Excavate, find whatever else might be buried here. 53%
Twilight stood at the edge of the chasm, staring down at oblivion. Her own hooves were stained, her body was weak and there were multiple small wounds on her body, all from the excavation.
The prospector was a mining ship, and so it contained several large diggers. Twilight didn’t know how to operate them, but Pinkie did, and so it fell to her and Fluttershy to go through what she turned up. And whenever radar indicated there might be something ahead, the digger had to come out, and they had to go in and excavate manually.
At first it had just been bits of scrap metal, like the first one they’d found. Most of it was stainless steel, though there were chunks of corroded aluminum and silicon half rotten away.
At a depth of perhaps eight meters, they’d found the largest chunk so far—and the only chunk ground-sonar suggested they were likely to find. Twilight knew the shape the instant she saw its suggestion on the radar array, and she’d been in a daze ever since.
Buried in the mud on Proximus B was an escape pod, fully intact, with its parachute door open and the inflatable landing pods rotted away. The shiny metal shell was pot marked with burns and dents, but held completely intact. The little window had, unfortunately, been part of the pod scorched by its fall, and so they couldn’t look inside.
The other ponies in her crew gathered around her like the mourners at a funeral. But we’re not putting a pony into the ground at the end of their long life—we’re taking them out again.
Even Applejack had made it out for this, though she was still in her wheelchair. During the week of their excavation, she’d recovered quite a bit, though Fluttershy insisted she remained in the wheelchair and didn’t do anything approaching real work.
“I guess this is when I should say something,” Twilight said. “I wish I had something inspirational, about how everypony in the space program knows what risks we take, and we put our lives at risk for the pursuit of science. We imagine a future for ourselves where ponies one day span the galaxy, with foals growing up on a thousand worlds all looking back towards the star of home with admiration.”
“You just said that,” Pinkie muttered.
Twilight glared. “The truth is, I don’t know how this could be here. Some of you may be familiar with the Wait Problem—the idea that it may be better to wait to send an expedition for future space technology to catch up with an earlier expedition. There is one problem with this theory—I have had Spike searching the radio records for any mention of another expedition. The name ‘Solstice’ does not appear in any transmission.”
“Except that our records got scrambled,” Applejack pointed out. “There are holes all over the computer. And nothin’ at all after we got into the Proximus system.”
“Right.” Twilight didn’t correct her, or even give her an angry look. She was right, obviously. It was possible a future ship had been hiding in one of the holes.
“What’s inside those pods, anyway?” Fluttershy asked. “It’s so big… like a whole ship.”
“It don’t look big when you’re inside,” Applejack answered. “It’s only about three meters by two of interior space. The rest is thrusters, and the nuclear battery for the caskets. They ain’t no hardware in there to wake up whoever’s inside—if it’s anything like ours, they’re made to be recovered by a future expedition. But… All of you, I ought to say. The corrosion on the metal here, it’s… it ain’t adding up.”
“How?” Twilight asked, taking a step away from the hole. Anything to delaying opening it a little longer. “It looks intact to me.”
“I mean it took forty years for us to get here,” Applejack said. “Give or take a few bits of change. The corrosion of the aluminum scrap Pinkie brought back suggests it was underground at least two centuries. That just don’t add up. Probably it means there are hostile elements on this planet—something in the soil, maybe. Or something in the water. Some material that eats through our hardware faster than it should. The smartest thing to do with these pods would’ve been to leave them in space. Whoever landed it here…” she shook her head. “I ain’t optimistic.”
“That’s not the only problem,” Pinkie whispered from Twilight’s other side. “How did it get buried so deep in so little time?”
“Only one way to find out,” Fluttershy said. “Like you said, we can’t wake them here anyway. We’ll have to bring them back to the Equinox.”
They all turned to her. Twilight nodded, then teleported down into the darkness. There were work lights set up around the pod, which was a craft perhaps eight meters by four. It had landed right-side up, and so they’d dug a nice big hole right up to the entrance. The bolts were already off, the locks already cut. All Twilight had to do was lift the crowbar in her magic, and push.
The door opened with a hiss of stale air. Old rubber peeled away from around it, crumbling to dust. A layer of water had formed in the interior of the pod, filled with dirt and debris. Many of the internal mechanisms had rotted or decayed in one way or another, though there was an occasional spark.
At one time, all six of the pods had been active. Twilight didn’t have to see the bones to know that only one—the one that had been at the height of the slope, and stayed dry—was still active.
“Six occupants!” Twilight called up, to where her friends waited. “Five casualties.”
She braved a few steps into the old pod, clambering over a fallen wall plate and some loose wire, up to where she could inspect the single working pod.
“89% functional entropy detected.
Service immediately.Occupant:
CPT SUNSET SHIMMER”
Twilight clambered out of the ship, taking her first breaths of fresh air, then looked up and called her orders.
