Probe penetrates the atmosphere. 72%
Twilight gave her order, but it wasn’t as though that meant for an instant delivery of all the answer they wanted. They sent off their command, and then began another long period of silence while they all waited to know what would become of the probe.
No one got anything done, not even Spike. To the extent that Spike could get anything done anymore. Twilight knew better than to ask him. Twilight took the time she had to make a brief tour around the Equinox, catching up with what many of her crew had done. Even if she’d given them free reign, she wanted to get an impression of what resources they would have going forward.
She found Node had completely taken over Spike’s workshop. What the dragon had accomplished by ruthless trial and error, assembling from barely-related parts, Node had cleaned up and ordered into something incredible.
The computer fabrication ran quietly, spinning wire-thin circuits around a sphere like a knitter assembling a ball of yarn. Twilight leaned in, looking down at whatever it was creating. Gold and coper and aluminum went in, along with silicon, and only the sphere came out, along with lots and lots of metal scrap and waste acid.
Expensive hobby you have.
Less expensive was the metal skeletons Node had already covered with layers of some kind of dense silicon foam in a pink shade like some ponies under their coats.
Muscles connected one bone to another, muscles of a strange black fiber that another machine quietly spun from silicon, acid, and a carbon brick.
“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Spike’s voice asked, coming from one of the nearby speakers. “Node can be insufferable sometimes, but some of what she says is true. Getting her memories back didn’t make her worse at this, it made her much better. If Equestria had one creature like her…”
Twilight raised a wing. She wasn’t sure which of the cameras Spike might be using to watch, but clearly he saw, because he did stop. “Too late for the signalers to save us now, Spike. There might not even be an Equestria anymore. And if there is, it might be here.”
“If there is… we kinda did what we said we would,” Spike said. “In a way. We made first contact, and we might be bringing them back with us. Maybe Node is what saves Equestria.”
“No,” Twilight argued. “Node might help, but it would be us who saved anything. We got here on our own. We survived Proximus B, we survived Cozy Glow. Node barely even answered our questions.”
She stopped, leaning over the table at the strange metal skeleton. “What is this?”
“The Ancients,” Spike answered. “Or what they looked like when they had bodies. The Contingency contains a… simulated world, built for creatures like this. All that’s missing is the fleshy bits, and the brain. You see the first one growing near the wall there.”
“Why?”
There was no longer a way to watch Spike, and see what he might be thinking. She only had his words to go on. “Because Node wants her old body back. She has convinced me that it would be easiest to give me a body to control if I allowed for something less familiar in the short term. Once I had something, I could help build something more familiar. Though building a body like my old one would be… impossible.”
“So you’ll be alive again!” Twilight exclaimed, grinning.
“No,” Spike said flatly. “I would exist within the mainframe. Controlling the body would require proximity. I don’t want to be removed from the Equinox. There’s so much space in here. It isn’t the body I’m used to. But I can do more for everypony with the ship. I can react much faster than you can. I will remain where I am.”
Twilight didn’t argue. She took one last look at the body, with its strangely flat metal skull, and array of sensors and flexible cables. What Canterlot wouldn’t have given for a find like this, before they left.
Sometime the next day—not that long at all, really, Spike put out the all-call that their probe had reported back. “We won’t be getting another transmission,” Spike said. “I think you should meet in the bridge.”
They came—all except Sunset Shimmer, anyway. “I’ll listen from medical if that’s alright. Less walking.”
Twilight watched from the front of the bridge, watching as the probe charted its path straight down into the swirling fog. A distant metallic echo grew by slices, until the vastness of its scope became clear. She leaned down, checking the numbers just to be sure.
“That’s not just bigger than Canterlot Station. That thing is bigger than the moon.”
It stretched down and sideways into the planet’s atmosphere as far as the sensors could penetrate, borne upward by a glow of radiation from below. Active support, lighting the surrounding gas in a brilliant halo that turned the probe’s signal to static the closer it got.
“Not one thing,” Rarity corrected. “Captain, I see two objects. One is tethered to the other, but I believe the composition is distinct. I’m getting a thaumic signature, see here?”
Does Twilight know what it is? Yes.
Twilight followed her gesture to that part of the display. “That’s a city shield. Unless I’m wrong… Spike, do we have a match on… Canterlot Station?”
There was a brief pause, and the screen focused on the smaller object. It was only a radio outline, and compared to the incredible radiation that blasted out of the lower object, this one was a corpse.
“No match,” Spike said. “On the object as a whole. This section however…” a faint outline appeared around the tip of the object, maybe a tenth of its total area. “Could be a match. The thaumic signature is two orders of magnitude greater than the old Harmony reactor.”
“Well duh,” Rainbow muttered. “How the buck do they keep it fueled? While in-flight?”
Sunset’s voice came over the radio a moment later. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like what the crystal empire wanted to build. Guess they found another way here.”
It’s a pony shield spell, Twilight thought. We have a pony ship.
“One more thing,” Spike said. “The probe sent encrypted ident-pings as we approached. We have a response here—just from the smaller object. We have… ship status report. Hold on, I’m reconstructing it. Bleed from that fusion torch is making this harder than you can imagine.”
“I can imagine,” Node said. “Would you like my help?”
Spike didn’t answer for a few more moments. “There!”
GENERAL DISTRESS OF HMS CELESTIAL ENDURANCE! HOSTILE VESSEL, WE ARE THE LAST SURVIVORS OF OUR PLANET. OUR VESSEL CANNOT ENDURE THE CONDITIONS OF THIS PLANET. IF WE ARE NOT RELEASED, WE WILL BE DESTROYED.
A heavy silence settled over the room. “Ain’t what I wanted to hear,” Applejack whispered. “Mah whole family—”
“Might be on it,” Pinkie said helpfully. “Don’t be sad yet. We don’t know.”
“We need an approach vector,” Spike said flatly. Like he’d just switched off whatever let him speak with pony emotion. “This data suggests a few options. But if we’re going to try any of them, we need to fortify the Equinox. I wasn’t designed to survive a hurricane.”
1. Permanently sacrifice Applejack’s personal project to reinforce the Equinox.
2. Remove everyone from personal projects for a little while (each character receives only a d4 to make progress, instead of a d8. If a character does not reach 100% upon arrival, that project will not be usable)
3. Don’t take anyone off their projects, Twilight and Sunset will just shield the Equinox when the time comes (if they are alive)
(Certainty 205 required)