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)
Oof, real tough call. Think I'm going to have to come down on repairing the engine. No idea how the space engines work but leaking fuel COULD leed to other problems.
The eye and food are also real high up on the list so it was a real tough call, the radio can just sit and wait.
Fix the engines. Newtonian physics demand that. Go-arounds take a very, VERY long time if you miss the windows.
Strawpoll, strawpoll. Man, I can't decide.
At first I considered the transmitter/receiver array, because people said (and I agree) that if they got into a fight their weapons would be useless, so convincing them not to fight was the best option. Then I remembered the linguist (fluttershy) is still in cryo, so chances are any communication would be fruitless.
Ultimately I decided with the engine, because at least they’ll get a chance to plot a course to a nice planet, rather than a death trap of a world.
Also, I think the coloured options are character specific options. The one that in the first chapter was purple, because only twilight could make that decision, the one in this was orange because it’s unique to applejack. I think the black ones would have been there regardless of who we chose to wake up, but the orange one was there because we specifically woke up applejack.
9228299
2nded
I had to consider what they will need most. and to me it was food. If they run out of food than they won't have the energy to do anything. They can get the food going, slow their speed to a crawl to conserve fuel. Than go to working in the eye finally the radio. I would also get Twi to start to look into alternative fuels as well, ones they can replenish. I am thinking see if she bottle up her magic, go super strong solar, or even bottle Dragonfire. Those are things they can create on their own so they can't run out down the road. We have seen Two create things, even life, out of household objects. That has to be something they can use. I did really like that Twi stepped up to defend Spike. This is going to be a major change here. Spike ISN'T a baby. He is by in large WAY older than all of the girls now. He has kept them alive by having to learn a whole new field of work on the fly. I think it will be a rough change for the girls to not treat him like a child when he honestly might have outlived some of them if they were still on their planet
9228298
Given that Applejack mentioned helium-3, it's safe to say it's a fusion engine of some kind. Maybe the fusion can heat propellant to extremely high temperatures, and shoot them out the back with great efficiency. Or maybe the fused atoms themselves are getting shot out the back. Regardless, it's far more efficient than anything in use today, metallic hydrogen based rockets, and nuclear rockets (the fission kind).
A clipboard?!
I would expect she would need an entire book to list all system failures...
And Starscribe, could you please explain what the colors in the options are meaning?
Is it like 9228322 suggested?
Repair the Eye, if you can see where their is foul the leek isn't as bad.
But the engien coms strait after, then hydroponicks for biomass.
when emidiget survival issius are deltwhit then the pepole back home can start jamaring about data.
Hmm I still have not found what the orange means...
Oh, right, that particular skill set is attached to Applejack. At least she'll but up and running relatively soon.
I'd say hydroponics seems wisest—the more of the crew they can thaw, the better, and it'll also be able to feed those mouths—but when flying blind, deaf, and bleeding, at least one of those problems should be solved post-haste.
And darn it, Spike, the collision might not have been your fault, but the resource issues certainly are.
9228334 9228355
I think it's the option the character would choose if they weren't subject to our whim.
9228331
That's not how fuel works for spaceflight. Because there's no friction in a vacuum, you don't need to continually use your engines to maintain speed. What you do instead is use your engines to accelerate at the beginning of the journey, spend most of the journey cruising at that speed with the engines off, then use your engines to decelerate at the end of the flight. What that means is that slowing down spends fuel rather than conserves it.
Since the food situation was described in terms of when they'd be able to revive the others rather than by when they'd run out of food, it seems a lot less urgent than the engines potentially being entirely dead.
Fuel. Food is important fuel for the living on board, but right now keeping on board able to move and stop, and powered is a bit more priority. I'd say engines, eye, food, communications.
Tough choice given how all four are pretty important. Communications, the eye, and engines could all be critical for entering the new solar system, but without the third one there's less they'll be able to do about the intel provided by the other two so I'm voting engines.
Boy, thawing out of cryo sounds a lot like being resurrected after rotting in a grave. I'm no doctor but sounds like some of their flesh is necrotic. But they're getting better! That's what's important!
Dunno about AJ, but that makes me feel better!
Anyway what's today's disaster? Ah, all of these sound pretty important. My gut reaction says repair the engine, but I'll consult the other comments. ...Still not sure. Time to roll some dice and see what chance and chaos say. (Fair warning, I'll be doing this a lot when indecisive.)
Ha, forgot I had a dice that rolled 1-4. Perfect! Looks like I'm going with AJ's special option of Hydroponics. Sounds useful when I think about it: Other than growing the raw materials for the medicine to revive the rest of the team, more nutritious food means faster healing for these freezer-burned corpses they call bodies, and prioritizing food in that Banished game always kept my settlements alive when my friends that played that game always died in the first winter. Resource management in the wilderness is kinda like resource management in deep space, right?
My vote's for hydroponics. Not neccesarily for practical reasons (all the options seem important anyways), but for the chance that it'll unlock other characters sooner down the line.
