Cut them loose 51%
Even if she was unopposed at this moment, Twilight could feel the weight of all Equestria on her. This would be the moment that they forever blamed her for the sacrifice of their friends and relatives.
Either that, or the moment where they all died in a single fiery explosion, making every sacrifice they’d ever made pointless. How far had ponies come as a civilization, that she could risk giving it all up here?
Apple Bloom is on that ship. Sunset Shimmer, Node. They had a cold copy of the Equinox’s database, a few fabricators, and about a dozen of Apple Bloom’s little repair beetles. Did they stand a chance of survival without the Canterlot’s support?
I might be damning them to be torn apart by Hunger’s machines. Or maybe the grief will kill them before the demons do.
She could only wish that Celestia had been there to make this choice. The princess would know how to explain the sacrifice to the rest of Equestria. If only the situation were simpler, Twilight herself might’ve made the sacrifice. But that would leave a child princess to somehow command a civilization that would desperately need a technical expert in all the fields Twilight had mastered.
“How long do you need, Node?” Twilight asked. The bridge fell silent.
“Not even a minute,” she replied. “We’re on it, captain.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.”
“I know,” Node said. As her voice came back, the sound of distant shouting echoed on her line. Mechanical sounds rumbled, and ponies ran.
“Mah sis is on that ship, captain,” Applejack said. “If they cut loose, I’ll never see her again. My only family.” There was agony in Applejack’s voice. Not the suggestion of an argument, or a pony about to attack. This was simple heartbreak.
“I know,” Twilight said, meeting her eyes. “Applejack, this station wasn’t meant to fly like this. We’re already coming apart at the seams. Starlight, and Celestia, and Luna and so many others died for this chance.”
Can Twilight calm her down? Yes.
Applejack sniffed, lowering her hat to cover her face. It didn’t hide her voice cracking, or the sound of her years. “Ain’t like it’s quite goodbye yet, right? We’ll be sendin’ signals back fer… years, maybe. She might be right behind us, chattin’ up a storm.”
Twilight nodded her agreement, even if her own assessment of Node’s odds were bleak. For the first time in her life, she got the feeling that Applejack would do better with a little less of the truth. “But right now, I need my chief engineer at her station. Celestia only knows what’s it’ll do to cut free of a counterweight as heavy as all those Dialects.”
“Nothing good,” Spike called, apparently unmoved by their exchange. “I think we’ll hold together, at least the difference in velocity between us is negligible. But if we wait too long…”
“Ready!” Node shouted. “Say the word, pony! We’re waiting on the trigger!”
“Godspeed,” Twilight said.
The Canterlot reeled in the void, jerking violently under Twilight’s hooves. Somewhere far away, metal tore and stone ground together, shuddering under the sudden acceleration.
Emergency alarms started blaring, thankfully not in Starlight’s voice.
For a few seconds Twilight just covered her head, waiting for the shock to pass.
Screens came back on one at a time, followed by the emergency lights. Applejack reached her station, brushing aside the rubble from her keyboard.
“We’ve got… solarium core is offline. But the sail’s power transfer is… working. We’re getting energy from the beam.”
“There are two decks exposed to hard vacuum,” Spike said, voice stiff. “Not sure on the casualties yet, still coming in.”
“Sail team?” Twilight asked, eyes falling on Starlight’s empty station. She twitched, fighting back her own tears. She was the princess, she had to be strong for these ponies. She’d just sacrificed relatives.
Rarity made her way over, skimming over the readings. “Sail is up, Twilight. Spell stable, acceleration steady. We did it.”
Static hissed from the radio, then a voice rectified through the hissing and sputtering. “Canterlot, come in! You still burning up over there?”
Twilight took a single deep breath, then replied as calmly as she could. “Looks like we’re in one piece, Node. How are things on your end?”
“Wee bit disintegrated,” Apple Bloom answered. She didn’t sound disintegrated herself, at least. “We weren’t one ship to begin with. Now we’re… more of a debris field, flyin’ out towards the rim of the system.”
“That isn’t the end of the world,” Node added. “We’ll patch things up over here, Twilight. I kept everything we really needed centralized in the wreck of this old Imperial Flagbearer. Give us a few weeks, and we’ll have collected the other bits and pieces. We’ll keep you appraised.”
“How long?” Twilight asked. “We’re still accelerating? How long until we can’t communicate?”
“Never,” Node answered flatly. “Theoretically, that is. Practically speaking we don’t have infinitely sized antennas, and you organics aren’t going to live forever. Lightlag is going to get annoying before we’re done with this conversation. In a few hours, we’ll have to start sending letters rather than conversations. Don’t worry though, Highway has protocols for that. I’m sending them to Spike now. So long as we’re near the line you took, we can send messages to you, and catch whatever you send back.”
