Chapter 26
Almost two full weeks passed relatively peacefully. Twilight spent most of her time resting, sometimes doodling on something, trying to heal up her horn. Flight spent much of each day digging through the computers and managing the ship’s systems; it took her only a single day to get the atmosphere all throughout the ship cycled out for a breathable atmosphere, and that in the core sector- including the reactor room- heated to normal temperatures. The end of the second day had seen the interior temperatures hitting the numbers she’d told Twilight about- and she’d been working on defrosting the outside ever since.
It was rather fortunate that the shipboard kitchen had been well-stocked in preserved space food. Twilight despised it, as did Flight- but it was food, and it was enough to keep them alive. Water was fairly easy to harvest from the ice outside.
Finally, on the thirteenth day, Flight stepped onto the bridge for only the second time. Being on the extreme front of the craft, like her ship’s bridge, she couldn’t heat it to the same temperatures as the inner sectors of the ship; the Wendigos made sure of that. She trotted up to the panels, glancing around at them as she lit her horn with a warmth spell.
It took her about a minute to make her way to the helm, and wake it up. It didn’t recognize her ID chip- but none of the consoles did, because they didn’t have the transponders to see it. Fortunately, it was a very trusting civilian design, so she didn’t need to authenticate herself.
She tapped a couple of controls. She’d run these same self-tests the first time she’d visited the bridge two days prior.
They all came back green.
She checked the instrumentation… All green.
Then she touched a couple keys, and pushed the throttle up until the main forward atmospheric engines started spinning. She let them spin for a few seconds, then pushed the throttle up to de-icing strength. She then remoted her way into the reactor and set it to full power- it didn’t have the same automatic adjustment system her ship did.
Finally, that done, she adjusted the life support to use some of the additional heat from the reactor to heat the entire ship to normal temperatures… and switched her heating spell into a remote blasting spell, with which she started blowing ice away from the ship.
Ten seconds later, she touched the key to run the VTOL engines up to full speed and open the hatches, even though the blades were held flat.
Exactly as expected, the Wendigos went crazy. They knew something was happening.
Then the one thing she was worried about happened: A Wendigo got sucked into one of the engines.
The engine didn’t even stutter. The engine temperature dropped significantly for a couple seconds, but that was about it. No impact was detected.
She breathed a sigh. The Wendigoes were clearly gaseous beasts- she had been right to set the life support to a fully self-contained atmosphere. That meant there was limited oxygen aboard… but it also meant the Wendigoes couldn’t get in.
The engines built up to de-icing speed, and then stayed there, littering her panels with vibration warnings. The entire ship vibrated from the engines- and each time a hunk of ice would break free of the blades and vanish out the back of the engine, one of those warnings would disappear.
Then the door opened, and Twilight rushed in. “Princess! It’s shaking!”
She glanced up. “I know. I’m de-icing the engines.”
Then Twilight glanced out the windshield, and gasped. “The Wendigos-! I can teleport us out of the storm- that’ll have to be-!”
“Stop,” Flight ordered.
She flinched. “What?”
“Go ahead and teleport yourself,” Flight told her. “But don’t take me. I’ll have this thing in the air in about five minutes. If you’re willing to wait another day or so, I can fly this thing all the way to Ponyville.”
Twilight winced. “But the Wendigoes-!”
“Pose no threat. A few of them have been sucked through the engines already.” She looked out the windshield in time to see another one get too close to the intake, make a valiant attempt to escape, and vanish into the engine. Then she shrugged. “Though, I suppose they’re technically EDFs, not engines, per se, but everypony calls them that.”
“EDF?”
“Electric Ducted Fan. It’s…” She sighed. “I’ll dig up the blueprints for you once we’re in stable flight, and explain it then. For now, I’m a bit distracted.”
As expected, the Wendigos did not want to let her leave- but they couldn’t directly restore the ice. They could bring in a snowstorm, but she was kicking up enough of a maelstrom with the engines that nothing could stick to the ship.
So they brought in every Wendigo for what had to be a hundred miles, and chilled the air outside to very near absolute zero.
They very nearly were able to force Flight from the bridge- but the nuclear reactor at the ship’s core was powerful enough, combined with Flight’s warmth spells, to keep her from freezing behind the consoles.
Then she took off on VTOL power, and powered the forward engines once again. The Wendigoes battled to send her tumbling out of the sky- but, especially once the ship had built a hundred kilometers an hour or so of forward velocity, they didn’t stand a chance.
She quickly accelerated the ship to forward flight, allowing the VTOL engines to be closed- and leaving the Wendigos long behind. Once the Wendigos fell behind, the ship was only plowing through minus fifty degree air, which the reactor could keep up with on its own. She and Twilight stayed strapped into their seats on the bridge for another several minutes anyways, until they climbed out the top of the storm, into the thinner- and much less turbulent- upper atmosphere.
Then, Flight was the first to leave her seat, after setting the autopilot. “Hokay, that was a pain,” she stated.
“What-!” Twilight gasped. “Aren’t you still flying it?”
