4. Let Spike Decide (He’ll be awake anyway, might as well let him choose once there’s more information)
"I can't decide right now," Twilight said, pushing the tablet back with her magic. Spike caught it in his claws, frowning.
"You've got to decide," he said. "It takes a long time to build a lander, Twi."
"I know!" she grinned down at him. "And you'll be around to make the right choice. Wait until the probe gets there, then do what seems best." She hopped up onto the table, wincing visibly as the telescoping arms unhinged themselves from the cot and began adjusting her body into place. The cryopod looked like a tomb, even with most of its parts hinged open around her. I guess it might be. We've never kept somepony asleep for this long before. But ponies didn't brave new frontiers by staying safe in their beds.
"Good luck, Spike," she whispered, as the first blast of medication took her in the face. "See you… in a few."
"Yeah," he said. His tone stretched, becoming wistful. "In a few." Twilight saw no more.
But Spike did. Some selfish part of himself had been looking forward to this time alone—it was time Twilight had never given him growing up. To read as many comics as he wanted, do as few chores as he wanted. Not eat as much as he wished to, since the Equinox dispensed the rations automatically. The ship did not need his help. And while Ponies might've struggled under the high apparent gravity of acceleration, Spike's dragon constitution did not. He would have to enjoy it, because once it stopped, it would be into the centrifuge every day to keep his bones from getting weak.
For the first time in his life, Spike had an endless wealth of time on his claws. Enough time to play every adventure module from Equestria, to decorate the whole ship, to sit beside the hibernation pods for hours and tell Rarity just how he felt. Without an answer, obviously. Eventually, though, the leisure started getting to him, and he sent a request back along the laser line. He wanted home study university courses—as many as they would give.
"Here you go, buddy," came the datascroll from Big Mac. "You keep my sister safe now." So he gave himself a routine.
Spike studied on the main deck, where one day the crew might wake and live and look down at an alien world through real windows. The sky out here didn't include Celestia's sun, the window faced the wrong way for that. But they were still stars, the same stars he'd see from Equestria. The same stars his friends back home were seeing.
Spike didn't resist his dragon constitution, either. If he wanted to turn down the climate control to near freezing and sleep for a few months, who was going to stop him? The computer could wake him if anything serious happened that needed his attention. And after napping for a few weeks, his mind would be fresh for the next day of class.
The Equinox's systems became less of a mystery to him as the months turned to years. His own body changed too, and those changes were the most exciting of all. He almost woke Twilight when a pair of wings emerged on his back. But he'd also melted through several sections of deck-plating, and that would probably not have impressed her as much.
Eventually, the drone sent long ahead of the Equinox passed through Proximus, and though it had no fuel to stop it sent back enough data for Spike to select the prospector with certainty. Twilight would probably support his choice, and if not… she shouldn't have left it to him.
But then something terrible happened.
It was near the end of the trip—long enough that much of the deck was beginning to show wear from the places he'd walked, and he'd had to swap out his furniture with that stolen from other quarters. An explosion that shook the ship, waking him from one of his month-long naps. Spike jerked suddenly to alertness, ears flattening as alarms throbbed.
Spike did not sleep in his quarters, but in Engineering, with the Equinox's own sun burning just through the shield. Gas hissed into the air from several vents, even as bulkheads on both floors smashed closed. "MULTIPLE HULL BREACHES DETECTED. DANGER CODE SOMBRA!"
Spike's mind returned only sluggishly. But there was procedure for this, and the computer had made him rehearse it almost weekly. He pulled into a space-suit as quickly as he could and did nothing else until his helmet was securely in place. The screens circling the reactor weren't green anymore, but shone an angry amber, along with steadily increasing radiation levels. A pony in his position would be in trouble soon, but dragons were tougher.
Spike stopped in front of the nearest console, scanning it for the computer's warning messages.
Rupture detected in primary plasma line! Cause: Unknown.
Damage detected in primary drive manifold!
Coolant leak detected in central reactor!
Atmosphere venting on decks 2-4!
If he were religious, Spike might've whispered a prayer of thanks to Celestia that they were still alive. If that line had broken inside the Equinox, they'd be nothing more than scraps of relativistic space debris.
