“Well, Twilight, this is most certainly an interesting, and slightly worrying, observation.” Princess Celestia calmly set down her teacup. “But I fail to see why you felt it necessary to bring this to both myself and my sister’s attention.”
She was right to be slightly confused. Twilight had sent them both letters explaining that she had just observed something in her telescope that should be impossible. A quick scrying spell had shown that Twilight had been slightly stressed out, and very worried, when she had written. Also, Twilight had requested that the two of them show up, as opposed to merely sending the letter to Princess Luna.
“That’s why I want to show you this,” Twilight said, removing the recording crystal from the case you were supposed to store it in when not recording or playing back a recording. “You remember that telescope I really wanted? This is the recording crystal from the one you bought me.”
“I take it you recorded the event?” Princess Luna spoke up. She had been silent up until now, mostly do to being utterly baffled as to how she could have missed an object that was as large as Twilight had described.
“Yes; take a look.” Twilight pointed the crystal at the projection screen, dimmed the lights enough to make the projection more visible, and began playback.
Both princesses looked at the object, and immediately noticed something wasn’t right. “That doesn’t look like any meteorite I’ve ever seen,” Celestia said. Her sister agreed. “Strewth. I hath seen many a meteorite, but none with such a consistent pattern to their form.”
“Keep watching. There’s something that could be even more surprising to you,” Twilight said cryptically. The puzzled princesses did indeed keep watching.
However, Luna noted something that seemed off about the footage. “Are the flames at the front growing weaker?” She asked, puzzled by this.
“Yes. This is part of why I wanted to talk to you two. My best guess is that it was moving so fast that was able to climb back out into space,” Twilight said. “However, that’s not the only thing that caused me to bring this to your attention.”
At this point, Celestia noticed what had caused Twilight to be so startled by what she had seen. “What in the name of the Maker?” She said, stunned.
She could see that the object was not only unnatural for its uniformity, but also for its shape. It was long and slender, with only a few protrusions from its sides. There was a larger section at the back that was lit from within, with several of what looked to be portholes akin to those on an airship.
Once the flames died down completely, the object began to change in shape. The shield like object at front began to fold, with an inner section folding to make way for the outer section. Two large, wing like objects began to expand from the sides of the object, while four of the cylinders at the back of the ship seemed to begin to slide away from it. The object was a marvel to behold.
It also was most certainly not made by ponies, or griffins, or any living thing on the planet.
“I can certainly see why thou contacted us about this, Twilight,” Luna said, stunned.
“Commander Jebediah. I believe I may have a solution to how we deal with the fact that the heat shield will not survive another pass like it was planned to,” the voice of B9k said. “It will, however, require a great deal of Delta-V.”
No plan survives first encounter with the enemy was an old saying, but one that certainly still applied. During an EVA inspection of the ship shortly after aerocapture, one of the crew members had spotted that the ship’s heat shields had degraded around 90% of their ablative tiling, far more than had been predicted. This meant that the shield would fail if they attempted another pass. This was a problem as the flight plan they had so far relied on a second pass to bring down their apoapsis to around 850 km above the ground.
“Let me hear it, B9,” Jeb said. “It’ll probably be better than what we’ve got now.”
“My plan involves raising the periapsis to 150 km, then using the engines, assisted by the Oberth effect, to lower the apoapsis to 400 km. The orbit is lower, but that increases the benefit from the Oberth effect when we go for a circularization burn. The Delta-V requirements, however, require that we dip into the 2,000 m/s Delta-V reserve fuel,” B9k finished.
“How much Delta-V would the two maneuvers cost in total?” Jeb asked.
“Minimum requirements will be around 4,800 m/s of Delta-V. I predict that there is around a 52% chance that the actual required Delta-V will be higher. We have 4,678 m/s of Delta-V using only what Xenon is left in the main fuel tanks, but we have far more than enough Xenon to make up the difference in the reserve fuel tanks.” B9k paused. “Before you ask, yes, I did run this through the D-Wave Four(1). It couldn’t come up with a smaller number than what I gave you for the required maneuvers.”
“Well, that’s the best we’ve got. Spread the word, B9,” Jeb said. “Authorization to access auxiliary fuel tanks granted.”
“Understood, sir. Transposing fuel,” B9k said as he opened valves between the two fuel tanks, using the base pressure from the auxiliary tanks to force Xenon into the main tanks. “Transposition complete. Attention crew, this is B9k speaking. In a matter of minutes, we will be executing a maneuver to raise the periapsis of our orbit to 150km. Be ready to strap into your seats on our mark.”
“Also, B9, how are the preparations for the deployment of the scanning satellites going?” Jeb asked, hoping to be able to get the process of building the infrastructure for landing on the planet that they had been sent here to explore over with.
“They are coming along brilliantly sir. Once we are in a circular orbit, should I begin deployment of the GPMS(2) constellation?” B9k asked.
Jeb’s response was a shrug, followed by, “I suppose so.”
“Also, sir, I believe there is something you should see,” B9k spoke, his voice tinged with worry.
“What is it?” Jeb asked, curious what could have caused his stoic AI companion to become even slightly worried.
“On screen now, sir.”
“Oh.” Jeb stared at the screen. On it was an image of the night side of the planet. One that was focused on several lights which could only be large cities, several of which were relatively close together. “Well that throws a spanner into the works.”