Twilight knew what her next priority would be, now that the Canterlot was intact. She glanced down at the struggling shiprats, feeling a tug of guilt for the pain they were feeling. None seemed to be catastrophically wounded, but if the damage was internal how could she even know that for sure? She turned over her shoulder. “Flywheel, can you walk? I’d like you with me when we start on Life Support.”
For a moment it seemed like he was going to let her go. But then she said where she’d be going, and her practically flew out of his seat. “I can buckin’ walk. What in Celestia’s name are you going to do to our life support? Take our air away the way you almost crushed us?”
“No,” she said. “How about get the atmosphere bucking breathable again?” She gestured with a wing all around them. “Your brain is being poisoned with C02 concentrations this high. Clearly you’re all… resistant to it. But you’re swimming in a toxic soup and we’ve got to fix that ASAP.”
He looked like he was going to argue, then sighed. “Give me a moment to check on my ponies. I have to make sure we can get the injured to our clinic.”
“Sure,” Twilight answered. “We’ve got a good doctor of our own, and probably more medical supplies than you have left after all this time. You can use our medical bay once we dock.”
“There’s sky out there…” said a voice. One of the other shiprats, who had floated over to a window. They stared out at the stars, with only thin wisps of atmosphere floating along beside the station. Twilight had seen the view from up here many times—Canterlot was supposed to be the capital of Equestria, with thousands of ships coming and going. Now the glass ceiling showed them only stars, and the huge planet far below. But the planet was below now. It was a start.
“Sure is,” Twilight said.
A few minutes later, and they were back in the elevator. It shuddered uneasily as it rumbled down the shaft, and once Flywheel had to tinker with the panel again. He wasn’t half as good at it as Rarity, but he got them moving again. “It was wrong of me to underestimate an Alicorn,” Flywheel said. “I should’ve known you’d be here to save us. Ponies told stories about you. The Alicorn that went missing. The first one to die for Equestria, others said.”
There was nothing to stop her from asking this time. “What do you mean the ‘first one? Were you… did Celestia really detonate the sun?”
Flywheel nodded nonchalantly. “That’s what the computer says. Every alicorn made their sacrifice. Celestia to give us the push—Luna to protect us during the blast—Candance to power us during the journey.”
Tears collected near the top of Twilight’s helmet, pushed there by the downward motion of the elevator. Her voice cracked as she asked: “What about Flurry Heart?”
“The princess frozen in ice,” Flywheel said, her voice reverent. “Who sacrificed her family so she could lead us when we reached our new home. Though… maybe she won’t have to. Seems like you’re here to lead us. Didn’t sacrifice yourself to… let Equestria know it’s fate, or whatever the story is.”
They stopped, clambering out of the elevator. “Not yet,” she said, concentrating for a moment on simulating gravity under her hooves. It was stupid and unnecessary, but also made her feel far braver. It was something familiar, a way she could be back in control. Control she desperately needed.
Then she followed, past nervous crews of over a dozen shiprats. They looked like they’d been working, but clearly the launch had interrupted their routine. A few were lying on the ground, tended to by nervous companions.
But this was why she’d brought Flywheel. He could go ahead of her, waving away their concern and offering support so that she could focus on the task at hand: evaluating life support.
Is the damage severe enough to need replacement parts? Yes
She strode between the massive filtration cores and cooling towers, taking in the jury-rigged modifications with wide yes. In some ways what the shiprats had accomplished here was a miracle—in other ways, it was about to be her nightmare. They’d paid no heed to standard safeties, or even common sense. If it wasn’t for what she’d just learned, she’d probably be having nightmares about what they were doing with their gasses.
“It’s a bucking miracle you all haven’t suffocated,” she said when she was finished, taking a notepad of scribbles and tucking it into a pocket on the front of her suit.
“You’d do better?” Flywheel snapped. “The fabricator has been out longer than I’ve been alive. Spare parts are entirely gone, and our mission has always been to preserve the sleeping ponies at all costs. We used our blood to oil the chains of this station, princess. Of bodies stoked the embers. There isn’t anything more my shiprats could’ve done.”
“You’re right,” she said, lowered her head apologetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to criticize what you’ve accomplished. But we do have a working fabricator. Let’s see about getting the station working again before our orbit decays and we fall back to Proximus C for good, yeah?”
“At least that’s one thing we can agree on.”
Twilight would have to choose a repair path for the monstrosity before her.
1. Quick and dirty. Ponies are suffering every moment they have to breathe this air. Let’s work with what they did and just get the 02 concentration back to where it should be.
2. Methodical and proper. First we fix the fabricators, then we produce the parts we need, and eventually we have a space station with scrubbers that can last another century. If we don’t do this right it’s only going to fail again.
