//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5: Twilight Hopes 
// Story: Ad Astra Per Derpy Aspera 
// by SparklingTwilight 
//------------------------------//

Lightning Dust was not Doctor Hooves' first choice for the mission, Princess Twilight Sparkle reflected, but the Doctor's first choice, though she was a kind mare, and although she had performed test flights before the government took over, wasn't reliable. She almost certainly would have died due to some accident if she'd been sent into space. She wasn't anything like the Wonderbolts or even Lightning Dust. She was just an ordinary mail pony at best. At worst... the Princess had lived within the mare's orbit in Ponyville and in addition to the mare's floating eye handicap... she also attracted accidents. Dropped pianos. Flaming mail. Crushed attics. Twilight and her friends had suffered--especially ex-Weather Coordinator Rainbow Dash who supervised the mare--Derpy Hooves, until she needed to be gently asked to consider alternative employment.

Rainbow Dash had been Princess Twilight Sparkle's first choice to go to Marred. Twilight, deep in her neurotically-beating heart, would rather no pony undertake the risk, but once her government took over the project, it became a politicized competition with the GSCR griffons. So, it needed to proceed. So many non-pony creatures were watching this race carefully. 

Princess Twilight was newly installed on the throne, so she lacked the historical gravitas of her 1000-year-reigning predecessor. And other creatures were taking advantage--pushing, pressing. Abyssinians seized Saddle Arabian yarn reserves and were rumored to be moving against their sheep farms. Although Princess Twilight could blast a pride of criminal Abysinnians... there would be collateral damage... especially since the Abysinnians were rumored to store stolen merchandise among civilians. 

Twilight didn't want to become known for cruelty. Songs still percolated among other creatures about Princess Celestia's decade-long post-exile-of-Luna rage, like those yawled at every Abyssianian wake. Twilight shuddered at recalling how embarrassed her embassy had been on discovering that nasty tidbit of history. Now, she, Equestria's Princess of Friendship, had no desire to be known for something so terrible as Celestia's Great Water Spritzing--it would destroy her. 

She needed to adopt a gentler tone even though it took longer to resolve matters through kindness--her own friend group's tendency to ignore Fluttershy, the Element of Kindness, proved that, unless other creatures were more receptive to kindness--and nothing Twilight had seen had shown her that. Creatures who didn't build their entire society around friendship that could repel cruel ice spirits probably wouldn't have a stronger conception of friendship and kindness than ponies, she figured. And ponies daily struggled just to do the bare minimum even with those terrible consequences hovering over them. 

However, if she could shock and awe everycreature with an awesome accomplishment--reaching the planet--finding its postulated civilization that arguably left hoof-made canals on Marred, criss-crossing the surface between empty seas--then she could obtain the foreign creatures' polite obedience and respect.(Note 1). Probably. It might not work. They didn't think much of her defeat of Tirek, Cozy Glow, and Chrysalis--the Stoned Trio, which saved the world... probably because foreign countries had also helped. And all her magical time traveling saving the world from a cultist madmare... nocreature knew about that. So, inventing an important justification, she backed the space program in all its reckless glory.






Note 1: The canals were first seen in pre-Celestia days. The seas they connected were, in old Ponish, named 'mares' for their apparent similarity to the heads of Princess Platinum and other famous female rulers. Chancellor Puddinghead, a leading stallion excluded from the naming, was compensated by having an asteroid named after him. And with pudding.






And Rainbow Dash, Princess Twilight's close confidante, had joined the Program, despite Dash's other obligations. Dash had heard that her archnemesis, the flippant and crass Lightning Dust, was trying to be the first ponynaut, so Dash took a leave of absence from leading the Wonderbolts--Equestria's premier flight team--and entered training.

Twilight put on a brave face and girded herself at the base of the hospital stairs. She ascended and trotted to Dash's room, where she knelt beside the pegasus' bed and sniffed a whiff of the cooling chemicals applied to Dash's burns. She tried not to look too much at the boils covering her friend's hide, or skeletal remains of wings that doctors said should probably grow back with proper diet. Probably... although there was a twenty percent chance something decidedly un-awesome might happen to them.

"Did she make it?" Rainbow Dash swallowed hard, then she sucked on the medical straw lodged in a side of her mouth.

"She's on her way to Marred."

"Lucky," Rainbow Dash said.

"If she comes back."

"She's not going to make it?"

Twilight Sparkle shushed her friend and hastily constructed a magical bubble of silence. "She couldn't resist the opportunity to show off, so she lost some thrust."

"Doing what?"

"A loop-de-loop around the moon."

"She couldn't save that for another trip?"

Twilight Sparkle shrugged. "She's always been a showoff. Doctor Hooves says she should be able to reach Marred, if nothing goes awry."

