glow. “But in the meantime.”

My eyes flutter shut. Hooves still in contact with the exposed panel, I press carefully but firmly into the deepest tangle of wiry roots. A slow breath in, a slow breath out, until my own are synced with the ship’s gradual brightening and dimming. I reach out with my senses, feathers twitching against my back and—ah! There it is. Dozens of burned out black husks on either side of a flowing white stream.

“There was a power fluctuation in the warp coil during our last jump. It must’ve burned out the fuses in this section of the ship,” I realize, eyes popping open. The image gradually fades from my mind's eye, but my soul remembers the shape of it, and my brain is quick to replace the image with the basic technical knowledge that was drilled into every cadet before graduation. “I’ll make a dozen more and get those replaced for you in a jiffy, Wandy.”

I grab the panel and efficiently replace it, the screws spinning in to hold it back in place with practiced motions. The access tube may be too tight for flight to be anywhere near feasible, but I can at least use my straining primaries to spin the screwdriver. Putting panels back by hoof alone was far more arduous.

“Don’t worry.” I stow my screwdriver back on my belt and reach up again, holding my hoof to the replaced panel. It’s hard to distinguish the two in the comparative dimness, with the manalight shut away, but I can almost feel it pulsing beneath, if I listen close enough. “I’ll get you back in tip top shape soon. Oh, right–Computer, end log entry. Please.”

I carefully shimmy my way out of the tube.

Spinning in the chair as I wait for the fuses to replicate is just about the closest thing we get to a breeze in space, and my feathers tingle with the simple pleasure of the wind sliding through them. It takes me back to the academy, before it, even, when all I’d had to slip the surly bonds of earth were the wings on my back.

“Focus on a cloud when you spin! It'll help you fly straight when you come out of it,” Sky Stinger offers helpfully.

But there aren’t any clouds in space, or at least, none on the ship. Well, the non-regulation cloud bed in Captain Spitfire’s quarter’s didn’t exactly count, but it was technically ‘on the ship’.

So I use the poster on the wall instead as I spin around and around and around. It’s an old Wonderbolts recruitment ad, faded and peeling a bit around the edges—one of the first from back when the ship had been crafted into being. A staggered line of pegasi peers proudly up at the spangled sky, a moon-shaped disc of a ship beaming across it above their watchful gaze. SEIZE THE SKY, SEE THE STARS is stamped along the bottom half.

I flap my wings once, propelling into a faster spin. The poster flashes past.

SEIZE. THE. SKY.

Another flap.

SEE. THE. STARS.

Another.

SEIZE. THE—

“What are you doing, Ensign?”

I thrust out a hoof, catching the edge of the lab bench and grinding my spinning to a sudden, dizzying halt, spotting poster be damned.

“Oh! Hey, Captain.” My wings snap back in and my definitely not wobbly hoof raises into the sharp salute drilled into every Wonderbolt before they even got through basic training.

Captain Spitfire squints. “What are you doing?”

“Spinning, m’am!”

“No, not the—” She sighs, pushing one goldenrod hoof tiredly through her mane. “At ease, Ensign. I meant the replicator.”

“Oh. Oh!” I relax for barely a moment, and then my wings are popping back out again in frenetic excitement. It’s rare to see the Captain in the lab, and rarer still for her to actually ask me a question. I have to make this conversation count. “I was examining the fourth manafold under panel gamma-epsilon-three-nine-two.”

Spitfire’s eyebrow arches to join her dubious squint.

“Oh. Uhh...the Faust tube, downstream from the warp core?

Her eyebrow raises higher.

“That little crawlspace in the aft of the ship?” I try.

“Oh.” Spitfire’s brow dropped, but she didn’t look any less dubious. It’s a captain’s prerogative to look askance, I decide. It’s probably good to have a healthy amount of skepticism on the crew of any starship. “Wait, that claustrophobic little access space? What in the hay were you doing in there?” The ‘again’ wasn’t said, but I heard it all the same.

“I noticed a spike in our mana readings after our last jump,” I say. “The wave’s amplitude has been lower than expected, not quite out of specification yet, but still, I thought I’d take a look.”

“Uh huh.”

“So I did! A bunch of fuses blew, so I’m making some new ones to replace what got burned out.”

Spitfire tsks. “Naturally. How many of the things blew?”

“About a dozen,” I say. “So I figured I’d make eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”

“Just so we have some extra,” I hasten to explain further. “I haven’t gone to check the other three manafolds yet, but my diagnostic indicated that more than just the fourth manafold may be contributing to the shrunken amplitude—”

“Equish, Ensign,” Spitfire barks, pressing her hoof to her temple.

“More fuses than what I found probably blew,” I simplify. “But I won’t know until I can get my wings and hooves on the problem.”

Spitfire’s hoof lowers from her temple. I take that as a sign that my explanation was succinct enough for once. Working with Captain Spitfire isn’t easy, exactly, but it’s rewarding in ways that I never really considered. Learning to whittle technical jargon into more understandable terminology is one of the aspects of my mission that I’m most looking forward to taking back to the Wonderbolts on Equus, once we return home. Maybe Professor Rider will help me put my experience down in writing for future ‘Bolts.

“Printing those fuses will take hours, Ensign.”

“Oh.” I pause, considering. Replication was still slow on starships. With no leylines to draw from, the ship had to convert ambient starlight into mana for such purposes. “Yes, about…six hours?” I estimate.

“Try eighteen,” the captain says, shaking her head and leaning against the doorway. “We’ve been in the black for three cycles, there’s not much for the array to pick up in here.”

“I hadn’t even considered,” I mumble. The captain is right, of course. She usually is.

“Don’t sweat it too much, kid. Still.” Spitfire straightens, striding into the little shoebox of a lab. “Six or eighteen, that’s an awful lotta hours to be sitting in here.” Her arched, skeptical eyebrow returns. “Dontcha think you should take a break instead?”

“O-oh.” Vapor taps her hooves together thoughtfully. “Well, I— I thought about it.”

“Sure you did.”

“But I figured I should stay by the replicator in case it needed some maintenance.”

“Some babying, more like,” Spitfire snorts.

As if on cue, the replicator sputters and sparks.

“Oh my.” I push off the counter, expertly rolling to a stop directly in front of the replicator: a box of mostly glass and the same pearly-white almost-metal that most of the rest of the ship is made of. The array in the center of the box—beneath the half-printed fuse—darkens, its bright white light fading.

“Of course,” the captain mutters sourly behind me.

“Not to worry, Captain,” I murmur softly, my hooves already pressed against the crystalline panel inset into the front of the machine. “I’ll have this fixed in two shakes.” My eyes flutter shut and I can feel my expression smoothing into the familiar pensive searching. Slowly, my wings lever open, the feathers twitching forward and back, as if tasting the wind.

