Six hours before death.
A large group of ponies, plus a griffon suddenly showed up in a cold dark room. It took them awhile to adjust their eyesight, and then they all grouped together in front of each other.
Rainbow stepped forward, “Everyone, welcome to the autonomous scout ship Equis I. Let's see I am going to upload Celestia to the control center, and then we are going to just pull this rust bucket back home.”
“Question?” Twilight flickered her own ears, “Actually I have multiple questions ”
“Granted,” Rainbow stared at Twilight who starred back in return. “Sorry Twilight I will answer any questions you want unless they aren’t classified.”
“Classified, do you really need to keep secrets of the long-dead space-faring civilization?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes, “Well, first of all, it's not dead, If I have to guess there are probably multiple space colonies out there somewhere. So yeah I am protecting the national secrets of my own nation.”
Alright fine! If this was an automated scout ship then why do you need to upload, I can't believe I am saying this, the mind of my former teacher to the ship.”
“She is kind of is and kind of isn't your teacher, she literally now exists as a temporal copy of Princess Celestia,” Rainbow shrugged it off. “Nevermind that, we need her because It's going to be a hay a lot harder to reset systems manually, and then fly it, like I said manually Just trust me you don't want to fly this ship manually.”
“I don’t want to interrupt your nerdgasm, but I think I just leave you two lovebirds alone!”Gilda was frankly getting annoyed, and she wasn’t really interested in participating in listening to them talking.
“That's fine,” said Rainbow Dash. “Just make sure not to get lost on this ship.”
Gilda sighed,” Yeah, yeah, what could possibly go wrong, I mean...”
Rainbow's eyes widened at that, “Gilda, what's the actual buck, you are never supposed to say that! Now, I definitely positive that something will go wrong.”
Gilda was clueless, “What? What did I say?”
Rainbow Dash groaned and then mimicked in her own raspy voice,”What could possibly go wrong? It's like you are deliberately trying to make it worse.”
“Sheesh, someone is grumpy today. Alright fine, I promise that I am not going to end up dead or something. I don't know, this rust bucket is probably going to fall apart simply because it's old.”
Rainbow’s eyes followed Gilda when she crossed the room, and then she sighed. Rainbow trotted next to the control panel, she then took her medallion and then inserted right into the slot. A few seconds later a small beep sounded off to signal that it was safe to remove it.
Rainbow flipped a few switches and then a synthetic robotic voice could have been heard in the system.
“I feel like somepony reassembled my own mind and then put it back together. Everything is on the ship is falling apart.”
“Rainbow, are you sure that we can't just grab the data we need and then just do this mass teleport again.”
Rainbow shook her head, ”unfortunately no, as funny as it possibly sounds, when ponies first build that thing, they never took into account that it's going to be serviced by the live crew. It was supposed to go out there, continuously mapping star maps for other ships to follow, some of them are crewed, some of them fully automated. To make it clearer this ship doesn't have necessary energy reserves for the crew to mass teleport that wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place.”
Twilight was slightly confused by that, “So what if it actually needs repairs, what’s then?”
“Its very simple the ship calls in the repaired shuttle on a secure frequency, its jumps in, perform the necessary repairs and then jumps out.”
“You’ve mentioned fuel, how exactly it refuels?”
Rainbow Dash cringed. “It's not supposed to. I am not an engineer I just follow orders and shoot staff but from what I gather this ship has a very efficient prototype of the fusion reactor, and before you ask I don’t think there are any repair shuttles left.”
Meanwhile…
Fluttershy along with Big Mac as well as three little flies had been trotting in the corridors of the ship.
“Do you think that we should have been staying where the others are?” Applebloom and the others are have been trotting along with other files.
“Nuh, they don't need us, I am pretty sure that they can handle it without us on our own,” Sweetie Belle dismissed her concern.
“This is not what I asked, and you know it.”
“I know don't worry about it, we now have two adults constantly looking over us. Let’s go, I probably want to see something, as well as, to show I to all of you.”
“What exactly would that be?” The fillies continued trotting through the corridors.
“Well I was hoping to see what's outside, and that's means we are going to the bridge of this ship.” Sweetie Belle then glanced at Scootaloo, ”Scootaloo, you’ve been awfully quiet today.”
“Well I… I am kind of shocked that I am kind of living my own fantasy.”
“Hm, interesting!”
“Interesting...Wait, this thing has a bridge?“
Sweetie Belle stopped moving, which caused others to bump into her, “Well, of course, it has a bridge, Let me point it this way this ship is the first prototype, so it would only make sense that they reused already existing ship for the purpose.
Scootaloo was very confused now, “It does, wouldn't it make more sense to build an entirely new ship?”
“They would have been, but they never intended for a ship to return, so it would make sense for builders to use the ship that already exists.”
“Uh...okay, but my heads hurts already,” groaned Scootaloo.
"Alright fine," All of them just now entered on the bridge. "We are already here anyway. Let me see," Sweetie Belle looked around. "Aha, a starship with old reactive glass shield design, with a clear view of outside world, perfect!" Sweetie Belle stopped for a second, something in her own logical mind had been very confusing to her.
"Um, what is it?" Both Applebloom and Scootalooo looked at each other and then directly at Sweetie Belle.
Sweetie Belle simply gestured at something invisible beyond the glass shield "Look outside and tell me what you see."
Applebloom and Scootaloo once again looked at the outer space "Um, we see... uhh, I think its a disk of a dark cloud with two beams shooting out of it. Is that supposed to be bad?"
“Not from that distance, no...”Sweetie Belle quickly reassured them, “However this is not what concerns me.”