1. “Applejack, your work restrictions are lifted! Keeping this pony alive is our new first priority!”
2. “Fluttershy, get to the Equinox and bring Spike down her immediately. We need his help to repair this pod. The Equinox will be fine without us for a bit.”
3. “I’m sealing this back up for the time being. We have to investigate the nearby structure. These ponies landed here for a reason. Maybe they expected a rescue.”
4. Fluttershy suggests a trick to wake the occupant immediately, using some makeshift supplies and every drop of Geneseed they’ve grown so far. [dangerous]
(Certainty 200 required)
Repair the thing, and when the time comes, wake up bacon-hair.
Applejack is in no condition to be doing work. Spike should repair the pod.
But I guess you guy's like disobeying the doctor's orders. Like taking Pinkie off her meds.
Then again, we don't know how bad the pod is. It might need repairs immediately or it might be able to wait awhile. If it does need to be fixed right away, Applejack would probably be the best choice. If not, Spike may be preferable. I mean... it's waited for a long time. A little more time to bring Spike down there wouldn't be too bad right?
I'm gonna go with response 1.
2 is too risky, with 3 they don't have enough intel to know if it's safe to enter or not and it might compromise the safety of their encampment, and 4 sounds like it could lead to a repeat of Pinkie's near-disastrous revival.
I'm going to say we play this one dangerously, I trust Flutters knows what she's doing and she would do anything to prevent harm to Shimmer.
Get Spike down here. Applejack is still recovering, so she can supervise as Spike works. Plus, a short break from the radiation, and real gravity would do a world (heh heh) of good for Spike's morale.
It doesn't feel like there are any good choices here, or at least not any safe ones. 1 could do lasting harm to Applejack, 2 could make the Equinox explode, and 3 and 4 could both kill Sunset, slowly and quickly respectively. All told, I'd say using the engineer they already have seems like the best bet, though I wish Twilight had phrased that order differently.
As for the advanced decay, Pinkie has a point. Hostile soil chemistry doesn't explain such a deep burial, especially with no sign of an impact... though that might explain why the area is that rocky to begin with.
My "YOLO" vote is on cooldown so I have to go whit option one but it is the only thing she do and then right back to bed.
This is strange. Another crew made it here before the Equinox. I wonder if Node knows about them? Maybe not since it seems to have been created when the Equinox entered the system. I don't like any of these choices. I say....bring Spike in. Don't think AJ should be working yet.
As much as I would rather Spike do the work there are 2 facts that tell me that it NEEDS to be AJ.
1) This is beyond Spike's skill level, it might even be beyond AJ's (unless it has some of that lovely tech our probe friend ran on, then Spike might be better)
2) Exposure and a sudden change in conditions means that things could rapidly start breaking down, it might not have been ideal conditions but they were likely very stable.
Waiting a few hours could mean her death, which makes the Fluttershy idea a good one, but the sheer number of resources and high level of risk makes that only worth the risk if the system starts failing.
I literally checked the character sheet to see who had the higher repair skill. Spike was 3 and AJ was 4, so AJ it is.
Of course it hasn’t been updated in a while, so maybe the stats have changed
Yeah, I'm going to have to go with Applejack with this. The higher skills of Applejack and Spike being exposed to radiation while taking care of the Equinox is a big hit to choosing him. But Applejack doesn't necessarily have to do this on her own.
Node could be an extra set of steady manipulators to help keep Applejack from working too hard.
The name of the last option alone almost made me vote for it, but bacon hair must survive.
Hey, wait a minute... Twiggles just saw bones, she didn't specify PONY bones. What if Shimmer is a eqg human? Sure, it's unlikely, but possible.
Option 1 seems like the best choice here, honestly
Wake the Bacon Hair!
Aaaand now we know why there's no record of the ship. Also I'm going with flutters option
I think option 3 is the best decision for the sake of the crew. We need more information to work with.
To be fair it is the worse option for sunset... so I can see why so few voted for it.
So a ship launched after them arrived centuries before them... I think Cozy Glow did far more damage then any of them had realized. Maybe diverting them to a much longer course at high relativistic speeds. They stopped getting messages from Equstria because as far as they care the ship was lost centuries ago.
Seeing the parallels with the show I'd say Sunset broken the Wait protocol and ran off from Celestia to find the source of the signal. That means it's possible this is isn't a nice Sunset, it's a rouge Sunset. She is my favorite character though... Uhg lot of bad and worse choices last few chapters.
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Applejack would be working on maintaining the pod, while the occupant is still frozen. There's no risk of infection this way. When they do decide to thaw it, they can sterilize it first. The only risk there is to Applejack's own recovery - if she's still under a work restriction, it's likely for good reason.
There goes everyone's neutrality.
... Though now that I think about it, there wasn't much neutrality to start with.
I'm not risking Shimmy's life with #4, and as much as I want information I don't know if it's safe to leave the pod to search the nearby structure (#3). I also don't want to risk Applejack's health with #1 nor risk the Equinox with #2.