“I’ve no doubt about that,” Spitfire remarks sardonically. But it’s tinny, almost, or maybe warbly is more accurate, like an old radio program. The tone of her words is stripped away as I press my hooves to the panel and look, listening to the darkness.

“There is it,” I mumble. Breathe in, breathe out. With a tug, the small branch of the ship’s mana stream that diverts power to the lab sparkles back into life, the replicator whirring back on and picking up right where it left off. “And...done!” I say brightly, opening my eyes and swiveling to face the captain once more. “No harm done.”

“Except to your rest schedule,” Spitfire grumbles, still peeved. “If this damned ship wasn’t so bucking complicated, maybe we’d have more leeway to do things like eat and sleep.”

Or an actual crew, she didn’t say.

But I hear it. I always do.

“It’s alright, Captain,” I say, rubbing my hoof along the counter. “She’s a good girl, really.”

“A good bit of unicorn-made nonsense, more like,” Spitfire snorts. But then her ire fades away into its usual slow simmer, overlaid with the tired acceptance that has long since made a home in the captain’s very being. “Ship’s disposition aside, you’re taking a rest period, Ensign.”

“I’ve only been on shift since–” A quick glance to the clock, “—Oh-five-hundred, Captain,” I argue weakly.

“And seven hours of work is more than enough to fill a day’s quota,” Spitfire bites back. “Did you even take lunch?”

“A working lunch,” I hedge.

“You’re taking a break, and that’s an order.”

“Yes, Captain,” I sigh, standing from my chair.

“Don’t you ‘yes, Captain’ me,” Spitfire snarks, stepping back from the doorway and gesturing for Vapor to walk ahead of her down the curving hallway. “You’ll take a break and you’ll like it, or you’ll be resting in the brig.” The captain’s regrets are always so much easier to read than her jokes. I can never quite tell when Spitfire is joking or serious.

“Yes, m’am,” I say, hastening my steps towards what passed for the cafeteria. I only glance back at the lab once, but the replicator is happily printing away fuse one of eighteen.

Eighteen might be overkill but...I’ll find more that need replacing eventually.

Better to be safe than sorry.

Chapter 3 – Storm

With Vapor finally forced into sleeping – she never stops – I can relax. In some ways living with her is like the one and only time Rainbow Crash asked me to babysit her spawn. Vapor always has to be bullied into bedtime.

I slump back into the chair, my wings flaring out of old habit for the gloves. All I get for my troubles is a twinge in my bad wing, and I wince and scowl.

Nothing’s changed; of course it hasn’t. There’s nothing out here but spheres of hydrogen separated by billions of miles, the dead space in between, and me. None of the meteor-blasted planets down there hold life, I’m sure of that now. Ponykind has flown far enough and wide enough that we would have found them. Not that I could search anywhere even if I wanted to. We’re supply only now, and Wanderer only has docking equipment for the colony stations. Nothing that would let us land anywhere.

I used to dream of flying in an alien atmosphere. Maybe one with lower grav than Equus, where my wounded wing wouldn’t hold me back. But it turns out that atmospheres are rarer than gold dust, and there’s nothing for me out here. Nothing for anypony.

The sensors are humming softly. The sun with the flare-ups is closer now, and it’s bigger than it looked. A full-fledged solar storm, maybe. Our plotted course takes us through the outermost edge of it, and if I was feeling cautious we do have enough fuel to give it a wider berth. Hell, we have forty years of fuel on board, intended to supply three separate colonies and the ponies living there. If we wanted to deal with the reports on why we needed to tap into the cargo holds, we have enough fuel to go anywhere we want.

But I spent a week fine-tuning our star maps for this route, and I don’t want to alter things unless it’s absolutely necessary. Fuel is scarce out here without the passive mana that Equus and its millions of inhabitants pump out. No leylines to tap into.

And maybe there’s a part of me that wants to see a solar storm up close. It’s been a while, and looping gracefully around those slow-mo arcs of liquid fire is something I’ve always enjoyed.

I’ve been good. I deserve a little variety.

It’s still miles off, though. Nine, ten hours till we’ll be close enough for the sensors to give me a clearer picture. Nearly a full twenty-four till we hit the edge. Plenty of time for the kid to rest up, and me to daydream miserably about my glory days. Same old.

Resting my chin on the dashboard, I peer through the Y-shaped control wheel and let myself drift. If my eyelids grow heavy, it’s not like it matters. Out here, nothing does.

We’re flying south over the edges of the dragon badlands. We’re in our usual V formation, me at the head. Ten wings flapping in perfect, effortless synchrony. The kind that only comes after years and years of working together, flying together, living together. Always watching each other’s back.

And the ponies behind me are my best. Those I’m closest to out of everypony in my squad. Surprise is on my left, Blaze on my right. Soarin and Misty Fly bring up the rear, and I know that every one of them is exceptional. The finest fliers in Equestria, flying with me, at my command.

My heart swells, and I know that nothing will ever make me prouder than this. Nothing will ever feel so right. Nothing will ever taste as sweet as this easy, implicit trust. Comrades and teammates and friends. Family, in Blaze’s case – my distant cousin – and my occasional lover, in Surprise’s. Nopony in the world means more to me than these four.

We’re using the long-distance gait I perfected – small movements of the wings, gliding wherever possible. We’re tough and like wolves, we can keep this up for days on end. Soarin calls it the goose-flap in my honour. Like all the ‘Bolts callsigns, mine is stupid. On my first official flight as a rookie I freaked out and galloped for my takeoff instead of using the standard leap-start – and it landed me with the nickname Goose and a billion flap-run impressions performed by ponies who weren’t even fledged when the incident happened. It overlaps to poor Blaze, who is saddled with the even worse Gosling.

But I’ve leaned into it now, and most of the routines I choreograph feature the V-shape that’s become my signature.

We’re headed down to the dragonlands on a mission for Princess Twilight. She wants us to talk to Dragonlord Ember about...ruby export treaties, or something. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem half as important as the chance to spend a few days with my favourite ponies. I’ve got all the details in my saddlebags, but I won’t look at them till the night before we arrive. If it didn’t buck up our reputation for speed and efficiency, I’d linger over these red-striped dunes. Spin out the trip a little longer.

The sun sinks low over the sand, and we fly in companionable silence until Surprise suggests we call it here. “I’m starting to feel it, Cap.”

I love that. Cap. The word encompasses everything I’ve worked for, the respect I’ve earned – but the affection as well. The trust they have in me.

“Sure thing.” I lead us into a spiralling descent, and we settle down in a sandy hollow, flank to flank for warmth in the cold desert night.

