//------------------------------// // Chapter 102 // Story: Voyage of the Equinox // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Refuse to give the order. “You know I wouldn’t do that,” Twilight said. “If you’re willing to go through the process, or maybe to use the contingency device, then that’s your choice to make. I won’t force you to… subject yourself to that. I would suggest that you should spend more of your time near medical, if you want to be alive when we arrive at… wherever we’re going.” She raised a wing, interrupting whatever Sunset was about to say. “I’m calling a general meeting of the crew. I want you to explain to them everything you told me. If you’re not going to guarantee your survival, then we need to know anything that might help us complete this mission.” Sunset nodded weakly. Twilight couldn’t read her expression—whether she was pleased about not being forced, or just annoyed with Twilight’s lack of certainly assertiveness. “Can we do it in medical?” They did it in medical. With gravity returned, they actually took the gather a few chairs, though Twilight didn’t bother with a table or a projector. With Sunset’s ship destroyed, ultimately everything they learned today was going to be from her anyway. Sunset herself wasn’t hooked into life support anymore, though she still rested on one of the medical costs and had bandages wrapped tightly around her head. Her eyes still seemed strange, and only her entirely mechanical limbs moved smoothly. At least she didn’t smell necrotic anymore. Twilight began the meeting with some brief introductions. “You all knew we’ve been caring for Sunset for many months now. She woke while you were out of communication, and that was when I learned… well, what she’s going to tell you. But before she does, I want to stop a few things right away. We’re going to have to decide how much we want to believe her. The escape pod’s databank was completely destroyed, as you already know. We either trust her, or we don’t.” “You should trust her,” Apple Bloom said. It might be the first time she had ever interrupted Twilight, at least the only one in recent memory. “She’s tellin’ the truth, I know she is. If this is about what I think it is.” “I hear you, uh… know about home, is that true?” Rarity asked. “Something happened, to Equestria.” All eyes turned on Sunset. Finally, she nodded. “There are… lots of names for how it started. Space rot was a popular one, not because space caused it as everyone who got it was in… yeah, okay. Summary. Ponies on the Outer Rim started getting sick. Those Ort Cloud bases and mines and telescopes, that was where it was worst. Old professors, little foals that had been brought out there. Usual suspects would get sick, and no treatment would make them better.” “Heisenberg Grounding,” Node said, from her corner of the room. She sat far from everypony else, with wings folded and face grumpy. Her past of helpful passivity, or just simple observation, both were long gone. “That’s what it’s called.” “Okay…” Sunset repeated. “Whatever you call it, it started to spread towards the center of the system. The further it got, the darker it was far away. Even young, healthy ponies would get sick and die if they tried to fly into it too deep.” “What was it?” Rainbow asked. “Like a fog, or a cloud, or—” “No,” Sunset said. “Nothing you can see. The only way we ever invented to monitor its effects was with certain species of delicate flower that die before ponies. But you’re distracting me. “Ponies were panicking, as you can imagine. Nopony knew what would happen when it got to Equestria. Would the shield hold? Even if it did, what about everypony on the surface of Equus? What about the Martian colony, or the mercury forge? We tried… everything we could think of. Shields, friendship beams, magnetic bottles, gravitational disruption. Nothing even slowed its effects.” “Nothing does,” Node whispered. “Space is hungry. Now it feasts.” Again Sunset tensed, though none of the others interrupted her. Node seemed so strange after getting her memories back, that even trying to press her felt vain. “Eventually we realized we had to evacuate,” Sunset said. “No, turning every factory and forge and craftspony towards building evacuation ships, we could never bring everypony. Many would die. Did die, given the year. My ship was already finish by then—we were supposed to follow yours, originally. “But you weren’t responding to messages, so we didn’t know if you were alive. We didn’t know that Proximus was safer. But we knew it was further. It should buy us some time if we could reach it. Obviously it has, since none of us have died or…” she looked away, expression dark. “Well, worse things. It usually makes you insane while it kills you.” I’ve seen some of that in my own crew, Twilight realized. Maybe even in herself, at times. We’re running out of time. “So you’re saying we tried to evacuate the whole planet,” Applejack said, raising an eyebrow. “Forgive me if that sounds far-fetched, but… we wouldn’t save basically anypony if we put ‘em on a ship like this.” “The plan was to put almost everypony in long-term storage,” Sunset countered. “The ship itself would have a much smaller crew. But it was still under construction when we left. What we did bring was a device, magically entangled with a twin that would be on the new ship. I could activate it to take a measurement exactly once, and learn where the ship had gone.” She levitated the device of a nearby tray—its circuits were inert now, its lights all dull. But it was a small miracle it had ever worked at all. “We’re going to the point this machine indicated, your captain can confirm it. I believe that some ship from Equestria must be waiting here. It will know I activated the receiver, since its entangled pair is also destroyed. I believe that is why it’s waking up.” “Okay…” Rarity said. “Suppose we accept all that. Somehow Equestria managed to construct a… escape ship, or a vast swarm of escape ships. Accelerating the Equinox out here was difficult enough. I imagine it must’ve been far harder to get the evacuation ship here. What do we do if we find them? This… Heisenberg Grounding, will be approaching us too, yes? We have to… what, keep going? Fleeing forever?” “Not me,” Node said flatly. “Not Spike, not Apple Bloom. Machines are immune. I do not know why, so don’t ask. I realize the complexity of an advanced starship begins to approach that of simple life. Yet the starship flies onward, and the flower withers. I cannot explain this. But in the space that is dark, His machines will find yours, and unmake them. A starship would certainly be found in time.” “I don’t think we had a plan,” Apple Bloom said. “Everypony was just hoping the Signalers would save us.” She turned towards Node. “Are you going to save us?” Node laughed, her voice bitter in the confined space. “We did. The salvation we left for you was the contingency. We gave you what we used ourselves.” “In there?” Rainbow glanced down at her hooves. The others who had been trapped there all looked similarly introspective in their own ways. Pinkie paced, Rarity sighed wistfully. But Rainbow was the first to speak with confidence. “Yeah, I don’t know if Equestria wants to play pretend. I think we’ll be… fast. It has to catch us first, right? If I can break the rainbow barrier, we can get away from some dumb space-disease.” “It’s too early to make a decision,” Twilight said. “We’ll need to see the state of the evacuation ship, if there really is one. We’ll need to see what resources we have. I’m going to be giving out work assignments for the next month. We’ll pause to review when the probe we sent reaches its destination and can give us better information.” 1. Everypony focus on repairing the structure of the Equinox. I don’t know what’s waiting for us at Proximus C, but it’s probably a fight. [chance of Rarity’s special defense project: 25%] 2. Everypony do whatever you think will help us be best prepared. I know you all have goals of your own. I should let you finish them. We can do more important things after the first month. a [chance of Rarity’s special defense project: 50%] 3. Everypony focus on the weapons. We need something to defend ourselves, even if we don’t have the spare parts to get things at 100%. 4. Destroy the Contingency. We win this alive.