Work on their personal projects
Twilight had her own ideas about what the crew of the Equinox ought to be doing. But ultimately, the decision not to micromanage her ponies was a simple one. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t possibly know as much about their own disciplines as they did—though that was certainly part of it. Far more than that, she just didn’t have the energy to ride them all.
It was a long trip, enough time for much to be accomplished. Much more than last time, given they no longer had a stowaway gradually burning through resources and setting them up for several kinds of failure.
Twilight had no time for her own pursuits—there were a dozen little fires to put out, and she was usually the pony to do it. The Equispike still had dozens of broken systems that needed fixing, distributed damage from Cozy Glow’s explosives. True, the ship was still structurally sound. But every little bit of damage or broken system was a little of their beach washed out to sea.
When Twilight wasn’t fixing other ponies’ problems, she found what time she could to talk to Node. But where she had once been obtuse and reticent with everything she said, now the “pony” was frighteningly direct, uncaring, almost cruel.
Twilight had no idea whether she should believe anything that Node told her. But she spoke in Starlight Glimmer’s voice, with such absolute certainty that it was hard not to believe what she said.
She spoke of a race as ancient as time itself, a race so well-traveled that the location of their original homeworld was lost to time. They had an infinity of different branches, spreading away through the universe from the location where Hunger had first appeared.
Once they had been young and clever, inventing incredible things that their ancestors never would’ve believed. But with every new failure, their hope faded.
“And all these creatures… where are they now?” Twilight asked.
“The Flotilla,” Node said. “Our ancient ancestors are, anyway. An intergalactic fleet… of a size and scale your mind cannot comprehend. My people, and your creators, left from that fleet because they thought they could succeed where others had failed.”
“You say things like that,” Twilight said, pacing around the workshop. This was where Spike had worked to build Node, with the strange fabrication hardware that they’d been sent. All that machinery was still here, much enhanced by Node herself. “But I don’t think that’s true. What does it even mean to be too advanced for me to understand? Ponies are interstellar creatures too.”
“Okay,” Node looked up from her work. She was doing something with glass, overlaying thin layers together around a thin organic film. There looked to be a grid of wires printed onto the glass, little coper lines so fine she could barely see them.
“The Flotilla’s core is composed of a number of Shkadov thrusters, constructed using a hyperstable class of Red Dwarf star. They have sailed for billions of years, and will sail for trillions more. Starlifting engines draw necessary matter from within each star, supplying numberless trillions of individuals with what they need to continue functioning.”
“Shkadov thruster?”
Node rolled her eyes, looking back to her work. “We use the sum of the star’s own output to push that star. Perfectly balance a swarm of mirrors against photonic pressure, with an opening opposite where you want to go.”
Twilight tried to imagine that—whole stars turned into engines? Equestria had a nonzero amount of experience with manipulating large objects. Celestia and Luna did, anyway. Maybe they would fit in with this Flotilla better than Node suggested. “And why didn’t you go off to join them yourself?”
Node’s plastic ears fell limp. “Shame. We were… the boldest, cleverest, and loudest engineers. Proximus C was a laboratory outperforming your entire civilization every few minutes. When we left, we swore we already had a solution. Beyond that—none of us is the only instance of us. I’m a copy of a copy of a… I don’t know how many of me there are. The Flotilla doesn’t need me back. The one it has isn’t a failure.”
Twilight settled one wing on her shoulder. “The Flotilla is lucky to have you, but so are we. I’m glad for what you do for my crew.” She left Node to her own devices after that—though from the number of fabricators going around her, she suspected that Spike had just as much of a hoof in whatever was going on there.
Node achieves 80% progress on her unknown project during the first half of the voyage.
Twilight checked in on each of her crewmen whenever she could. The others didn’t have the secrets of the universe to share with her, but they still needed to know that their work was appreciated, and they had her listening ear if they needed it.
Rarity makes 60% progress.
Applejack makes 70% progress on repairs.
Rainbow makes 80% progress with weapon modifications.
Apple Bloom and Sunset make 80% progress on an unknown project.
She spent more time providing moral support for Rarity than for any other pony, who seemed to be struggling with her theoretical defense system.
