Chapter 22
Find a nearby asteroid 64%
They’d named the asteroid Harmony’s Repost, probably because Twilight was tired, and she didn’t have hours to obsess about what it should be called. Ever since they’d tossed their stowaway into the freezer, Twilight had been having trouble sleeping.
It was all bluster, it’s okay. Equestria isn’t in danger. Still, she hadn’t be able to get her last words from her mind. “It already happened. It’s all gone back to the way it should be.” Even if they were still in touch with Equestria, their information would be four years behind. IF she asked for confirmation that nothing was wrong, she wouldn’t know their answer for another eight. By then they would probably be on their way home already, and beyond the power to change course.
If Spike or Applejack had been affected by their actions, they made no sign of it. Spike certainly didn’t seem torn with regret—he’d taken to her assignment with incredible enthusiasm.
She found her way to central fabrication roughly ten minutes before they were scheduled to park beside the asteroid, and he was still hard at work.
“Don’t worry!” Spike called, sounding quite worried himself. “The new stuff is all mine, I didn’t steal ship parts.”
The new stuff indeed. Spike now had several different machines, each one nestled inside standard fabricator shells that had been gutted and opened and connected with thick bundles of wire. She approached cautiously, watching through the plastic as Spike did.
The thaumic-grade crystals were gone, replaced with a single disk about as wide around as the bottom of a pony’s hoof. Tiny grippers inside the machine held it as it was sprayed from both sides, then lowered it into another section of the machine. Lights flashed from within, and it was lifted again to be sprayed and polished. From the look of it, all these connected machines were made to pass that single thin disk around.
“That’s an awful lot of effort,” Twilight said, sitting on her haunches and trying to make sense of it. “Guess you made progress in the last month, huh?” He also wasn’t wearing badinages anymore, which she found even more encouraging. His scales had healed, though the purple and lavender pattern there would show slight splits for the rest of his life. “All that for a disk?”
“Actually all this is for a single component of the real machine.” Spike pointed to the wall. He’d significantly restructured, with most of the diagrams kept in their original size. But two had been enormously enlarged, printed and painstakingly glued together into two huge posters. “This is the machine you’re looking at.” He said. “And that is what it makes. Here’s a failure, check it out.”
He tossed another disk towards her, and Twilight caught it in her magic. At least she didn’t get a headache when she tried to levitate anymore.
It wasn’t clear anymore, but faintly reflective. There were lots of little patterns visible in the crystal, square, repeating and regular and connected with hair thin wires. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “The aliens gave us an art machine. I’ve never seen ponies carve so fine. What in Equestria are they using do print so fine?”
“Light,” Spike answered. But he still sounded frustrated. “It’s not art Twilight. It’s some kind of… thinking machine.”
“A computer?” She tossed the disk back. “I’ve heard ponies talk about tiny tubes, but not this tiny.”
Spike shrugged. “I can’t make any more sense of how it works than you can. I just know the fabricator they have us can’t be controlled by our computer. No uplink at all, just one of those sitting in the heart.”
“It’s really interesting,” Twilight admitted. “But we’ve got bigger problems right now. Asteroid looks promising. Applejack has a sensor probe ready as soon as we get closer. All three of us on mining detail until further notice. So…” she gestured at the complex machine with a wing. “Pack this up. Maybe make some room, too. We might need fabrication again as soon as we have the spare metal.”
“Right,” Spike deflated at her words, though he was obviously trying not to show it. “Mining duty. I’ll be there. Just…” He reached over to the wall, ripping out the ingredient sheet and pushing it towards her. “We need all this. If there’s any chance we can get it…”
“We’ll try,” Twilight said. “But getting the Prospector up is priority one. Then we refuel, then we get enough to get Hydroponics growing, then we get to other projects. I’m sick of operating with only part of my crew.
A few hours later, they were back on the bridge, with the screens all filled with data readings. “Well…” Applejack relaxed, pushing away from the science station. “Say ‘yer prayers back to Celestia, cuz’ we’ve got Xenon. We’ll have to melt a nice little lake of ice to get to it, but… nothin’ the Equinox can’t handle.”
Twilight looked again out the window—the asteroid didn’t look like much. An oblong bit of mostly ice, wrapped around a thin spur of rock and metal. It was larger than the Equinox, but not much larger. “What about the rest of our systems?”
Applejack shrugged. “The rest is… mostly aluminum, few other trace metals. Was hoping for some titanium, so we could replace some of the systems somepony decided to gut… but hydroponics will work just fine with aluminum trays. But we do need an agenda, cap. We could spend… oh, six months here. Use some ice to dome over down there, get into the gut on that rock and dig out everything we need… like mah family would do… or we could just start hauling ice back, looking for pockets a xenon.”
“What difference does it make?”
