Begin preparations, but wait for safety confirmation 45%
“There’s no question in my mind.” Fluttershy finished. She sounded reluctant, as she had with every word during the presentation. “There is nothing in that land that looks dangerous to Equestrian life. There are no known poisons in the air, or water, or soil. The air has the right concentration of inert gasses and oxygen. And if you wanted anything else, look at the plants.” She flashed through a few more slides, showing the growth around the palace taken from several angles. The trees and grass might be a pleasant purple, but they were otherwise quite similar. There were flowers, apparently insects and small animals too.
Maybe that’s why you want to go down there so badly. Do a little taxonomy of some alien life. Catch yourself a cute pet? But if that was true, Twilight wouldn’t complain. Her chief medical officer had also been the pony more reluctant about her presence here, without any stated reasons beyond her friends. If this was what it took to get her passionate about their mission, that was fine with her.
“So that’s it,” Applejack said. “Somehow this planet looks like it’s been through a war, worse than anything that ever happened on Equestria or off it. Buildings so advanced we can’t even imagine how to build ‘em are destroyed, that kinda thing. But there’s this one little patch that nobody bombs. Frankly cap, if this ain’t a trap I don’t know what is. Looks like they were doin’ their best to make a place look like a patch of home, then… bait us down there. That stupid machine won’t shut up about how we’re supposed to go down.”
“To somewhere else,” Spike pointed out. “I spent an hour talking it through its coordinates with a map. It used the same system as our computer when we’re indexing a planet, and it didn’t send us to that place.”
“What about the rest of the planet?” Twilight asked, levitating over a few of the pictures and studying them for any hints. But she could see nothing—they just looked like flowers and plants to her. “Could this part be protected, somehow? Maybe there’s poison all around it.”
“That’s possible.” Fluttershy admitted. “That’s why I gave you that spot. It’s… right by the edge. I took the probe out, looked around. Not much is alive in those buildings, but I think that’s more about availability. They’re… dry. No moisture, maybe not in the whole atmosphere.”
“Which… tells us a few things,” Applejack continued. “Like, we ain’t gonna refuel from down there. Also, if we do go, we gotta bring our own water. Bit of a pain if we wanna raise up a big crop. Maybe that little patch has its own reservoir.”
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “I don’t know… about any of that. All I know is, the probe didn’t find anything different when it drove away. Doesn’t mean the whole planet is safe. I just know you aren’t going to die from breathing, and you could probably grow something in the ground. We’ll… have to run more tests on the microbiome for that, and the microscopes are too big for a probe.”
It was safe—as safe as they could guess at from orbit, anyway. We didn’t just find an alien race, we found aliens who live in conditions similar enough to us that we can walk on their planet. That was either a wonderful coincidence, or more reason to trust Cozy Glow. She wasn’t sure which one she liked more.
But before Twilight worked out what to do about their landing, if indeed they were going to make one, she wanted to take one last chance with Pinkie Pie.
Pinkie Pie’s mental and physical recovery: Critical Success!
Random Event: The Oppress of Peace
But she didn’t get the chance, because that was when an explosion shook the deck beneath her.
“Radiation alert. Danger! Critical exposure in eight minutes, fourteen seconds. Radiation alert.” Twilight jerked upright, scattering the wreckage of their little meeting in a cloud of magic. From barely awake, her mind had snapped instantly to alertness.
“Where is it coming from?” she called to Applejack. The pony was already at the nearest wall-console, her hooves scrolling rapidly through ship’s sensors. “And… that’s dosage for a pony. Spike, aren’t dragons… resistant to radiation?”
He nodded. “More like Immune.” Indeed, Spike seemed more afraid by the sound than the thought of something on their ship irradiating them.
What exploded? The answer was obvious, and she wasn’t surprised to hear— “Hull breach in the emergency reactor. The fission reactor.” Applejack’s ears were flat against the blare of the siren as she leaned over the screen, reading fast.
“I’m going for Pinkie Pie!” Fluttershy asked. “Radio me with what we’re doing.”
Sleep caskets are shielded, our friends are safe. Twilight ran through the facts in her head. Spike is immune, we’re not. Two hazmat suits in the engine room. How much more time would that give us?
Applejack continued. “Damnit! Looks bad, Twilight. Someone knew what they were doing. According to this, the reactor has been running for eight months now. Never knew, cuz’… horsefeathers, doesn’t matter now! From the sound of those alarms, we haven’t been venting the waste like we’re supposed to. Seems like Cozy wanted to light us up like Hearthswarming.”
“How long to fix it?”
“Radiation alert. Danger! Critical exposure in seven minutes, thirty seconds!”
“Longer than that!” Applejack yelled, furious. “But… there are a few things we could…”
1. Evacuate the crew into the Prospector, leaving Spike behind to repair the Equinox. Spike might not have half of Applejack’s engineering talent, but he’s got immunity to ionizing radiation and that’s more important in the short term. We can stay in touch over the radio and exchange instructions, assuming that doesn’t blow up too.
2. Load the emergency archive of the computer into the Prospector along with the cryosleep caskets, then abandon the Equinox for good. [Nonzero chance of radiation poisoning, but unlikely to be fatal as Spike can do most of the heavy lifting] The Equinox is going to explode, run for your lives! Our chances of building a replacement on our own with just a Prospector aren’t great, but we can cross that bridge when we’re not dead!
3. Instead of risking death on an alien planet for her whole crew, Twilight could return everypony but Pinkie Pie (who hasn’t been awake long enough to heal) to cryosleep, leave Spike behind to repair the ship, and take the Prospector with just the two of them down to Proximus B. We could use our time productively in that healthy patch of land, or maybe explore the ruins, or even deliver the probe. But there’s no reason everypony else has to be in any more danger then they already are.
4. With her superior engineering talents and tremendous physical abilities, Applejack can travel down into the reactor and vent it in time to prevent a lasting impact and save the Equinox. The process will take longer than a lethal dose, but not so long that the effects overpower her earth pony endurance. [Fatal to Applejack] It’s the right thing to do, Twi. I always knew it might come to this.
(Certainty 215 required)