• Published 10th Oct 2018
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Voyage of the Equinox - Starscribe



Equestria's first interstellar ship is crewed by the best and brightest Equestria has to offer. Twilight Sparkle and her friends are determined to uncover the origin of the mysterious alien Signal, no matter what it costs. A comment-driven story.

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Chapter 4

Applejack (Engineering, Hydroponics)

Twilight stared unblinking into her mirror, eyes watering even with the assistance of a pair of new plastic glasses. A thin line of fuzzy mane had sprouted in the week since she had first woken, the only healthy color on her whole body.

Patches of her fur were still missing, with splotches of grayish skin visible underneath. But they’d started to itch terribly, which the manual told her meant they were healing. The joys of being generation one. She could only hope that Equestria’s future expeditions would have better versions of that technology.

The Equinox had gone from the factory perfection she remembered upon launch to a place of near-constant alarms and minor emergencies. She could hear one of them now, along with the faint crackle of Spike’s voice over the radio. “I got this!” he called. “It’s no big deal. Don’t let Applejack out of bed again.”

Twilight levitated the radio up to her face. Proximity was enough to make it click on. At least their field equipment was still working. “I was about to see her anyway.” She lifted her thick clipboard up off the deck, then bounded towards the door. She didn’t have very far to go—their quarters were arranged in a spiral around a central living area, like the spokes of a wheel.

Applejack’s bedroom door was open, and so Twilight could see straight through to where a roughly mare-sized lump was struggling into a wheelchair. Twilight herself wasn’t able to move terribly quick yet. She was only a week or so ahead of her friend when it came to healing.

“Wait, Applejack! Stay where you are!”

“Horsefeathers,” her friend cursed, slumping sideways into bed. Her legs were slipping out from under her though, and she was already starting to slip.

Twilight covered the distance as quickly as she could, climbing over a set of low chairs and stopping in the doorway.

Applejack looked the way Twilight felt a week ago—her head almost bare, her coat patchy and uneven. But there was no new growth on her yet. Twilight hurried over, pushing with a little magic to nudge her gently back into bed. “What did the computer say about your first duty shift, Applejack?”

“Two weeks,” Her friend muttered, glaring at the half-dozen pill bottles all around her. It came from being an Earth Pony—all that endurance meant drug resistance, which meant a harsher freeze than the other tribes. Twilight knew a little of what it felt like, but she was also an Alicorn, with the benefit of faster healing.

“Two weeks,” Twilight repeated. “You have my permission to ignore that restraint as soon as we explode. Until then, trust Spike. If he could manage four decades, he can handle a few more weeks.”

“I ain’t rightly convinced of that yet, Twi.” The mare sat up in bed, propping her back as vertically as she could. She’d somehow struggled into her duty jumpsuit, though Twilight couldn’t have guessed how. Her motions were sluggish and clumsy, and her eyes were perpetually unfocused. She had her own computer-issued glasses, though she wasn’t wearing them now.

“Well, I’ve got something that might make you feel better.” She held up the clipboard in her magic. “An exhaustive list of every system failure on the Equinox! How great is that?”

Applejack snatched for it. “For everything on that list, I bet there are three bigger problems he don’t even know about. He’s just a baby, Twi. We can’t… think of him like he’s a proper engineer.”

“We can,” Twilight argued. “He basically grew up on the Equinox. He’s known this ship longer than we’ve known each other. It’s possible… though I’m not making any judgements on it… that he might be better at keeping her running than you are.”

Another siren went off from somewhere down the hall, along with a brief flash of sparks from an exposed panel. Applejack rolled her eyes.

“Well, maybe not better,” Twilight added hastily. “But he’s not a baby. He did his best.”

Applejack took the clipboard, scanning over it with difficulty. “Could you, uh… help me find my glasses, Captain? I figure I must ‘a lost ‘em behind my desk ‘er somethin’.”

