Friendship One

by BRBrony9

Departure

The Vanguard reached its destination successfully and safely, delivering its crew and cargo to the massive interstellar ship that would be their home for the next few years. Everything was being made ready; Friendship One was at its full complement, stocked with supplies, hydroponics facilities and oxygen plants operational. The navigation system was online, the thrusters and backup ion drives were standing by to be used when and if needed. The long, almost spindly craft was not elegant; it could not be called beautiful in any sense of the word, all protruding stanchions and antennae, a couple of slowly rotating torii giving the sensation of artificial gravity so the crew could try to combat bone density loss and muscular atrophy during their journey.

Several large modules, adapted from space station designs, provided the bulk of the living space, such as it was. Each crewmember had a 'bed' (really just a sleeping bag strapped to the bulkheads, to save space) and a small storage bin for personal effects, and that was all. There was electricity in every compartment, about the only luxury, providing for lighting and access to the internal intranet of the ship, which contained an almost complete record of every book and movie ever made, compiled and digitized as part of a vast cultural archive within the ship's computer, backed up at multiple points by external hard-drives dotted about the ship containing the same things. Nopony wanted to lose their history, their culture, their past, even though they were about to hopefully begin an entirely new chapter.

In the middle of the ship was the command module. Like the combat information centre aboard a warship, buried deep within the hull, the command module was located where it was deemed to be the safest. Micrometeorite impacts were far less likely than they would be at the front of the ship, and even with the magical shield bubble, it was deemed prudent to protect the brain of Friendship One through its physical location and also the installation of a large micrometeorite deflector, a big metal sunshade-looking contraption stuck to the sides of the module. From here, General Spitfire would oversee the day-to-day operations of the giant, lumbering craft. Normally, mission control would relay messages and telemetry from their tracking stations to this module. But soon enough after departure, there would not be a mission control any longer.

They would be on their own, for the perilous, dark journey through space, an impossible, unprecedented, absurdist notion of travel over a distance so vast as to practically lose all meaning. Of course, any journey- impending apocalypse or no- that intended to travel at such speeds would be essentially on their own anyway, as they would quite literally outrun the radio signals that might be sent from the ground. But this had a different quality to it, the difference between forgetting your phone and being unable to call roadside repair when your car broke down, and there being no roadside repair and no towing company and no police, because they were all dead.

Spitfire and her crew were well-trained and well-led, but there was a mental component to the mission that even the ESEA psychologists had not quite been able to deal with. All space travel was lonely. Being so far from home could have a deleterious effect on a pony's psyche- Princess Luna could attest to that- but they were going so much further. All Equinauts through history, save for the Valiant's trip into the outer solar system, had been able to see their home planet looming large through their viewports. They had all had a home to come back to. The crew of Friendship One would not. They would have to travel through the nothingness, for longer than anypony had ever been in space, going farther than anypony had ever gone, all the while knowing they could never go back, and if they did, they would find only the charred bones of their loved ones and the ashen remnants of the world they had known.

No psychologist had ever been trained to help a patient deal with that.

Four hours after the arrival of the Vanguard, the ship was ready for departure. The crew, when not devilishly busy with preparatory work, had been waiting in dreadful anticipation of nuclear retaliation from Griffonia, but there had been none. King Grissom had no desire to inherit a radioactive wasteland as his spoils of war, and so long as Equestria continued to hold fire on the rest of her nuclear weapons, he would do the same, and none of his nuclear missiles could be put into a high enough orbit to destroy Friendship One anyway. Spitfire, floating gently in the command module, summoned her senior staff, for she was expecting a message. When it came, it was broadcast throughout the ship, to every compartment and on every circuit. A few amateur astronomers and ham-radio operators tuned in as well, listening from the surface for the last message they would probably ever hear. Spitfire adopted a posture that was as close as she could come to parade-ground attention while in zero-gravity.

"Hoofston, this is Friendship One. We are standing by for your transmission, over."

"Friendship One, copy. Transmission begins now, over."

