Chapter 12
Send the original signal 89%
Twilight didn’t hesitate. They’d come all this way to investigate the ancient creators of the Signal. She dug through the computer for a few seconds, found the recording of the original signal, and sent it back as loud as their transmitter could handle.
The instant she started, the vessel stopped transmitting its own signal, changing the overflow of white on all her screens back to the steady background hum of Proximus, still enormously distant.
“I sure hope you know what yer doin,’ Captain. That thing sure don’t look friendly. All those little spikes and towers. I bet she’s armed to the teeth.”
Twilight sat back in her chair. Whatever the vessel was about to do to them, there wasn’t much she could do to stop it now. Either their deaths would become mysteries in Equestria forevermore, or they wouldn’t.
Then it changed. She saw the lights appear along the hull, rippling lines like the illuminated flesh of a deep-sea fish. Were those patterns she could see along its surface, or was that just her imagination? She double-checked with the computer that they were recording from every forward-facing camera they had, just in case.
“What did you do?” Applejack asked. But even she seemed moved speechless by the display. She leaned forward over the weapons’ console, watching the little ship as glowed in alternating shades of green and blue.
“Just sent them back The Signal. They’ve been sending it to Equestria for almost a century now, I figured maybe… they’d know they called us.”
“Guess they did,” Applejack muttered. “Unless that’s their way of tellin’ us to prepare to explode, which don’t seem too likely.”
(Twilight attempts to figure out the message the alien vessel is sending. Failure)
Then the coms console in front of her lit up like Hearth’s Warming decorations. Solid, repeating bars appeared on her oscilloscope, so dense that she almost couldn’t see them. The screen still displaying database access flashed for a moment, then cracked down the center, emitting the stench of phosphorus. Twilight recoiled on instinct, watching as several other screens all over the bridge started flickering, scan lines appearing in irregular patterns.
“Buck it’s attacking us!” Applejack darted over to the weapons console, settling her hooves onto the controls. “We can’t just let it…”
Something was happening to the probe. The massive lens at the front of the bridge wasn’t a screen, and so was unaffected by the strange behavior that had infected their computer systems. The ship in front of them was getting smaller. Not just that, but its colors were glowing brighter, like someone had lit a fire in its little metal heart.
Twilight almost covered her face with a leg, but resisted the temptation. If it was about to kill her, she would at least watch her death coming.
Then it started to leak. Bright orange and yellow something leaked out from the front of the craft, quickly engulfing its glowing lights, turning silvery and metallic the instant it left the vessel. Then she saw an explosion—a flash that sent the various bits and pieces of the craft expanding outward in all directions.
Twilight winced. “Buck, how much time…”
“Not much!” Applejack leaned into the controls, settling her eyes into the scope connected to the eye. Her hooves twisted rapidly in quick succession, and Twilight heard the sound of the flak revving to speed before firing for nearly twenty seconds straight.
(Applejack fires the anti-collision system. Success)
She couldn’t see the little flashes in the void from bits of debris that would’ve smacked into the Equinox—but a few moments later the flack spun down again and Applejack rose from the controls, dripping with sweat and shaking on her hooves. “I think I got it all. Buck me if we shouldn’t have shot it earlier.”
Then all the lights went out.
For a moment the two of them stood in perfect, frozen stillness, listening to the silence on the Equinox. There was, no whirring of the air recyclers, no rumble of the engine. Nothing but the rumbling of steel as it settled under the sudden cession of acceleration.
A few seconds later the emergency crystals came on, a brilliant blue glow over the airlock settled into a metal bracket. Twilight winced at the thought of recharging every one on the ship when this was over.
Because that’s my biggest problem right now. Not that the Equinox may’ve just been fried by an alien weapon for reasons unknown. But that didn’t make sense, not any way she thought about it. That thing could’ve flown right up to them and exploded! It could’ve just hit them head on and left nothing but bits of dust in the wake of the resulting explosion. It isn’t a weapon. Probably just… alien technology. An accident.
“Wonder what broke,” Applejack muttered, removing the crystal from its hook and settling it around her neck. “I don’t hear auxiliary power kickin’ in, so… probably the computer. Pray to Celestia it ain’t fried, or we’re gonna be mummies within a week.”
They checked core systems along the way, with Twilight briefly peeking in to make sure Spike was alright. He was asleep, and Twilight didn’t wake him. It took almost an hour to reach the central computer, time spent manually opening every sealed airlock. Eventually arrived, and found it was the only system still running.
Every screen in the core was filled with strange text, unreadable rectangle characters scrolling past in a blurring array. Every tape drive in the room was spinning, every computational cluster belching enough heat that their breath didn’t fog in the air anymore.
Now Twilight had a choice to make…
1. Manually cut the power and run a full system restore from the master backup. I don’t care what the probe was trying to do before it exploded, now it’s put all of us at risk. Sure, we might be giving up on the probe’s response, but it might also just be a totally accidental side-effect that’s going to kill us all.
