Chapter 1: Nomastromo Rerouted
Designation: Nomastromo
Make: M-Class Star-Freighter
Classification: Commercial Towing Starship
Cargo: Refinery processing 20,000,000 tons of magical ore
Course: Returning to Equestria
Crew Complement: 7
The powerful drive engines of the starship Nomastromo burned to brake the ship's course, bringing the vessel down to a steady drift through space. Inside, the ship seemed nearly frozen. Cold, lifeless, and silent, the three pressurized decks had a thin atmosphere and walls coated in a light layer of tiny crystals from whatever moisture had stayed in the air. They glistened in the darkness, bouncing what meager amounts of illumination they received from the ship's hibernation mode lighting.
Warm air began to flow through the vents, accompanied by the chugging of the air processing units kicking into full gear. Mechanical swishes rang with the motion of internal mechanisms adjusting themselves to respond to the atmospheric controls. Lights came up on all decks and various displays and monitors around the ship booted, crackling with some minor static. On the bridge of the ship, located on the top deck, many displays defaulted to a logo screen, bearing the ship's name and the owning company's logo in bold lettering backed by the silhouette of a pegasus boldly shooting into the stars. Electronic chatter between all the equipment filled the air with a low, drumming white noise. Life came back to the Nomastromo.
On the same deck, the last of the lights came on in a dead-end corridor at the corner of the ship. The sturdy white door at the end rose and there was a brief clash and equalizing of atmospheres, since the room behind was run and maintained on an independent system. The lights in the room brightened, revealing a circular, sterile, pearl area with padded cushioning all about the floors and walls. In the center, a mammoth machine endlessly performed its function: to power and maintain the seven hypersleep chambers that were radially connected to it, spread out like the petals of a flower. The crew stayed in this chamber, sleeping in stasis for the course of their trip through the cosmos.
The main computer of the ship pushed a signal through. Adjustments to the internal atmosphere had been made and the vessel was ready. It was time to wake the crew. The droning of the hypersleep machine changed, softening and slowing in tone as it modified each chambers parameters to bring consciousness back to the inhabitants. Indicators on each of the chambers lit up to show when its occupant had normal, stationary readings. Once all were green, the lids of all seven chambers simultaneously unlatched and gently raised. Inside each, one pony lay down sleeping a regular sleep, brought back from the frozen stillness of hypersleep.
After several minutes of silence, there was finally a stirring in the chamber closest to the door. With the most sluggish of motions, a white hoof raised up and pressed down on the side of the mechanical bedding. The unicorn inside forced herself up, straining her weak, awakened breathing. She sat there, taking a few good breathes, bigger with each draw. At last, she shook her head to try to push out the potent delirium that filled her, a motion that dislodged the cucumber slices that had been resting over her eyes. Reaching over her head, she checked to make sure the towel wrapping her hair hadn't fallen out of place. Blinking and getting focus back in her eyes, she wielded her magic to pick up a smaller tower resting by the side of her chamber, which she used to wipe the beauty cream off her face.
Every time she got out of one of these hypersleep chambers she swore she had never been so achy and stiff in her life, and this time proved no different. She eased over the side, bit by bit, until she finally planted all four hooves down on the padded floor. While she made her way over to the wall where crew bathrobes hung, she felt out her body's movements again, fresh and new. She passed the six plain, white robes that were hung there and went straight to the special, secluded hook where her royal purple robe with golden colored trimmings waited for her.
A pampered but delirious cat, white as snow, reached her small claw up over the edge of the hypersleep chamber that the unicorn had emerged from. The animal hardly had the energy to hiss her seething discontent, her irritability being the one thing that came back to her instantly.
In the common area on the top deck, just a corridor down from the hypersleep vault, everypony was up and gathered around the large table which filled the room. It was covered with food containers, plates, cups, and all the standards for a usual space freighter's crew's breakfast, and the shifting and passing of foods and goods made up half the noise in the room. The other half was the limp conversation between the crew; their chatter could hardly be described as lively, but they did their best to talk the hypersleep weariness out of themselves.
Most of them were only partially dressed. Some were still wet from having washed themselves first before sitting down for breakfast and were wrapped mostly in towels. The ship's Navigator, Fluttershy, had multiple towels coating her and she shivered as she complained of the cold.