We talk about nothing, about anything. Soarin’s problems as a single brother-slash-adoptive-parent to a troubled teenager, Misty Fly’s recent entanglement with a cute stallion from the rich part of Canterlot, Blaze’s hopes of being picked as a mentor when the next clutch of newbs roll through – hint hint, cuz.

“That’s Captain to you, Gosling,” I say without any rancour, head resting comfortably on my hooves as I look up at the stars overhead. Millions of them, billions, stretching into infinity, laid out just for us in endlessly beautiful patterns. And my squad with me to watch them as they turn overhead, slow and stately as the princess who put them there.

As I stare into those white pinpricks in the velvet black, one of them seems to detach itself and drift downward. I squint up at it, then fan out my wings to feel the air currents and the weather brewing in the atmosphere overhead.

“That’s weird,” I say, and my squad are so in tune with me that four more pairs of wings flare out to sense what I’m sensing.

Soarin frowns. “Snow? In the desert?”

“We’re outside of Equestria,” Surprise points out. “There’s no logic to any of the weather here.”

By logic, she means ponies, but the point stands even if Princess Twilight wouldn’t be a hundred percent happy with it. Most of us prefer civilisation – just with a more multicultural interspecies spin on it these days.

“Even so,” counters Misty Fly. “Snow in the desert in high summer is weird.”

The flake twists and turns through the air, and finally comes to rest on my nose. My eyes cross as I stare at it with my eyes and all my pegasus senses. A chill breeze stirs my tail. It’s colder already. Even as we stand here talking, the temperature is plummeting.

“Should we turn back?” Soarin says nervously. Capable as he is, he’s not a fan of stormy flying.

Blaze bristles. “No way!” She’s laser-focused on that mentor slot. Wants more than anything to prove herself to me and the commanders back home. “We’ve got a mission and we’re seeing it through.”

“Don’t bite my head off.” Soarin actually scowls at her, which isn’t like him. He’s gotta be feeling the lack of sleep now, though. We all are.

Blaze glowers right back at him. “You can go home if you want, Plop.”

The rest of us wince a little at that. Of all the unfortunate callsigns, Soarin’s is perhaps the most unfortunate, and he’s still a little sensitive about the incident behind it. In another two or three years it’ll be blasé, but for now it stings, and Blaze clearly only brought it out to wound.

“Keep the pecking to yourself, Gosling,” hisses Soarin, and the vitriol in his voice is so real that I am jerked into action.

“Cool it!” I muscle in between them in a way I’ve never had to do before, and they both have the grace to look cowed.

“Sorry, Captain,” somepony mutters, and I return my attention to the sky.

The single flake is followed by another and another, and suddenly the stars are being blotted out by the gathering clouds. Snow is falling thick and fast, and the purple-blue sand beneath my hooves is quickly turning to white.

Something is very, very wrong here.

I stretch my feathers wider, feeling for the air currents that will lead me to the source of this unnatural blizzard – a rogue pegasus, maybe? Tracked us out of Canterlot and followed us all the way here? Uncharitably, my thoughts go straight to the Dropouts, but even they don’t take that stupid trumped-up rivalry to mount a weather attack on us in the wilderness beyond Equestria.

“We need to get up there,” I say briskly. “Suits on, everypony. We need the protection.”

Wordlessly, they obey, though Blaze and Soarin are still glaring at each other when they think I’m not looking. That’s not right either. They’re friends.

“Storm formation,” I command, and jump.

At once, we form up. Me at the head of the diamond, Blaze above me, Soarin below and Misty Fly and Surprise on either side. Tight enough that the tips of my feathers brush theirs as I flap, and I can feel the downdraft from Blaze overhead. Everyone visible in my peripheral vision, able to twist and fly exactly as I do. Only pegasi who know one another intimately can flock this close together. Only real teammates. But my crew and I live for moments like this, and nopony lets me down.

We shoot up into the gathering storm, and the wind is rising. Howling like a gale as we plunge into the clouds – and now I can sense the storm much more intimately, boosted by the presence of the others, and suddenly I feel the tangled threads of the wind looping together at the center of the storm. The twisted knot lurking there, fouling everything with its presence and its wrongness.

This storm is not natural.

It knows I feel it, and the howl of the wind spikes into an anguished shriek. It’s a targeted attack, and Blaze only just manages to keep her position as the wind rips at her.

“Can’t you keep up, Gosling?” Soarin shouts from beneath me as she struggles back into place, and then I realize the other, more insidious magic at work here. The skittering claws digging into any crack they can find, widening and tearing to amplify the discord between us.

“Retreat!” I bellow, knowing that even with our training, our skill, our bond, we are no match for this. We’d have to be alicorns before I’d feel confident tangling with this monster. “Windigo!”

As one we wheel away, turning our noses north to Equestria and home – but the wind screeches on every side, spinning us farther than I intended, and without the pole star to guide me suddenly I’m not quite sure which way true north lies. But anywhere is better than here, and I strike out with a confidence that is not altogether feigned. My first responsibility is to my team, and I have to get them home safe.

Another blast of wind, snowflakes frozen into tiny icicles peppering my fur like buckshot. Frost is lapping at the edges of my feathers, threatening to crystallize as the temperature drops and drops.

Surprise is lagging, her white feathers crusting over as she flounders, and Misty Fly rounds on her – “Fly faster, Slowpoke!”

“Cool it, Dizzy!” I bark at her. “Slowpoke, back in formation!”

Surprise struggles back up to us, shooting me a resentful look from under her lashes – and the responding fury that surges in my breast is not the less irresistible for how unnatural it feels.

“Stay tight!” I scream at them, fighting to be heard over the gale. The snow is so thick, I’m feeling them more than seeing them. But though I can sense every snowflake around me, I have no control over this storm. We’re way out of our depth.

I try to dive, to lead us out of the underside of the storm. But the wind catches us from beneath and hurls us back aloft, scattering us – and the ground could be a million miles away for all I know. All that is left is the clouds and the maelstrom of swirling snow. My own hoarse shouts as I call for my team, over and over. “Soarin! Dizzy! Gosling! Form up! Where are you?”

A harsh, grating whinny that sounds like ice grating over stone, like the laugh of a madman. I see a shape in the clouds, always just out of sight. Sinuous as a snake, with only the barest suggestion of an equine face and a mane that ripples down the too-long spine.

Buck.

“Stay away from me!” I bare my teeth at it. The anger almost feels like mine. “I’m the bucking Captain of the ‘Bolts, and I’ll kick your face in!”

Another hyena-laugh, glaciers grinding in the frigid waters, and then a boom of wind slams into me from behind. Another from a different direction, another, another – the windigo tossing me like a toy, like a cat playing with a mouse. I’m spinning and churning, my wings beating like a hummingbird’s as I fight for a semblance of control. The world is a blur of whirling white until – snap – one gust of wind hits my flailing right wing at just the wrong angle. It goes limp and all at once I know what direction down is, because I’m tumbling head over hooves in a tailspin.

