Send boarding crew to Canterlot Station 43%
“You realize how stupid it is for you to be going on this mission,” Sunset said, glaring at her just outside the docking bay. “This is why we have crews. This is why we delegate. We trust them to do these sorts of missions for us.”
Twilight glanced briefly down the open door to the Prospector. Her crew was already waiting inside—Node, Rainbow Dash, and Apple Bloom, and Rarity. Between the four of them, they would cover just about any skill the mission might need, without sacrificing some critical capacity that would otherwise doom the Equinox if they were somehow lost. Granted, morale might suffer a fatal blow if they were lost. Considering how thin they were all stretched at this point, Applejack in particular.
“They probably won’t be able to receive messages from the Equinox,” Twilight said. “They’ll be on their own.”
Sunset shrugged. “And you’ll be okay with that, because you delegate this important mission to the most capable ponies you had.”
Does Twilight insist on going herself? No.
Twilight sighed, slumping onto her haunches. “You’re right. I… wanting to go is selfish. I have a crew for a reason.”
“Exactly.” Sunset walked past her, calling into the opening. “Captain Twilight is leaving the mission to you! You can prep for takeoff, Rainbow!”
The pegasus emerged from inside a few seconds later, looking between them with concern on her face. “Is that true, Twi? That doesn’t seem like you.”:
“It’s not,” she admitted. “But Sunset is right. We don’t know what’s down there, and I’m the only alicorn we have. If something awful happens and I need to save you, the best place for me to be is somewhere I can do the saving.”
“Not that you’ll need to,” Rainbow said, puffing out her wings just a little. “Because I’m the best pilot that ever lived. I’ve been training for like… months, maybe? Or years? On the best simulator ever. I’m going to just dominate, you’ll see.”
Considering the winds down there, you better. Twilight reached out, settling a wing on Rainbow’s shoulder. “Good luck, Rainbow. Bring everypony home safe.”
She met her eyes, nodding once. “You got it, captain.”
Twilight watched them go from the bridge, tensing into her seat as the Prospector got closer and closer to Proximus B’s opaque atmosphere. Rainbow was right, she was the best pilot for the job. She could do things with spacecraft that Twilight could only understand in computer models. “Going down,” Rainbow said, her voice twisted by only a hint of static now. “We’ll keep an open channel all the way in.”
“Rodger that, Rainbow.”
Does Rainbow fly them in safely? No.
RANDOM EVENT: The Agree of Disruption
Twilight could see that something was going wrong before Rainbow actually said anything. The information came buzzing back across the Equinox’s sensor connection with the prospector. An above-average density of changed particles, some slight deviations to the flightpath. Inconsistent altitude adjustments.
Then the pilot’s voice, sounding a little panicked. “Uh… Twilight? I think we might be having some…” on the channel behind her, several alarms started going off. On Twilight’s sensor displays, the Prospector veered violently, dangerously close to the acceleration threshold on unconsciousness. Rainbow was trained for high-g maneuvers, but the Prospector could take only so much. “What do we do?”
“Get out!” Twilight said. “Emergency burn, right now. Buck the docking, get out of there!”
“Already on it!” Rainbow said, over the sound of more alarms. “Alright ponies, buckle yourselves the hell in and say goodbye to your breakfast!”
Her voice vanished into the roar of the prospector’s engines. Twilight held against the seatbelts in her chair so firmly that her hooves started going numb.
“There’s nothing you can do, captain. Either they’ll survive, or they won’t.”
The voice that spoke from behind her was Spike’s, though it didn’t seem like it came from any of the familiar ship’s speakers. She glanced backward, eyes widening at what she saw. It was very much like what she’d seen from Node, a bipedal creature with mostly naked skin and four manipulating arms. Its eyes were wide, and its hair a sharp purple just like Spike’s scales. For as strange as he looked, the voice was identical.
“You have a body,” she said. She kept glancing back to the readout, but the Prospector’s signal was gone into the static of its emergency burn. Either it would resolve out the other end, or… it wouldn’t.