Only the Magic Officer, Twilight, deigned it important enough to be in full uniform for the first meal. It was a bright blue uniform abounded with pockets and buttons. An identity patch on the shoulder carried the seal of the Magic Division, along with her rank, the ship's name, and employee number.
The Engineering Technician, Derpy, heavily blinked her eyes as she worked to rid herself of her sleepiness. She could tell something was wrong because everything she saw was crisp and focused. Slamming her head down once into the table, her eyes were rolling in her head when she lifted it back up. Lazily they settled into a much more natural crosswise position and she smiled with relief.
To her left sat Applejack, her boss and the ship's chief Engineer, who was bemused with the technician's antics. "You're still with us, sugarcube, right?" the engineer asked her partner.
"Right?" Derpy queried in confusion, and she turned her head in that direction. However, all she saw was the pony sitting to her right, the Warrant Officer, Pinkie Pie.
The white unicorn, sitting to Applejack's left and still wrapped in her extravagant bathrobe, rubbed her face sorely. This was Rarity, the ship's Executive Officer and second in command. "Augh... I feel dead," she moaned.
"Anypony ever tell you you look dead?" Applejack quipped with a brief chuckle.
Rarity glowered back at her, but the feeling of being a walking zombie seemed pretty equally shared around the room. Every bite of food, every sip of drink, every little joke and smile, worked to ease them back into their senses. The lukewarm coffee was probably the biggest help, though. The pot was being passed around the table with frequent regularity.
During a lull in the table conversation, Applejack seized the moment to speak up. Loudly, to be sure everypony could hear her, she said, "Oh yeah, right, I just remembered something. Now, before we dock, I think we oughta discuss the bonus situation. Derpy and I," she gestured to her engineering partner, "we think we deserve full shares. Right, sugarcube?"
"Right?" Derpy asked, and again twisted her neck to look to her right. Like before, all she saw was Pinkie Pie, who by now had enough energy to give a big smile back to Derpy. The lost pony looked back at Applejack with a befuddled stare.
Applejack shoved a hoof quickly into Derpy's gut.
"Oof! Oh! Yeah. Uhh..." Derpy suddenly seemed to remember. She rambled in a rehearsed manner, "Applejack and I think that the bonus situation isn't fair."
Sitting roughly across from Derpy and next to Rarity, Captain Rainbow Dash calmly took a sip of her own coffee. This wasn't the first time the engineers had brought up the matter of payment and, knowing Applejack, it wouldn't be the last. But their pay wasn't Rainbow Dash's concern and she dismissed it as she usually did, saying, "Well, you get what you contracted for, like everypony else."
"Yeah, but everypony else gets more than us," Applejack casually emphasized.
A single-toned beep sounded in the room, but like so many other noises of a working starship, it passed right through the ears of most of the hungry and unrefreshed ponies. Twilight recognized it immediately and, without even looking up from the milky white drink she was pouring for herself, she commented, "Rainbow Dash, Mother wants to talk to you."
Rainbow Dash, a little surprised at having missed the noise, looked over at a rack of displays on the wall to see a blinking, lighted indicator which confirmed the news. "Yeah, I see it," she responded. She pushed up out of her seat with a stretch, joking in a pretend haughty tone, "The light's for my eyes only!" She grabbed her half-finished coffee cup in her mouth and made her way over to the bridge.
"Can I get some coffee?" Applejack asked out loud, with some minute disdain at having the payment conversation curtailed. "It's the only thing worth two bits on this darn ship."
Passing through the bridge to get to Mother's control chamber, Rainbow Dash stopped to take another sip of her coffee and put on her uniform jacket. It was a heavy jacket, and dirty brown with the ship's name emblazoned on the back in yellow. Like Twilight's uniform, an identity patch was present on the shoulder. Typically that was all of the uniform she wore, without the jacket ever being closed up. This ship hauled cargo back and forth across the reaches of space; it wasn't the most glorified position of service to ever exist. She was only going to wear what she thought was comfortable and the company was only big on pushing regulations that affected the bottom line. Besides, the jacket got bonus points for looking wore, beaten, and totally awesome.