2. Let the computer run for a few days before shutting it down if that isn’t enough time. The probe received our message, and this is how it answers. This is why we came here, we have to let it play itself out. But if we wait too long, we’re going to be helpless when we catch up to the Prospector. There’s plenty of air in the Equinox, but we can’t stay helpless forever. If the batteries drain completely, we might not be able to get the reactor going again.
3. If pressed, Applejack suggests a modified version of the latter option. Using the Equinox’s supply of EVA suits and the computer core as a base camp, the program could be allowed to run for weeks without much disrupting ship’s operations. Some auxiliary power sources could be manually operated to keep the batteries from going dry completely. Working in space suits cramped in one room is likely to hurt morale and slow Spike’s healing, but if the probe did intend anything it will certainly be allowed to complete.
(Certainty 150 required)
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Goddammit Twiggles
Im calling it now its a race of AIs and they just up loaded a program to communicate and bring the Equinox to them
Give it a few days but the crew comes first.
Oooo. I know it's risky, but it's the whole reason we came here. Even if this probe wasn't from the original senders, it still tried to do something then run before it blew up the ship. I say we try to figure out what the program is! And screw morale, this is the whole point of sending these ponies/dragon out here. Risk it for a biscuit I say!
That is why I'm voting option 3.
I vote 1. We can't rely on alien charity to fix all their problems. Before anything else they have to focus on saving themselves.
Looks like it's a matter of clashing tech levels. The aliens definitely weren't expecting a system based on magnetic tape. Give it a few days, sure, but if the upload is too big for that long, best to indicate that they need to find a different way to communicate.
9259334
At least AJ was able to shoot down the debris.
9259350
THEY ARE GETH!
I'd say take longer for sure, as the uploaded program is going through and trying to complete what Twilight was unable to; creating a translation codex and initiate contact.
Morale may not seem too important, but all it takes is twilight and applejack being at each other’s throats to bring the whole mission crashing down. Two ponies fighting doesn’t seem like a big deal, until you remember that two ponies is 2/3 of the entire available crew.
Also, the events with twilight and applejack this chapter (with the communication and flak), are they like dice rolls, with different characters having different odds of success? I know fluttershy is the linguist, so would she have a greater chance of decoding the message than twilight.
2 there is little time
AJ's ideas seems to be alternating between being acceptable and terrible, but this one has potential.
Option three. Seems like the best idea. After all, they are here to learn, right?
Oh shit, this is pretty bad.
Chances are that ship just uploaded a virus into the computers. I don't think we will want that screwing with systems now, do we?
Option 1
I'm going to have faith in these aliens. I just need to figure out if we go with AJ's idea or not.
Ehhh, why not? AJ, do the thing.
You know, it occurs to me that we might have just accidentally engaged in cyberwarfare. We transmit the Signal, the probe starts behaving weirdly, and subsequently self-destructs. Simultaneously, most of our ship systems malfunction in strange ways, and something's trying to run on our computer system?
If that's the case, we probably don't want to let whatever's running run on the ship's main systems.
Still, on the off-chance that the probe was functioning as intended, we probably don't want to ignore the program entirely. There's little sense in acting on the assumption they're hostile, given that with their almost certainly superior technology and our lack of weapon systems, there's probably very little we could do to defend ourselves.
For those reasons, I would go with option 3.
The last option. You have to let it run its course. If it is some kind of malevolent artificial intelligence con Neumann machine that has infected the equinox, so be it, their asses were kicked the minute they got into the system. On the other hand, it may be worth more than their very lives. In fact, If they have no idea how long it will last, Apple Jack should give up her life support for twilight. (Edit for grammar etc)
Absolutely blind entering the solar system I would say option one.
Given they sent a third ship to them with a method to actually interface with their computers in a nonviolent way to the Equestrian ship I would say they have a better idea of what's going on or they are so advanced you might as well see do option three.
Not because of the color of the after post.
Simply because if they are that far advanced there is little reason to conclude they would be this knowledgeable of the ships internal functions and it would be better to strike from an interstellar distance with warning on their own terms.
Sounds like you've got the wrong character encoding in your computer system, Twily.
#3 over #2 for sure. Admittedly morale can become a serious issue, but there's no reason they can't abort and do the computer reset if it looks like AJ and Twilight are at their breaking point.
As for #1 ... maybe it's the sunk cost fallacy but I just can't throw our only real results in the dumpster.
2 immediately strikes me as a compromise between the two options. But do we need a compromise or do we need a commitment? On one hand/hoof/claw, putting ask your eggs in one basket is a big risk. But where RNGs are involved, option 2 is playing on hard mode to get anything useful out of the computer, and in that regard, the title of "riskiest option" switches to 2. I'm going with 3.
Option 3
We went through the effort to travel and respond to these aliens, and their probe didn't seem like it intentionally was trying to destroy the ship, so in an effort to conserve what we can with our resources I would let the mainframe computer run. And maybe wake up our communications specialist next chance we got.