The video screen popped into life. An image of the throne room of Canterlot Palace, and in the foreground, the Princesses, all four of them, in their royal regalia. There were other figures in the background too- those in the know would recognise the Elements of Harmony, Starswirl the Bearded, Shining Armor, the commander of the Royal Guard- but it was the Princesses that commanded the attention, and it was Celestia who spoke.

"My most loyal subjects, and all our allies and friends aboard Friendship One. You are about the embark upon the great journey, toward which we have striven these many years. You carry with you the hope of our entire species, and every species on this planet. As we watch you with eyes turned skyward, we pray to the endless and unforgiving expanse that it may allow you to complete your mission in safety."

The crew were silent, in rapt attention, as the world had been when Celestia announced that everything would be coming to an end in five years' time.

"Your task is a grave one, but it is the most important task in all of our long and storied history. No command I have ever given has carried more weight. This is not about victory in battle, or ending poverty, or fighting for rights and freedoms. This is about nothing less than the survival of everything we are, of everything we believe, of everything we hold dear."

A tiny bit of static crackled on the audio, perhaps from a cosmic ray from Celestia's sun passing by. Friendship One had to be protected against that, too, and she had been radiation-hardened in a similar fashion to military aircraft and vehicles, with circuitry and machinery designed to operate even in a high-radiation environment.

"This will be the last time you shall hear my voice. But do not forget it. Remember what you see here on your screen. Remember us, and all those who are staying behind. Remember every face, every name. Remember every place you have ever been, every sight you have ever witnessed. Use those memories to build anew. To create another civilization from the ruins of the old, but to learn from our mistakes, to build on our strengths. Make New Equis your new home, and think of us from time to time. That is all we can ask of you."

Crying in zero gravity was tricky, for the tears tended to form globs and cling to the eyes and cheeks like a thin sheen of slime, but there was scarcely a dry eye in the command capsule as the crew listened to their Princess, their brave Princess, who could have come with them, still could; teleporting to the ship was well within her power. They all could come. Every one of those on screen, the royal family, the Elements, their closest advisors. There was room and time for the transfer to be made. They could be accommodated. There was a small but vocal contingent aboard who argued that the Princesses were being derelict in their duty by choosing to remain behind. Their presence would give an immense boost to the colonists, both in terms of their abilities and their morale-raising presence. But they had chosen to stay, not to avoid the risks of the perilous journey into the darkness, but to try, however futile the effort may be, to save all those who could not come, all those who were not Equinauts and whose lucky numbers had not come up in the lottery. Even those who wilfully disbelieved the end was coming. Even those who were, at this very moment, defiling Equestrian soil with their presence, breaking international law and fighting an unjust, greedy war. They would try to save everything, but perhaps they would save nothing.

"If we survive, we will endeavour to get a message to you," Celestia continued. 'It will, of course, not arrive for years. Eight years, to be exact. If you do not receive that message in eight years time, then you can safely assume the worst, and that you are the last living ponies, the last living Zebras, the last living Yaks and Griffons and Diamond Dogs anywhere in the universe. If that should be the case, then I have no doubt you will all uphold the great and noble traditions of your respective races, and the collective principles of love, friendship and justice that we all hold dear."

Each of the other Princesses then spoke a few word, echoing Celestia's sentiments. Luna urged the different races to work together, Cadence urged them all to show love, respect and understanding for each other under trying conditions, and Twilight, the youngest and most inexperienced of the royals, simply wished them luck and said that every creature left behind believed in them and their long mission. Celestia then spoke again, for the final time.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Twilight is correct. We all believe in your eventual success, though it will be a seemingly endless and hard road. If we succeed here, then your mission will have paved the way faster than any thought possible for an expansion of our society beyond the stars. If we fail, then you will be all that remains to carry the torch. Good luck to each and every one of you."

"And to you all down there, Your Highness," Spitfire replied, holding a firm salute, hoof at her temple, until the image of the throne room flicked off and was replaced by a blank blue screen.