She went to the back of the bridge and through a small, secure hall lined with computer banks to get to Mother's chamber. Mother was the name of the rudimentary AI which ran the Nomastromo. Largely her purpose was to handle all the automated systems of the ship and alert to crew to anything that would need manual intervention. The long trips through space were often very uneventful and a pony crew was only necessary at times few and far between, but they always had to be present, just in case. In all other situations, Mother, and AI's like her, were capable of steering a starship through the empty regions of the galaxy on their own.
The chamber itself was described as a blister by the engineers, being bubble shaped in design. Dead in the center was a chair for an operator sit to at, complete with a keyboard text interface to Mother, and the whole setup faced a monitor on the far wall for Mother's output. The rest of the room was coated in small, blinking, white lights whose flashing patterns made no discernible sense to anypony. They were all pretty sure that the lights were installed merely to look futuristic.
Setting her mug down to one side of the keyboard, Rainbow Dash sat in the chair. She mashed the space bar once to wake Mother's display out of power save mode. "Morning, Mother," she hailed as the screen came to life.
Mother dumped a list of main menu commands onto her display. It was a long chain of selectable commands... anything a pony could want for getting details on the ship or doing other tasks. Besides all the options for diagnostics and internal ship controls, there were various support programs listed for research efforts and planet surveys, some history and bookkeeping entries, solitaire, a few emulators and ROMs, abort, retry, and fail.
Rainbow Dash tapped at the keyboard and selected the "Interface" option, allowing general direct queries to be given to Mother for computation or response.
The screen cleared and then offered back to her: "READY FOR INQUIRY".
She typed in the question, "What's the story, Mother?"
Back on the bridge, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Fluttershy all entered in their respective uniforms to join Twilight, who was already waiting there fully dressed. Rarity's uniform resembled Rainbow Dash's, though the unicorn insisted on cleaning it up, wearing it properly, and adding embellishments. Nothing fancy... just a few jewels she had placed here and there, the inside of the collar was lined with decorative crystals, and the zipper had been replaced with one made from gold. Pinkie Pie's and Fluttershy's uniforms were much simpler, lighter jackets, in deep blue and soft green respectively. Identity patches were on the shoulder of every uniform.
The ponies sat down at their individual stations. Enough time had passed that they were feeling free of the burdens of hypersleep and their spirits were lifted knowing that their trip across the stars would soon be over. All that was left was to dock back over Equestria so the cargo could be unloaded. Then they could relax at home, instead of being sequestered away at cramped stations on Palominus, out in the middle of deep space.
"Okay," Rarity said, sitting down and magically securing her belt, "Plug us in."
Pinkie Pie flicked several switches on her station and the bridge controls changed over to manual mode, bringing all the ponies' stations online.
"Thank you," Twilight said, immediately setting to work.
Fluttershy's station displayed a star map, focusing on the ship's current position. With a curious stare, she tilted her head to one side and wondered if perhaps she was just seeing something wrong. "Uh oh... where's Equestria?"
Rarity looked at the pegasus with surprised eyes. It was pretty much the last thing she expected to hear from a navigator. "You should know," she answered in astonishment.
Pressing a button, Twilight brought up the star map on one of her displays and looked it over. "That's not our system," she commented.
Looking deeply unhappy with the implications of what she was seeing, Fluttershy brought up the ship's course history and started to search through it.
"Contact traffic control," Rarity commanded, hoping that they were close enough to Equestria to be picked up and guided in if the navigation system was on the fritz.
Securing a headset on herself, Pinkie Pie held one hoof against the headset earpiece so she could listen carefully. She toggle a switch on her board to enable broadcast and tried to reach any potential receivers with a standard greeting. "Hello? HEEELLLLLLLOOO?" she sang out. "Anypony there? If you're there, pick up! Pick up, pick up, pick up! ... Hello?" She waited a few moments for any responses but received only static. Humming in thought, she changed up her approach. "Oooooookay! DON'T pick up! I dare you not to pick up!" No response. "We have ICE CREAM! Plenty of ice cream! But if you don't pick up you won't get any! ... Hello?" Switching the broadcast off, Pinkie Pie shrugged to Rarity, "Nopony's home."
"Keep trying!" Rarity grumbled in annoyance. Like Fluttershy, she didn't want to accept what all this might mean.