3. Radical With a much lower population, we could handle most of the air processing by restoring hydroponics. We’ve got some great robots ready to mass-fabricate.
My God. That nova was done as a Project Orion booster. Goes to show just how desperate they were.
In any case, let's get a working solution kludged together for the time being. They can come back to it later, but for now getting the oxygen concentration up at all takes priority.
Its better to do the job right the first time, rather than have to do it again later. Besides, the ship rats have been breathing the air for a long time, a small delay won't make much of a difference.
I'd say quick and dirty first, and THEN do a 2nd methodical run.
Why? oftentimes equipment has to be taken offline for maintenance. With the air as it is, turning off the already struggling filtration for longer than necessary is not a good idea.
Hence first improve the filtration to the point that one of the units can be taken offline for a proper repair without endangering the crew.
As for the lateral shift, it sounds to me like the first step will be culling the shiprats, and replace their labour with robots. This would likely cause a mutiny against "The Princess that betrayed Equestria". (since apparently according to the computers, every princess, who isn't Flurry Heart, died for Equestria[and Flurry is on ice, having lost her family for Equestria], so suddenly a princess showing up who not only didn't die, but then also attempts to cull the shiprats…)
Well... The first two choices are weird.
With air being so bad, perhaps getting air as good air to the crew as soon as possible is a good idea. But relying on a jerry rigged system long term is a no go if they want to wake up the cryo-sleepers later. Considering the dangers of multi-choice stories, it might be unwise to let a choice like this go if Starscribe decides we get one or the other this story.
Though going the long route of maintenance means the systems will go down once they start rebuilding it. This would really concern me if it wasn't for one thing, the Equinox is docking. The Equinox life-supports might short term give them enough time to take life-support offline to rebuild it. Of course that might stink up the air in the Equinox for a while as it trades air.
Going to go with the long-term rebuild of it. Best to get it fixed right so it doesn't break down again. Though I am a bit concerned. Can Spike's new bod hold up what's left of the entire equestrian race as they rebuild the colony ships life supports?
With it being either/or, the best choice is methodical. They have lived generations on bad air. A while longer won’t hurt them and our crew has suits. Radical sounds like executing shiprats with either forced conversion like Apple Bloom or just off them and build new robots. Don’t like the sound of radical at all.
Fix it right the first time.
No madness this time. Good work, Sparkle.
I think for the short term, we could do it quick and dirty. We can fix it up proper once the air is actually breathable.
Also..wow, that information we just got. Wonder if Celestia blowing up the sun had anything to do with the damage the Equinox initially took upon entering the system. I'm also curious how this story can end at this point without anyone dying. There is no home to go back to.
As tempting as quick repairs are, consider how many, many times we've had to deal with failures and compound failures that cascade into even more failures. The crew has a huge problem on their hoves and probably the only reason they're not facing an emergency right now is that all the failures trying to kill them rushed the door and got stuck trying to squeeze through at the same time.
Yeah, that's an encouraging mental picture...
When all hell starts breaking loose they're going to want the fabricators not just working but turbocharged to deal with everything breaking down and needing all the spare parts ever all at once.
Frozen in ice doesn’t mean Flurry is dead. Maybe she’s in cryo somewhere and they forgot where exactly. We still don’t know what Pinkie ran into during the journey here.
It’s possible that the high CO2 is somehow protecting these ponies from the madness. They’ve been awake for generations and it seems none of them have shown the madness.
9912932
This was my first thought, my second was "Cadence what did you do?"
Slow and methodic is the way to go here. These ponies can stand the air just a bit longer so we can get this done right the first time. Besides, they've adapted to the environment they have. Changing it too fast may kill them.
P.S.- Buck option 4... Buck it right out an airlock.
9912795
Why would the first step be culling? Where this insane idea even came from?
They already got much smaller population than Canterlot is supposed to support, what is the reason to kill anyone else?
If there's anything I learned from playing games like ONI, is that you should take care of your air problems sooner rather then later. Option 2.
Damn.
Sounds like Flurry is in stasis, at least.
Yikes.
2, let's do this right. They're not going to suffocate in the next couple of days or weeks after living in it for so long already.
Methodical is best. They have survived for this long. Best fo get things working completely first and right.
And R.I.P Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. They sacrificed so there ponys might live.
Am I reading a MLP fic or something from Warhammer 40k?!
Rolling for insanity.....
.......8.......
