Pilot’s Log
Date: 02/03/2406 17:04
Okay, so parts for the new antenna have been assembled and are just sitting in the cargo container, ready to be put together. A small hole in the debris has been drilled to let air and food into the mine. Suggestions to put a hole through my walls which would lead into the mine have been shot down since I would have nowhere safe to live while we repair things; selfish, probably.
Crossing the barrier that was the airlock with my backpack filled with equipment, I used the scaffolding on the side of my building to get myself set up on the roof of said building to find Luna already there and waiting with her welder.
“Do you have everything ready to build this thing?” Luna inquired hopefully. I merely shrugged back in reply. Selecting the blueprint for the basic antenna array, I placed the framework down -suffering through another typical short blackout where the frame itself suddenly appears to me- so that Luna and I could set to work. While she worked on just welding the joints, I set to applying the parts and pieces in their appropriate places.
It only took us a couple minutes of welding, but soon we had a large spire of metal rising up into the sky above us.
“So, now what?” Luna wondered as she stood back to gaze up at the thing before us. Still remaining silent, I jumped down off the building and connected to the airlock computer which, in turn, connected to the mainframe computer which, in turn, connected to the new antenna. “Are you going to remain silent?”
“Yep.” I replied short and simply. Extending the range of the antenna as far as it could go, I set it to sweep for signals not expecting anything. Imagine my surprise when I got not one, but eight different radio signals in all directions; a couple of them pairing up on my HUD. “Well now… that’s interesting…”
“What is?” Luna glided down near to me, looking over my shoulder to stare down at my computer. Doing so was pointless since it was just a keyboard and the screen was inside my helmet, but I think it made her feel included.
“There’re eight radio sources on this planet...” I mumbled back then repeated myself when the translation software told me it couldn’t properly understand me. I slowly spun on my heels, taking in the information I was getting from the antenna and filtering out the non-essential information like the nearby ores discovered by the waiting Wyvern.
“That can’t be right, we don’t have radio capabilities in Equestria.” Luna frowned and shook her head slowly.
“Then that makes sense that the closest relay is over four hundred kilometers away. It’s probably outside the country.” I found my voice remaining rough and calm, my speech taking a slow pace as I crossed my arms over my chest. “By the looks of it… It would seem that Equestria is the… only… country… without radio communications…” I added, making Luna’s heart visibly drop; if her ears and tail were any indication.
“So we are severely behind on the technology side of things, after all?” Luna murmured to herself in defeat. “And here I’d thought we were fairly well along…”
“Just means that you and your scientists now have goals to aim for. Talk to some of your political friends across the borders, ask them to see if they can share their technology with you.” I suggested as an alert to a notification arriving pulled me from my conversation musings. “Oh, right.”
“I think I shall have Twilight speak to the representatives of the other countries soon enough.” Luna decided before a thought occurred to her. “Unless the planet dies before we can put those new technologies to good use…”
Retreating to the interior of my bunker via airlock, “Can I suggest getting radio communications up and running then? Make some radios that’ll let the ponies here enjoy the last few months they have before they either leave or they die?”
“My word, you’re just a bundle of joy today, aren’t you?” Luna sighed with a roll of the eyes as she followed me towards my room while I pulled my helmet off and tossed it onto the couches nearby.
“No, really? A bundle of joy, huh?” I whispered to myself, unintentionally making it slightly louder than I’d intended. “No shit.”
“Look,” Luna demanded, stepping in my way to cut me off from my room and computer. “I get that today doesn’t hold anything for you. You’ve got more to be disappointed about than you do to be celebratory about, I understand. But all this moping about, this self-loathing is certainly not helping your situation.”
“So what, i’m just supposed to forget that only a week ago to me, I said final good-byes to my family? It’s like they only still just died!” I demanded in return and pushed past Luna into my room. She managed to enter before I could lock her out and she soon stood before me again.
“Yes, I get that! Think about it, i’m over one thousand years old! I’ve seen more than my share of friend and family die while I lived on. Didn’t you say that when you signed up, you were made aware that you’d never see your friends or family again?”
“Yeah, and I honestly thought that it’d be slightly easier than this! I figured that those recorded messages they uploaded with me would stave off the loneliness for longer than they did! Now, like you said, it’s all an illusion! I know they’re long dead, I know their grandchildren are all dead and their great grandchildren are all in the last throes of their lives! When I return to Earth in another six hundred years, I’ll have outlived my entire lineage! I could be the very last of my family alive when I return!” I shouted back and diverted from my route to the desk to a route to collapse onto the bed, resting on the backpack rather uncomfortably. Luna stood before me at my knees watching me in silent exasperation.
“Can I not serve as your new family? Can my sister and our friends not serve as your new family? We may not have been born to the same parents, nor have we grown up together or have we even known each other for longer than a few months, but can I not at least try?”
