Towards the Prospector (60%)
Twilight Sparkle watched the display in front of her with modest disappointment. Somehow, she expected a thrilling chase through an alien star system to be a little more like the movies she’d enjoyed as a child. Where were the clever angles of ships zooming past each other, of entire battles resolved in the course of minutes?
Instead, she watched the Prospector’s tractor tick slowly away closer, so slowly that she almost couldn’t register it.
“You should know, captain, we’re burnin’ fuel like it’s goin’ outa style. Not just burnin’, neither. We’re accelerating to catch up with ‘em. That’s kinda like walkin’ backwards from where we’re goin’. I’ve counted things out—we should have enough to stop somewhere when it’s over. But… that’s where we’ll stop. Between this chase and the leaks, that’s our tank.
Twilight stared at the display a moment longer, watching the three digits of the Prospector get another tick closer. “How long until we catch them?” Of course, those weren’t the only marks on the tactical scanner. There was a third ship, traveling directly towards them. It had adjusted course the instant they had, so fast Twilight wasn’t sure if there had even been enough time for the light to travel that far.
“Sixteen days,” Applejack answered. “Full burn all the way. Wouldn’t take half as long, except they’ve seen us, and they’re running. They can track us too. We weren’t ever supposed to be running away.”
“And when we catch them…”
“We’ll be moving about twelve percent faster than they are,” Applejack said. “That ain’t a small amount, Twi. If we had anypony who wasn’t you on board, I wouldn’t even try it.”
“What difference do I make?” Twilight asked. “If I was any good as a captain, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
Applejack stomped one hoof on the deck-plating between them. “Says the pony who stopped takin’ her drugs so she could give them to the daughter of some nutty prospector who worked way harder than she should’ve.” Applejack removed a clipboard of erasable paper from her saddlebags, settling it on top of the computer.
It was a force calculation, with masses and speeds scrawled in Applejack’s dense printing. It was a spell. “You want me to cast… this?” Twilight skimmed the rest of it. Applejack wasn’t joking—there were maybe three unicorns in the whole world who could manage this spell. “The Starswirl construct might be able to cast this. But he’s still teaching in the academy—”
“You can do it, captain,” Applejack said. “I know it looks scary, but there’s less variables there than it looks. I’m gonna cut the Prospector’s engines. It won’t be able to tug free. And while you’re grabbin’, I’ll be out there with a few boarding hooks to make sure she stays where she belongs.”
Twilight slumped into the captain’s chair, eyes rolling back into her head at the difficulty of the spell. The energy requirements came down to the difference in their speeds—a hundred thousand newtons of energy minimum that she had to find a way to dissipate.
“Applejack,” Twilight spoke slowly, trying not to sound patronizing. “If I buck this spell up by a single percentage point… I’ll shear the Equinox in half.”
“You won’t,” Applejack insisted. “We can do it, Twi. You can do it. We owe it to Equestria, don’t we?”
The screen under her tablet flashed bright red for a second, and a mechanical voice sounded. Starlight Glimmer’s voice, since she’d been the one to write the Equinox’s operating system. “Ship ERROR has entered visual range. Transmission detected.”
Applejack fell silent, retreating to the weapons console across the room. There was nothing there anymore, beyond the flack cannons meant for shooting down incoming obstructions.
That was what the Signaler (not the best name, but since they hadn’t identified themselves yet) ship read on their tactical scanner, about three hundred kilometers and still closing.
“I’m focusing the eye…” Twilight muttered. The window in front of them contorted, shifting until the patch of space it showed was no longer empty. It wasn’t a screen, not like the ones their computers used. Getting a look at a few flashing red characters wouldn’t give them any tactical information worth knowing.
According to the tiny scale at the bottom of the image, the ship was about the size of the Prospector, though much thinner, like an elongated torpedo. There were no enclosed sections—she could see straight through it in a few places, where spindly protrusions like antennas emerged.
“Give me a weapons scan,” Twilight called.
“Already did. Not reading any hotspots, or the signatures from any weapons we’ve got. But Twilight, you know—”
“I know,” Twilight muttered. “It’s an alien ship. It might be a warship and we’d have no way of knowing.”
“Yeah, but not that. I’m not getting any thermals out of this thing… but it’s decelerating right now. Where’s the heat from its thrusters?”
“We’re getting another signal,” Twilight cut in, darting across the room towards coms. She could listen to it anywhere, but the oscilloscopes and other readouts were nowhere else. She flipped it onto the Equinox’s speakers.
It sounded like a series of clicks, with varying distances between them. But not the Signal she was used to. This meant something else. And her linguist—the only pony with a prayer of understand them—was still asleep.
“Looks like that’s it… no, wait. It’s repeating. Same message, but it’s a full megawatt more intense. Buck, it’s whiting out the receiver.”
They’d missed the chance of running from this ship, or… probe, whatever it was. Now she had to do something.
1. Send back the original signal. We’ve got a perfect recording, might as well give them something they understand. Let them know we’re the ponies they called.
2. Send their exact transmission. Nothing’s a quicker shortcut to prove we’re intelligent. We can figure out what it means later.
3. Try to translate the transmission anyway and respond. (high chance of failure) I know this isn’t my area, but there’s got to be some way…
4. Applejack suggests waiting for the probe to get close, then a full spray from the anti-collision systems. The cannons should shred it before it blinks.
(Certainty 150 required)