Far above me, the windigo laughs.

My mind is racing – hunting for a solution, a way out of the impossible hand I’ve been dealt. My wing is loose in its socket and blindingly painful; definitely dislocated. My team is scattered, and for all I know in the exact same position as I am.

And I’m falling from almost a mile up, from which height the soft pillowy sand will be harder than steel. The wind buffets me again, one last slap in the face as the snowy ground yawns up beneath me. The impact sends spikes of pain radiating up through my body. My wing burns like fire, a pain so sharp that it catches at the breath in my throat, sends tears spilling down my cheeks. A pain so intense it almost feels…real.

I’m yards from the ground – inches – I shut my eyes, not wanting to feel it – a bruising impact – I go flying out of my chair, my head colliding with the wall as my eyes snap open, my bad wing crumpled awkwardly underneath me. Shit. I’m awake, and – shit shit shit.

I scramble upright – though the grav must be malfunctioning, because upright suddenly seems hard to achieve – and flap my way back to the dashboard. Hover lopsided in midair, staring stunned and horrified into the darkness of space, now burning bright.

From deep in the bowels of the ship, I can hear the rookie’s panicked shouts. Captain! That’s me, I realize dimly, still fixated on the impossibility before me. I have to…I have to do something, I think. Wingbeats in the hallway. Vapor’s coming. I have to be a captain.

Chapter 4 – Sunfire

I’m shaken awake, and not at all in the usual way.

My mother always said that the only thing about me that wasn’t wispy and willowy and bendable as a breeze was how I sleep, which is like a rock. Captain Spitfire says it's more like a brick: one soaring through a window, heedless of the shards of glass flying free in my wake.

“Single-minded focus,” Professor Rider had remarked once, marveling and dubious at once, during one of my many lab classes back at the Academy.

I barely heard him then. The words slice through my mind with crystal cut clarity now.

My eyes snap open, but the shaking never eases. Where I expect to see Captain Spitfire’s scowling face glaring down at me, I see only the wobbly ceiling of the ship. It wasn’t her hoof on my withers that pried me from sleep.

I sit up too fast, but I’m a pegasus, and a Wonderbolt at that. The day my vision goes black at the edges from something so small is the day I retire. I’m on the ground, in the main thoroughfare up to the bridge, and not in my bed, as I’d expected. The white lights embedded in the ceiling flicker above me as the shuddering ground trembles back into pseudo-stillness. I wince, bring a hoof to my temple and ow, how did I–?!

Ran into the wall, I realize dully, eying the dent in the pearly white paneling at exactly eye level and in exactly the shape of my skull. Still, no blood at least, just a wicked shiner by the feel of it. Was it called that, on your face, or was that just on the eyes?

I take a deep breath in and attempt to recalibrate.

Not dizzy, probably not concussed. No weird colors at least. Still, I feel...odd. Woozy? Nauseous. Sick in a way that I haven’t been since I was a filly. The sensation is familiar and also...not. A thrumming drumbeat inside of me. Like the way you can feel lightning dance across your feathers before it strikes, feel a sonic rainboom before you can hear it.

And then I hear it with my ears in addition to my soul.

A great, rending groan shudders through the ship, the metal squealing in duress as the wave passes through it and me. Something primal and wild and utterly unordered snarls to life inside me, an instinct so old it needs no name, a fear so quick and bright that its purpose could only ever be to keep stupid ponies like me, far beyond their ken, alive.

“Captain!” I shoot up into the air with a cry, the pain in my head forgotten. “Captain!”

The Wanderer isn’t a large ship—shrinking magic for cargo removes the need for a massive storage hull, and semi-autonomous piloting for distance makes it unnecessary to have a full crew complement, even on long delivery missions like these. But the corridor to the bridge, just wide enough to fit two ponies, has never felt so long as it does in this moment. I arc my wings back at a perfect forty-five degree angle and push myself into a tight spin, my eyes locked on the heavy metal doors at the end of the hall.

Thankfully, the ship is smart enough that, even trembling on their invisible tracks, they open with a great whoosh before I can slam my head into them, too. I skid to a halt in midair, no clouds to break my landing, and toss my gaze around wildly, barely pausing to shield my eyes against the immense brightness bleeding in through the spaceshield viewfinder and flooding the bridge. “Captain!”

“I’m right here, rookie,” Captain Spitfire grunts, and so she is, sprawled on the floor but slowly levering herself upright. My eyes linger on her wing, the bad one, as she pulls it free from under her own weight.

“Rookie?” My voice is high and shrill and thin to my own ears, gone numb from the low, droning cry still rumbling through the ship. “No, wait, that doesn’t matter, Captain, what is–!”

“Buck if I know, Ensign!” Spitfire cries. With a flap of her wings, she’s airborne, moving to hover before the glass and peering out into the bright blue-white outside it. The deep, resonant cry slowly abates, drifting into a silence that punches through me with its stagnant volume. “Assess the situation.”

The bridge is a mess, and it’s with a sudden jolt that I realize the ship is tilting listlessly towards its side, the wall slowly becoming the relative floor. Pegasi aren’t as sensitive to gravity’s pull as other ponies, not once properly trained, at least. But I hadn’t even noticed, the sound of that moaning call had filled my mind utterly. I slam my eyes shut, reaching for the Wanderer’s magical core, trying to sync the mana flowing within with my own, to assess—

“I said assess, Ensign Trail!” the captain roared, and my eyes snap back open, startled. “With your eyes, your ears, your wings, your bucking hooves—!”

With deft movements, I move to hover before the window with the captain.

“A star,” I breathe.

The captain’s glower deepens.

“A–a white dwarf? No, a blue dwarf,” I amend.

“Classification ain’t exactly the name of the game here, rookie.”

“You said assess!” I cry, plaintive and foalish. My lips press together into a line, and I try again, more evenly. “You said to ‘assess’, Captain.”

“That I did,” Spitfire chuckles darkly. She looks strange in the starlight, I realize, her sunshine fur so pale and sickly and wrong. Washed out. Has she always looked so tired? “Let’s…focus. The problem is out there.”

“But...not the star?” I press closer to the glass. Under ordinary circumstances, squinting directly into a star would be an incredibly stupid move. But the ship runs on solar energy; it was built to withstand stars, whether it be their eons or their fires. The Wonderbolts were just the rare few who got to experience it up close.

“Not the star,” the captain confirms, but her mouth is still pursed in dissatisfaction. “I saw…” she cuts herself off. Shakes her head. “Anyhow, near as I can tell, stars don’t let loose predatory hunting calls.”

