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// Ticking Clock, Smoking Gun 
// Story: Friendship One 
// by BRBrony9 
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How time flies.

The last year, for many ponies, seemed to have passed much more quickly than any which came before it. A continual background fear made it difficult to keep track of time. Days turned into years, turned into centuries inside each anxious mind.

The bunkers were filling up, another lottery having been performed to fill their general accommodation. Queues of buses and trucks, using military fuel supplies, of course, streamed out of each major city and town across Equestria. Each pony had been told to bring one suitcase and one personal bag, to contain their entire world. That was all. There was no space for more.

One month before the end, the doors were opened at each complex, great, heavy steel monstrosities that looked like the entrance to a giant bank vault. Supplies had already been pouring in, but now it was time for the ponies themselves. Wide-eyed civilians, foals trailing aimlessly along and clinging to their mother's tails, sad-faced stallions looking back over their shoulders at the surface, and up into the sky with a mixture of fear and longing. Soldiers and Royal Guard directed them from their transports and down, deep down underground, as far as explosives and magic and Diamond Dog miners could take them. To safety, it was hoped. Those doors, once sealed, would be pressurised, each bunker complex operating as a closed system, like a spacecraft or submarine. This was vital. It was not enough to simply filter the air from outside, like a fallout shelter, because in all likelihood there would be no air outside.

Privately, many of the engineers and technicians assigned to each bunker knew that, even if they survived the strike, it would only be a matter of time- maybe months, maybe decades, maybe centuries- before the triple-redundant oxygen generating systems of each complex failed or ran out of spare parts. Even when that happened, it was hoped, the plants and food-bearing hydroponics beds, plus a significant quantity of algae, could help provide oxygen as well as nutrition. But that would have to continue until the end of time, because it was expected by many scientists that the entire atmosphere of the planet might be stripped away or otherwise irrecoverably damaged by the gamma ray burst, making life on the surface impossible for generations- or perhaps forever.

That was why the more astute of the ponies now filing in to each bunker might have noticed that they passed through not just one, nor two, but a total of three large blast doors, because the entranceway was not just a one-way street. It was an airlock, designed to, hopefully, allow Unicorns in Equinaut suits (or slimmed-down versions of them supported and braced by the wearer's own magic, because a true spacesuit was impossibly cumbersome and heavy in Equis gravity) to move across the surface at some future date in search of supplies from whatever remained of their civilization. The idea of simply throwing open the doors and foals running out happily into the sunlight, however, was likely just a pipe dream. Each pony took one final look out across the landscape- desert, prairie, the mouth of a mountain valley- that lay beyond the doors of their bunker, before they stepped inside. They knew they would never see the surface, or the sun, again.




With one week to go until G-Day, Equestria had practically stopped existing any longer as a functioning entity. Electrical power and running water were only widely available in the largest cities, or where a pony was lucky enough to live close to a military base or some other vital facility, like the rocket complex at New Zebrica, where the deep roar and crackle of a new launch could be heard at any time of the day or night. There was not much of a schedule any longer; as soon as a rocket and her crew or supplies were ready, up it went, the next one already waiting on a barge in the river that ran beside the complex, ready to go, like ponies queuing for a bungee jump, or more accurately one of those fairground slingshot rides. 

An explosion at a rocket fuel plant, probably caused by speed and skipped safety checks, had killed eighty-seven workers and demolished part of the nearby town of Clopham Junction just weeks earlier, as the deadline approached and standards slipped. Another plant had been closed for six months due to a lack of workers- they had simply walked off the job, one by one, to go be with their families, and not enough replacements had been found, even with military technicians from the Space Corps' nuclear missile division being rushed in to help. The remaining plants had been churning out rocket fuel like soda. Almost a hundred civilians had died when one tanker truck carrying poisonous hydrazine overturned and a fast-spreading cloud of vapour had drifted through a suburban neighbourhood. The bodies, a very brief report had been ashamed to say, had been left in the houses where they lay. The mortuary system, like most other things, had collapsed too, and nopony came to collect the corpses.

Friendship One was the only thing anypony cared about now. It was the only thing that gave any hope whatsoever, every time it sailed by overhead, anti-collision lights on the scaffold visible from the surface, like a gigantic, distant airliner. Telescopes would reveal more lights coming and going, shuttles and automated capsules delivering a steady stream of supplies and the crew, some two thousand eight hundred of them.

The vast majority- two thousand one hundred- were ponies, equally divided among the three subspecies. There were three hundred Zebras, too. One hundred Griffons, all those Equestrian citizens who had pledged loyalty to the Sun & Moon United and had passed the screening checks and training. There were a hundred and fifty Diamond Dogs, a hundred Yaks (a significant number of their small population), and a small and eclectic assortment of the other small sapient races- mules, a buffalo, a few of the smallest dragons- making up the numbers. There were no cows, whose physiology would not stand up to space travel, it had been determined. The Seaponies had not been called upon, because their Queen had announced their intention to ride things out underwater, in the deepest reaches of the seas. The Changelings had ignored any requests, too, perhaps having their own plans for survival underground. Discord had retreated to his own world, safe from harm behind the skein of a different reality, telling Celestia there was nothing he could do to aid the planet, nor the evacuation. He had offered to house the Elements and the royals if they wished, but his pocket dimension was too small to house everypony. They had all refused to go- like Celestia, they would stay behind to try and save the planet. Discord had expressed his doubts. Some things, he told the solar demigoddess, are beyond even our power.