Pinkie Pie thought deeply for a moment. "I got it!", she yelled and flipped her broadcast unit back on. "Knock knock!"
At Fluttershy's station, she had the computer draw the route they had taken and finished calculating their current position. "Okay. I've found it," she told the others. "We're just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven't even reached the Outer Rim yet..." she moaned in disappointment.
"That's hard to believe..." Rarity said.
"What are we doing out here?" Fluttershy asked. Scanning over her star map, it was clear the Nomastromo had taken quite a bit of a detour from the straight route to Equestria.
"I don't know," Rarity honestly answered.
"Get it?" Pinkie Pie giggled into her comm. "Because you're supposed to say, 'who's there' but then I act like you said, 'hooves' hair' and..." but she still wasn't getting a response. "Oh, come on!" she shouted, flicking the broadcast off in a huff and folding her forelegs.
Down in the lowest deck, C deck, Applejack and Derpy walked about giving everything the once over. All the main engineering systems were present on C deck and it was standard procedure to check up on everything after coming out of hypersleep. Technically Mother should have alerted them to any problems that might have occurred on the trip that physically needed their support but any good engineer knew that the moment you started blindly trusting the machine would be the moment something would silently go wrong.
Their own uniforms were by far more casual than the rest of the crew, mostly being street clothes with the identity patch attached, further separating them from the others. Both ponies wore hats as well. Applejack's was a brown, wide-brimmed hat which was a well known personal effect of her's and Derpy wore a navy blue baseball cap with the logo of her alma mater, "Cloudsdale School of Engineering and Mail Service".
While striding to the next hall to continue their check, Applejack jovially asked her partner, "Listen, you ever notice how they never come on down here? I mean, this is where all the work is."
"It's the same reason we get... uhhh..." Derpy tried to answer. She held up a hoof to help her count, but the indistinct appendage didn't prove to be much assistance. If only she had some kind of... enumerable, individually manipulable extensions on her hoof! "The same reason we get..."
"Half?" Applejack offered.
"Yeah!" Derpy exclaimed. "A half share! And they get a... two... half share."
Applejack chuckled but continued her joke, "Yeah, but I think I know why they don't come on down here! It's because of you! You don't have no real personality. Mostly. Leastwise, not so much in canon, anyway."
Around the main table in the common area, the bridge crew had gathered and sat on Rainbow Dash's instruction. The captain herself stood, waiting for the engineers to arrive so she could make the announcement of what she learned from Mother. She could feel the discontent from the bridge crew, unhappy that what they had woken up expecting hadn't become reality, and she knew Applejack and Derpy wouldn't take it any better. What's more, not everypony would be happy with the reason for these events.
Eventually the engineers arrived, with Applejack still in a jolly mood. Derpy took her regular seat, which happened to be next to Twilight, and Applejack followed her up to take her own usual position. She needed only to remove one obstacle.
"Uh... you happen to be in my seat," she cordially said to Twilight while tapping the unicorn once and gesturing to the side.
Twilight rolled her eyes and quietly snorted at the obsession with assigned seating, but she didn't offer any physical objection. She stood up and took a single step to the side, opting to make her point by standing between Applejack and Pinkie Pie for the duration of the meeting, instead of walking to the other side of the table to one of the empty seats.
"Thank you kindly," Applejack said. She grabbed the hat off her head and dusted her seat off with it. Tossing her hat back on, she lowered her head and carefully aligned the chair to the perfect position, moving it a few centimeters to the left, a few less to the right, then just once more to the left again... When she had gotten the seat just perfect, she aggressively leapt over the back of it and landed in it, jostling the whole set up and shaking the entire table with a loud thud.
Ignoring all the stares that had gotten her, Applejack started the meeting, continuing with her genial energy. "What's happening now, sugarcube?" she asked Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash stepped up and leaned forward on the table between Fluttershy and Rarity. Observing the crew for a second to make sure she had center stage, she addressed them, "Well. Some of you may have figured out that we're not home yet. We're only halfway there."
Despite the bridge crew already sharing that knowledge, there was still groans from them at its awful confirmation.
The cheery mood was promptly wiped from Applejack's face. "What?" she asked out loud, stained with disbelief.
"Mother's interrupted the course of our journey," Rainbow Dash continued.