He began shutting down the central reactor, claws moving sluggishly in gloves. He could actually feel the deck shake as the auxiliary chemical generators switched on, running a little unsteady after many years of neglect. They would keep him alive while he figured out what to do.
Spike quickly realized there weren't enough spare parts to get the engines ready for deceleration—not without some "creative" engineering. But the Equinox was built from highly modular components, and he was reasonably sure he could get enough by sacrificing a less-important system.
Scrap Backup Cryogenics (So long as nothing goes wrong, I should still be able to thaw them out.)
Scrap the Lander (The Equinox can land. Taking off again, not so much.)
Scrap the Weapons (We come in peace, why'd they even give us these?)
(Certainty 100 Required)
Scrap the weapons. You've got an alicorn to point at grouchy things.
A tougher choice this time. Considering one of the lander options would be useful for gathering much needed resources on the new world, I'd say scrapping weapons might be the best choice. They have some magic to back them up, and if they get the right materials, they could probably make more weapons.
9223667
2:10-2:16
I'd say Cryo or Weapons. Even if something goes wrong with the cryo units and some of the ponies are held in stasis they still have the chance to come across a civilization as advanced as them who could help them out assuming the transmission is from a healthy civilization.
If the civilization is at war (something had to do that kind of damage and missed projectiles will do damage even lightyears away if they impact) then they'll need the weapons, if it's an asteroid or something they'll possibly need them for meteor defences.
I had to go with the Cryo.
Why the option to wake Twi for said decision wasn't offered is beyond me.
Scrap the redundant backup cryogenics system. Not enough detail from the probe to determine if weapons will/will not be needed, and the Prospector would be all-around useful once deceleration is complete.
Damn it, Starscribe, two chapters in and I'm HOOKED!
I’d just started to figure I could catch up on my backlog bit by bit before tackling any other stories, and now here’s something I literally have to follow from the beginning. And without even a chance to sleep on the first choice... well, maybe I can do that for this one. Not that the lander choice probably affected this situation (unless you only created this POV and situation for Spike because the poll passed him the buck?).
(Although of course Spike picked the single option that I had dismissed, for the same reason as another commenter- not sure it sends the best message. Though maybe it won’t even matter now....)
Anyway, engaging story as usual.
9223686
Because this happened.
I planned on talking about it, but that 1k limit is... well, in some ways it's the point of this project. Got some growing pains in figuring out how to make everything fit. I'll get better, I promise!
Weapons they're the most expendable of the three and worst comes to worst we'll have an angry alicorn on our side.
9223712
You're trusting Apple with important decisions?
I'm not sure if that's a good idea... She is worrying at times.
This was a very interesting chapter for sure. It really showed how useful and important Spike is to the team. I mean without him they all would be dead after this event. I wonder if the only change was the wings or did he get bigger? I cast my vote already even tho I wont say what or why because it is more fun that way lol. I wonder what will be the next big thing, for sure I can't wait to see when the girls wake up. For them it has only been a short time for Spike it has been much longer. At least he spent alot of that time improving himself lol.
Cryogencs - (So long as nothing goes wrong, I should still be able to thaw them out.)
No. We're not trusting our wonderful mane 6 in the hooves of fate.
Scrap the Lander
The thing that can manufacture almost anything else, and otherwise be left with the ability to land but unable to get back up? Pretty far up there in terms of bad ideas.
Definitely weapons. You're already in a spacecraft capable of relativistic flight. Either they're so advanced your weapons will be useless, or you're going to be able to fly circles around them without making a dent in your delta-v (change in velocity) capability. Fight or flight - well ya always go flight with the Equinox.
As for getting caught - Just carefully scan for signs of violence before you go pop down there. Heck, the ISS astronauts could see 9/11 happening with binoculars. Any decent IR suite could detect muzzle flashes from tanks or cannons, possibly even muskets and rifles with some good near-future, maybe even modern tech. To say nothing of deciphering radio signals. So you can minimize risk by studying them from orbit for awhile, first, to see how violent they are. So basically you can minimize the risk of getting caught somewhere you can't escape from. And once you're on the equinox, you can escape from anything they can throw at you.