“H-hunting calls?” But even as I stammered it out, I knew it was true. That instinct deep inside me that had sent me careening out of my quarters and towards the closest thing I had to safety clicked into place. Predator. “But...surely not. There’s no sound in space,” I say instead, faintly.

“Think you and I both know that’s not exactly true.” Captain Spitfire flicks an ear, and then cranes her neck down and around, trying to peer outside, but upwards. “Damn it, I can’t see anything out of this blasted glass.”

“It isn’t–” I cut myself off. Whether or not the spaceshield is ‘glass’ or not isn’t actually important. “The sensor array–” I realize.

“Shot to hell by whatever sonic wave rocked through us the first time.” Captain Spitfire grimaces. “I already checked. But not a bad line of thinking,” she admits grudgingly.

“Then…” We lapse into silence. The star’s glow was like a television screen. Blue-white and wakeful. I could almost hear the static coming off it.

And then a massive form scraped its way past the viewport, blotting out the light completely.

“Wha–” I wheeze.

Massive. A massive, massive object—no. A massive creature moves past, sending the ship rocking in its wake. The lights around us flicker, valiantly trying to stay alight as the ship sways, but they ultimately fail, and the pale emergency lighting gutters on. But the darkness inside the ship is nothing compared to the creature outside. My breath catches in my chest as I watch it meander forward.

Its body is huge and fathomless and spun from void itself, so black and lightless that it almost hurts to look at, my eyes itching to look away as my brain fights itself over whether it’s better to perceive death, to stare is in the face, or to never see it coming and look away.

But on the edges of that titanic void…a dotted outline, delicate and gossamer as silk. Pinpricks of light that detail one massive, sweeping tail, a dozen flipper-like appendages set below a gaping maw topped with uncountable, barnacle-like eyes that glow with an eerie inner light.

“A star beast,” Spitfire breathes. And she’s right, I think, or close enough. My throat is tight as I swallow past the lump that’s formed. Ursa Majors are big, sure, but they’re big on a pony scale.

It takes everything in me not to call it a monster.

This thing sashaying through space as if the ether were no more than the calmest tide, this…lifeform, is massive on a planetary scale. My brain fills with a buzzing noise as I consider its size, its magnitude and majesty, its pure gloaming horror.

“But what is it doing here, of all places?” I murmur back. “This star...it’s in the middle of a solar flare, isn’t it?” I had reviewed the star map and our planned route, of course. The path we take is the captain’s purview, but I’ve always preferred to know our heading.

“It is,” Spitfire answers grimly as the creature finally moves fully past. We squint into the returned brightness. “Look.”

A great gout of plasma lashes out from the star, a long string of sinuous, sapphire light. The creature moves towards it as if bewitched, opening that massive black hole of a mouth, and we watch as the creature sucks the starlight down. It turns towards the next ejection before the first has even dissipated, but the first trails in the creature’s wake as if magnetized. Again and again, a solar flare casts a line and is sucked up into the creature’s waiting, preternatural blackness almost as soon as it forms. We watch in a quiet sort of horror as the monster, a creature born of void and starlight in equal measure, gradually brightens. New pinpricks of light dot its surface, and the eldritch glow in its multitudinous eyes brighten from milky dimness to a bright, misty white.

“I think it’s...feeding.”

Captain Spitfire nods. “It–”

Her words are cut off as another terrifying groan rips through the ship, sending us shaking and shuddering once more. We both pitch forward, covering our ears with our hooves (and outright folding them down in my case), but it is of little use. It’s a magical sound, or near enough to approximate magic; a hunting call meant to find prey and maybe even stick it in place, or at least to communicate its location to others in the vicinity. Air is of little consequence to a sound that transcends physicalities and is heard with the mind, with the soul.

“We need to get out of here!” Spitfire shouts above the din.

“But how–?”

The Wanderer, usually so solid underhoof, careens sharply, as we’re knocked into a looping spin. I drop my hooves from my ears in surprise. The captain’s sharp inhalation drags my gaze back.

“There’s more.” I see her lips mouth the words more than I hear them. But she’s right. Another massive form moves past us, this one smaller than the last but even closer. And then a third one off in the distance, swooping to suck up its own noodle of sunfire, and another beyond it still. An entire pod of eerie behemoths. “Celestia almighty–”

“Space whales,” I breathe. My exhalation fogs up the glass.

“We need to get out of here,” Spitfire finally says again, grimly.

My head nods, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the feeding frenzy below. It’s bewitching and haunting in equal measure.

“Snap out of it, Ensign!”

I flinch and straighten, snatching my eyes away to meet the captain’s. “Yes, m’am!”

“So. Let’s get out of here.” In a single beat, she’s settled back in the Captain’s Chair, her wings flared out behind her.

“Um. Captain?” I hesitate. “What are you doing?”

“I’m flying us–oh.” She blinks in muzzy surprise, and then it’s right back to her usual dark glower. “Right.” Spitfire casts a disparaging eye over the control panel at the front of the bridge, crystalline and utterly opaque in both color and use—to the captain, at least. “Stupid unicorn ships…” she mutters, beating her wings once again and settling her hooves against the panel.

I watch the captain for a few heartbeats, and then a few moments, and then what has to be at least five full minutes. She flares her wings—searching, I know, for the old Pegasus-class grips, even if unintentionally. But they aren’t there and they never will be again. Making the stars accessible to all of ponykind was just one of the goals of the Harmony-class ships. The days of pegasi having sole claim to the sky are…

Well.

“So.” I clear my throat. “Are we…?”

“Blast it all to hell,” the captain cries, throwing her hooves off the control panel. “I can’t fly this thing with the sensor array down.”

“Oh.”

“There we are, another Vapor Trail oh,” the captain gripes, spinning to glare me down, her hoof jabbing towards me with each word. “Oh, your Captain is a useless sack of pony feathers that can’t even fly these forsaken sky buckets! Oh, we’ll be trapped forever because of her! Oh, we’ll never make it home!”

I open my mouth to answer, but...no. No, maybe not. Not yet.

Captain Spitfire carries on in that vein for a while, ranting and raving interspersed with the occasional mind-rending call from beyond the ship’s fragile walls. After what had definitely been at least five minutes, the captain starts winding down. I seize my opportunity.

“Captain?”

“What?”

“Permission to speak freely?”

“Oh for b–granted, Ensign.”

“The space whales’ calls are increasing, and getting closer.” A pause. “I think we are drifting further into their midsts.” Another pause. “Perhaps...I should fly the ship?”

Spitfire glares. She glowers and grimaces and grunts.

I shudder as she levels that look on me.

