• Published 24th May 2019
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Luna is a Harsh Mistress - Starscribe



When Celestia banished Nightmare Moon, she didn't go alone, but with her loyal army. Now they're trapped in an alien environment, with tensions high and the air running out. If they don't work together, their princess will soon be alone after all.

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Chapter 64: Homecoming

Author's Note:

This chapter is the same content as the beginning scene of the Epilogue from last week. If you already read that, you can continue to the next one. Moving the chapters instead of publishing them allows the comments to survive, and I wouldn't want any of them to be deleted by mistake.

Silver Star crossed the boarding platform, one hoof extended to touch the railing. He’d never seen the moon from so high before, where even the newest domes looked like little mounds of gray dirt broken by the occasional skylight. Thousands of ponies were down there now, all watching this mission.

Guess they got their invasion after all, he thought, stopping beside the waiting outer airlock door. We knew we would be returning for revenge on Equestria for hundreds of years. Hopefully our ancestors don’t mind if we’ve changed our goals around.

“Is something wrong, Terra 2?” hissed a voice in his suit radio, startling him. “Do you see something on the rocket the engineers missed?”

“No, Command, just appreciating the scenery.” He turned back toward Moonrise, scanning the uneven surface’s many windows for the one that Magpie would be watching from. They all looked the same from here—but he waved anyway, just in case. Only then did he finally enter the airlock.

The door slid closed behind him, then began to hiss as atmosphere flooded in. He waited in relative stillness, going over the mission in his head one last time.

She wasn’t supposed to be awake yet. After all the years he had waited, it could’ve been many more before Magpie ever woke up again.

The inner door opened, and he bounced his way into the capsule. There was space in the launch section for three ponies—one upper command chair, and two lower systems chairs.

The other two creatures on this mission were already here—Daystar, another crystal pony, one who had apparently given up on pretending and just removed her helmet completely.

“You showed up,” she said, looking up from the computer terminal. Even through his helmet he could still feel the heat that massive thing produced. Daystar tended to it like a mother to a sickly child, her head only occasionally poking out from behind the display. “I was wondering if we were going to get scrubbed again.”

Past the computer station was his own, the pilot’s chair. In a way, he was only here as redundancy for the computer. But given how experimental that machine was, he expected it to fail before they landed, and to be making most of the decisions himself.

“It wouldn’t be right to delay the Terra mission, even over such a significant miracle,” Luna said. She was shorter than either of them by a considerable margin, even with her horn. But it didn’t matter if she knew the Iron Quill the least. All Moonrise agreed that the first pony to fly back to Equestria ought to be the only one who had ever seen it in the first place. “How is she, Silver?”

“Like she’s been frozen in time,” he answered. “The battle for Moonrise was still fresh. But she remembered me, so I’ll take it.”

“Terra, please complete preflight checks,” said a voice. “Terra 2, verify the responsiveness of the high-grav navigation systems. This isn’t a one-way trip.”

Silver nodded, removing a clipboard near his seat. He settled into the pilot’s chair, running over the checks that the others had probably already done while he was gone. He ran through the procedure as calmly and methodically as he could, marking and verifying each as they acted the way he expected.

But he’d already known it would all be working—this wasn’t their first launch. Silver wouldn’t be the first pony to fly, though he would get to be one of the first to fall.

“Preflight navigation complete,” he said, about half an hour later. “No failures to report.”

“Then we’re green for fuel loading,” Command responded. “Terra 1, keep an eye on the temperature. If we see pre-ignition, you’ll only have seconds to get everypony out.”

“I know.” Luna reclined in the command chair, watching her own suite of gages and sensors that Silver couldn’t see. “I’m watching. I’m just not expecting to do anything. We haven’t had a launchpad detonation in… how long, Command?”

“Six years,” Command answered. “Not in the last eight missions, Terra 1.”

The princess shifted uneasily in her seat, lifting her helmet from beside her and securing it over her head. “Next time Command, just give me the duration. Six years sounds better than eight missions.”

“You got it, Terra 1. Sit tight, we’ve got green pressure readings across the system. This won’t be long.”

It wasn’t. Silver went over the prelaunch procedure one final time, while Daystar did the same thing just beside him. The computer she controlled would take them on a precisely optimized path down to Equestria, right down to the landing site. But if it failed, Silver had a detailed chart of similar paths he could take, with vectors and times and fuel calculations.

The mission might be tighter, if more of the crew needed to breathe.

“Orbital is coming into position,” Command said. “You have a two-minute launch window. Begin pre-ignition sequence.”

Silver flipped up a single plastic cover, and pressed the button underneath. The floor shook under their hooves, pumps grinding and churning. “Pressurization complete,” he said.

“One minute to ignition,” Command responded. “Watch for abort flags.”

Silver settled into his seat, listening to the distant countdown. What must Moonrise be thinking?

“Do you have anything to say, Terra 1?” Daystar asked. “For when they’re playing this recording for the next thousand years?”

Silver looked up and over his shoulders, meeting the princess’s eyes. Her ears were flat, her coat plastered down with sweat. She had been thinking about this, maybe more than the actual flight. Apparently she’d been crying too. She reached over, adjusting her microphone and fumbling with a sheet of paper.

The princess had barely aged over the last few centuries, and was nowhere near as mature sounding as she had been when Silver first met her. But the ponies of Moonrise hadn’t been alive for that. Their princess had always been the ambitious, adorable Alicorn of today.

“A thousand years ago, your ancestors were banished here for fighting in a war we couldn’t win. Flying back to Equestria will not be a return home—we know where we belong. Though Equestria hasn’t or can’t respond to our radio messages, we declare that this is not an invasion.

“Instead, we hope that the Terra mission will be an opportunity for forgiveness, for us and the ponies we left behind.”

It wasn’t a terribly long speech. She had less than a minute to give it, with Command counting down all the time.

“Ten,” Command said, loud enough to startle all three of them back to their stations. “Ignition.”

What had been a gentle rumble beneath them transformed into a roar as preburn shook the Iron Quill in its moorings. Silver barely even heard the count of one, but he felt the clamps release them, watching a dozen different dials and readouts for any sign of danger. With the princess aboard, they might be able to teleport away from a disaster before it shattered them, if she was fast enough.

Silver pressed down into his seat, as the thrust of their flight accelerated them up and away from the moon’s gravity. He barely even sunk into the rigid foam—the real test would be when they launched from high-grav.

But they didn’t teleport away. Silver’s altimeter showed the moon fading faster and faster, and the single display before him lit up with tracking information for the orbital module, waiting for them to dock. He watched from his single small window as Tranquility faded below him, hopefully not for the last time.

“Docking pattern with orbital harness is synchronized,” Daystar said, as the launch thrusters finally fell still.

“How do you read?” Command asked.

“Life support nominal. Fuel within margin. Trajectory looks good,” Silver said.

“Final abort window doesn’t come until the first Equus burn,” Command said, as though they didn’t already know that. But maybe the princess didn’t. Silver might be bold, but he wasn’t bold enough to tell an Alicorn what to do. “Don’t be afraid to make the call if you have to, Terra 1.”

The princess laughed into her radio. “Only if we have to.”

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