“What, you wanna serve as my new sister or something? You want me to adopt you into the family so I have family who’ll live as long as I will?” I raised my head to look over the edge of the suit around my neck.
“Well, seeing as I already have family with me… Why not we adopt you into the family? Make both Celestia and I your family in one go, and the other princesses your step-siblings all at once?” Luna suggested as she remained stood where she was, despite my head flopping backwards to land on the mattress again.
“No offense, but no thanks.” I grumbled back and sighed, closing my eyes in the process. They remained closed only for a moment as I hauled myself back upright with a groan and stood, Luna stepping back to give me room. “My plan is to build you all the colony ship, help you find a new hospitable planet and then set off in a ship with Cryogenic capabilities to continue on my mission of mapping unregistered space for the Human Alliance before returning to my world to get reintegrated into a society that i’m a thousand years behind.” I announced and slid into the seat of my desk to open the incoming mail documents.
Luna sat next to me, watching my face as I read the document and went over the details of the attachments. She apparently found amusement in my facial expressions but remained respectably… Okay, she burst into a short fit of giggling.
“What?” I glanced from the document to Luna, giving as best a glare as I could given the fluctuating emotions within me. They were mostly confusion and aspirations that I was receiving updated versions of the blueprints as well as eight petabytes of data regarding new blueprints, welding patterns, food processor prints and surprisingly an up-to-date dossier on my family status.
“No, nothing. I’m just watching your face as you read that document. They’re quite humorous to me.” Luna explained through the remains of chuckling to herself. “But, you do look like you’ve dissolved that negative attitude you had.”
“Well…” I felt my face squirm around a bit as I looked over the new information before me regarding my family lineage. “I’m looking at my family tree now…”
“Really? How does it look?” Luna raised an eyebrow and hopped up onto her rear hooves to drape her forelegs over my shoulders to look at the screen with me.
“Surprisingly full… Apparently my sister had a couple kids, they all had a couple kids and their kids all had at least one kid…” I reported as I looked over the information, scrolling over everything as I speed read everything on the screen. “Seems like there’ve been eight politicians, twelve businessmen and women, four more spengineers like me that headed out in opposite directions from me…”
“Sounds like quite a pedigree for your family, doesn’t it?” Luna remarked as she remained hanging off my shoulder, the weight of her body supported by my exo-frame rather than by me. I still couldn’t move under her, however. “By our standards, you would be quite a valuable asset to the country, nearly worthy of nobility.”
“It’s funny you should mention that, actually…” I sighed as I zoomed in on a particular branch of the family tree. “It seems that one of my family members went to another planet and married into royalty.”
“So you are actually of noble birth?” Luna smirked and hopped down to circle around me and sit next to the desk to look across at me.
“Nah, there’s no nobility before me and it doesn’t count if it’s after me and married into it.” I shook my head back in reply and sat back, closing down the family information to go over some of the new blueprints. “But, on an unrelated note, I now have blueprints for something that will put us just within the time limit we have to build the colony ship. It’s new technology that I didn’t have when I launched, so I don’t really understand how most of it works, just how to build it.”
“Then, what are we waiting for? We should get a move on and build the thing!” Luna launched to her hooves and stood, racing for the door before returning with my helmet to drop it over my head and pull me from the seat by her teeth. Stumbling along behind her, I first worked at attaching my helmet before escaping the grasp of the pony princess and stepped back, out of reach of her teeth. “Come on, we’ve not much time!”
“Or power.” I declared, standing firmly in place. “The machine requires insane amounts of power and only needs more the larger we build the structure.”
“So, all we need to do is generate more power!” Luna declared with a hoof stamp and continue towards the airlock, stepping in to wait for me to join her.
“Which requires more materials than we have right now!” I shouted back and remained planted where I was. “As it is, we don’t have any way to mine out resources and we’re severely lacking in what we do have! Best I can do is build the mining laser as a stationary object!”
“Then we’ll do that! Or have you forgotten that there are a dozen ponies currently trapped in the mine that exists just beyond your stone walls?” Luna scowled at me and advanced on me, staring me down angrily.
“No, I haven’t forgotten about that! But remember how we said we couldn’t dig them out from the side or risk injuring ponies? We have to mine down from above quickly enough and without disturbing the mountain any further, in order to prevent another cave in!” I glared back through my helmet even if the princess of the night couldn’t see it.
“So what, are you saying that we have no hope at saving them?” Luna was verging on lividity now, her eyes looking like they were threatening to change shape from the raw emotion.
“I’m saying, right now we have no hope of leaving the planet!” I announced and the air froze between us instantly with those words. Luna gasped silently at me at the revelation and slowly back-pedaled out of the room and through the airlock.
I sighed and turned to the couches. Pulling my helmet off again, I shoulder rolled onto the cushions and sprawled out on my back to stare up at the ceiling. Draping my arm over my eyes, I gave a second, half-hearted sigh in defeat and began trying to form any kind of plan for possibly accumulating enough resources to build the aircraft I needed to not only save the trapped ponies but also get myself off planet in only a couple months.
