Excavate, find whatever else might be buried here. 53%
Twilight stood at the edge of the chasm, staring down at oblivion. Her own hooves were stained, her body was weak and there were multiple small wounds on her body, all from the excavation.
The prospector was a mining ship, and so it contained several large diggers. Twilight didn’t know how to operate them, but Pinkie did, and so it fell to her and Fluttershy to go through what she turned up. And whenever radar indicated there might be something ahead, the digger had to come out, and they had to go in and excavate manually.
At first it had just been bits of scrap metal, like the first one they’d found. Most of it was stainless steel, though there were chunks of corroded aluminum and silicon half rotten away.
At a depth of perhaps eight meters, they’d found the largest chunk so far—and the only chunk ground-sonar suggested they were likely to find. Twilight knew the shape the instant she saw its suggestion on the radar array, and she’d been in a daze ever since.
Buried in the mud on Proximus B was an escape pod, fully intact, with its parachute door open and the inflatable landing pods rotted away. The shiny metal shell was pot marked with burns and dents, but held completely intact. The little window had, unfortunately, been part of the pod scorched by its fall, and so they couldn’t look inside.
The other ponies in her crew gathered around her like the mourners at a funeral. But we’re not putting a pony into the ground at the end of their long life—we’re taking them out again.
Even Applejack had made it out for this, though she was still in her wheelchair. During the week of their excavation, she’d recovered quite a bit, though Fluttershy insisted she remained in the wheelchair and didn’t do anything approaching real work.
“I guess this is when I should say something,” Twilight said. “I wish I had something inspirational, about how everypony in the space program knows what risks we take, and we put our lives at risk for the pursuit of science. We imagine a future for ourselves where ponies one day span the galaxy, with foals growing up on a thousand worlds all looking back towards the star of home with admiration.”
“You just said that,” Pinkie muttered.
Twilight glared. “The truth is, I don’t know how this could be here. Some of you may be familiar with the Wait Problem—the idea that it may be better to wait to send an expedition for future space technology to catch up with an earlier expedition. There is one problem with this theory—I have had Spike searching the radio records for any mention of another expedition. The name ‘Solstice’ does not appear in any transmission.”
“Except that our records got scrambled,” Applejack pointed out. “There are holes all over the computer. And nothin’ at all after we got into the Proximus system.”
“Right.” Twilight didn’t correct her, or even give her an angry look. She was right, obviously. It was possible a future ship had been hiding in one of the holes.
“What’s inside those pods, anyway?” Fluttershy asked. “It’s so big… like a whole ship.”
“It don’t look big when you’re inside,” Applejack answered. “It’s only about three meters by two of interior space. The rest is thrusters, and the nuclear battery for the caskets. They ain’t no hardware in there to wake up whoever’s inside—if it’s anything like ours, they’re made to be recovered by a future expedition. But… All of you, I ought to say. The corrosion on the metal here, it’s… it ain’t adding up.”
“How?” Twilight asked, taking a step away from the hole. Anything to delaying opening it a little longer. “It looks intact to me.”
“I mean it took forty years for us to get here,” Applejack said. “Give or take a few bits of change. The corrosion of the aluminum scrap Pinkie brought back suggests it was underground at least two centuries. That just don’t add up. Probably it means there are hostile elements on this planet—something in the soil, maybe. Or something in the water. Some material that eats through our hardware faster than it should. The smartest thing to do with these pods would’ve been to leave them in space. Whoever landed it here…” she shook her head. “I ain’t optimistic.”
“That’s not the only problem,” Pinkie whispered from Twilight’s other side. “How did it get buried so deep in so little time?”
“Only one way to find out,” Fluttershy said. “Like you said, we can’t wake them here anyway. We’ll have to bring them back to the Equinox.”
They all turned to her. Twilight nodded, then teleported down into the darkness. There were work lights set up around the pod, which was a craft perhaps eight meters by four. It had landed right-side up, and so they’d dug a nice big hole right up to the entrance. The bolts were already off, the locks already cut. All Twilight had to do was lift the crowbar in her magic, and push.
The door opened with a hiss of stale air. Old rubber peeled away from around it, crumbling to dust. A layer of water had formed in the interior of the pod, filled with dirt and debris. Many of the internal mechanisms had rotted or decayed in one way or another, though there was an occasional spark.
At one time, all six of the pods had been active. Twilight didn’t have to see the bones to know that only one—the one that had been at the height of the slope, and stayed dry—was still active.
“Six occupants!” Twilight called up, to where her friends waited. “Five casualties.”
She braved a few steps into the old pod, clambering over a fallen wall plate and some loose wire, up to where she could inspect the single working pod.
“89% functional entropy detected.
Service immediately.Occupant:
CPT SUNSET SHIMMER”
Twilight clambered out of the ship, taking her first breaths of fresh air, then looked up and called her orders.
1. “Applejack, your work restrictions are lifted! Keeping this pony alive is our new first priority!”
2. “Fluttershy, get to the Equinox and bring Spike down her immediately. We need his help to repair this pod. The Equinox will be fine without us for a bit.”
3. “I’m sealing this back up for the time being. We have to investigate the nearby structure. These ponies landed here for a reason. Maybe they expected a rescue.”
4. Fluttershy suggests a trick to wake the occupant immediately, using some makeshift supplies and every drop of Geneseed they’ve grown so far. [dangerous]
(Certainty 200 required)