No good choices here, it seems.
... Oh well, I guess we can chance Applejack for a bit. It's not like there's going to be hard labor, right?
P.S. MacGyver is in the polls.
Ok, voices of the void, this is very bad. First of all, Sunset Shimmer is there. That can't be good. There's five hundred question to be asked, but the most important now is:
Wich option is the best? We have four, each one with its inherent dangers, both to the patient and the crew.
The first one endangers Applejack, and possibly Sunset too, as she could catch the flu during the fragile first weeks post defreezing. Note that Sunset is likely way more fragile than the others, maybe with some serious damage.
The second option is slower, and may compromise both the Equinox and everypony's health. Being exposed to radiation is no joke, especially duringe the first week post defreeze. However, we aren't sure to what extent Spike might have absorbed that radiation.
The third option is a nope for me. We can't just leave her here! Also, that building is ominous and tall and I don't wanna go just yet.
The last option is labeled [dangerous], but that means dangerous to the patient, and nothing else, so it's the least compromising option, some makeshift supplies and a bunch of geneseed we can grow again. It's a bad move, tough, I think. Mainly because we want her to survive, and this is anything but that.
So, the choice is either 1 or 2. Spike or Applejack? Flu or Rad? Again, we face a choice, this time a little bit less pressing. Do we put in danger the Equinox or do we put in danger Applejack?
I'm going to go with Applejack. No need to exhaust her, but she is a better engineer, and she probably won't kill everyone by just being there, while our ship explodes in the distance. It's dangerous, but every other option is also pretty dangerous.
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The only problem with that theory is obviously the ship started in the right direction, then changed directions, and then went back on course. Changing direction in space isn't easy like in a car, if we assume they traveled at 10% light speed it would take them months to reach it if we assume 1g acceleration.
You also have to remember that spike was awake for a good portion of the journey, and there were probably some things keeping track of time, so the trip probably didn't take centuries.
What's more likely is that is was Sunset that traveled back in time. Something went wrong on her trip, and ended up centuries in the past relative to when she left. And that's how she got there so long before the mane 6.
Also an important question: Who were the other five (now dead) occupants?
Summoning Spike is perhaps a bad idea. We don't know his status.
This isn't our Sunset, is it?
Woah.
2 IMO, it's the happy medium between letting Fluttershy try Mad Science and trying to let AJ kill herself from flu complications.
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If I had to guess, I'd say the Shadowbolts, but that is just a guess.
Also, I don't think that using Applejack's expertise necessitates having her do much physical work - like with the farming, have her supervise and tell the others what to do, plus anything that absolutely requires her direct action, but let the others do all the heavy lifting, so to speak.
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89% entropy. You want to keep entropy as low as possible when preserving something, so I think it is very likely the pod is well past its originally intended expiration date.
Sunset's one of my favorite characters. (I find her very relatable for some reason.) I want her alive. I'm just not sure what way is best to do it. If I could remember how bad my last flu was I'd know if AJ would be able to focus and repair the capsule.
When faced with indecision, I roll dice! ...One. Applejack is up.
Also, the five casualties. Can we find a crew manifest somewhere? Could they possibly be...? I mean the number of them fits...
There is a certain appeal to 1, but it depends on how sick Fluttershy thinks Apple Jack is. AJ can still give advice and lend her expertise, maybe even do limited physical labour such as repair fiddly circuit boards, with Fluttershy's permission, but if there is grunt work to do and she's still sick her body just won't be there for her, no matter what she wants. We need Spike if the other ponies can't do the work.
I think all the choices are less than desirable, but I'm going to risk 4 as it has the best chance of saving Sunny's life as far as I can tell. But, is she in human or pony form? Barring that then 2 makes more sense, provided you can do enough repair to the pod to make it remain functional, AND the Equinox is currently repaired enough to allow Spike to leave. We haven't had any status updates on the ship in a while.
As for 3, I'd keep ponies away from the building for now, but are there no remote explorers that can be used to examine the building? Even a picture taking drone, either flyer or crawler, would help.
Still wondering about the water situation.
Big question. Why aren't the others getting sick?
Who were the other five...?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I vote the dangerous option.
Ah, the ever-ambitious Sunset Shimmer, whose name starts with S and who wanted to make history (as per her note to Cozy Glow). How'd that work out for ya?
Was undecided until I saw the comment about the crew's repair skills. AJ all the way.
Process of elimination, guys. #1 is unsupported by the evidence. This thing has been buried for a long time; it can wait for someone to get over the flu. #3 is just stupid: why seal it up? Also, I feel like Twilight would actually reach through the fourth wall and slap you for trying it. #4 is needlessly risky, see objection to #1.
[edit: DAMMIT, GUYS! #4 would at least not have been nonsensical. #1 is like the dumbest one IMO.]