"She never should have been allowed to apply!"

"She turned her life around after getting rejected from the Wonderbolts..."

"For taking too many risks! She hasn't learned anything!"

"Creatures can change."

"Most ponies never do--deep down," Rainbow Dash huffed.

"Despite her many years as a leading--Equestria's leading stunt pony, she has not injured herself badly."

Rainbow Dash blew a raspberry. 

Twilight Sparkle smiled. "Glad you feel good enough to express yourself."

"That's about all the expressing I can do."

"Well," Twilight said. "The statistics do not lie. Over the last few years, you spent more time in the hospital than her."

"Because my tricks were more complex!"

"I do not disagree, Rainbow." Twilight Sparkle lightly patted her friend's haunches. 

"She's going to get herself killed."

"We can hope not. And pray."

"To whom? Yourself?"

Twilight's face reddened. "To Celestia."

"She's gone, Twilight. There's just you."

"She'll turn up again. Her and Luna. They're just at Sapphire Shores."

"Twilight, she's not a deity. At least not anymore. You said she was losing her--" Rainbow Dash whispered despite the bubble of silence. "At least she's not here. You're the only super-duper leader we've got, Captain of my country. And you've got me and the rest of your friends to support you!"

Twilight sighed, long and loud through her nostrils. "Times like these make me want to reconsider the donkeys' sky god. The Abyssinians' extensive pantheon, or the Minotaurs' ancestor spirits." Twilight massaged her forehead. "If they really could give out handouts and not just hope... and if they didn't turn out to be dark demonic spirits..."

"If the support of your friends isn't getting you past your anxiety, go back to your books. You know, like precepts of the ancient pegasi," Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight arched an eyebrow. "You've gotten into philosophy?"

"Theology," Rainbow Dash grunted. "Dad died last year and Mom broke out the old books. Dad read them to me when I was a foal and put them away since she thought they were garbage, but he was always paging through them when she wasn't looking. And... she figured we could feel him with us when we looked through..." Rainbow Dash gulped, then sniffed. "Like, you know about them, right? You're the biggest egghead there is--"

"I didn't study impractical topics."

"Right."

"But, no need to worry!" Twilight smiled. "I'll be glad to hear about it now!"

"Fine. I mean, I thought it was bunk when I was growing up, but you know, we--you, me and the others--sort of were the spirits of harmony and friendship when we went adventuring. Perspective makes a pony think. Basically, the concept is: we're all one. In the sky. On the earth. Everything. And every little butterfly flap, it all comes together, and it works in unison like a flapping wing aligning a spine and a purpose. That's why we pray. Well, why some pegasi pray. Sorry if this sounds stupid--ow."

Twilight applied some ointment on Rainbow's wounds.

"The point is, we're all here for you, Twilight. All pegasi. All creatures who like you. And since we're all here, expending our energy for you, even though we aren't with you in the precise moment when you're trying something, you can't fail with our friendship behind you."

Twilight's eyes teared up. "Thank you, Rainbow Dash." After a pause, she added: "Do you need anything?"

"Nah. Just keep me updated on how it's going," she paused. "And if you can get me an advance copy of the Next Daring Do book, that'd be great," she sighed. "Alright. I admit it. Again. I hate that mare... Lightning, but what's the backup plan if she doesn't make it? Can't reach Marred? What if she exhausts her fuel before she's flung around the planet or doesn't have enough to re-accelerate once she's been captured by the planet's gravitational field?"

Twilight Sparkle's nose twitched. "Until a certain point, she is reachable from Equestria. We can get to her with a rocket and a filled spare, hoof it off to her, join hooves and turn around, send her back and then the rescuer can head back as much as possible with the remaining fuel. Later, we send a third rocket with another spare, pick up the rescuer and everypony gets home.

"But at the 'no-go point' we can't get her back. There's a limit to how efficient rocket fuel can be and how much water can be taken. And there's the theoretical problem of the pegasus-oxygen-conversion ratio over time under stress--we just don't know so many answers. This project was--it's my fault it was rushed. You won't believe the technology those griffons have! My fault. Her blood will be on my hooves if we fail. Yes, she did something stupid. But Doctor Hooves planned for that. The technology failed. But that's because we went faster than we should have. But all that doesn't matter, probably. I hope.

"Because... she'll be fine. Just fine."

"How many spare rockets did Hooves make?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight Sparkle smiled a tight tired smile, bit her lower lip, then trotted out of the room.

There was one. A single spare rocket. And a second for testing that didn't have boost necessary for the range. It could get a pony part of the way and Twilight, if her magic held up, might be able to fly to grab the pony. They had one shot.