“I don’t understand why this is giving me so much trouble!” she exclaimed, slamming another broken thaumic crystal into the disposal chute. Servos hummed, and the scrap slid away down the tube.
It was the second crystal she’d burned out during their conversation.
“That’s what comes from pushing boundaries,” Twilight said wistfully. “Everything we do is outside the familiar.”
“Not that far outside,” Rarity muttered. “Shields are common. How hard can it be to get one to trigger on command?”
Impossible, so far. Canterlot station had shields, and ultimately at the center of that infrastructure was a crew of dozens of unicorns. Only one was required, but many times more than that were always there, their powers amplified. But never missing.
“Maybe you’re going about it the wrong way,” Twilight muttered. “Maybe instead of trying to surpass Canterlot, we should just try to equal them. We have three ponies who can manage that spell.”
Rarity grumbled, then shook her head. “We don’t have the power. Only the engines are rated for that kind of output. Retrofitting somewhere else to take that much from the reactor just isn’t something we can manage with our crew. But with Node’s new computers, we would only need the shield for microseconds. Just long enough to intercept a projectile, or disassociate a magical attack. You’re smart, Twilight, but your brain just isn’t that fast.”
She pointed to one corner of the workshop, where the ship fabricator had printed the rest of her shield. Massive capacitors rang the outside, with a single conspicuous hole in the center. “Our existing computers are fast, but they aren’t smart enough to recognize danger when they see it. But Node has this new kind of AI… models you can teach, that get better and better the more they do something. That’s what runs this shield.”
“And your design is going to… trickle-charge these capacitors, using the existing wiring,” Twilight guessed. “And then turn on just when we’re getting shot at.”
“It does seem frighteningly likely,” Rarity said. “It’s the only disaster we haven’t faced yet.”
For an expert in fashion, you have low imagination for disasters.
But eventually their remote probe arrived, sending back its first grainy photos of Proximus C.
Everypony gathered to see what it would show, packed into the bridge where they had the biggest screens. Even still, the black and white surfaces did a pale job at communicating the incredible scale and majesty of the gas giant. Twilight had never seen images from so close to one.
“Captain,” Spike’s voice said, making her finally look up from the images. “We’re dealing with significant light lag to the probe. We have to send our command in the next minute, or it will default to its preprogrammed course.”
Twilight tried to remember exactly what the default might be—but that slipped her mind. It had been over a month now, and she had so much to remember… “What do you mean?”
Node made a convincing throat-clearing sound from beside Twilight. “The atmosphere is scattering our sensors. See there, that thing looks like metal. The probe thinks there might be a gigantic structure under there. Looks like…”
“The probe is 70% certain there is a larger structure underneath,” Spike said. “If we order now, it can adjust course and impact the planet close to the structure to get a good look. It will keep transmitting until right before the impact. Or we let it keep flying, and not show anypony who didn’t already know that we’re coming.”
“You aren’t going to hit them, are ‘ya?” Applejack asked. “I know our probes are real small, but so’s a bullet.”
“We can’t be positive,” Node said. “But we’ll try to be far enough away to get better information as we enter the atmosphere. The real fight is between the scattering of that gas and the transmitter antenna. The broadcast will be so high power and directed that the object will be able to guess our approach heading with certainty.”
1. Order the intercept [gain much more information, but reveal approach]
2. Flyby instead. [little more will be learned until the Equinox arrives]
3. Aim for the object intentionally. [W͝H̳͎̩̘͕̝͕A͠Ṭ̮͕͞ ̴͎̤̤̼̳͉̫I̸͍͉͉̘̟̤S̤͓ ̥̮̰̖̘͞O͝R͙͎D̡̹̗̣E̲͍̺̮͠R̩͓E̘̦̗̝̗̭D̙͈̩̻ ̻̰̻M̨U̩̱͇͖̩S͔̱̼̟T͎̻̪̬͕̀ B̘̲́ͅE̴̝̩̮̱C̖̠̥̘O̬ͅM̷͍̺͎̖Ḙ̹͓̮ ͕͢D̹̼̹̱͎͙I̟̮S̤̜͡O̳̺̥̰͉̭̭Ṛ̥̙͡ͅD͚̬̮̟̪̼ER̯͚͝]̞̼͖̖̱̯
(Certainty 200 required)