“Go right on ahead, Ensign.” She flaps her way back to the Captain’s Chair, her earlier alacrity already forgotten as she settles heavily against the cushions. “Be my guest. You should feel empowered to get us the hay out of here.”

I swallow. “Yes, m’am.”

The flight panel is faceted and cool beneath my hooves, just like every other panel on the ship. My eyes flutter shut, searching...but it takes longer, this time, to find the ship’s core, for all around me when I close my eyes is mist.

Fear, I realize. Clouding my senses with its sticky fog. It’s been so long since I’ve been afraid, really, truly afraid, I realize. On the heels of that thought is the vast gratitude for that truth. How many ponies can say the same for themselves? That their every day is a boundary to press, a joy to behold, a wonder to find, an adventure waiting to be explored?

I am so very lucky to be able to do the work I do.

The thought sparks warm inside me, and I reach again, seeking the river of power coursing through the Wanderer. And there it is, below me, thin and thready and dim in the dark, paler and weaker than I’ve ever seen it, but still there.

I slow my breaths, match the thrumming drum of mana in my own body with the ship’s. It’s the same magic that gives pegasi their flight, and similar enough to the magic earth ponies pull between their hooves and the ground, or that the unicorns pluck and weave with their horns. We aren’t so different, really.

Other ponies piloting the stars has always been inevitable.

But piloting is another thing entirely than flying.

Flight is the purview of pegasi, and of pegasus magic alone.

My eyes snap open, and the world around me resolves into sharp clarity. It’s harder, without the sensor array, to know exact numbers and positions, so approximations will have to do. I decide on what direction is north and I spread out my senses, perceiving with everything the ship and I have to offer: three whales due west, two to the northeast, and an uncountably ‘more’ approaching from the encroaching darkness beyond the flaring star’s light. I unfurl my wings, the primary feathers twitching as I breathe and the ship breathes and my oh my it is exhilarating to fly again.

I bank us smoothly to the right, barely noting the captain’s gasp of surprise as we arc away from the star, away from the feeding whales, back to the relative safety of the dark causeway—

The ship shudders around us, harder than ever before, loose on the hinges like baby teeth waiting to come free. I tug away from the magnet-like force trying to pull us back.

“Rookie–” Spitfire stands.

“I can do this,” I say firmly.

I tug us upward, away from that tractor-like force pulling us back, and for a shining moment, we’re free, cresting above the clouds to see the sun, feel the coolest, purest breeze on our faces once again.

And then we’re knocked flying, circling and whirling back the way we came in an uncontrolled spin.

“Oh no.” I reel from the surprise of being pushed around so easily. The ghost of pain dances up my legs and across my wings, but no, it isn’t real, I remind myself, just an impression from the ship, not mine to feel.

All around me the ship plunges into darkness, even the emergency lighting snuffed into nothingness with only the star to see by. I crane my neck around.

“I can do this,” I insist to Captain Spitfire with a confidence I don’t really feel.

She watches me, her face utterly devoid of emotion in the stark light. I hate it.

“I can,” I say again, and maybe this time I’ll believe it, maybe this time I’ll do it. What comes first, I wonder, as I sync my breaths to the ship’s. The belief or the success?

And so I try. Again and again and again and again, sweat tracking down my back and soaking my fur as I try every maneuver, every flight pattern, every single trick in the book that I’ve learned and several I’ve only read about.

Slingshotting off the star’s gravitational field: failure.

Diamond roll: failure.

Rider Loop: failure.

Crying in frustration: …technically also a failure.

With each attempt, the mana core of the ship fades. The whales take a little more notice of us, their vast heads swinging to track our progress. Circling closer each time we slow to a standstill. And with each failure, my own heart gets a little closer to breaking.

“That’s enough, Vapor,” Spitfire says behind me. Quiet. Grim.

“No,” I refuse. “I can do this.”

“We’re dead in the water.” A pause. “Engine’s dead. We’ve gotta take a break to recharge the core at the very least.” Another pause. “And maybe us, too.”

“I can do this, I-I swear I can do this, Captain–”

“Under normal circumstances, I’d believe it. But this…” She moved to peer out the viewfinder at the dizzying frenzy of void and starlight dancing outside that I could sense and feel more than I could see as we slowly spun. “This one, I’m not so sure about.”

“I am a Wonderbolt and I will get us out of here.” I grit my teeth and I lower my head, press my hooves all the more firmly into the control panel, flare my wings all the wider.

Because that’s what ‘Bolts do.

I have never felt less like one in my life.

Chapter 5 – Stranded

Starlight filters weakly through the viewports as we spin slowly sunwards.

Another…whale? Are we calling them whales? These behemoth things made of liquid starlight are as little like whales as ponies are like mountains, but it’s the name Vapor seems to have fixed on. Another whale slides past, gracefully closes in on another spout of sunfire and drinks it down. Pulling the fire inside itself, flaring brighter and brighter until it finally levels out and goes after another strand. A trailing tendril swings in our direction, and the force of its passage is enough to set us spinning again. I flap steadily, ignoring the ache in my shoulder, and let my ship spiral around me.

Vapor flashes past my head four, five, six times, still glued to the console, trying desperately to decipher the undecipherable. To get the sensors back online, or the navigation, or even the lights, just something, anything to be less of a sitting duck bobbing towards an inevitable end.

It frustrates me, seeing her like that. So full of hope and blind optimism that she lets herself be spun like an earth pony in a barrel. Convinced that if she finds the right equation, the right reference in the ship’s archives, she can solve this.

“Aren’t you dizzy?” I snap at her as she zips by an eighth time.

“Hm?”

She isn’t listening to me. She never does. All those promises from the recruiter who was sent to convince me when I last said I was considering cycling out. Worthless. Your experience is so valuable to our mission, Captain Spitfire. We can’t lose you. You’re irreplaceable. Yeah, I sure feel it. Irreplaceable to my crew of one who wouldn’t notice if I dropped dead right now. But I fell for it – again. I stayed. I always do. What is there for me back on Equus? Skies I can’t fly in. Cloud cities I can’t live in. Friends who no longer know me.

My wing spasms and I drop awkwardly to the floor and join the same stupid spinning process Vapor is engaged in.

Another whale, another strange vibratory call that sends bone-deep tremors through the ship and us.

I’m angry – I’m so angry that I’m going to die here, a billion miles from Equus and Cloudsdale and the ‘Bolts HQ and everything that ever meant anything to me. My situation is more hopeless than it’s ever been, and I don’t know how to save the only squadmate left to me.

But there’s something tugging at the edges of my mind – a realization, almost. Something on the tip of my tongue, that I can’t quite yet see the shape of. All I can think of is the windigo, the braying laughter spraying me with shards of ice that cut my skin and drew blood.

