Magical sails 53%
Twilight didn’t know what to do. There was probably some easy option, something just out of reach for her. But whatever that option was, she didn’t know it. They couldn’t just build them both—they didn’t have the manpower to split between two options that way. Whenever the engineers were working, other aspects of the ship were abandoned. And if her spellcasters were building sails, they weren’t repairing damaged thaumic systems.
“We’re going with your design, Starlight,” Twilight declared, after considering silently for a few minutes. “I agree there’s more risk to it, Node. But we don’t know how much time we have left. It might seem strange to rely on magic for something this important, but… ponies have always relied on magic to survive. Our air-shield is magic, our gravity is magic. Our sails can be magic as well.”
Node sighed, slumping back in her seat. She steepled the fingers of one hand together. Even on a flat, alien face, Twilight could see her disappointment. You seemed determined to avoid mechanical conversion, captain. But the longer you continue with rash decisions like this, the more inevitable that becomes. Machines can survive Hunger’s rot. Ut when you make that transition, you will sacrifice your magic as well.”
“Many of us are… unwilling to ever make that sacrifice,” Starlight stepped down, flipping off the projector. “Look at Sunset. She’s half machine already, but the other half would mean giving up her magic. I don’t blame her for refusing.”
“Feel free to consult me throughout the project,” Twilight said, doing her best to head off another argument. “I’m a few decades behind your understanding of theoretical magic, but… I was right there before I left. And I could use something to work on.”
It was another project, another split for her crew. But the more ponies woke up, the less Twilight became the captain of one ship. She was the princess of a civilization—the last lifeboat in a tumultuous sea. So maybe they’d never made it back to Equestria—Equestria had come to them.
Twilight did work with the sail team over the next month, getting regular update from the other crew sections. Everything from the establishment of a proper education system along the shiprats to updates on mining yields—all of it was on her desk. That wasn’t to say there were no issues during construction—but every challenge they faced was of the common magical variety. There was no refuge for Equestria now, no choice but to keep pushing through.
Twilight watched the wings first extended about a month after construction began, using the observation deck high in the palace’s tower. Very few sections of the castle hadn’t been crammed full of caskets like everywhere else on the station, but this was somewhere. Princess Luna had kept telescopes here long ago, observing the stars during the era before spaceflight. Twilight could still make out the pattern of the constellations stenciled into the stone.
She had to look away, from those patterns of stars no pony would see repeated the same way. And if we become vagabonds like the other ships in the flotilla, then the idea of a constellation won’t make any sense. What is it like to be a transient species?
Through the glass, Twilight watched with her senior officers as a veil of shimmering wings appeared in the void above Canterlot. Or below, depending on the perspective. They were transparent even now, the magic equivalent of metal foil. No terribly large amount of force would press against any one part, but collectively they could accelerate the entire station at incredible speed.
“We’ve run simulations of the magical supports and the pressure they place on the station,” Starlight explained, gesturing towards the ceiling. “Spike agrees we’re well within stress tolerances. The compressive force will be evenly applied, as though the station was orbiting a planet again.”
“Until your magic fails, and the highway turns us to ash,” Node said flatly. “Or we just stop accelerating and shoot off into space. I suppose it depends on what the highway happens to be doing at the time. I’m not terribly fond of either option.”
“That will not happen,” Starlight said, gritting her teeth together. “We depend on a dozen different systems to keep us alive. We have heating and air processing and hydroponics, and plenty of others. All take active effort to maintain. These sails will be just another system, maintained by unicorns. We’re not worried, are we princess?”
Apple Bloom wasn’t a senior officer, or anything close to one. But she was Node’s assistant now, and that meant she had a place in the cramped observatory. “It does mean we’re locking ourselves into organics for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Since metal folks like me won’t be able to keep the sail going.”
“Of course we are. The princess planned on that to begin with. If we were going to change everypony, we wouldn’t be in a rush.”
Nopony in the room quite looked happy with that pronouncement, but Fluttershy was the first to break the silence. “I was hoping we could speak about that, captain. We’re seeing… the early signs of death rot in some of the oldest, weakest ponies on board. It’s effecting our shiprats quite a bit, but they’re not the only ponies suffering. We might want to think of using the highway soon, before ponies start dying.”
The excitement of the successful test faded, and her friends fell silent again. Several set glasses of bubbling drinks back down, waiting for her response. “Has anypony died yet?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I have a few ponies in their beds. Sunset Shimmer, a few older scientists and maybe a dozen of the shiprats. But the number is going up every day, and those ponies aren’t getting any better. We’ll start losing them soon.”
“There are some other, uh…” Applejack began, her voice becoming more confident as she spoke. “Some other things we could do to improve our odds, if we didn’t want to throw the accelerator on right away.”
Twilight had at least one idea of a way to treat the sick, even if she knew they wouldn’t like it.
1. Gather the miners and leave now. It’s only going to get worse. Ponies getting sick is only the harbinger of something much worse.
2. Expand Canterlot. Right now most of the station is packed full of caskets. When those ponies wake up, they’ll need somewhere to live. Otherwise, we’ll be the stewards of the dead for the rest of time.
3. Focus all resources on mining. We can build while we move, but we need raw materials. Stockpile vast supplies of metal, water, and other essentials, we can push them along in front of us while we travel.
4. Spike’s long observations with the Canterlot sensors have detected something interesting: Signaler derelicts. Instead of building more station, they could tow over quite a few of those, and make a sister station for the Canterlot out of their remains.