L̡ͩͩͤ͒Ẹ͉̤̗̞͈̎̽ͭ͂̏ͨA̜̩͈͈̭̱͇̒͌̇͜V̟̗͌ͪË͚̳͚̯̳́̄͑̑͠ ̻̩̤ͥ͊̈́̿N̫̺͙͓̰̂̑͗͋Ỏ̩̂̐͊ͦ̀N̵̰̜̪̻͛ͫ̈́́͗́Ēͪ̒̌̔ͦͦ ̰̪̗̰͖̃̃ͩ͗ͦ̅̋A̤̲͍̦̙̅̌ͬ̿ͯ͊L̹͎̞̞̮̤̟̋͗̀ͮ̽͌̑̀Ĩ̼̜̼̌̃́V̶͓̼͔̪͕̯̙̈͑̊̓͌̌Ė͎͎͕̘̖͋͡ͅ!͎̦̠̫͂̏̉̌ͭ̎ͤ ͖̖̦͑͋ͣ̏̅L̩̙̼͔̣̓̓͂̂̉̒̍͝ͅĚ̥̲̙̯͕̦͗͒T̖̪͈͖̼͝ͅ ͉̣̖̟͙̤̌̉T̡̞̱̔H̤͓̖ͤ̈́Ë̼̪̰̗̤̓͑ͯ́͆ͩͅͅM̺̮̬̭͚̱̃͞ ̪̭͕̞͉̜͓͝S̞̙͖̻̠͐ͮ̾̚ͅṶ̄͋̈́͝F̸̞͎̱̼͓̼̟̿̏̐̆F̜̤͓͉͆̐͆̒ͫͭ͋̕O̷̮̹̯̗͚̔ͅC̗̎̅̎͐ͬ͗ͅẢ̩̟̤̩̝̮̓̓ͣ̐̆͊͠T̘̔ͮ̌̔ͅE͐̈ͭ̏҉ ̵̟͓͇̲̑̑̽̏O̠̼̼͐̇̉ͥ͌N̴̞̲̜̤̱͐̄͗̊ͨ ̢̐̂̇ͪ͆T̲̟̟̉͛ͧ̄ͤ͑̌̕H͚̠͓̽̏̾̈́̓E͇͚͉̻̭͇̔ͩI̖͌̓ͣ̚R̩̜̔͛̐̓ ̞͆̄ͮ̑̂̈́̚̕O̹̮̺̬͢ͅW͉͎̻̯̮͉͇ͤ̈́ͭ͋ͤͬ̈N̠̜͇͕̤ͦͥͦͪ̅ ͍͓͙̮͖̙̲̋ͥ̈̑̾H̻ͬ́U͈̺͎̭͑̍̂͒͛̉͒B̜̣̭̮̰̖͖̅̈̑ͪ̃R͈̠̹͕I̘͕̘̜̪͓̍̔Š͖̖̮̳̳͍̫̊̀ͫ!̼̲̱̳̖̄ͥ͆̏̄
9912795
I'm pretty sure "with a much lower population" refers to the already smaller population there currently is, not culling the shiprats down even further.
I say get the CO2 scrubbed now. The shiprats may have been conditioned to live under high CO2 concentrations, but once their minds are properly oxygenated, repairs, and work can go much better, and smoother.
They have a lot of hooves, but now they don't have a lot of time, because of orbital decay.
A quick, and dirty repair now means more time to properly do the job, and worry about orbital Decay later.
Getting proper repairs will be much more efficient with more hooves. Getting more hooves can only be accomplished with better air. Fix it quick so we can get more ponies awake and fixing things.
Yes I would... blood is fuckingly awful as a lubricant, it GRIPS things as it congeal...
Leaving the damned gear alone would be better.
I'd normally go for repairing things the right way, but Canterlot is a wreck. Heck it should be condemned instead of repaired, but we don't exactly have another capital ship lying around to move the survivors to.
We have more than life support to fix. If we were to repair every major system the "right way" we would be playing the next chapter as the Mane 6's kids.
Tell Spike to fabricate a hundred pounds of duct tape.
I say we should do the Quick and Dirty approach, and once everything is stabilized fix it up for good.
Hopefully we will be able to unfreeze Flurry later.
9912868
Time travel. Twilight just needs to find the Starswirl the Bearded wing, and bring Node back in time with her to a point where they can actually do something, and undo the future.
9915634
That's assuming a hell of a lot. One, that there was a Starswirl the Bearded Wing to begin with. Two, that it contained the spell. Three, that the wing and the spell are still intact after all these centuries. Four, that even if all those conditions are met, there's a way to actually do any of what you said. The first time Twilight time traveled in the show, she went back a week, couldn't change anything, and was in a stable time loop. The second time, with Starlight, involved the map in her castle. Required the map. She doesn't have a map or a castle in this story. Also, five, that Twilight can do anything at all when the Signallers, a much more advanced society, couldn't.
With such a system I'm guessing there would be multiple life support units, I'd fix afew of the more intact ones, before starting on the fabricators to relate the junkers.