“Spike, I want priority radio access to anypony who has family on that ship,” Twilight said. “Organize a schedule with Node.” She looked to Applejack. She probably needed her chief engineer more now than ever. But she might never be able to have another conversation with her sister again.
“Start with our chief engineer. Maybe she can keep the line open while she’s directing the repairs.”
Compared to the disastrously high stress of the launch, the next few hours passed in a blur to Twilight. There were plenty of repairs to make to the Canterlot, some of which would probably take weeks. But none of them would kill them if her ponies got to work, and she trusted their skill.
She contributed her magic where she could, but ultimately there were many problems she just couldn’t fix. But they still had the engineers for that, and she wasn’t worried. Delegation was always an important skill for a princess.
Eventually she found herself back in her office, drained of magic and physical energy both. Spike would update her if any more disasters sprung up for her to deal with, but she could hope for a moment to rest.
She stared down at Starlight’s ID tags, the only thing that could be recovered from her magically charred body. Another life sacrificed because of Twilight’s decisions.
How many more were dead because of her? How much blood were they leaving behind in the Proximus system?
Twilight’s radio hissed. She braced herself for word of another explosion, or maybe a section of crew-quarters they’d found open to space.
But it wasn’t Spike who spoke next.
“Hey, Captain. How’s the flight?”
She slumped into her chair, exhausted. “Sunset? Shouldn’t you be talking to your family or something?”
The mare was silent for a long time. At first she thought the message hadn’t made it, before she realized the obvious. Lightlag.
“Would if I had any,” Sunset finally answered. “Had a little brother, but he got sick real early on and didn’t make it off-planet. Parents were old, they didn’t win the lottery for a spot of Canterlot. But I knew they probably wouldn’t when I launched, and so did they. We said our goodbyes a long time ago.”
“Mine too,” Twilight called back across the void. She wasn’t without a family though—her brother and niece were both aboard, still frozen. Possibly for a long time to come, given the ship’s limited resources. “But I can be your family for a minute if you want to talk. If you want to be furious with me about letting you go, now’s your chance.”
The replies weren’t getting any faster—quite the opposite in fact. But Twilight was getting used to it, letting her mind wander and drift while she waited for her message to reach the distant creatures, then return.
“I’m gonna be a little salty about it,” Sunset finally said, without anger. “You know how weird it is being surrounded by ponies but not having any magic? How much of ourselves do we have to lose before we’re not ourselves anymore?”
She didn’t actually wait for a response. Much to Twilight’s relief, since the honest answer wasn’t one she wanted to give. “I didn’t want to go on, you know. When you forced me to change? I wanted to stick my head in a power outlet and let nature take its course. Well… not nature. You get the idea.”
Sunset laughed, but Twilight didn’t.
“I couldn’t, though. I kept remembering everything we’d done to get this far. My ship didn’t make it, and we still did the impossible. Equestria needed me. Maybe I needed Equestria too.”
“I’m sorry you can’t be here,” Twilight whispered back, after a long time. Hopefully the delay would make Sunset think she had hung up. “This hurts everypony, saying goodbye.”
Sunset laughed again. “You gave me something to fight for, captain. One day we’re going to join you at that flotilla, and I’m going to punch you in the face for what you did to me. Then I’ll thank you. That order.”
“I’ll be counting on it.”
Only static answered.
Much could’ve been said for the little acts of heroism over the next few weeks. Twilight worked alongside her bravest and brightest ponies, repairing the damage on the Canterlot and making their passage secure.
But while her crew focused on the short-term goal of making the Canterlot itself viable again, Twilight’s focus had already turned towards the future.
The journey would be long.
The highway would eventually accelerate them towards the speed of light, but even still they might be settling into a trip of many centuries. Twilight could hardly imagine how a single station could be made self-sufficient for such a period—even when they had a practically endless supply of energy through the highway itself.
In the end, she’d narrowed things down to a few approaches, each with their own advantages.
1. Try to build a civilization while in transit. Work towards waking every creature, cannibalizing and rebuilding along the way. Turn every mind towards inventing new technologies and magics necessary for longevity.
2. Gradually put ponies to sleep, until only a rotating skeleton crew remained. This would enable the ponies of Equestria to arrive at the Flotilla together, and let Canterlot itself exist with a minimum of systems that needed to be kept running with limited spare parts.
3. The first plan, but instead of traveling straight for the flotilla, stop every time the highway let them to gather supplies and expand with whatever raw materials wait in new systems. The trip would be vastly longer, and many generations of ponies would likely die before they reached the flotilla, but it would require no new technologies or spells to be invented during the journey.