The First Equestrian Starliner

by computerneek

Chapter 1

“Sir, you misunderstand. This is an experimental system.”

“Yet you stick it on the biggest ship we’ve ever built?”

Sigh. “She was going to be a lot smaller, but someone had to mandate she be a warship. I had to make her that big because that’s the only way for her to still pack in the necessary support systems!”

Grunt. “How’d you get past the size-to-firepower limits, then?”

“She’s also equipped with more than one untested weapons system.”

“Oh? When are you planning to test them?”

“On her maiden voyage.”

“With noone anywhere nearby?”

Shrug. “We don’t know if they will blow up the ship either- but I do know these weapons are far too powerful for testing anywhere near our home system.”

“Who’s going to watch the testing, then?”

“The computer will watch initial testing in deep space. Once it gets back with a report on the effective zones of the weapons, we can set up a more focused testing range also in deep space for more directed testing. Right now, the priority is to make sure these experiments won’t kill everyone.”

Grunt. “I cannot authorize the launch. The rules specifically state that new vessels must be monitored by an outside source from launch to commissioning. If you cannot guarantee our safety in doing that, don’t launch it.”

Sigh. “Fine, then. I’ll see what I can do.” He turns to head back to his car; the Space Lord had refused his request. He’d even refused to acknowledge that its experimental engines are so massive precisely because they’re designed to take the ship where no current ship can go!

The doors land closed behind him. Heck, just about everything on that ship is experimental- all the way down to the environmental systems, being designed to handle just about any possible atmosphere and maintain completely different atmospheric compositions in different rooms of the ship!

He navigates his way out of the government building. He’ll have to cancel the launch reservation he’d made- and abort his ship’s maiden voyage. The first of the just-as-new power plants running the thing will be kicking off the full test cycle- through ignition- in as little as three hours’ time.

He has until the gravity drive test begins tomorrow morning to cancel the whole shebang. Honestly, he would have preferred to get the thing into deep space before lighting off the gravity drive. Unfortunately, simple thrusters- even combined with the fancy magneto-drive most ships use in close proximity to planets these days- simply aren’t strong enough to have a snowflake’s chance in an active volcano of even floating the thing off the docking clamps.

The good news is, cancellation should be as simple as a single command. He can even send it from his phone, once he gets back to his car. Then he’ll be stuck at his computer, rewriting the maiden voyage program, for months before he applies for another launch reservation and seeks permission to launch again.

So, another good year and a half or so that his ginormous ship will remain in the construction hangar… Another year and a half of expensive rent before he can dismantle the hangar and return the land. He’d been hoping to do that now- and hide out in a hotel or something for a week until it gets back from that maiden voyage… An event that was scheduled for this coming Friday.

He freezes momentarily, glancing to the side, at the noise of a car engine. Most cars these days still have wheels; the maglev coils work great on the roads, but most people don’t have mag lines installed in their driveways, or other locations they want to park their car. Not to mention, if one has to swerve off the road for some reason, wheels are the only way to get back on the road.

This car just shot off the road at a few hundred miles an hour, twisting in midair before striking the ground sideways. Now a whirling drum of steel, it’s bouncing straight towards him. He dives for cover.

He doesn’t make it.

Three hours later, the first of many fusion plants ignites successfully, stabilizes, and starts providing power to ignite the rest, while the automated program disconnects external power.

The following morning, a Monday, the gravity drive lights off successfully- and the docking clamps that hadn’t been caught in the drive zone retract peaceably from the now floating ship. The few that had been in the drive zone had been torn violently away from the armored vessel.

One hour after that, the still-standing launch reservation arrives- and the computer, acknowledging the clock, increases power to the gravity drive, rising the ship out of the damaged hangar, guiding it smoothly up the scheduled flight path. The crash test dummies strapped to seats or walls throughout the ship don’t even realize it’s moving- a feat most ship designers would kill for.

The ship finally reaches orbit unhindered- and touches on the end of the scheduled flight path, at the edge of controlled space. The gravity drive goes instantly to full power, pulling off accelerations that many fast courier vessels might envy. It reverses acceleration at some point, drawing itself to a halt close to a light-minute away from the Earth before rotating ninety degrees and launching into the various engine tests. Only one craft is close enough to witness the departure- and the crew of the mining vessel stare slack-jawed as its enormous engines power on... then the entire ship disappears in a blaze of light.