I take a step forward, towards Vapor. “When I was younger, I was squadron commander of the ‘Bolts, right?”

Without looking up from her work, she nods. “I know.”

Not from me. I don’t talk about my glory days like some vets do; it just hurts too much. But I dip my chin in assent. “Well, one time we were on a mission outside of Equestria. Flying across this huge desert. It’s nighttime, and a snowstorm pops up. And not just any old snowstorm; a real Crystal Empire level whopper.”

“Right.” It’s wooden. Just enough feigned interest to be polite. All her attention still on feeling the ship – as though it’s a cloud, or a cyclone, or something that makes sense to pegasus magic. I’m irrelevant to her, and so is my story. But I flatten my ears and push on. Vapor Trail is not the first rookie I’ve wrangled. Not the first one to be certain the old-timers have nothing of value to teach her.

“We had no idea what was going on. We were scattered, panicked. Some of us were fighting. I was…” I wince, hesitate so long she actually glances up at me. I twitch my bad wing. “I was...injured.”

Suddenly, she’s paying attention. “The day you hurt your wing?”

She’s probed me about it over the years. A subtle question here, a little nudge there. Open up to me, Captain. Trust me. And I never have. Not until now.

“It was chaos,” I tell her. “We were frightened and confused, and we had no idea what was going on. It was like nature itself had turned on us. These huge forces that we couldn’t understand, out to get us.”

Now fully engaged, she sits up. Both her ears swiveled in my direction.

“But it turned out to be something quantifiable. A windigo. Feeding the stress between us, making us tense and angry. Using the discord to fuel the storm. It was...I was…” I shut my eyes and force myself on. “It took me hurting my wing to see it, but I understood. And once I knew what the windigo wanted, it was easy to beat it.”

She rubs uncomfortably behind her ear. “But that was on Equus. A windigo is...it’s real, Captain. We understand them.”

I shake my head. “We didn’t always.”

“What happened after your mission?”

I lower my gaze. That’s not the happy part of the story. I shrug my stupid right wing. “I got everyone out.”

Slowly, she nods. “But your…?” She doesn’t say the word wing, and suddenly I like her a little more than I did before.

“It was my last mission, yeah.” And it’s all as fresh as it was sixteen years ago: the humiliation, the pain. The failed rehab, the gradually dawning realization that there could be no going back. A grounded Wonderbolt. A flightless pegasus. The work of my life, ground into nothing in an instant. “But I saved them.”

That’s what I try to hold onto, through the sleepless nights and the useless stretching regimens to mend what can never be fixed. That’s what I remember when the concerned letters stopped coming, when the awkward visits dwindled into nothing. When even Blaze stopped coming to the family reunions, driven away by the bitter old drunk in the corner. When it came down to it, I saved my team.

“Focus,” I say to her sharply. “What do these things want? What do they feed on?”

A sharp inhalation. A wondering Oh. “It’s the solar cores. Maybe they can...smell them, I think. They’re feeding, and we’ve got concentrated solar mana in our holds. They’re hungry.”

I don’t argue. I think she’s right. But these things are circling us like koi carp around a mosquito, and knowing we’re full of their favourite food doesn’t do wonders for my nerves.

Suddenly the way forward is clear. The plan crystallizes in my mind like the ice on my feathers so long ago. “We need to jettison the cores.”

But Vapor gasps. “We can’t, Captain. The colonies – the ponies there need that fuel.”

“Agency standards mean all of them should have a year’s supply stockpiled.”

“But what if something’s gone wrong since last supply run? They could need–”

“Kid, either we dump the cores here to feed these guys, or they keep nudging till the whole ship falls apart, we die, and they eat the cores anyway.” I glare out through the viewscreen at the star-speckled beasts curving through the sky.

Her lower lip trembles. “I can’t fail my first mission.”

I put a wing on her shoulders. Pull her close to me, the way I once comforted Blaze when she was my nervous lil’ rookie. “Kiddo, we’re the only part of the mission that counts. We’ll get more solar cores out here for the colonies, do an express flight. But right now, we need to focus on saving each other.”

“O...okay,” Vapor says in a small voice, her wavy mane falling forward across her eyes. Then she steels herself. Nods again, more firmly this time. “Okay, Captain.”

And somehow, hearing that title again, I do feel a little more myself. The sort of captain I used to be – leading a living flock of flesh-and-blood ponies, not just steering a lifeless hunk of metal across space.

“Battle stations,” I bark out in my old ‘Bolts command voice, and Vapor scrambles to obey. My heart is pumping, the pulse echoing in my ears, and we both position our hooves over the controls. Two bodies, but a single organism. A team.

For the first time in a long time, I think I feel...real. I feel alive.

Chapter 6 – Saved

Suddenly, my heart is pounding again. Not with fear this time, but with purpose. We have a plan. And a plan means a chance.

“The cores will resize to normal as soon as they pass through the airlock,” I explain nervously. “A distraction.” A tasty, tasty distraction. Maybe. Hopefully.

Captain Spitfire nods next to me, brow furrowed in concentration. I think she knows I’m losing it. For once in our working relationship, she’s letting me talk out my process.

That alone drums up my anxiety another notch.

“The ship is surrounded by a membrane that maintains our internal atmosphere, but the shielding won’t protect us from the whales.” I swallow, hard. “I’ll get our own core back online, and you’ll put your many and varied experiences to excellent use to fly us out of here. We’ll have seconds to jump the engine, and even less to get away.”

“Correct and correct.”

We lapse into heavy, frenetic silence.

“...What if we die?” I whisper.

“We’re not bucking dying out here.” She snorts, the hot air steaming the control panel. “Now tell me how to fly this thing.”

“It’s just like when the nav and sensor systems are online, but, um. Harder?” I search for a good metaphor, but I’m grasping at straws. That Captain Spitfire didn’t really ascribe to my ‘woo woo outlook’ wasn’t exactly a secret.

“Mm, tell me something I’m not familiar with,” she mutters her bad wing twitching.

“Have you ever meditated before?” I try.

Spitfire actually looks away from the control panel arrayed before us to stare at me, utterly appalled. “I cannot think of a single thing that I would like to do less, Ensign.”

“Well,” I giggle only a little crazily. “I think you’re about to have a crash course in it.”

Emphasis on the crash, Spitfire’s baleful eyes say. “On with it then. Time’s ticking.”

And it was, I knew, it is. But we would only have one shot at this harebrained scheme, one chance. I knew, deep in my soul, that taking the time to calm down was the only option.

Because I am the only one who can lead us in this. And so I do.

“Steady your breathing,” I hear my voice say, the sound low and warm and a little fuzzy in my ears. “Bring your heart back to baseline. Close your eyes.”