"Why?" Rarity immediately asked.
"During automated trips, Mother's programmed to take certain actions if specific conditions arise. She re-routes course around unexpected obstacles, seals decks if there's a sudden loss of pressure, abruptly terminates the function to the hypersleep chambers and kills us if there's a fault in the AE-35 unit... that sort of thing," Rainbow Dash explained for the benefit of the readers. The crew were veteran cargo runners, after all, and they knew how their own ship worked.
Pinkie Pie asked, "So what happened?"
Taking a big breath, Rainbow Dash revealed, "Seems she's intercepted a transmission of unknown origin. She got us up to check it out."
"A transmission?" Rarity said in surprise. "Out here?"
Rainbow Dash nodded in confirmation.
"What kind of a transmission?" Fluttershy wanted to know.
"Twelve second industrial techno loop," Rainbow Dash answered.
"SOS?" Rarity asked.
"I don't know."
"Pony?" Pinkie Pie cryptically inquired of the signal's origin.
Rainbow Dash furrowed her brow, wobbled her raised hooves in the air, and spun a creepy tone onto to her voice. "Unknooown... Oooooo! Spooky!"
While Fluttershy nervously shrunk back in her seat, Derpy's discordant eyebrows moved in opposite directions. She didn't understand what any of this meant and openly questioned, "So... what?"
Applejack snickered at her partner's reaction with an air of agreement.
"We are obligated under section-" Rarity tried to explain.
"I, uh, I hate to bring this up..." Applejack interrupted, "but this is a commercial ship, not a rescue ship. Right, Derpy?"
"Right?" Derpy asked. She cranked her head to check, but since both Rainbow Dash and Twilight were standing, she saw nothing but two empty chairs to the side of the table. Shifting in her seat and twisting her whole body, she kept looking more and more towards the right, almost reaching all the way around to her left before she slipped out of her chair and tumbled onto the floor.
"It's not in my contract to do this kind of duty," Applejack elaborated. "And what about the money? If ya'll want to pony up some money for me to do it I would be happy to oblige."
A gray hoof shot up from under the table. "Yay! Money!"
Annoyed, Rainbow Dash grumbled, "Applejack, w-"
"Let's go over the bonus situation! We never-" Applejack tried to insist.
Unexpectedly, Twilight thrust herself into the conversation, also aggravated at the engineer's constant interrupting. "Can we just-" she started.
Unwilling to let the topic go, Applejack vocally overpowered her. "We never talked about the bonus situation!"
Twilight turned and appealed to Rainbow Dash, the irritability bursting from her voice. "I'm sorry, but can I say something?"
There was a moment of silence while Rainbow Dash nodded and gave her the go ahead.
Focusing back on Applejack, Twilight stared her down and explained, "There is a clause in the contract which specifically states: 'any systematized transmission indicating either a possible intelligent origin or some potentially sweet grooves MUST be investigated...'"
Applejack rolled her head over in frustration, looking away. "Aw, I don't want to hear it," she complained.
Mounting her front hooves on her chair and pushing herself off the floor, Derpy was almost back up from her spill. "We don't know if it's intelligent!" she objected, before her misplaced weight caused the chair to slip out from under her and she collapsed all over again with a loud crash.
"I just want to git on home and party," Applejack continued griping.
"Applejack, will you just listen to the pony?" Rainbow Dash angrily shouted, pointing again to Twilight in order to give her a chance to finish.
Twilight picked up, "... or suffer penalty of total forfeiture of shares. NO. MONEY."
"You got that?" Rainbow Dash heavily emphasized.
She knew she was beat, but Applejack wasn't the least bit happy about it. Spitefully, she put on a cocky grin and laughed with veiled sarcasm. "Heh, well, yeah, I got it."
"Alright then. We're going in," Rainbow Dash implicitly ordered. She pushed off of the table and left for the bridge. Most of the rest of the crew got up and began to follow her.
Still keeping up her appearance, Applejack turned to Derpy. "Yeah, we're going in. Aren't we, sugarcube?"
A gray hoof shot up. "Yay! Going in!"