9228299
Yeah, I'm really torn between that and the eye. It depends, I suppose, on how hard sci-fi this story is going to be. In real life, flying a spaceship blind is more about luck than anything else. And if you get lost in space and didn't pay attention to any reference points along the way, and can no longer find a reference point... You're boned. That's it. You are lost in the most permanent way you can be barring death.
9228517
In my opinion. That's where catch 22 rears its ugly head. If we repair sensors, we may not be able to do anything about what we sense, if we repair our engines, we may not be able to sense anything to use our engines for that we wouldn't have been able to get to without repaired engines anyway. Gah, this one is hard.
I'm a little confused. We were decelerating last update, but here it sounds like we might be able to repair the engines while they're still running? That seems mighty ambitious.
How much food do we have right now? How long until we reach the system/proposed landing site?
Right now I'm thinking the Eye since we can use that to see what's coming/the aliens and make sure we land somewhere with helium-3.
hmm, as important as the other options sound without the engines working properly the ship wont be able to move properly. They'd either manage to stop moving, but end up stuck, or keep moving in one direction until they collide with something.
Shame that without the Hydroponic and all with the other disasters going on we wont be waking the rest of the crew for a while. But with the recovery time being what it is having more people up and about wont fix the problems any quicker.
Im starting to wonder if we'll ever have a chapter where the ship and crew arent constantly in danger of blowing up at this rate
9228340
No, that one is written as intended.
9228348
Thanks, that one's a real error, and I fixed it.
9228388
I want to mostly let the text speak for itself, but I suppose those who ask in the comments can get answers too. I intend to provide 3 options for most chapters. But where Twilight has friends around with useful skills, or particular items or equipment, more options might become available. Think of the colored options like the unique dialogue options that open up in an RPG when you meet some special qualifications. The black options are the ones that would be there regardless.
Hydroponics:
Worst case scenario: All three crew members are totally engrossed with their task for all 3 months. Since only one of them is an expert, I assume the burden of labor will already be imbalanced right from the start. That combined with simple logic leads me to believe that this is not the most likely scenario. Still, this would be in the spirit of the third rule.
Next best scenario: Applejack alone is totally engrossed with her task for all 3 months. Being the expert, her sills are absolutely devoted to resupplying the biofab; the other two are free to undertake whatever tasks are required of them. I find this to be a bit more likely because division of labor just seems to make sense given that they're locked into a three-month waiting period before they get results. I feel this scenario could also be described as "the crew members have some spare time to do other things when they're not working with plants." Also, as a side note for picking hydroponics, Applejack's going to be doing this for 3 months. The sooner she starts, the sooner she gets results.
Best case scenario: After a brief amount of time spent setting things up, Applejack checks her work daily, but is otherwise free to help wherever needed. Sounds a little too good to be true, so probably just me being overly optimistic. Not as likely as the other two options because the worst case scenario gets a pass from the story's third rule.
Actual worst case scenario: All aboard perish because of any number of reasons. Short term, this could mean running into something. Long term, this could mean mission failure. Because this one is such a wild card, I can't say how likely it is.
The other options: I think drifting through space would be unlikely seeing as they're already in system and presumably will be affected by the star's gravity. Engines could be turned lower or shut off to conserve fuel for evasive maneuvers or to maneuver towards a planet or asteroid or something else with raw material. But then, evasive maneuvers or the search construction materials both would be greatly aided with navigational systems.
My ranking: 1) hydroponics, 2) sensors, 3) engines (assuming that hydroponics doesn't take up every moment of those three months. If it does, then the need for survival puts hydroponics down below engines. Better a small crew than no crew.)
Is it just me or does this feel like a TTRPG with Starscribe as the GM?
Fix the engines. We run out of fuel right smack bang in the middle of deep space, we are so fucked its not even funny.
You sadistic beeotch….
None of those are good to go without, especially in the void. But you gotta at least have locomotion.
Wow, really tough choices, each of them has a really good thing, though the coms are definitely the least likely to need it right now, even if Equestria had something to say, there's little that could help them right now. While getting the others up is important, the way AJ described it, all they actually need is biomass with a similar enough base structure to themselves to make it, and if no planets in this system have it, it would be a pretty wasted trip. Which means it's best to actually be able to see what is out there. However, knowing what's out there won't help if you can't go there. That's the tipping point for me, the fuel leak. Everything else is a case being able to wait till later, baring something odd happening. But if they don't fix the engines ASAP they'll be SOL.
9228580
Not quite, Necrotic flesh is black and clearly rotting, this is more like they got freezer-burned.
9228580
Also, getting hydroponics back means getting more characters into the story.
Obviously late but that comms option sounds like a red herring that's meant to sound like the wrong choice but turns out is needed. They came to the system following a signal so someone out here has to have comms or had comms. I don't know how much use hydroponics would be if it's pretty clear they are going to have to scrap the ship soon. That being said I probably would have picked eye knowing where they need to go means they can get there in one shot. Engines is a gamble cuz they'd be flying blind.
On the second thought, it's more like Tharsis
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With less cannibalism.
LOL