“I’ve had one for a few days now,” Spike said, settling into the science chair and adjusting the jumpsuit around his collar. He wore a uniform just like the one he’d once worn to formal functions, covering much of this strange body’s naked skin. “But I don’t feel the need to… use it, very often. The focus in one point is distracting. The Equinox has a wider scope of sensors. A body manipulates my senses into… caring too much about a single viewpoint.”
Twilight looked back to the screen. “You didn’t make a dragon.”
“No designs for one,” he said. “And since the materials available wouldn’t have the traits of a dragon, making something with my old shape seemed… pathetic. Maybe one day, I can get a design that approximates it. Honestly, the Equinox is a better approximation of a dragon than this. Thick scales, sturdy, long-lived…” His expression changed. “I’m getting a signal from the prospector.”
Can Rainbow pull back out into orbit? Yes.
“We’re bucking out!” Rainbow’s voice came back over the radio, heavily distorted. “Captain, uh… I think we might need ourselves a lift. Prospector’s drive section is half melted, and I had to ditch some cargo to lighten the load. But we’re out. I think the station holding Canterlot tried to grab us!”
“We’ll set a course,” Twilight answered, voice grim. “We’re coming, Prospector. Sit tight.” She nodded towards Spike. Without a word of explicit instruction, she felt the dull rumble of the Equinox’s engines kicking on. There was no need to calculate vectors or plot a course out of orbit—Spike did all that on his own.
“Looks like they’re badly damaged,” Spike said. “We’ll need considerable time to try another mission like that, and lots of repairs. Or…”
1. Time doesn’t matter, repair the Prospector and try again. It’s the safest way.
2. The Equinox is larger, and its engines dwarf the Prospector or the Canterlot by weight to thrust. We’ll do this ourselves.
3. Twilight didn’t study teleportation not to use it. She’ll make a long-range jump directly onto the Canterlot. [dangerous]
Go to the interface station. While the engines of the Equinox are bigger, the station is holding a much bigger ship.
Or send a probe to the interface station first, see how it reacts.
The Prospector was never rated for that kind of stress. My kneejerk reaction is to send the bigger ship. That said, we tried delegation, maybe it’s gime to risk the least amount of lives possible.
Shame we can’t have Sunset do the dangerous teleport. Twilight has had a lot of struggles with teleporting so far. I’m going to vote for Twilight but I fully expect the poll will go with the Equinox.
*** edit *** Oh, there’s a 4th option. That changes things...
Pars minuta prima, Captain. Remember that.
Send in the big boy and head for the interface station. If it wants them to come in, go along with it. Yes, it could end disastrously, but at least the approach will be fairly simple.
Sneaky fourth option seems the best, I'd say.
I knew something like this would happen if we took the prospector, but apparently a majority of people think taking the flimsiest and least poweful craft at our disposal was the best choice... Now the prospector is halfway to being scrap, and we've lost potentially critical time on an ill convinced stunt. Good job.
Now can we take the Spikequinox and dock with the station? Or do you want to risk Twilights' sanity and her crew to the hunger? Seriously, we've taken all this time upgrading and reinforcing the ship exactly for this. I don't see why we wouldn't dock the ship, but maybe a majority of those who vote are expecting some sort of deus ex machina type miracle to happen with a bonehead choice.
Just to reiterate, I'm mad as hell at the apparent lack of thinking that went into the last vote. I also am voting for option 2, because it is what we've been preparing for all this time and risking the hunger influencing the jump has BAD IDEA written all over it.
Edit- I just saw the 4th option. Still voted for 2. My reasoning? PONIES IN DISTRESS!!! Seriously, did everyone just forget the SOS indicating ponies on the station in need of rescue? Now you want to go derping off to the station holding Canterlot in position instead of attempting to contact the forementioned ponies? My god, it's like a bunch of people went "Hey something shiny! Let's go look at it!"