In the cool, pale light of the pre-dawn hour, while most of Equestria was waiting in fearful silent dread for the end, a few astronomers gazed upward into the sky. Friendship One was clearly visible through their telescopes as she prepared to depart. Though she was an ugly ship, she was a beautiful sight; the sunlight that would soon arrive over Equestria was already painting her hull a fiery gold, as though she were undergoing atmospheric re-entry. In reality, the ship was getting farther from the planet, not closer to it, nosing out of its orbit with a few bursts of propellent before they engaged the magic 'drive' which would take them away, far away.

These few astronomers, at least, could spend some small part of this final morning doing something that they loved.

Friendship One left behind its cradle, the metallic womb where she had been birthed, and climbed into a higher orbit. Spitfire ordered her to be taken to one-third of lightspeed, at a gradual but increasing rate of acceleration. Best not to tax her too much all at once, just in case. There were a million parts that could break and ruin the whole effort before it even began. Yet they could not dawdle; somewhere, invisibly, out there in the coal black emptiness, death was stalking them, nipping at their heels.

To the observers below, Friendship One began to draw away, waning like a fading winter moon, getting smaller and smaller, hard to track because there was no glow from rocket exhaust nozzles as there would be with a normal craft. Magic was driving her, not rocket fuel. Her ion drives were strictly secondary, suborned to the forces of a different science, one which, despite having been studied for far longer than the world of astrophysics and technology, was still not fully understood, even by its greatest practitioners.

Friendship One accelerated, leaving Equis orbit, and then, like a flash, it was gone, racing away at speeds too great for the mind to comprehend, as its unicorn 'engine room' drove it into the void. Soon it was gone from deep-space radar altogether, outrunning the radio waves that were tracking it. Other than Celestia's speech, there had been no great ceremony, no breaking of champagne as there would be with a naval vessel or cruise liner, no pomp and circumstance. Just a little light in the heavens growing smaller and smaller until it vanished entirely, as though it were a metaphor for the fate of ponykind.

To echo that metaphor, a little while later, as the sunlight broke over the land and dawn arrived in a brilliant blaze of fiery splendor, the air-raid sirens began to mournfully, pointlessly wail across Equestria.

Comments

[Sunset_Shimmer83]

i'm curious other than general Spitfire, how many other canon characters made it on the FO

[Booster Spice]

I wish I could remember the short story name, where an alien ship found a deserted Earth, hours before the shockwave hit, and had to overload the engines to accelerate to light speed while in the shrinking shadow of the planet.

When Sirius goes off, it will literally be a second sun in the sky, at least doubling the Earths thermal load, so not just taking off the atmosphere, but boiling it dry also? Hotter than Venus?

Only one chance, because they cant wait to detect the wavefront to tell if they need to run further, they would be dead at that intensity, unless they manage to use the Medusa method?

[Jhonn]

why not use the sun and moon in an attempt to appease the impact as staggered shields??, it would at least increase the odds.

[BRBrony9]

11118625
It was discussed by the princesses and the scientists in an earlier chapter, but it was ruled out, because the moon is too small, and moving the sun in such a way would cause so much tidal stress on the planet as to destroy civilization as effectively as the gamma ray burst. They definitely considered it though!

[Blaze rod]

I was kind of expecting Flurry to be on-board. As last of the alicorns and the only one that isn't an adult yet.

[Pseudosapien]

Great speech, great chapter. Thanks!

[Jhonn]

11119072
I don't mean that they are literally shields, what would happen if Celestia and Luna caused an eclipse of the sun right in the direction of the death ray??? XD
the mass of the sun along with the moon, could be used to cause a slight wave effect which, while not shielding, would deflect most of the radiation.
it is known that mass can distort space, the power of that light of death is not enough to tear so much mass apart (unless it is not mentioned in the story if I remember correctly), the problem is radiation, if they use the masses of the sun and the moon so that it causes an effect as if it were two rocks between a stream of water, just in one part of that stream there will be a space where the water cannot move even a leaf.
This effect is what can cause the air to lift masses thousands of times denser ( like the aerodynamic lift), causing gravity itself to mold that ray to deflect it with its own power.