If not, then they're advanced enough that one weapons' suite won't be peanuts against them - even if they're decades behind, a single craft isn't going to do much in battle against an entire civilization, unless that craft is so far ahead it didn't even need its weapons (because its main thing is its absolutely insane delta-v and high acceleration).
Even in Apollo, they preceded the Apollo missions with Gemini missions which were essentially dress-rehearsals - we didn't know what'd happen if you had a man in space for a week at a time, so we had people orbit Earth for the duration of a Moon mission where they could return within an hour if things went wrong to make sure people did fine in space for a week at time. Then they did that a few more times before ever launching men out to the moon.
And less applicable, they even took Apollo LM's and CSMs and tested their docking and maneuvering systems in Earth orbit to ensure the design was solid. They circled around the moon in a free return on Apollo 8, and even did the whole shabang (Lunar orbit insertion, CSM/LM undocking, some sorta flight tests by letting the LM drift around the CSM, and such. Can't remember if they did the orbit adjustment burn leading up to descent) in Apollo 10.
But 40 years is a long time, so it makes sense they wouldn't do Apollo-10 style dress rehearsals for this, I guess. But they'd definitely thoroughly ask things like - "hey, x y and z are the reasons 40 years posses some risk, we can mitigate those by having them thaw every 10 years, have a month out, then go back under for another 10 years" or such. Or even just only freeze them for 35 years if the risk of 40 was that great.
You'd think they'd know the limits of and reasons for those limits on cryo pretty well, though. So I'd think they'd have been smart enough to make the systems very safe.
EDIT: Lol, wow, I didn't realize how much I wrote...
Hey, I'm passionate about space tech, m'kay?
9223757
Just a method of randomization.
Weapons. Scrap weapons.
If we assume the star they’re going to is the same distance as alpha centauri, then the 40 year journey means they are traveling at 10% light speed. This means the thing that breached the hull could just be a small piece of space gravel that the ship’s point defence system missed.
Or, you know, it could not be...
Scrap the lander, can build one later, might be fatally too late to build back-up cryos and weapons if they are ever needed
My vote is Scrap the Weapons. Sorry Rainbow Dash I suspect those wore yours. But I whole heartedly agree with Star Scraper's reasoning.
Cryopod's and lander are more import at the moment.
Scrap the Weapons got my vote on the poll. If it really is super-powerful aliens, those won't do any good anyway.
Sweet, we got the Prospector anyway, and with survey data backing up the choice.
Hmn. Weapons, I guess.
In this case, they'll brave new frontiers by staying unsafe in their beds.
I find myself wondering about the damage rating system. Is Sombra better or worse than, say, Chrysalis?
In any case, any choice leaves the mission vulnerable in one way or another. We'll see how badly things go from here...
Scrap weapons, cannot vote on strawpoll on mobile. Just pops up ads
4) Jettison Spike
It's his hormones and dripping that got them into trouble in the first place. I'm not entirely sure how it's his fault aside from his weak grip, or how jettisoning him will help, but times like this call for bold, decisive action, not trying to figure out reasons to not jettison Spike.
My only hope is that spike survives... No specific reason why......
As my rules for this story state, i must leave a comment! Not 2000 words in and already a disaster. Lovely
Im gonna have to go with the majority vote here of scrapping the weapons.
The other options are too important long term or risky short term to lose. while giving up the weapons might put them at a disadvantage in a hostile encounter, odds are that they'll already start at a disadvantage and that having them would not make much of a difference. element of surprise, unfamiliar territory, being in space, you name it.
9224225
Agreed. clearly he must have been sleepwalking and has caused this! There is nothing that can proof otherwise therefore it must be true! Thus we should Jettison him!
Scrap weapons. We can build more later, and there are no known hostile threats anywhere....for the moment.
I'm voting Scrap the Weapons! You can always improvise weapons, and they have magic. But if cryo breaks, everyone dies. If the lander is scrapped, they're stranded forever. Definitely weapons.
Missed the vote here, stupid work, but good set up, nice to see Spike using the time well and planning things out.
Weapons gone... ehhhhh I'd have gone with back-up Cryo to go.
Spike
Or KaBOOM!
This is a fascinating format!
I'll just leave this here.
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