Rescue should be our top prority right now. We can worry about the station and Canterlot itself later, but if we mess ANYTHING up on the station we may not have a Canterlot to save.
Fine.
We'll do it ourselves.
Thank goodness we didn't send the whole ship in there. What if what happened to the Prospector happened to the Equinox? Even MORE time lost to repairs!
I'm voting for trying to dock with the interface station. Hopefully it's safer.
9815281
I feel like you're taking a lot of anger out on people when none of us knew the results, and that's really not very fair. Clearly this was a roll, and there was a chance that the Prospector would have made it. There was also a chance that the Equinox WOULDN'T have made it, which would have been a crapton more damage to repair and threatened the entire crew instead of just a portion. Who's to say that whatever tried to grab the Prospector wouldn't have had an even better grab on the Equinox? Why is it wrong that enough people wanted to attempt the option with the least chance of catastrophic mission failure?
It's easy to say "I told you so" after the fact, but this was still largely random, so no one can really take credit for being 'right' or 'wrong'. We have no way of looking back in time to what would have happened if your option had been picked. That's kinda how life works, after all; you make the best choice you can, and deal with the consequences. In this case, we have to decide as a group, and it's just not possible for everyone to agree on one course of action, so we'll see where the majority leads and hope for the best.
I want to try again with the Prospector. It doesn't seem safe to bring the Equinox in there.
Let's not risk the Equinox crashing into Canterlot. Dock with the interface section, try to turn off the suction, or try something else.We can't trust teleportation.
9815281
What if the station tries to suck the equinox into the same position as Canterlot, crashing the two together and only making the situation worse?
Time to embrace the HuNgER
9815281
Since when does a distress signal that's been going for ages mean something is definitely alive down there? Until I hear from something alive my reaction has been to be prepared rather than fast.
Honestly, I'd like to spend the month and get the prospector back up, not to use it again on the same mission, but just to have a second vehicle ready for whatever situation may spring up. I feel iffy if it's wise though in the event that time really does matter here and isn't just a distracting force.
9815439
Didn't the activation of Sunset's device cause them to start sending out a signal? Implies a high chance of life to me.
If everyone on board is dead... Well, there are time spells in the Starswirl the Bearded wing. They would be a good last resort to save Equestria - perhaps even the planet itself, if the whole crew could be permanently sent back to before the disaster hit
Go for that sneaky fourth option.
9815360
Lets try a test shall we? Try throwing a paper plane into a high wind. Then try again with an rc plane. Which do you think has a better chance of navigating and survival? This is a gas giant we're dealing with, and my anger stems from the fact that people don't seem to realize that the forces at work would do exactly what they did.
The prospector wasn't reinforced and upgraded for such a mission, but the Equinox was. We seemed to be preparing to dock the ship for the last few chapters, and then the moment using the lander is presented all that time and effort means nothing. I would have been okay with the choice if the prospector had been upgraded for the attempt. It wasn't, and we still tried despite warnings of what would likely happen.
The point of my little "told you so" rant appears to have been missed, as most will get annoyed when someone points out how they were wrong. If you want me to apologize for giving an educated opinion, not having that opinion listened to or even considered, then pointing out how my prediction for disaster was correct, then you shall have it. Just please consider that some of us do have an idea what we're talking about.
I almost always leave a comment with my choice and the justification for that choice. Unless I'm mistaken , many of us frequent commentors do. I pointed out what was wrong with the choice, but it was made anyway. I felt marginalized, and now I've got people giving me crap over venting at those that made me feel like my opinion didn't mean squat. Thanks a lot people.
I even tried turning my rant into something constructive at the end. Yes it was still a bit vitrolic, but at least I was trying to work on a solution. I guess I'll just be quiet from now on, since expressing how idiotic I found the choice to use the lander was seems to be wrong.
