Login

The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 277: Sol 538

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 549
ARES III SOL 538

The jumbo battery felt heavy in Fireball’s arms.

It shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t a big deal, not really- he could carry two of them easily, probably, except they had to be absolutely sure to treat these giant chunks of crystal as delicately as possible. Starlight had found five cracks in the batteries from the cross-Mars drive- none very large, but any of them could cause a complete break once the repulsor enchantments in the top of the crystals kicked in. She’d taken the time and the magic battery power to cast mending spells on all the cracks, leaving the crystals- and their embedded enchantments- as good as new. Even little cracks couldn’t be allowed, not now.

But as important as absolute care and caution were, Fireball couldn’t keep his mind completely on the job. His mind kept returning to the fact that, after the ninth battery, and after spending two days’ worth of EVA time clearing all the junk removed from Phoenix from the launch zone to make room for the batteries, he felt… no other word for it… weak. And tired. And, well, very un-dragonlike.

Is whatever Dragonfly’s going through contagious? He glanced over at the changeling, who was slowly stringing cables between the batteries to link them to a master switch. All the batteries were lying on their backs, terminals and readouts facing up, making it easier to connect them. The bug was really dragging her hooves and not particularly trying to hide it anymore, but at least she kept going.

Thirteen more days. That’s it. Thirteen days and we’re on our way home. We can lie down, rest, do nothing until we get someplace with real magic again, and with gems that aren’t bucking quartz!

“Okay, right here, Fireball,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Very gently. Metal away from the ship.”

“Yeah, I know.” Fireball brought his mind back to the here and now, shifting his grip and cautiously lowering the meter-and-a-half long shaft of quartz and metal to the dust-covered soil. “There. These would look neat if we stood them up.”

“They sure would,” Starlight agreed. “Right up to the moment they fell over and shattered during liftoff. They’ll work just as well this way, and they can’t fall over like this.”

“We could dig holes.”

“That wouldn’t keep them steady enough. Besides, the controls and terminals are on the bottom. I really don’t want to think about what might happen if we stood these upside down and launched.”

“Heh. How about if we stuck one on top of the ship, upside down, and turned it on?” Fireball grinned. “And watch the battery fly up into the sky.”

“Not funny. It’d probably also wreck the ship. Equal and opposite reaction, remember? C’mon, let’s go get the next booster. Only five to go.”

Fireball followed the unicorn back to the rover. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Sure.”

“Have you tried using magic without the batteries lately? Is it stronger or weaker?”

“Not for anything larger than a potato, no. Why do you ask?”

Fireball, on most subjects, believed in brutal honesty. But where it came to his own feelings of weakness, or his own feelings of any kind, he felt no shame or guilt about lying like a pile of rhinestones. “Bug’s getting worse fast on the two-minute magic ration,” he said. “I was wondering if it affected you ponies any.”

“Hm,” Starlight said. “Well, I’m a bad example. Channeling mana from the batteries exposes me to more magic than the rest of us put together.” She stopped walking to look at the MAV, where Cherry Berry and Spitfire were going through more control familiarization drills. “And I don’t think Cherry would admit it if she was feeling weaker, not right now. I know for a fact Spitfire won’t.”

“Huh,” Fireball shrugged. “Anything we can do about it?”

Starlight considered this. “We have nine full batteries,” she said. “We’ll need a little juice to levitate up the last pieces of equipment to install in the Phoenix- the Sparkle Drive, the RTGs, the batteries. Maybe we can go to three minutes. If Mars doesn’t pull something new on us, that is.”

Fireball nodded at Dragonfly again. “Probably a good idea,” he said. “More would be better.”

Starlight shook her head. “If we have extra magic the night before liftoff, we can splurge then. But I just don’t feel safe…”

“Yeah.” Fireball didn’t need her to finish the sentence. “None of us are gonna feel safe til we get off this rock.”

They began walking again. Fireball carefully slid another jumbo battery out of the harness that had carried it from Acidalia Planitia across thirty-seven hundred kilometers of Mars. It felt heavy in his arms too, just like the ones before.

Three minutes instead of two. Hope it’s enough.

Thirteen more days.

Author's Notes:

Really nothing more to say about this particular sol, so this stays short.

Coming down to the end here. Tomorrow I expect to finish up the Sol 551 chapter.

Next Chapter: Sol 544 Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 26 Minutes
Return to Story Description

Login

Facebook
Login with
Facebook:
FiMFetch