“Well… how big a rush we’re in,” Applejack answered. “Waitin’ means we’re better prepared. We could go into the prospector nice and slow, check if for all kinda traps. We could make ourselves a fresh batch ‘a spare parts and fill our tanks till they’re like Rainbow in cider season. But that’s a long time, especially with just three. So long it might be faster to lose time in the beginnin’ plantin’ some geneseed, cuz the first crop’ll be one more set a hooves, and another every month after. The longer we’re here the faster we get.”
“Basically, comes down to what yah’ want fixed, and how prepared we want to be.”
Twilight needed to make a list.
- Rebuild weapons [ORE UNAVAILABLE]
- Construct Hydroponics (one crew-member will revive every month following its completion, speeding further repairs)
- Repair the prospector
- Minimum fuel for inter-system destination
- Fully refuel all tanks
- Replace field equipment
- Complete Spike’s Project
- Repair backup cryogenics
- Build a second lander (using a different template)
- Conduct a serious study of why Equestria is out of contact
- Split the party: Once Prospector is repaired, have Twilight take it somewhere while the crew repairs the Equinox.
- Fully repair Equinox's structural integrity [ORE UNAVAILABLE]
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Hmm right... Spike's flame message at what speed travel?
Hail Transistor!
It looks like it's counting each check as a separate vote, and throwing off the percentages. Assuming you have some way to see how many responses there were.
9301991
One can see the total votes for each option alongside the total number of votes overall
Definitely hydroponics, gotta get more of the crew up and recovering. And I'm all for completely refueling - no more of this desperate scrabbling for fuel at inconvenient times. Repairing the prospecter makes sense to speed the work. But Spike's project and figuring out what is going on back in Equestria seem low priority right now, at least until they have comfortably established a basecamp on a solid planet and gotten all crew up and healthy. Survival must come before curiosity, especially when they cant do much about one thing and the other has waited 40 years already.
9301991
Yeah, I think I'll use whatever option gets the most as the "total" votes, since I have no way of easily checking the number of respondents. And anything within half of the total of the one with the most votes will happen. (which could be all of them, depending on how pones vote)
Refuel the ship, repair Hydroponics and the Prospector, and replace field equipment. Hey, i nailed the top four! (as of now)
I always wonder about these multivote options on polls. Choosing too many options would sort of be watering down your voting power, right?
Hydroponics please.
More ponies = more hooves available to complete more options, faster.
I say hydroponics is the best thing to do. Once more of the crew is awake, further repairs can happen fast, plus the larger crew can preform additional projects at once. Like repairing Fluttershy's room.
I guess as long as he doesn't run afoul an archer with a black arrow he should be fine, right?
Good enough for me.
I voted for the Hydroponics (like most did), repairing the prospector and getting more fuel.
The rest can wait in my opinion.
Hydroponics should definitely be #1. More horsepower (ha!), and more character interactions making the story more interesting. Also, more specialties!
Hydroponics (for the needed help) and Spikes project (cause I think that it will eventually be the key to the system).
And maby a sideline of Twilight exploring with the Prospector if fuel does not take away the possibility. (maby check out nearby asteroids for titanium or other needed ores)
I vote Hydroponics, Repair Prospector, and Fully Refuel. No more fuel concerns!
Hydroponics is a must. Getting the Prospector back up and running is a duh since this is exactly what it's designed for. (any other lander I'd have said pass on)
Backup cryogenics is an important safety project, especially if the crew is being revived. (plus it adds a bit of a backup in case things go wrong with our prisoner)
Spike's Project and recontacting Equestria right now are projects that should only be worked on during downtime and not a distraction for active duty hours.
Refueling... Full refuel is a waste of time that could be used to mine for other things to do stuff like repairs and replacement of all non-mission-critical equipment. Plus if the drone truly is hostile more fuel (assuming it's reactive, instead of inert) means a higher chance of secondary explosions.
I will express my opinion of the last available option in song:
But yeah, let's get some more hooves on the ground.
Hydroponics to help revive the others (and get them some food!), repairing the Prospector means they can make use if its unique design, full fuel means they can go ANYWHERE, replacing 'lost' equipment is good and repairing backup cryo in case of emergency is again a good idea....and that bitch is taking up space in the main cryo so yeah....
The rest seem either silly/redundant or just a recipe for depression
Hydro, refuel, communications, repair prospector, and then send Twilight to search for ore for structural integrity.
Hydro to get more crew-members and get food online, repairs and systems will snowball. Repair and refuel. Check prospector when specialists have thawed to do so, get communication working and then send Twilight to find another Asteroid which might have materials for the repairing the hull completely.
After these basic requirements are done and material stockpiles are sufficient it is time to make decisions for the future. They appear not to be in any hurry to make quick decisions, and even if they would be getting things stabilized would be the best solution in my mind.
