Tonight's writing: Changeling Space Program (Patreon)

(need to fill in gaps on what I've written so far: this will be slotted into the right spots)

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Rainbow Dash floated in Amicitas's bridge(A1). She didn't exactly have a lot else to do. 

There had been some scientific experiments earlier in the flight, but she'd finished all of them except for a couple which could be summed up in a five minute report back to the ground. There had been interviews with reporters and even a couple of live telepresence conferences with schools on the ground, but those had been cancelled hours before, as soon as everypony on the ground had realized that she would be stuck in orbit and not making the moon's newest crater. 

All she had to look forward to was the two or three hours in the evening when Fluttershy would read to her(A2), and story time was still some hours off. Other than that and the occasional fragment of chit-chat from the ground, she had absolutely nothing to do until she got rescued- which, by her own rough calculations, would take a week at the earliest, depending on how quickly Twilight could slap a rocket together that could reach her.

Dash was already trying to predict what would happen in that evening's chapter of Robo Rock Another World Live! when the unexpected voice over the telepresence comms yanked her out of her daydreams. Her reflexive jerk and shout sent her spinning in the cabin for several seconds before she stabilized herself with her wings and found hoof-holds on the flight couches. As she reached down for her discarded comms headset, the message repeated on the speakers: "ESA Flight Thirteen, this is Horseton Space Center, comms check, over."

Horseton? Dash thought. What do the changelings want? Does Chrysalis want to gloat at me or something? "Uh, Horseton, Amicitas," she replied as she settled the headset over her ears, "I read you loud and clear. How me?"

"Reading you same. We have you on screen now." As the buzzy voice spoke, Dash recognized it as belonging to that one changeling, the one who had rescued those three other astronauts- Dragonfly, that was the one. "We have someone here who wants to speak with you. We've cleared our Mission Control for this, so this will be a private conversation once I hand over. Do you copy?"

"Uh... Amicitas copies, Horseton," Dash answered cautiously. "Copy private conversation, no press. Stand by." Rainbow Dash looked at the comms controls, with their regrettably small number of knobs and switches. None of them, so far as she knew, allowed Amicitas to switch the telepresence to limit it to a specific planetside target. There was a private channel for spacesuited personnel, there was a switch between push-button microphone activation and voice-activated ("vox") comms, there was off and on... but she couldn't cut Horseton out of the loop while she talked with Cape Friendship. In fact, any telepresence system that knew how to tune in to Amicitas's specific enchantment could talk to her(A3), and she couldn't shut them out. 

Sighing, she bent to the inevitable. "Baltimare, Thirteen," she said. "Did you copy my last exchange with Horseton?"

"Affirmative, Thirteen." For some reason Moondancer was at the capcom seat. Dash had guessed Twilight wouldn't have been there, but Spitfire should have been on shift, at least until Fluttershy managed to nerve herself back through the mission control doors. "We are now clearing Mission Control except for flight director. I have to be here no matter what. Sorry, Rainbow Dash."

Okay, so that explained that. "Copy, Baltimare," Dash replied. "Just wanted to make sure you were on board with this."

"Amicitas, Horseton." Dragonfly again, as serious and straight as Dash had ever heard a changeling be- not that she'd spent any time listening to changelings more than necessary.

"Go, Horseton."

"Be advised that Horseton capcom is now Twilight Sparkle," Dragonfly said. A soft rustling sound, as of a headset microphone being jostled, whispered into Rainbow's ears.

"Twilight??" Rainbow Dash squeaked, and then followed it up with a hurried, "Uh, Amicitas copies capcom Twilight Sparkle." I figured she was there- where else would she get rocket parts from at short notice- but why is she calling me from there??

"Hello, Dash," Twilight Sparkle's voice called, loud and clear. "How are you doing up there?"

"How am I doing up here??" Rainbow Dash asked. "I'm going round and round an enormous silver glowing space rock. You know that. It's only been six hours or so! What I want to know is," she said, trying not to shout too much, "what are you doing down there in Horseton??"

"Well..." Twilight Sparkle didn't hesitate much, but Rainbow Dash had known her favorite egghead long enough to recognize the You Aren't Going to Like What I'm About to Tell You tone. "Remember how you said I'd find a way to get you down, no matter what?"

"Yeah." 

"Well, the good news is, I should be up there myself to come get you in about twelve days, plus or minus."