Captain Spitfire shifts a little beside me. Her hooves are on the controls alongside mine, and on the edge of my perception, past the ship and the whales and the star beyond, I can feel the thrum of her magical core: glowing embers in contrast to the cloudy breeze of my own.

I pause. It’s just been so long since I’ve flown with another pony. I had forgotten the effervescent joy of working together with another towards a common goal.

“Reach out for the ship, with your mind, with your magic,” I murmur, and everything else falls away. We are suspended in the darkness, a fire waiting to spark and a gale waiting to gust. The ship’s mana network unfurls below us, pale and ghostly as a dried out river bed.

“Is that…?” Spitfire breathes.

I nod, once, and with our slow magical enmeshing with the ship, I know she feels the specter of it. “Reach for it,” I encourage. “The same way you reach for the wind with your feathers, the same way you pull moisture into the shape of a cloud. You already know how to mold it, what you want it to do.”

“Fly.” A single, soft syllable.

“Fly,” I agree.

Feathers twitching, I press my hooves into the crystalline interface beneath them, and I open the hatch.

The cores tumble free just as intended, bright and golden as they wind past us in the dark. In half a heartbeat, my eyes are open, and I look out the viewfinder to confirm what I felt more than I saw. The cores are rolling out from under us and trailing sunward, each one golden and precious and rare even in the star’s lapis light.

Another cry rends through the ship, and I wince, my grip on our quiescence stumbling.

“Buck, buck, buck,” I mutter, even though I know I don’t have time for curse words, let alone panic. My eyes slam back shut, and it’s easier now to see the tracery of the ship beneath us once more.

“Breathe,” the captain intones beside me, calm as I’ve ever heard her.

“I-I can’t—”

“You’re named for wind. If there’s a single thing you can do, Ensign…” Her forced calmitude removes some of the usual sting from her words. “So do it.”

She’s right of course. She usually is.

In the span of one breath and the next, I spread my wings. I grab hold of the pool of magic welling deep in my chest in one, and the dried out husk of the ship in another. And then I pull, crashing the two together.

A smarter pony, or perhaps one with more time, would have opened their core slowly, fed the ship morsels of mana bit by bit until it sparked to life. We don’t have that luxury.

Explosions of light dance before my mind’s eye and I stagger, falling half limp against my control panel—no, the ship’s control panel. Magic flows out of me, through hooves into crystal into magical lattice and wiring, and it takes my breath away to feel it leave even as I feel it return through the ship’s senses. Powerful, thaumaturgic pulsations stronger than any heartbeat drum to life all around us.

“Focus, Vapor.” Spitfire’s voice cuts through the fog, sharp as ever. But it’s warmer, too, because I can feel it now: her relief and regret, pain and resentment, fear and heartbreak. What comes out as anger is so much more complex than I ever really, truly realized. “Focus, and fly us home.”

She’s right. If there’s one thing we were made to do, it’s fly.

And then we’re soaring, arcing widely upwards and away, away, away, flying at last, loose and fast and free as we were always meant to, a streak of warming flame through the night. It courses through us, through me, a fierce longing and deep satisfaction as fathomless as the whales themselves. Our joy–no, the Wanderer’s joy, no, wait— the captain’s joy at finally rocketing through the air once again, stars whipping past us in streaks of light.
Deep within us, a thought. A small thing, barely a seed, but wondering. Considering what mysteries each of those streaking stars contain.

“It…did we do it?” I groan as my focus wanes. Sagging again, this time fully boneless, against the controls as our conjoined consciousness recedes, the magic inside me guttering out as the tide ebbs. I glance up, with my eyes instead of my mind, and there’s the captain, smirking proudly ahead as we fly away from danger, space whales be damned.

The eldritch calls behind us shrink to nothing as she pilots us carefully into warp and then steps back from the controls, the tension in her limbs easing. Adrenaline floods my system, as if to replace my lost mana. I spring upright.

“We did it!” I cry, and this time I mean it. “We did it, we did it, we did it!” I punch the air and spin towards her, ready for a high five or a hug or—

Captain Spitfire smiles, but it seems like a reflex. Her eyes are shadowed.

The joy begins to ebb away. “What’s wrong, Captain?”

“You did it.” She spreads her empty hooves, looks down at them. “What use was I?”

I open my mouth, ready to tell her that it was her who flew us out of there, almost, her experience and my half-baked guidance…but platitudes aren’t what she needs to hear. “You were the captain,” I say softly, fully honest now. “I was…I went to pieces. You were the commanding officer, and you fixed me.”

And I fixed Wandy. The three of us together are unbeatable.

“It’s like you said.” Carefully, I reach out and put a hoof on her withers. “We saved each other.”

She smiles weakly. “Thanks, kid. But…I think I need to think about retiring. What kind of a captain can’t fly her own ship?”

My heart pulses in sympathy, and I don’t think I’m imagining the way Wanderer’s lights seem to dim as well. “But. I’d miss you so much.”

Her smile widens. Becomes a grin. “Well, I think I know who I’m going to recommend as my replacement.”

Dumbfounded, I stare at her. “Really?”

She chuckles. “I can’t think of a single pony who’d do better.”

“If — if you do retire, Captain,” I say hesitantly, “You’re brilliant at motivational speaking. At making ponies into a team. You should go back to Wonderbolts HQ. You should be a professor.”

For a long time, she looks at me. Her eyes are glittering too brightly. “You really think they’d have me back? With…this?” She flexes her injured wing.

I don’t mention that the pegasus flight division of the ‘Bolts is now mostly an anachronism, a display team for fairs and special occasions. Ceremonial. I don’t mention that ponies and creatures from all tribes and species can join the spaceflight training program. It’s not the time.

Instead, I nod. “I think you have exactly the skills our trainers need.”

She exhales. “Well, it might not be the stupidest idea you ever had, kid.”

She turns back to the spaceshield, and the two of us watch the stars in companionable silence. We’re going home. In two weeks we’ll be close enough to the first relay station to radio home and let them know what happened. Taking the direct route back, we’ll be home in less than four months. On Equus, picking up more solar cores to head back to the colonies we missed this time around, and — and I could be the one in that seat. Captain Vapor Trail. Maybe they’ll let me choose my own crew. I can already imagine the look on Sky Stinger’s face when he has to salute me.

Outside, the stars slide past. Pale pinpricks of silver, tiny stitches on the tapestry of the universe. Each one flaring bright white at the edges of our view before vanishing into the distance behind us.

A smile spreads over my face.

Author's Note

A sincere & special thank you to Shaslan for ~~co-authoring~~co-piloting this little exploration of SF and mentorship with me! I'm so lucky to have a friend like you, Shas, and especially one so willing to dive feet first into such a fun project, ready and willing to make it truly shine.

Thank you for reading! 🐋⭐