The Nomastromo gently tugged its cargo across space, hauling it towards the planetoid from which the signal was originating. The refinery and ore storage that the ship was hauling was massive in comparison to the three deck Nomastromo itself, being over forty times the starship's size. But the Nomastromo's engines were quite strong and the good thing about space was that, with so little friction, even a little push carried you a long way. The cargo itself wasn't built for landing on planets like the starship was, though. It was space-loading and space-unloading only. The plan was to insert the refinery into orbit around the planetoid while the Nomastromo disconnected and landed on it.
With a course plotted, Mother automatically and steadily guided the ship towards orbit. Fluttershy counted down the estimate time as they drew close. "Five... four... three... two... one..."
"Equatorial orbit nailed," Twilight confirmed from her station.
All the ponies on the bridge reported their status, and the two engineers down below reported their status over the ship's comm system. Everypony was verifying that things looked good before separating from the cargo.
"DOR is in line," Rainbow Dash read off one of her monitors.
"How's the status on the lifters?" Pinkie Pie asked no pony in particular.
"Give me an EC pressure reading," Rainbow Dash requested aloud.
"Stabilization thrusters firing," Twilight declared.
"Semaphore resolution looks good. Detecting minimal possibility of a resonance cascade," Fluttershy rambled.
"Flux capacitor is fluxing," Rarity noted.
"Neutrino dynamo polarity repulsor quantilizationeration," Pinkie Pie made up on the spot.
The ship's engines and thrusters came to a stable rest. The vessel and cargo floated lightly around the planetoid, caught in orbit by its gravity.
With everything looking good, Rainbow Dash ordered, "Prepare to disengage from platform."
Nodding, Fluttershy announced, "Mark, twenty seconds." She began a new countdown, "Twenty... nineteen... eighteen..."
The Nomastromo delicately pulled away from the refinery, stretching the sturdy umbilical that connected the two. There was a minor vibration and deep metallic noise that spread throughout the ship when the umbilical hit its maximum length, just before Fluttershy's countdown finished.
"Two... one... mark!"
"Disengage," Rainbow Dash commanded.
There was a heavy clunk as the pressurized clamps of the umbilical suddenly let go and the ship shook mildly as it was pushed clear from its cargo.
"Umbilical's clear!" Pinkie Pie reported. "Congratulations! It's a boy!"
Rainbow Dash double checked her own displays and, satisfied, told the crew, "Money's safe. Let's take her down."
The engines lit up and the Nomastromo blasted forward, following the orbit around the planetoid so it could begin careening down into an orbital descent.
Carefully monitoring their trajectory, Rarity ordered, "Roll ninety-two degrees, port yaw."
Thrusters on the side of the ship fired, rotating the ship into position so it would be parallel to the surface of the planetoid as they broke atmosphere. Angling the nose of the ship down, its forward motion carried it out of orbit and slowly dropped it towards its target.
Fluttershy's station finished its estimates and put the approximated distance to the surface on her monitors. She began reading them off, "39,000 meters... 38,000 meters... 37- Uh..." She looked back at the captain, "I'm the navigator, right? Do I get to do more than-"
"Keep counting!" Rainbow Dash barked.
Lowering her head in disappointment, Fluttershy let out a low whine but stuck to her orders. "35,000 meters... 34,000 meters..."
"Turbulence," Twilight predicted. And right on cue, the ship begin to shake lightly. It was cutting into the atmosphere of the planetoid and beginning to meet resistance to its thrust. All the ponies simultaneously checked their seat belts. "Locked and floating," Twilight followed up, dutifully monitoring her station. "You can drop us anytime. We'll catch."
Rainbow Dash raised her hoof over a switch in preparation. She announced loudly, "Alright, inertial dampening is going off. Hold on, ponies, there's going to be a little bump!" The instance she flicked the switch, a tremendous vibration shot through the vessel. If the crew hadn't been buckled in, they would have been flung right from their chairs. It was almost as if the ship had been struck by some kind of light-based torpedo weaponry.
Down in engineering, Applejack and Derpy gripped their stations as the ship continued to rattle violently through its descent. There was an abrupt, loud, whining, metal wrenching noise that came blaring through the walls.
"What in tarnation is that?" Applejack declared, looking about.
Derpy was tapping a hoof on her console. "Uhhh... the pressure dealie," she indicated. "The pressure dealie for deck three is doing a thing. It's thinging."