Well, that clock ran out. My apologies for saying how there was no defined time limit in previous chapters; I forgot about the slow, inexorable march of oblivion at the time. Still, at least we have a propulsion system in place. And Node's grousing is honestly irrelevant. Most of the ship's systems consist of magical items that require maintenance from organics. If something goes wrong thaumically, the Canterlot was already doomed.
So, last call before we leave. Bugging out immediately has the least risk for the inhabitants, but they could find themselves strapped for resources. Still, they've had a month plus to mine. Option 2 is right out, especially if they can build as they go. 3 and 4 present interesting possibilities... but we may not have time to retrofit the Signaler components before things get worse. Of course, the same could be said of the mining operations...
Ugh. No good options, really. I think 4 might be the best balance of expedience and preparedness. Node should be able to help get everything in order.
Character choices are solid options. We need to clear them of threats
Wait, does this mean that Sunset's good as dead? Sad for Bacon Horse, but following Spike's suggestion's likely the best that can be done, he has the processing power to make it the one with the best chances of success.
Those Signaler vessels went derelict for a reason, I'll bet. And if that reason is the Hunger... well, I don't think I need to say why that'd be a bad idea.
Honestly, I think it's time to go. In the event that Sunset's condition is irreversible, we can't lose Starlight too.
I say spikes option. Don't need extra resources to build something that just needs put together faster than the other options without immediately fleeing
So, this is reaching long back into the story, but we still have no conclusive idea what the group behind Cozy were after. I think though that it would make sense if they were other ponies contacted by the Hunger in the way we've seen Twilight contacted.
Now that we've seen evidence that the Hunger is approaching, I suspect that the price of taking one of the delaying options won't be just "Sunset and some of the older/weaker ponies die", but will also include more and more random ponies beginning to work against the group, possibly including either Pinkie or whoever injured her before the start of the story.
I think time is out. The benefits of delaying for any of these options don't outweigh the potential problems if they could approach the level of a civil war in the very delicate closed ecosystem of a space station.
Just go.
Welp, that's the signal! It's time to go, ready or not!
As much as I want to just get going we are going to need somewhere for everyone to live as we don't know when we will get another chance to get more resources, Spikes option makes the most sense to me it will be quicker than mining and then building an exspansion if we can just take some derelicts and piece them together and the resources we save by doing that can be used to make more repairs to the Canterlot on the move, plus it also has the benefit of not as the saying goes "having all our eggs in one basket" meaning if the worst happened and the Canterlot was destroyed or vice versa we have another ship to save as many as we could.
However after this I'm putting my hoof down and choosing the next option to leave, its time to go.
After the kill swarm in the vault, I don't trust anything the Signaler's left behind. I have to say '3'. It's insurance for if the sail breaks and it means that we can work as we go.
Congrats on getting Featured!
Give this story a try, if you wanna see how a vagabond city lives.
That's our canary in the coal mine, we go now or we we all die. I'm torn on salvaging the ships, we need the resources but as someone else pointed out they've likely been abandoned for good reason... possibly H͓̫u̜͎̪n̶̞͖̜̠̪̜̮g͍͉͙̯e̬͓̫̣͎̭̝͝r̵ related reasons.
10101450
It's featured pretty often.
Hmm...I say it's time we left.
I'm glad we selected the magic sails.
1, let's head out. We've pushed it too far already, most likely.
Salvage takes less effort overall than raw mining.
You do know that when you hilight a selection like that you tend to direct people to that choice?
Otherwise salvaging if possible is the way to go, and they probably have the technological sails available.
I'm hoping that the general 3:1 ratio of salvaging vehicles works here.
The 3:1 being that if you can get at least three vehicles of the same size and make you can get at least one functional with a lot of useful scrap. Scrap that you don't have to refine at the very least.
Just because there is a character option doesn't make it the right one. Losing sunset shimmer would be bad, but if starlight becomes affected it is game over. Leave now.
10101848
Even If it was an obviously terrible choice , it would still win as we've all been trained to think the *special* coloured choice is the secret one we've unlocked and therefore must be the one to go with .
That said theres a big difference if the salvage option is quick or not. We're on an countdown and we don't know how big a job we've chosen.
We need to leave. Now.
Well, that's the timer ringing. I didn't realize it'd show up this way, but this is at least better than an invisible wall of instant death.
Voting for salvage on the theory that it'll provide some resources in a hurry... but knowing it probably means people start dying soon. It probably beats leaving without adequate resources. No more delays after this, though; clock's ticking!
Welp, we had a good run.
"make a sister station for the Canterlot out of their remains."
THIS is the part I think a lot of people aren't paying attention to with Spike's option. Even ignoring the fact that we shoulda been trying to focus on getting out of here for AWHILE now the fact is the 'go salvage stuff' option doesn't end with going and getting some stuff for the road, Spike wants to take that stuff and make A WHOLE OTHER STATION. Even on a fast timeline that's going to take time. And later resources to maintain. And kind of oddly split ponies up. And so on and so on. It's a BAD idea for now.
Omfg, not 4! Remember how much trouble was caused by one malevolent stowaway? When Twilight visited the ring she made numerous successful saves against running into SOMETHING. Who wants to bet that there are several more 'somethings' on these abandoned ships just waiting to wake up and play?
Mine fast or go now. Leave the haunted chenobyl hell ships alone.
We have sick people, even if it isn’t the hunger we can’t take the chance that it could be. We need to leave.
I was so divided on what to vote for, till I remembered I'm a chapter behind and the votes already over. Lets see if 1 or 3 won. I liked both.