Yellow Alert 73%
Twilight couldn’t ask everypony to lock themselves away, not during such an important moment. The Canterlot would have to trade a little power for crew morale as they began the jump.
“I’m there, Twi,” Spike said from just beside her, voice gentler than it had been in a long time. How long had she been sitting there without making an order? “Modifications are in place, crew is ready. Say when.”
“Launch,” Twilight ordered.
For a few terrifying seconds there was nothing, just Twilight on the bridge and the whole ship holding its breath underneath her.
She felt it before she saw anything—the touch of some distant machine grabbing hold of the Canterlot, its invisible grip tugging it back towards Proximus B. This was the moment it might pull them down into the planet’s incredible gravity. The Canterlot had already been on its last legs before, it would never survive the pressure with all the modifications they’d made. Twilight had led her ship to disaster.
Were the modifications successful? Yes.
Twilight heard a rumble then, something that must’ve emanated from the Canterlot since there was no medium for sound outside. “Incoming docking protocols from Highway junction 599-12-65-00,” Spike said. “Node is handling the response, aren’t you Node?”
“Handshake successful,” her voice said, almost the same instant he asked. “Unrecognized sail design. Asking for our override. Besides, you know, we might be about to incinerate ourselves.”
“We aren’t,” Starlight Glimmer spoke from her console, glowering at Node. “It will work, Captain.”
“Grant our consent,” Twilight said. Even if we wanted to change our mind, it would be too late now. By the time we built a second sail, half the crew would be robotic. The Hunger might take all of us.
Light bathed the Canterlot from all sides, enough that every one of the external cameras in Twilight’s view was suddenly brilliant blue with little flashes of magical energy. Beneath them, the Canterlot began to move, pushed along by the sail at their back. Despite the name, the magical design more like a mirror, which would hold the ship in compression against its forces.
Does the Sail work? Critical No.
Random Event: Dominate of Animals
Twilight heard it the same moment as the rest of the crew did, a terrible metallic tearing accompanied by crushing rock. Twilight knew instantly what must’ve made that awful sound, and she spun back around to face Starlight. “What the buck was that?”
“Emergency shield online!” Spike shouted, his voice booming over a dozen sirens. “Captain, the highway isn’t letting us go. It’s asking if we’re ready for launch.”
“Of course we’re n—”
Node yelled over her; voice slightly distorted now. Apparently the emergency shield wasn’t doing great things to their communications. “If we cancel the departure now, the highway node will remember our design and never let another ship launch with it again! It doesn’t want to hurt us.”
“I don’t think what it wants will matter much!” Rarity called, on the edge of panic now. “Shield temperature nearly two hundred degrees and rising rapidly! I don’t think you need me to tell you what happens when it fails, captain!”
We might not have a choice. We’ll have to take our chances with the robotic conversion process, and take our time to build something else.
The Dominate of Animals reflects the magical ability inherent in organics, which Starlight intends to use to dominate the threat before them.
“Captain, there was… some possibility this might happen. It has to do with matching the thaumic polarity of the incoming energy. I prepared some modifications to the sail that should match these readings.”
Twilight’s eyebrows went up. She wanted to believe it—the Canterlot needed a miracle at this point. But she knew too much about magic to just accept the explanation. “It took you a month to deploy that spell, Starlight? How are you going to make alterations to it before our shields fail?”
The unicorn rose unsteadily to her hooves, shoving the cushion aside. “You know the way, captain.”
Twilight nodded weakly. There was one way, basically the same thing that their princesses had done. When a pony had spent every drop of magic they had, or wanted to reach beyond to some feat well beyond their power, there was one thing more powerful than any magical reserve.
A soul.
Twilight only had a second to weigh her sacrifice. One life against the survival of the Canterlot. “Equestria will remember you,” she said.
“That was always the goal,” Starlight said wistfully. “Didn’t think I could do this twice.”
Of those listening, only Spike seemed to understand at first. Then Rarity spun her chair to face the other way. “Captain, you can’t be—”
Starlight Glimmer vanished in a flash of her teleportation.
They waited in anxious fear for another few minutes. Twilight didn’t justify her orders, there were enough disasters going on around the ship that there was no time. She diverted what energy to the shields she could find, sent crews to put out fires, and pulled ponies away from the outer layers of the ship, where they’d be cooked alive the fastest.
Twilight felt the spell the moment it happened; a single blinding flare of magical energy intense enough to render the Canterlot transparent to her magical senses. Through the rock and steel and crystal, she saw a single brave mare, outlined before the crystal that produced the sail. It was a spell etched in rock, meant to survive centuries of travel.
Does Starlight’s sacrifice fix the sail? Critical yes.
Starlight’s will battled with the living spell, for only the fraction of a second. It could’ve shattered, but it didn’t. The sail shifted, and the soulfire light went out like a candle.
It wasn’t just her. External cameras suddenly dimmed as the Canterlot jerked forward again. This time the acceleration didn’t pass in a few microseconds, but continued at a steady rate, pressing Twilight’s hooves against the deck in an effective approximation of gravity.
“Repair crew reports structural integrity is… better than nothing,” Applejack said, the first to break the silence aboard the bridge. Only her and the alarms. “We’re not gonna tear apart, anyway. Gonna be a nightmare to fix whatever that grinding was.”
“Launch sequence complete,” Node said. “Starlight, I take it back. Guess your magical-whatever wasn’t as stupid as I thought.”
Twilight winced, wiping away the moisture from one eye. “S-starlight is… dead,” she responded, her voice cracking once. “She’s the reason we’re still alive.”
There was no time for a funeral, not with the Canterlot still barely holding together. But as Spike put it “any difficulties we encounter with acceleration should become catastrophic within the first few days. The further we go, the more likely we are to survive. Assuming none of the spells collapse.”
Twilight remained on the bridge even when her friends grew too exhausted to remain there, and had to pass off their duties to other ponies.
Does anything else go wrong? Critical yes.
That meant in terms of familiar ponies Twilight had only Node over the radio and Spike beside her when every alarm on the ship started going off again. With the lights dimmed and the night-crew with her on the bridge, Twilight took almost thirty full seconds to figure out what was going wrong.
Is it the connection to Node’s ship? Yes.
More precisely, for Node’s voice to finally make it to her through the shouting and the panic. “Princess, I know what’s causing that destabilizing stress. It’s my ship! I’m getting torsion stresses on all three binding sections!”
Twilight swore under her breath, vanishing from her throne and reappearing at Applejack’s usual station. The shiprat there looked up, then slid his chair out of her way so she could use his console without objection.
They’d known this could happen, as the sail pushed on the Canterlot and Node’s collection of derelicts dragged them the other way.
“We thought we knew how the sail’s force would be applied, but I can see now where our calculations went wrong.” Spike said, far more alert than Twilight felt. “If we keep pulling apart like this, the stress is going to tear me in half. I could try to adjust our angle so the stresses are more evenly distributed, but… that shift might be too much. We might explode into a million pieces.”
“Which is it?” Twilight shouted; wings spread in frustration. “Why would you even tell me if it’s going to get us killed?”
“The odds are modest,” Spike said. “Shieldponies have already been assembled and should be prepared in time. I estimate one in five.”
“There’s another option,” Node said. Her voice was suddenly flat, resolute. “We could sever every junction on our end, and you could drop us. No one aboard is vulnerable to the Hunger… we could rebuild, construct our own sails, and eventually follow you.”
1. Sacrifice Node’s ship and all the resources aboard [guaranteed safety for the Canterlot, loss of resources and crew aboard]
2. Risk Spike’s suggested emergency maneuver [chance of total mission failure and loss of all hands.]