The order of Twilight's list is a pretty good priority list, so I went with that and took the top six or so.
Assuming all votes are cast randomly, then an average distribution would be that all options have 100/n percent of the votes.
Since there are 10 options, any option with more than 10% of the total votes is an option which is more favoured than disliked.
Therefore, rather than take all options with percentages greater and equal to half the highest, a more accurate choice would be to take all options with percentages greater than 10%. (Even though there's no difference between these two methods as I'm writing this)
While I also voted for Hydroponics, I still think we need to not only complete Spike's project... But I am seeing cons of going for Hydroponics. Applejack is useful, there's no doubt about that, but we can hear and see her bias on so many things often. Consider how others might be biased to some discoveries, to Spike's project. Twilight is captain, but she could be outvoted at that point, couldn't see?
I am worried.
Hydroponics. We need faster repairs.
Hydroponics is a must. More crew members, more food.
Refueling is also important. Either one is fine, I personally vote for minimum, because we don't need full refuel yet.
Having a lander aviable is also super important. I vote for repairing the prospector, but building another one is an option.
I'm not sure if the field equipment needs to be replaced. In any case, I'd wait to have a bigger crew before focusing in this.
Backup cryo isn't urgent, neither are communication or spike's project. We can worry about those later, with a full crew and a base in better conditions.
Splitting the party is a no-no. Only villians do that.
9301281
Yes. Yes I did.
Hydroponics for sure.
I think a full refuel is unnecessarily wasteful. That's enough for the return trip, which we don't really need. Getting enough for inter-system transit is obviously important, but I don't think we need to go beyond that.
All the others don't have any noticeable drawbacks excluding time, but this is just stupid. You never break up in a story like this.
Anyway, we have our first multiple choice list! What shall we do?
...
I've voted for everything but minimum fuel and split the party. We don't have a definite and pressing reason to rush, and I want everything that can possibly serve as a Plan B online: better safe than sorry.
Almost all of that NEEDS to happen, but if there's one that simply can't be abandoned is Spike's Project. That's bound to open up so much technological avenues they'd be insane to let it go astray.
9302202
Complitly agree
Hydroponics I think should be the priority. Get the crew unfrozen and working. Then...repair the Prospector and get enough fuel to just travel around the system.
9302337
In real life I'd agree they only need enough fuel to get around a little, but given that this is a story and the odds of trouble are 100%
Without weapons you want to be able to run.
"badinages" - presumably "bandages"? That's a funny autocorrect error!
"the fabricator they have us" - "gave us"?
I need to check in more. I've missed a few polls
9302378
I agree. I dont know why so many people are against making it a top priority. IMHO crew and fuel are more important but ... There is no telling how much better it is than their present construction tech. It could potentially make their repairs 100 times faster ...and potentially give them ship upgrades .. those two alone are worth the time and effort.
Outside of the systems needed to survive, time isnt much of an issue right now. Getting more crew will certainly help.
As for Equestria's fate? They're probably best off ignoring it and not thinking too much about it for now since there wouldnt be much they could do about it anyway for the next decade or so.
9302202
First reaction i had to that option as well. Maybe once we can form 2 to 3 pony crews but with just 3 people, and Twilight's critical failure rolls, splitting her away from the rest in space is the worst thing we can do.
Full fuel and partial fuel are mutually exclusive, so that's minus one option no matter how you vote.
Hydroponics and the prospector should both get attention. But if they're pulling ponies out of cryo, do they really need to repair backup cryo?
Building a second lander is the Age of Empires equivalent of fast-Castling into a second Town Center. It's a yes from me.
And if we're building a second lander, we'll need supplies (i.e. Field Equipment).
For the sake of furthering the plot, I also voted to investigate Equestria's silence.
9302001
Ah. Figured you were just going to use the top five (of ten), but I like this better.
Hydroponics is the no duh priority, get the rest of the crew up ASAP. Then get refueled and fix the prospector.
Finishing Spike machine and investigating the com issue would be nice, but hardly needed at the moment.
9302378
Yeah, everything apart from splitting the crew. And the mutually exclusive ones like Partial Refuel. They need to have the best chances, and hence be the best prepared. The Project could yield A LOT of potential...
Although there needs to be some sort of order to which happens first or simultaneously. Backup Cryogenics can wait until later if Hydroponics comes online.
The question though: what will the chip drive?
Let’s play FIIID THAT ERROR whom ever find it and reports to me that you found it and what it was will get a clap
We’ve got another one!
-*-Priority-*-
1) Construct Hydroponics
2) Refuel tanks as much as possible
3) Repair Prospector
-*-Secondary-*-
4) And maybe replace field equipment.
(I know it's too late to vote. I just like adding my two bits.)
Bandages?