The ship was also being loaded, amongst other things, with a huge genetic repository of DNA samples, sperm and eggs from every species, including those who had chosen not to come along for the ride, and including a huge variety of samples from plants, trees, grasses, lichen, seaweed, algae and a thousand other floral subspecies. The genetic patterns of non-sapient life- rabbits, cats, dogs, mice and many, many more- had also been included. The science equipment aboard the ship would, it was hoped, enable the crew to begin the process of expanding the population of each sapient race, and of seeding the new world with the remains of the old.

The new world.

New Equis, it had been redesignated. Formerly called Typhon-B, it was one of two planets in the system, orbiting the star whose name it shared, and it was the only candidate for habitability anywhere nearby. Of a similar size to Equis, New Equis was known since before the emergency to be a candidate for a mission, imagined to be far, far in the future at that point, to colonise it. Long-range observations by spectrometry and space telescope had confirmed that the planet, eight light-years away, was temperate, had an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and possessed both oceans and continents. It was the only true choice, because the next closest planet which had been on the shortlist was a hundred lightyears distant, which, even at the superluminal speeds the Valiant had achieved, would be beyond the reach of Friendship One,  which was not being built as a 'generation ship,' nor as a cryo-stasis ship. Wherever they were going had to be within a reasonable distance (in astronomical terms at least- the planet was still trillions of miles away from Equis). 

It would, it was hoped, be an ideal starting point for a new civilization, one that would be spared the horrors of G-Day. But they still had to get there first.




With one week of life left, ponies were doing all kinds of things to keep their mind off of what was to come. There were organised 'street orgies,' which involved exactly what might be imagined. There were 'end of the world parties,' where, although the topic was apocalypse, the drink and drugs and magic-induced hallucination-shows continued to entertain, and often lead to more impromptu orgies, too. Huge banquets were put on by rich ponies, lavishly decorated halls outfitted with the finest foods and wine, and the doors thrown open to anypony who wanted to attend, no invitation necessary, because why not? Nopony was going to use any of that food after G-Day. This was not going to be like the aftermath of a bad hurricane or volcanic eruption or even a nuclear war, where it was a matter of carefully rationing supplies until help arrived, or until more stable communities could be established. There would be nothing left soon enough.

Out in the street, the army and police kept order, in the sense of mostly ignoring anything short of gunfire. There had been plenty of mass shootings and magical rampages over the past few years. Lunatics going out with a bang, terrorists and separatists giving it one last hurrah, religious nutjobs from the Cult of The True Moon, the Discordians or the Sombrans, loudly denouncing Celestia's messianic status as they gunned down her subjects. But order, for the most part, had been maintained. The army and the police were the only organisations who still had gasoline, electricity, running water and internet access, save for a few laboratories and universities, and of course the ESEA and the industries supporting the survival missions. The military were being kept on standby, both to assist with civil disturbances, aid in the bunker preparations and the final launches to orbit, and also just in case anything unforeseen should occur.

It was a good thing that they were, too, because with just a few days left, King Grissom made his move.




Seeing Equestria in such disarray, a failed state just waiting for the armageddon that he knew would never come, Grissom had been quietly preparing for years for this. A perfect opportunity. No longer would Celestia dominate global politics. It was his turn, his time to shine, even at his advanced age. Grissom was nothing if not a calculated plotter, a strategist. War with Equestria could have happened years ago, before Celestia's announcement to the world, but as soon as the King learned of Celestia's delusion, that all her attention was wrapped up in this forecasted event that only she could detect, he saw a golden opportunity.

Sure enough, as time dragged on and more and more of Equestria's money, time and resources were being devoted to building Friendship One and the bunker complexes, Grissom had raised tariffs on Griffonian exports, tightening the budgetary woes of Equestria still further. It had not helped a fragile economy; the stock market had already crashed to its lowest ever level when Celestia had given her speech. It might have brought the Griffonian economy down with it, if they had gone along with Celestia's scheme, but the Griffons did not buy into her predictions. Grissom gave a rousing speech urging every Griffon to continue with their lives as normal, and the economy stabilised, while Equestria's went into freefall. 

Economic power was not the only area where Grissom had been building up strength. The military, too, were being strengthened, and quietly prepared for war. Grissom knew Equestria would be at its weakest in the weeks before Celestia's prophesised doomsday. Morale would be non-existent. Why would soldiers want to fight for a land they believed would soon be turned to ash? Why would a soldier hurl themselves into the fray rather than spend what they imagined would be their last days on Equis with their loved ones? They would have nothing left to fight for. Their ranks were thinned, Grissom knew, by mass desertions. Their strategic oil reserves were running low. The national effort was being focused elsewhere, not even on this planet, for the most part. This was the perfect time to strike.

And strike he did. The border region of Yakyakistan separated Griffonia from Equestria, long-disputed but controlled by ponies. It was here that the Griffons attacked, claiming to be seeking to put an end to the case of true ownership. There was some token resistance, but as the Griffonian tanks and helicopters swept south across the plains and through the gap between two widely-spaced mountain ranges, the way ahead seemed to be almost completely clear.

By the time they burst through into the temperate lands and pleasant forests of Equestria itself, there was little to stop them. An Equestrian mechanised force had assembled near the city of Trottingham, but were soundly routed. Celestia ordered every available unit to march to plug the gaps in the line. It took several days, and by the time a proper defensive plan had been enacted, the Griffons arrived at the pivotal city of Vanhoover. From here, it was a straight run west, to Canterlot, the obvious, logical target, the capital city, symbolic, beautiful.

But they did not head west. Not all of them. The largest part of the Griffon army moved south, toward the dusty deserts of the equatorial province of New Zebrica.

New Zebrica, where the final few, vital rockets were sitting and waiting on their barges in the river.