~~~
“So, what’d he say? Did is antenna thing work? Has he got a plan?” Twilight inquired hopefully as she trotted into Luna’s home after the sullen princess. She was concerned about the princesses state of emotional health at the moment, the slow walk home and the lack of speaking wasn’t very enlightening or hope inducing in the slightest.
“Twilight, it would seem that this cave in has…” Luna began as she dropped to her side on a dark blue couch embroidered with subtle colourings of the night skies, done in slightly lighter and darker blues, purples and reds.
The rest of her “Vacation home”, as Luna had come to call it, was done in the night’s colours throughout the rest of the building which stood on par with that of the ponies’ homes around it. Most of the floors were black marble where acceptable and dark hardwood where not. The walls were done as the room changed, but they all still followed the same theme of a night sky of some kind: whether that sky was depicting a dawn, dusk or midnight.
“Has what? Is everything alright? I know the cave in has affected the ponies heavily, especially the ones who’ve still got family trapped, but I didn’t think that the suit would care that much about us after only being here a couple months.” Twilight crawled up onto a chair across from the blue princess and watched her stare off into the cushions and ends of that which she laid on.
“It’s not that, it’s that he seems to have given up on us.” Luna announced with a heavy sigh. Twilight raised both eyebrows at the announcement and sat up straight. “He seems sure that this cave in has doomed us all to death, says we now have no way of getting at the important ores to build anything that could save us.”
“I don’t believe that, he wouldn’t just give up on us that easily! He didn’t give up on me, he didn’t leave Pinkie crippled, I don’t believe he’d say that!” Twilight declared earnestly, looking confused at this information of having their fates sealed. “There’s got to be something he or we could do! Some kind of machine or advanced technology we could build to fix this!”
“No! There’s nothing!” Luna suddenly and unintentionally roared, startling both princesses in the living room. “Twilight Sparkle, I’m sorry for shouting like that, it’s just… The suit is so sure that we’re done for that I can’t help but think the same.”
“Then we just have to explore other options. If he can’t or won’t help us, then we just rely on what we know best to fix things.” Twilight replied calmly and sure of herself. Luna raised her head from her hooves to look at the young alicorn in confusion. “Magic!”
“I don’t know if we have any kind of spell or enchantment to possibly help us here, Twilight. Even my sister and I have tried that option and have both come up short.” Luna sighed again and placed her head back on her hooves in defeat. “Best idea I could come up with is banish the entire planet’s population to the moon, but only the princesses would actually survive up there.”
“So you’re just giving up?” Twilight looked at Luna with confused concern, figuring that how a princess at her age and level of experience had managed to get this far by giving up so easily. “The instant you give up, think about what kept you going till now.”
“What?” Luna raised her head again to arch an eyebrow at the purple princess.
“The instant you give up,” Twilight repeated herself. “Think about what drove you to this point.”
“The preservation of our ponies, I know. There’s just nothing we can do about that now, we don’t have the resources.” Luna groaned in disappointment and rolled onto her side, facing the back of the couch and notably away from Twilight.
“Well, I’m not going to give up just yet. There has to be something we can do and I’m going to find it.” Twilight announced firmly and stood from the chair with eagerness in her soul. “When I find out what that thing is, then i’ll come back to you and the suit to talk about it. Till then,” Twilight turned from the living room and entered into the hallway and aimed for the front door. “I’ll be at my castle with Sunset.”
Later that night, once everypony had gone to bed and Luna had sulked herself to sleep, the suit got himself dressed and shifted through the airlock with conviction. The time for being selfish had come to an end and he had shit to do.
Approaching the Wyvern parked nearby, he began to load up the cargo pods with everything he’d ground down from inside and stored in his pack with aims of using the sparse furnishings and creature comforts of his home to try and build something to save the ponies. Once unloaded, he popped into the cockpit and turned on just enough systems to let his tanks fill with oxygen and hydrogen before shutting everything down again.
Crawling out of the ship, he returned to his abode and began tearing down the airlock from within; the escaping air from within mixing with the air from outside and preventing him from being able to remove his suit now.
In the same time that it took him to build the shelter, it took the suit only a couple hours to tear everything down again and load it up into the Wyvern’s cargo; leaving a hole in the mountain that lead to the bare processing capabilities he’d left behind. Somehow, the hole that he’d been living in had been dug out that if he was careful, he could install a connector into the floor and park the Wyvern in the hole to charge from the main system.
Putting that aside for now, the pilot hauled himself up into the cockpit of the ship again and buckled himself down for a trip mostly straight up. Flying through the startup sequence as quickly as he safely could, he gave the engines just barely enough time to heat up before taking off and putting the throttle to full rise in order to shoot straight up as quickly as he could in order to prevent his ship from waking anyone at one in the morning.
He had shit to do, but it wasn’t down there at the face of the mountain.