She blinked. “No, actually. I turned on the autopilot- it’s flying itself right now. According to the navigation system, we’ve got about a twenty-two hour layover before we reach Ponyville, and it’s going to fly itself for the entire time.”
“But-! But-!” Twilight looked between Flight and the helm.
“It’s high technology,” Flight stated. “My ship could make a suborbital hop and land in Ponyville, all on its own. This thing doesn’t have either suborbital or landing autopilots, so we’ll have to make do with the standard aircraft autopilot and a manual landing. At least it does have VTOL power, so it won’t be hard.”
“V-TOL?” Twilight repeated.
“Vertical Take Off and Landing. Means, it’s capable of hovering, and moving straight up and down in the air, including for takeoff and landing. Much easier than attempting a runway landing in a civilization that doesn’t have any runways.”
“Huh. Twilight? You might want to come look at this.”
Twilight trotted up as Flight tickered away at the controls. “What?” She looked at the control console. “What am I looking at?”
Flight gestured out the windshield. “Not here, there. Ponyville.” Then she opened the hatches for the spinning VTOL engines, and switched the main engines to reverse thrust to kill her approach velocity for a VTOL landing.
Twilight looked, and gasped. “What the-?”
Flight knew what she was looking at. Even from this far away, she recognized the two Diarchs, walking through the middle of the town, side-by-side. There were ponies on either side.
And the part that Flight found most interesting, was that there was a large, VTOL parking spot painted on the grass just outside of town, almost perfectly matching the spots on the landing apron at Orbital Control back in Equineothame. It even had size codings on it- and it was much smaller than would be needed for her ship… though only slightly larger, she estimated, than would be necessary for the ship she and Twilight had found. She started swinging it around for a landing, already knowing what to expect when she opened the door.
Her crew had obviously seen it with the recon drone, realized who was flying it, and prepared. They were waiting for her.
“P-Princess!” Twilight half-yelped. “And…” She scowled. “What’s all that paint…?”
“Somepony is expecting us,” Flight stated. “All that paint on the grass is a parking space… for this ship, so that’s where I’m landing.”
“But… But who…?”
“I’d bet it was my crew, but it wouldn’t be fair to anyone that took it.”
“You mean…” Twilight muttered.
“That they’ve arrived, and I’m no longer stranded? Yep.” Right about at that moment, the ship entered hover, and she powered the forward engines off entirely. She rotated the ship and drifted it over to the landing spot.
Twilight wouldn’t stop prancing nervously in place all the way down. The prancing intensified when Flight deployed the landing gear- and when the wheels first touched down, Twilight squeaked and wrapped herself around a chair.
Flight found it highly amusing, as she flattened the pitch of the VTOL rotors and finally started shutting everything down.
“Alright then, Twilight. To the airlock!” She paused, tilted her head, and peeled Twilight off the seat back. “We’re landed, Twilight. Solid ground now, not flying.”
Twilight had, after all, been absolutely terrified that the ship would randomly fall out of the sky during just about any phase of the flight, whenever she thought about it. Flight was pretty sure Twilight was so worried because of how old the thing was.
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Well that was a lovely jaunt, and now they've acquired a spare ship! Most excellent, extra transportation is always useful. If nothing else it'll go a long way towards bootstrapping Equestria's technological capabilities.
That went a lot better than it could have.
10354347
Bootstrapping maybe, but also maybe restoring. Given the previous contact that gave humans pony forms and magic, it's possible that pre-Discord Equestria was technologically advanced in this timeline.
Presumably no colder than 77K? After that, the air would liquefy, the pressure would drop, and warmer air would be pulled in from the surroundings.
... Wait a minute. You said Wendigos are gaseous beasts. I wonder at what temperature they liquefy?
The upcoming conversation with Luna should be interesting. Actually, so should previous off-screen conversations, given that it sounds like Luna and the thestrals are in the same place.
10356821
Oh, you have no idea.
Your work and life come first. If you want to be entirely pragmatic about it (I don't know why you would; you have worth beyond being a system that consumes coffee (or tea, but don't try to make us believe you don't drink at least one
) and writes stories), we'd rather you survive and be happy so you can write more things later. 
Hopefully. I mean, there's that one guy waaaay over there, but other than him, we're nice.
Sure, anyone with an accounting education would probably say something about how authors depreciate in value as their expected publications move further into their active service life than if they were posting now, but we're not that cold-hearted.
10358561
... Neither. I don't drink either coffee or tea. Never had a taste for either one.
And while I do occasionally drink a caffeinated soda, it's occasional, not regular. I normally live and work caffeine-free.
So ... this VTol plane/spaceship ...
Whose is it?
Equineothame, or Equestrian?
Given that the controls are what Flight is used to, the technology is what she's used to, the flight mechanics are what she's used to, etc, the question has to be:
What the HECK is an Equineothame ship doing in long-term storage here?
10395758
Neither, technically. It's of ancient Equineothame manufacture, back before Equineothame lost their magic. Flight was only able to fly it because she's flown a few different ships, and the controls on it were intuitive enough for her to understand.
Plus, let's face it, the thing probably had a user manual she could use to rapidly familiarize herself with the different controls.