“Sure thing,” Twilight looked around for a few seconds, then lifted the crude plastic frames in her magic. She could see the faint layers there, though the lenses themselves had been melted and polished so well that it was almost imperceptible.

Applejack stuck out her tongue a little, muttering quietly to herself as she read. Now that was the engineer Twilight remembered. If anything convinced her that her friend would heal up in no time, it was the energy she could see flow into that face. Engineering was itself a kind of magic for Applejack.

“Spike explained all this to you?” Applejack asked.

She shook her head. “That would’ve been time he wasn’t using to fix the damage out there, or sleep. But I went through the computer a little. I know we… hit something when we penetrated Proximus from the interstellar void. Almost all the damage on that list occurred during that instant, or cascaded afterwards. I’m not qualified to interpret the data from before the impact, and what we’ve been reading ever since might as well be static.”

Applejack nodded, tapping her hoof against the clipboard. “Well, that’s what it says, Captain. And since you’re the Captain… I’m gonna need to know your first priority. Spike might not have talked to me much, but he made it pretty clear. He ain’t got the learnin’ to fix none of this. You’re gonna have to tell me what matters to you most. Any of it could kill us, so… it’s gotta be your call.”

1. Repair the transmitter/receiver array. Seems mighty secondary from where I’m sittin,’ but ya never know. It might be Equestria is just fittin’ to tell us somethin’ mighty critical. Or they were, few years ago. Or, ya’ know, maybe the ones who sent the message have been callin’ our names mighty insistent like and we can’t hear em no more.

2. Repair the eye. I don’t know any prospector worth two shakes of a comet’s tail ain’t got a workin’ eye and be fixin’ to fly through some uncharted patch’a space. We’re riding blind, nothing but what you’an see out the window with a glass. You know Spike said he’s been plottin’ the path towards Proximus by claw since we got into the system? That’s bloomin’ crazy.

3. Repair the engine. Spike sure did try his best, I don’t mean to make him feel bad ‘er nothin.’ But we’re leaking fuel like one’a Rainbow’s rainclouds. Remember how we’re supposed to be caryin’ enough propellant to tour all over Proximus and find whatever we might need for a trip home? If I don’t try an’ fix this, we better pray to Celestia wherever we stop has plenty of helium-3, cuz if it don’t we ain’t gonna move again.

4. Build Hydroponics. Hey, nopony ever heard of an apple blowin’ up no starship, but that ain’t the only thing we gotta’ worry about. Spike didn’t take it easy with the rations on the way over, if ya know what I mean. And more important-like, that Biofab ain’t broken, it’s outta feedstock. Guess Spike didn’t figure the computer would call all our revitalizer expired, or he wouldn’ta made so many sweets. Unless there’s life like we know it on some planet—and that’s a real long buck—the day we get our friends back comes three months after I plant our first crop a’ Geneseed.

(Certainty 135 required)

Author's Note:

Hey there ponies! Feel free to use the comments to discuss, but note that I don’t count them for the purposes of what happens next. If you want to make your voice heard, make sure you do it in the poll. This entry’s poll:

https://www.strawpoll.me/16637708

What you’re reading is a CYOA-style adventure story, fully driven by its user feedback. This story is written using a system called Mythic, a GM-simulator that allows me to be fully in the driver’s seat for the prose, without actually knowing what will happen next. Success or failure in this story is fully governed by the fickle hand of fate, as well as the wisdom of those who chose to vote on it.

You can go ahead and vote in older polls if you want, but obviously they won’t retroactively change the text going forward, so the links are left behind mostly because I’m lazy and as a record of previous decisions.

If you’d like to take a look at my semi-regularly updated blog post with character sheets and stuff, go ahead and visit here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/834930/voyage-of-the-equinox-resource-page

And if you’re curious about the dicerolls and the system, you can see all of it for yourself and verify that I’m not cheating on my discord here: https://discord.gg/mQfUn75

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