"Oh!" That was days and days before Rainbow would run out of food. And she'd been expecting an empty robot-driven capsule just big enough for herself, not an actual crew. "That's great, Twilight!" Only then did she remember that changelings were involved in some way. "Now what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is," Twilight said, dragging it out, "I won't be the one piloting the rescue mission."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Dash said with an extra dash of irony. "So who's flying? Spitfire? Princess Cadance?" Then it clicked. "Of course! You got Cherry Berry to fly it! Hey, that's great news! Did you think I was going to be upset because she's working for Chrysalis? Because she's a great pilot, you know. Trained her myself!"

"Um, no, Dash," Twilight said. "It's not Cherry Berry."

"Oh." Dash prodded the question forward like a tongue investigating the precise location of the aching tooth. "Then who is the pilot, Twilight?"

"Queen Chrysalis."

Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped hard enough to send a pop over the telepresence connection.

"Thirteen, Baltim- I mean Horseton, comms check," Twilight said. 

"Twilight, what were you THINKING?!" Everything Rainbow Dash had learned about communications discipline, and then insisted her friends learn about the subject, flew out the window faster than the air in her cabin would have if its windows actually opened. "Chrysalis?? Of all ponies? What's going to stop her from taking us prisoner and then trying to take over Equestria again?"

"Me." 

"Besides you," Rainbow Dash insisted. "If this is the real Twilight Sparkle I'm talking to! How do I know you're not some changeling disguised as Twilight?"

"Of the six familiars of Ahuizotl," Twilight said, "Fluffy the Terrible was the only one to lay a claw on Daring Do in two different books."

"So you're a changeling who reads Daring Do," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Big deal!"

"Dash, you're making a scene," Twilight said. "Do you really want me to prove I'm me?"

"I dare you to!"

"O-kaaay." Twilight's voice shifted into her You Asked For This And I Am Going to Enjoy It tone. "Seven weeks ago you went into a certain establishment in Ponyville with Fluttershy and Rarity. I wasn't there, but Rarity told me that cucumber slices were involved. And Bulk Biceps-"

"Okay, okay, OKAY!" Rainbow Dash shouted, her mane standing on end as she realized what Twilight was about to blab. After all, she only had a changeling's word that nopony was listening! "You're Twilight! You're Twilight!" In a softer voice she grumbled, "And when I get down from here I'm going to talk to Rarity about what 'tell absolutely nobody' means!"

"In her defense," Twilight pointed out, "you didn't actually ask her to make a Pinkie Promise on it."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow said. "Anyway, you're you. But how long is it going to stay that way, Twilight? And why is Chrysalis involved at all?"

"Because she insisted," Twilight replied. "She wants the publicity of changelings rescuing ponies. Plus this way I get a ship that docks with Amicitas, without having to risk you transferring ship to ship on EVA like with CSP-20."

"But Twilight," Rainbow pressed, "you know she's going to demand we give up the moon for this! If you do this, we lose the space race!"

"Rainbow Dash," Twilight said quietly, "we lost the space race the moment you had the fuel leak. We can't put together our own multi-pony capsule in time. If I just got rocket parts like I wanted, Chrysalis would go ahead with her dress rehearsal on schedule, and you and she would get back home at the same time, but she'd have a reusable three-pony capsule and we wouldn't. And anyway, I don't care about that now," she added. "I want my friend back safe. And that's more important than a hundred moon landings."

"Oh." Rainbow Dash leaned back, as much as free fall would allow, against her flight couch. "Um, thanks, Twilight." 

"What are friends for?"

After an awkward pause, Rainbow Dash asked, "So, what happens now?"

"I spend a few days training with Chrysalis while the changelings tweak their rocket for the new mission," Twilight said.  "You'll get a briefing for your part of it, but that's mostly going to be for the docking of the two ships. You'll be a passenger all the way home, really."

"Swell," Dash muttered. "Twilight, evil mastermind stuff aside, I'm a better pilot than Chrysalis."

"But it's her ship," Twilight said. "And so long as she behaves herself, we don't have any right to take it from her. So not another word about that, all right?"

"I didn't say anything!"

"You were about to."

"Prove it."

Long sigh over the comms. "Look, I need to get back to the conference room and begin briefing the CSP staff," Twilight said. "For now just sit tight. We're coming, Dashie. We'll be there soon. Just hang in there."

"Where else am I gonna go?" Rainbow Dash asked. 

A long pause, followed by the buzzy voice. "Amicitas," it said, "be advised that Horseton capcom is now Dragonfly."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Amicitas copies, over."

"We'll be monitoring you from here from now on through rendezvous with Mission Twenty-three," Dragonfly continued. "We're going to work out the details with Baltimare later, but as of now you're part of a CSP mission."

"Lucky, lucky me."

"Amicitas, we didn't copy that last, please repeat."