“it isn't?”
“No,” Deadpanned Sweetie Belle, “We are in the stable orbit of a black hole, and according to the ships nav logs it's been here for quite some time.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Girls! If the ship designed to be an as autonomous as possible then why it been sitting stationary in orbit of an object for at least a few centuries?”
“I don’t know, maybe because it’s likes been there,” Scootaloo shrugged off.
“it’s not that simple, it's like,” Sweetie Belle paused for a second. “Imagine, you do have a single very specific purpose in life. You go around traveling everywhere mapping out the territory, you love doing it, you don't want to do anything else except that one thing. Then one day you decided that you don't want to do that, but instead, you decided to just hang out in one very specific place for quite awhile now.”
“Damn right I would have because this type of existence sounds boring.”
“Maybe so, but remember you are just a machine, the definition of fun just isn't programmed to you, and your unexplored world is just too large for you to quit. You don't need to sleep or eat, well most of the time that is. So why would you stay in one corner of the Galaxy for several hundred years.”
“I...I don’t know, maybe I just wanted to be here.”
Sweetie Belle nodded, “Close enough but not quite. It's extremely bizarre but it's almost like...honestly.” She turned around, “I wish I have more information to work with, hm...”
Fluttershy looked at Big Mac “Um, should we get worried.”
“Uhh... Nope, probably no.”
Meanwhile…
“Boo!” Pinkie Pie suddenly jumped out of nowhere and scared Gilda, who in return jumped on the ceiling.
“Gaaaah! You… you… I think I almost...” Gilda had been huffing and puffing, after a few more minutes she managed to calm herself down, “Don’t do that!”
“That was for being a mean many pants, and this…” Pinkie Pie hugged Gilda, ”...and this is for being a good friend to Dashie.”
“Well, first of all, I don’t wear pants, none of us are, and second of all that idiot doesn't deserve my friendship.”
“I know for the first one, and the second one,... Well, if you really think that way, then this is a real bummer!”
Gilda looked at her with surprise, “What are you talking about?”
“Well…You probably don’t have any idea what I am talking about but Fancy Pants doesn't wear any pants and I think by now Rainbow Dash saved our friendship.”
Gilda scoffed, “An insane mass murderer a savior of friendship, yeah right.
Pinkie punched her softly, "But of course, I mean she saved our friendships, and well you are still her friend, are you not?"
"Well yes, I guess she is...", Suddenly a dark shadow moved, as well as a sudden clunking noise could have been heard somewhere. Gilda stopped moving because she thought she heard something, however, Pinkie Pie still continued hopping. "hold on just a second, did you heard that?"
Pinkie Pie finally stopped, her ears twitched carefully listening to her environment, she then turned her full attention to Gilda. "Nope, sorry I can't hear anything."
Gilda only shook her head, "Alright, just please pay attention next time, I think this dark atmosphere is finally getting to me."
They continued walking pass the corridors like nothing happened. At the same time, when they walked away the shadow continued to follow them from behind.
Meanwhile...
"Is everything alright dear?"
Twilight and Rainbow looked at Rarity and Applejack, then looked at each other, Rainbow just shrugged off.
"It's nothing we were just thought that you two went away somewhere, but I guess you are still here, huh. Well, to answer your question we were so caught up in pre-jump preparations, we kind of forgot you two even here." Rainbow shook her head. "Anyway, I don't really like any of this, it's too damn quiet. Ever since Gilda blubbed it out, I just couldn't get out of my head. So yeah sorry about forgetting you guys, kind of busy over here..."
"What exactly are you trying to do, how did you put it? Teleport the whole ship back home," Applejack had been listening and Rarity had been talking.
"In a way. Actually, the jumping procedures are already finished, I just need to completely scan the whole ship. It just takes too damn long."
"Well, okay then, I just hope it's not going to be something really dreadful, is it? This place will lose any tourist value if it gets any more dangerous."
Twilight sighed, hopefully not... I mean Rainbow Dash doesn't really believe in all of that paranoia. It just I guess we can't take any chances if we are going to bring this ship home, and well, we..."
"You have to make sure that it safe I get it."
Twilight shook her head, "Rarity it's not that simple, we choose to come here, and we kind of stuck here."
Rainbow Dash just shrugged off, "Meh, we don't need to be so pessimistic, we have a ship and we can travel in all three dimensions."
"Right!" Twilight agreed with Rainbow "We would be free to travel everywhere, and not only that I would receive an opportunity to learn."
Rainbow Dash blinked "Are you really sure about that? I mean I never really wanted any of this to ever happen. I..."
Twilight stopped Rainbow talking, by placing her hoof on to her muzzle "No don't say anything, you are our friend, and that's what matters."
“But I...” Rainbow saw something in Twilight eyes that she never saw before, she saw tears streaming from Twilight’s eyes.
“Rainbow please don't say anything, you’ve done enough damage. I know that you, what you did was Discord’s fault. I know it's not your fault, but...” Twilight looked away.
“But?”
Twilight blinked, “But I just can't forgive you just yet”
Rainbow swallowed, all of it that just happened in the past several weeks have been very hurtful to all of them, especially to Twilight. She was about to say something, however, Twilight started to speak first.
“I… I just wish I could forget about what I saw. I saw our future in ruins mixed with ashes. I wish I could forget about my fate as an abomination in the wasteland, but I can't. That would be grossly incompetent and irresponsible.”
Initiating a mandatory thirty seconds alarm sequence in the next sixty seconds.
"Twilight, please excuse me for a second it looks like the scan is almost complete, and I almost sure of it you are probably repeating yourself."
To be Continued...