Twilight knew what her next priority would be, now that the Canterlot was intact. She glanced down at the struggling shiprats, feeling a tug of guilt for the pain they were feeling. None seemed to be catastrophically wounded, but if the damage was internal how could she even know that for sure? She turned over her shoulder. “Flywheel, can you walk? I’d like you with me when we start on Life Support.”
For a moment it seemed like he was going to let her go. But then she said where she’d be going, and her practically flew out of his seat. “I can buckin’ walk. What in Celestia’s name are you going to do to our life support? Take our air away the way you almost crushed us?”
“No,” she said. “How about get the atmosphere bucking breathable again?” She gestured with a wing all around them. “Your brain is being poisoned with C02 concentrations this high. Clearly you’re all… resistant to it. But you’re swimming in a toxic soup and we’ve got to fix that ASAP.”
He looked like he was going to argue, then sighed. “Give me a moment to check on my ponies. I have to make sure we can get the injured to our clinic.”
“Sure,” Twilight answered. “We’ve got a good doctor of our own, and probably more medical supplies than you have left after all this time. You can use our medical bay once we dock.”
“There’s sky out there…” said a voice. One of the other shiprats, who had floated over to a window. They stared out at the stars, with only thin wisps of atmosphere floating along beside the station. Twilight had seen the view from up here many times—Canterlot was supposed to be the capital of Equestria, with thousands of ships coming and going. Now the glass ceiling showed them only stars, and the huge planet far below. But the planet was below now. It was a start.
“Sure is,” Twilight said.
A few minutes later, and they were back in the elevator. It shuddered uneasily as it rumbled down the shaft, and once Flywheel had to tinker with the panel again. He wasn’t half as good at it as Rarity, but he got them moving again. “It was wrong of me to underestimate an Alicorn,” Flywheel said. “I should’ve known you’d be here to save us. Ponies told stories about you. The Alicorn that went missing. The first one to die for Equestria, others said.”
There was nothing to stop her from asking this time. “What do you mean the ‘first one? Were you… did Celestia really detonate the sun?”
Flywheel nodded nonchalantly. “That’s what the computer says. Every alicorn made their sacrifice. Celestia to give us the push—Luna to protect us during the blast—Candance to power us during the journey.”
Tears collected near the top of Twilight’s helmet, pushed there by the downward motion of the elevator. Her voice cracked as she asked: “What about Flurry Heart?”
“The princess frozen in ice,” Flywheel said, her voice reverent. “Who sacrificed her family so she could lead us when we reached our new home. Though… maybe she won’t have to. Seems like you’re here to lead us. Didn’t sacrifice yourself to… let Equestria know it’s fate, or whatever the story is.”
They stopped, clambering out of the elevator. “Not yet,” she said, concentrating for a moment on simulating gravity under her hooves. It was stupid and unnecessary, but also made her feel far braver. It was something familiar, a way she could be back in control. Control she desperately needed.
Then she followed, past nervous crews of over a dozen shiprats. They looked like they’d been working, but clearly the launch had interrupted their routine. A few were lying on the ground, tended to by nervous companions.
But this was why she’d brought Flywheel. He could go ahead of her, waving away their concern and offering support so that she could focus on the task at hand: evaluating life support.
Is the damage severe enough to need replacement parts? Yes
She strode between the massive filtration cores and cooling towers, taking in the jury-rigged modifications with wide yes. In some ways what the shiprats had accomplished here was a miracle—in other ways, it was about to be her nightmare. They’d paid no heed to standard safeties, or even common sense. If it wasn’t for what she’d just learned, she’d probably be having nightmares about what they were doing with their gasses.
“It’s a bucking miracle you all haven’t suffocated,” she said when she was finished, taking a notepad of scribbles and tucking it into a pocket on the front of her suit.
“You’d do better?” Flywheel snapped. “The fabricator has been out longer than I’ve been alive. Spare parts are entirely gone, and our mission has always been to preserve the sleeping ponies at all costs. We used our blood to oil the chains of this station, princess. Of bodies stoked the embers. There isn’t anything more my shiprats could’ve done.”
“You’re right,” she said, lowered her head apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize what you’ve accomplished. But we do have a working fabricator. Let’s see about getting the station working again before our orbit decays and we fall back to Proximus C for good, yeah?”
“At least that’s one thing we can agree on.”
Twilight would have to choose a repair path for the monstrosity before her.
1. Quick and dirty. Ponies are suffering every moment they have to breathe this air. Let’s work with what they did and just get the 02 concentration back to where it should be.
2. Methodical and proper. First we fix the fabricators, then we produce the parts we need, and eventually we have a space station with scrubbers that can last another century. If we don’t do this right it’s only going to fail again.
3. Radical With a much lower population, we could handle most of the air processing by restoring hydroponics. We’ve got some great robots ready to mass-fabricate.