"Nothing, Horseton," Rainbow Dash grumbled. "Just waiting for my evening book-reading."

"Oh, we can help with that!" Dragonfly said. "I think we have a book around here somewhere..." Rainbow Dash heard some soft rustle and faint voices not on the comms circuit. Then Dragonfly broke in again, saying, "Found one! I don't know who it belongs to, but it's definitely not one of my queen's books! Definitely not! And it's called Stirrups at Sunset, by Tight Plot. Chapter One. She watched as the massive earth pony's muscles shone with lather, bits of soil clinging to his withers as he removed the heavy collar which was his only-"

"Not that kind of book!!" Rainbow Dash shouted. "Look, I'll wait for Fluttershy. She's midway through a book now, and I don't want to change midway through, all right?"

"Are you sure?" Dragonfly asked. "Because this is a pretty thin book. I'm pretty sure we could get through the whole thing in a couple hours."

"Positive," Rainbow said. "I'll just wait for- no, wait, there is one thing you can do for me."

"What's that, Amicitas?"

"Take a note for Twilight. I forgot to mention this to her before, but the comms system needs some tweaks. We need better channel controls up here for private conversations. And also some kind of, I dunno, bell or chime or whistle or something to let a pony know someone's about to speak after a long silence. Can you pass that on to her?"

"Will do, Amicitas," Dragonfly said. "And pilot to pilot, I know exactly what you mean."

"Good. Okay," Rainbow Dash said. "Now transfer me to Baltimare, please." With that she relaxed, letting zero-g float her away, satisfied that, for all the flaws Fluttershy's reading material had, at least it was the kind of thing you wouldn't mind fillies getting their hooves on. (A5)

Footnotes:

(A1) Rainbow Dash had had a little experience with powered flight before the space race- mostly flight-school requirements before she'd dropped out- and she was pretty sure what Amicitas had wasn't a bridge. An airship bridge was open to the elements. An enclosed control center, particularly one where the pilot and/or steerspony sat down, was a cockpit(A4). But Twilight had insisted that the Amicitas control compartment, which had space enough in theory for seven flight couches, was too large and roomy to be called a cockpit. Rainbow didn't care enough to keep arguing over it, so Amicitas had a bridge, even if it did annoy Rainbow just a little.

(A2) Fluttershy's reading preferences were not the same as Rainbow Dash's. Her oldest and best friend tended to like two kinds of books: century-old romances and translated Japonese or kirin novels. After almost two weeks of listening to them, Dash had decided the two genres were more or less identical in that they both involved relationships between two or three ponies who, for whatever reason, lacked the capacity to say Hey, I really like you out loud. Given that, Dash preferred the ones where the ponies in question got sent to another world, piloted giant robots, played in rock bands, or did all three at the same time. Sitting around sipping tea and making snarky comments just seemed lame by comparison.

(A3) Tuning a telepresence system to a specific target, or "address" as Twilight Sparkle called it, was a non-trivial affair. It was possible to provide telepresence systems with a limited number of pre-programmed addresses, but finding one by just sticking a unicorn horn in and mucking around would leave the unicorn with a headache and some number of lost hours they'd never get back. This fact was why telepresence communication, despite its obvious utility, had not yet taken off in Equestria... and why this massive security hole in space program communications had not, as of this point in time, been nailed shut. Rainbow Dash would shortly correct this oversight.

(A4) In some horrible, evil worlds the term cockpit originates from how the tiny, cramped quarters of early aircraft resembled the stinking, blood-covered holes where two young roosters would be unleashed to fight to the death while half-drunk people made bets on which one would win. Not so on Equus, although to the ponies the source of the term was still a bit barbaric. Some communities, when confronted with a cockatrice problem, would dig a narrow, deep hole, one that the monster couldn't get out of quickly, and then place a small mirror on one side of it. At least some of the time the creature would see itself in the mirror, think itself under attack, and use its petrifying glare on its "attacker". At the time of this writing the practice was almost a century out of fashion among ponies, who felt that petrification was a bit cruel even when done to a monster that would quite cheerfully do it to ponies.

(A5) This is not to say that Fluttershy's Japonese novels didn't have their share of fanservice. On the contrary. Fluttershy picked only those books for on-the-air reading which didn't cross a certain line. The more embarrassing books in her collection remained in a little chest locked in the bottom of a bureau in her bedroom. If Stirrups at Sunset had contained magic lockets, martial arts tournaments, or robots of any size whatever, it also might have found a happy home in that bureau. Further details, of course, must be withheld for the sake of Fluttershy's peace of mind... and also to prevent the first recorded case of spontaneous equine liquefaction caused by absolute mortification.