Applejack peeked over at Derpy's station. Sure enough, the pressure dealie for deck three was thinging in the opposite direction all the other pressure dealies were thinging. "Must've lost a shield," she mused.
Over the comm unit, they heard Rainbow Dash's voice, "Let's just go with it!"
The Nomastromo continued its wild quaking as it approached the surface, the taxed automated systems working to adjust for the thickening atmosphere with as much assistance as the crew could give. Finally the harsh rattling seemed to reach its apex and began to fade, bit by bit. The drop stabilized gradually.
Twilight continued to monitor her equipment with unsplit attention. "Dropping off now," she informed the crew. Her focus hung tightly on one of her monitors which projected their path into the atmosphere. The ship had turned from its nosedive and was beginning to level. "Still dropping." Once it was level they could begin a vertical descent to land. "There we are. We've got it." The ride now wasn't as ice smooth as it was in space, but it was significantly gentler than the worst of their descent.
"Let her drop!" Rainbow Dash instructed.
Fluttershy killed the drive engines on the ship and everypony was struck with a sudden weightlessness as the ship entered freefall. The numbers on her altitude display plummeted.
Throwing off her seat belt, Rainbow Dash swooped out of her chair and dove over to Fluttershy's station, switching the engines back on. The sudden jerk as the ship came to a floating stop threw everypony about in their chairs again. Recovering, Rainbow Dash glared down at Fluttershy. "I meant, 'take her down.' Like, SLOWLY," she gruffly snarled.
"O-oh. W-whoops." Fluttershy gave a retreating smile. "Sorry," she weakly murmured, and hit a key on her station. The Nomastromo began a slow, controlled drop down towards the surface, thrusters firing to bring the ship down as softly as possible.
Returning to her seat, Rainbow Dash buckled back in and reviewed their status. "Navigation lights on," she declared, toggling them on herself. A bright set of flood lights came on under the ship. "Landing gear..." she reported, again enabling it herself. The landing struts deployed, well illuminated by the navigation lights. It would all be a waiting game now.
The roar of the engines increased, decelerating the ship further for a hopefully smooth landing.
Fluttershy's altitude countdown slowed to match the pace of the ship. "800 meters... 700 meters... 600 meters... 500 me-" She grunted in frustration and hit a button at her station labeled, "Details". A progress bar appeared, accompanied by a time estimate. "Twelve... eleven... ten..." she read off. "Nine... eight... nine... eight... seven..."
Everypony on the ship was looking nervously between their stations and each other, feeling the mounting tension as the ship drew closer to a complete landing.
"Three... two... one..."
"NOW," Rainbow Dash ordered, "kill the drive engines."
With the flick of a switch, the thrust died and the ship dropped an estimated less-than-two meters to the surface. The landing legs crunched down on top of some uneven terrain, crushing rocks under the weight and adjusting their malleable struts to stabilize the ship. Even still, the shake that rocked the ship was far more violent than anypony expected. They all seized their chairs tightly in reflex, absorbing the shock.
Small explosions suddenly erupted from Fluttershy's and Twilight's stations, shooting out sparks. The electrical disruption killed many of the lights on the bridge, prompting a number of emergency strobe lights to begin flashing. Some small fires also invoked a loud alarm, noisily beating against the ears of the crew to the point that they had to yell just to communicate to the pony next to them.
Everypony quickly unbuckled themselves. Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight all grabbed fire extinguishers while Rainbow Dash went to check that Fluttershy was okay. The two unicorns sprayed the separately burning stations liberally, while Pinkie Pie grabbed the head of her extinguisher tightly in her mouth and began beating out a nearby fire with the heavy bottle.
"What the heck happened?" Rainbow Dash screamed demandingly.
Twilight fiddled with her now safe station, shutting off the audio assault of the alarm.
"Will somepony give me a straight answer!" Rainbow Dash shouted, not even adjusting her voice for the loss of the alarm.
"Has the hull been breached?" Rarity worried.
Pinkie Pie looked at her monitors. "I don't see anything. The main pressure dealie's not thinging."
The bridge crew stopped and looked at each other for a moment. Everypony ran back to their own station to double-check Pinkie Pie's assessment. Just to be sure.