Ten minutes finds the ship positioned approximately six lightyears from Earth- a distance even the fastest ships take several hours to traverse. With the warp engine test complete, the program moves immediately onto the next test- the engines designed to take it where no other ship can follow. This takes a few hours to charge- and finally, with a blast and a shockwave, the enormous ship disappears from the face of the universe.

Transwarp Drive test complete. Proceeding to next test…
ERROR: Invalid Instruction at 0A8C72F3: Null Dereference!
System Idle: Assist Mode.

---

Twilight Sparkle was gazing at the stars with her telescope. Just last week, Princess Luna had revealed to her that she doesn’t actually control the stars. Sure, there’s a few objects that look like stars, including the four that had aided in her escape as Nightmare Moon, but the stars themselves are beyond even her reach. She’d even mentioned that the stars are still there, even in daylight- it’s just that Celestia’s sun hides them from view.

So she’s gazing at the stars. Studying just for studying’s sake is boring- and unfortunately, she’s run out of disasters or predicaments to study up on. She’s even run out of possible predicaments to study up on.

But the stars are different. Nopony- not even Princess Luna- knows the first thing about them. Even from the moon, they looked the same. Princess Luna had, reportedly, gone as far as she possibly could- and they still looked the same.

And over time, they shift. So, clearly, it’s not just a giant painting surrounding Equestria. There’s something out there.

She intends to find out what.

In the basement of her Crystal Castle, she has prepared a contraption to help her climb up high, well above the highest any pegasus or hot-air balloon can fly. She’s tested it in as many ways as possible- and, she thinks, tonight might be a good night to test it out. She tilts her head slightly, twisting the telescope a touch to the side. She doesn’t think the stars had ever twisted before.

She watches as a tightly focused point in the sky seems to twist into a spiral, taking the stars with it- and finally, releases back to normal.

But there’s something there now. She runs her telescope up to maximum magnification, staring at this object, glinting gently in Celestia’s setting sun. It looks to be made of metal, from here. She watches as it approaches, growing larger in her view. She zooms out as it comes- and scowls as it begins to move sideways, sliding across the sky. She follows it with her telescope, zooms in as far as she can. She thinks she catches the glint of something other than metal on its side- but the writing is visible. She hasn’t a clue what it means; it most certainly isn’t Equestrian.

As she watches, the thing slides past her, on its way towards the sun. As a matter of fact, she realizes, it should be visible to the naked eye by now, as a star! A quick glance confirms this- as the brightest star. She returns to her telescope- and finally gets a view of the back of it.

Her jaw drops wide. That looks like the very structures she’d designed to get her contraption up so high! A bit bigger, sure, and a little more complex, she thinks, but still the same thing.

She gallops for the basement. There’s only one thing that could mean.

She’s onto something.

Author's Note:

Yes, the script controlling the ship for it's maiden voyage crashed. It's been lost permanently.

And yes, Twilight's contraption is some sort of rocket. She might not have built it to tolerate all the forces it needs to, though- through simple ignorance...

Comments

[LostArchivist]

Lol. I guess the Mars Rover team's engineers got asked to build the software again?
But is THIS why it was rejected?

The intro is kinda sad, though. Poor Mr. Elan Brusque didn't even get to see it launch. You could have had him at least live to see it, since the recovery was via the (crashed) computer program anyway.

But this is why there are supposed to be triple redundant systems or better... although it IS true that wouldn't fix a programming error... but that's why there's testing... Oh well, this is fiction! :D

And is THIS the future plot of this story?

[computerneek]

9124775
Um... No, that’s not why it was rejected. It was rejected because he wasn’t going to have another ship shadow it... Nevermind some of the systems- and weapons- could be incredibly dangerous... and this is the only ship big enough to mount them. In short, the space lord was being petty.

And... No, that’s not a future plot event. This ship is not self-aware- and while noone will ever follow, they will never hear back from it, either. As such, it is assumed lost.

Yes, the intro was sad... And that petty space lord gets to pay the price- the ship performed an interdimensional jump... with all copies of the blueprints aboard... and the only guy that knows how it works died.

Presumably, he did test it- in simulation. But simulations are perfect scenarios, real life is not. I’m betting they tested the rover program in simulation too.

[LostArchivist]

9124993
Those were jokes. Or were supposed to have been.

Good to see that he got his minor vengeance, though.