9815541
First of all, I really am sorry that you felt marginalized. I was the first to reply to your comment, and I certainly wasn't trying to create a dogpile. Of course differing opinions should be respected and giving justification for your arguments is a good thing. My only real beef with your comment was that you repeatedly took time away from explaining your choice to rail against those who chose differently and question their intelligence. It was heavily implied that those like me hadn't put any thought whatsoever into our choice. It's not fun being accused of stupidity because of a disagreement in opinion or missing a detail that might help affect our choices.
I don't want anyone to feel like they can't voice their opinion. I just don't want us to be slinging fury at each other over what is, in the end, a game. And I usually don't read through every comment on each chapter; I certainly don't mean it as a slight if I miss someone’s explanation of why they think another choice is best, and I know others don’t either.
You make a valid point about the Equinox being better beefed for this situation. I still don't think it would be a good idea to throw it into the gas giant since forces other than the planet itself were reportedly at work on the Prospector (“I think the station holding Canterlot tried to grab us!”), and because it's dangerous throwing all your eggs in one basket, but you're probably right that sending in the Prospector wasn't wise. Hopefully the crew's next step will have less catastrophic results.
9815454
Good point about the beacon. I dont think time travel would fix this though. They still dont know any way to beat the Hunger, and they might lose the advanced tech they have now. But having more minds working the problem would not be a bad thing.
9815541
Agreed. Attempting to approach in any case should never have been on the table except as last resort.
The very first thing to do is attempt to establish contact. Extremely little of that has been
attempted (as far as we know), and instead we're running around like chimpanzees throwing dung to see what sticks. It would have taken what, a day to fly over and try to establish comms with the Signaler station? After that if it failed, then we try the hard thing and bulldoze into the tractor beam.
It is incredibly frustrating that there haven't been sensible choices for much of this journey...
We feel a lot of unnecessary hardship is shoehorned in inexplicably.
Indeed, the fourth option is frankly what should have been done in the first place. Low risk, quick, high chance of success (with Spiquinox and Node), and best of all, it could solve so many problems for so little loss if it fails.
Are you kidding me! If we just lost something like half the crew to a random event I am going to be unhappy.
Neat that Spike is getting more options for mobility internal to his larger Spikequinox body. Him being able to contribute to his own engineering upkeep is fantastic. Well, right up until it goes horribly wrong but hopefully that won't come to pass.
Thank goodness we managed to retain those extra points of piloting skill.
I think my vote last chapter was to just go all in, so same thing this time. Teleporting in is definitely out, and maybe they have enough intel from the failed trip to succeed with the bigger ship.
9815726
I do wish there were more options in the way of “try to communicate with Canterlot” or, if thats not possible, that it would be better explained why. I dont remember there being mention of a reason they cant reach out, unless I missed it?
9815740
The atmosphere is interfering with normal comms. Essentially, by the time the probe got close it was indecipherable. We believe there wasn't even good visual confirmation of the surface state of Canterlot, and that's just a photograph...
9815744
Ahhh thats right, I remember now. I THOUGHT atmosphere might have been the problem.
All options suck ass. If it wasn't an all female organic crew (since spike is just AI now) is say cut ties, but don't want the species dying out in one generation so fuck can't they just row the canterlot out?
Same thing I voted for last week- go down and try to cut the problem off at the source.
Go Rainbow!!
*shortly later*
"Hello breakfast, nice to see you again. Not."
We should dock with the Equinox/Equispike/Spikequinox.
The only question is where...
Wow wtf
Going to the interface is a pretty worst case scenario
That's the crazy talking. This is a trap please vote for teleport
I'm going to go with Docking with the interface station.
This place is simply holding Canterlot, instead of trying to launch it like one of the Signalers ships. Either this is a trap or Canterlot's condition probably tripped a safety check. But in either case, I doubt a machine built in such a place wouldn't have means to safely extract a ship that would trip a safety shut down of its primary function.
One thing is certain, the gate is holding Canterlot together and up. I would imagine Canterlot is no condition of getting itself out on it own. I wonder if some of the damage might have been caused from trying to escape on their own?
This would have been the perfect spot for Twilight to give Spike a hug, and I am extremely vexed that it didn't happen.