Chapter 1
It was a long flight between the stars, and Zenith slept the whole way.
She dreamed of drowning in her coffin. Hour after hour she hammered her hooves against the unbending lid, in darkness so thick it must have been ink rather than water filling her lungs. The faint rhythmic sound of a drum, like the beating of a machine’s heart, kept her company during her endless death.
Mostly Zenith’s thoughts were too disordered to understand the dream or her circumstances in it. There was only a perpetual sensation of panic and dread, a gnawing horror that coiled in her heart like a worm. The dream had no purpose – there was no role for her to play in it, nothing to understand, no puzzle to solve, no secret corners of her soul to unbare. It was simply the sensation of dying, as best as any living pony could ever hope to grasp it, repeated forever.
Mostly, Zenith hated it.
The transition between dream and reality was hard to pin down. At some point a seam appeared in the darkness, a rime of faint orange light around the coffin’s lid, accompanied by a new sound: motors, draining away the suspension liquid bath. Weight returned, and she felt the perforated grill of the cryosleep sarcophagus’s floor pressing against her back. When at last more air than fluid remained in the pod, she took her first true breath in years. Every alveolar sac in her lungs shrieked as the raw, dry air abraded them, and she fell into a wracking, sputtering cough that lasted for minutes.
A normal waking sequence, in other words. Her sleep-fogged mind remembered that she had been here before – she was a professional and ought to act like it, dammit – and latched onto that thought like an anchor. This was fine. This was perfect. She just needed to focus and stop retching and everything would be okay.
A polite little light appeared on the inside cover of the coffin. She bashed it with her hoof, and the lid disengaged with a hiss-click-squelch. Little runnels of suspension fluid dripped on her like rain as the lid folded up and out.
“Good morning, Zenith,” a neutral, genderless voice greeted her. “You are still in suspension shock. Focus on breathing normally. You are safe, and everything is—”
“Skip it,” Zenith rasped. Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, alien. Probably there was still fluid in her inner ear. “I’m guh... good. I’m good.” She swallowed. Clots of fluid oozed down her throat. Thankfully non-toxic. “Where are we?”
“The nearest star is Gliese seven-one-zero, approximately thirty-four light-days from our current position,” the ship’s AI continued smoothly. “At our present course we will pass no closer than seventeen light days from its heliosphere.”
“Okay. Great.” She spat out a wad of fluid and carefully sat up. The cabin hadn’t changed – the AI kept it clean of dust, and there were no spiders to spin cobwebs in the corners. She could have slept for one night or a century and nothing in the ship would change. “So why did you—no, wait. Activate personality simulations. I need to talk to a pony.”
There was a microscopic pause, followed by a sudden blast of noise, a discordant buzz so abrupt and loud that Zenith shrieked and jumped halfway out of the pod. After a moment the adrenalin faded, and she recognized… kazoos?
“Happy belated Birthdays!” an exuberant, bubbling voice blasted from the hidden speakers, ten decibels louder and diabetically oversugared. A popping staccato shook the room, and a blizzard of holographic confetti rained down, covering every horizontal surface like snow. Zenith gawked at the mess, her headache and burning lungs forgotten.
“You know, for a 74-year-old mare, you don’t look a day over 27!” the voice continued, followed by a giggle. “What’s your secret, huh? Is it the suspension goo? I bet it’s the suspension goo. Twilight’s always telling me, ‘Pinkie, don’t eat the thermostatic suspension fluid, Zenith needs that so she doesn’t die during cryosleep!’ But I bet Twilight just wants to keep it for herself, and that’s why alicorns live forever!”
Right. Birthdays. Dates. What year was it? That should’ve been her first question, dammit. She was slipping. Zenith grunted and stepped carefully around the mass of suspension gear cabling, dormant instrument panels, low-light navigation arrays, semi-sentient sensor blisters and a thousand other things all competing for space with the single living pony aboard the ship. She squeezed along a rack of environmental suits, leaving smears of fluid all across their faceplates – it would evaporate with no residue in a few hours. The holographic confetti dissolved beneath her hooves, and she finally wormed her way past a narrow bulkhead and into what passed for the ship’s living area. Approximately two square meters, it was just large enough for her to stand upright and turn around. The shower/auto-hygiene unit took up half that space, and she wriggled into it with an exhausted huff. Barely four meters and she was out of breath. She slid the door shut and turned the water on full-blast.
“You okay in there, Zenith?” Pinkie Pie’s muffled voice came from outside the shower pod. The AI was just being polite – it could materialize sounds anywhere in the ship, including inside her skull, if it wanted. “Do you need a moment? I can give you a moment.” A moment passed. “How about now?”
“Sorry, Pinkie, I’m fine.” Zenith stuck her head under the spray and let it peel back her mane. The hot water sluiced away rivers of the thick goo that coated her body, and steam filled the little space instantly. Her pale-yellow coat began to emerge from beneath the sickly grey slime. “Just gimme a sec—a minute. Give me a minute.”
Fortunately, the AI knew when to be literal, and when to give a pony a fucking break. At least ten minutes passed before Pinkie tried again.
“Hey.” A pause. The voice was quieter now, more intimate. Right there in the shower with her. “Feel better?”
“Yeah, sorry.” Zenith batted at the controls with her hooves, eventually managing to shut off the spray. A gust of warm air began to flow down from vents in the ceiling, slowly drying her coat. “Still waking up, you know?
“Aunt Pinkie knows alllllll about that. You just let me know when you’re ready!”
“I’m ready now.” Zenith squeezed back out into the cabin. The AI had tidied up during the shower – the confetti was all gone, along with any traces of suspension fluid. The cryosleep pod was retracted into its storage position, replaced with a much more comfortable acceleration couch. The lighting was still dim, and would be for a few more hours until her eyes finished waking back up, but for now she could see just fine. She settled on the couch and pulled up a data pad. “How long?”
“Just a hair under 24 Terran years.” The field of stars filling the viewport vanished, replaced by a long series of solar calendars. “Or 26 if you’re catching up on Hearthswarming cards for Equus. By the way I have a bunch of Hearthswarming cards for you to sign when you get a chance.”
“They can wait.” Zenith waved away the calendars, pulling up a map of the local stars. “Why did you wake me? “
“That is definitely a question for Twilight! Hang on a second, let me—” The voice cut off, followed by the sound of a muffled scrum: hooves banging, wings flapping and muttered whispers. When the voice returned it was a new pony, still chipper, imbued with enthusiasm, but also more dignified. Responsible. “Good morning, Zenith. I hope you slept well. Sorry about Pinkie – I was trying to get a word in edgewise but you know how she can be.”
“It’s fine. Catch me up?”
“Approximately 197 hours ago, I detected a faint, repeating radio signal emanating from somewhere in the Gliese system.” Twilight Sparkle’s voice took on a didactic, lecturing tone, colored with just a hint of smugness. Zenith always suspected that the AI enjoyed simulating Twilight most of all, and put a bit more effort into her performances. “It wasn’t worth waking you over, but I did divert course a bit to bring us closer. With a better signal and some complex analysis—” Twilight’s voice dripped with glee, here; Zenith could practically hear her smiling, “—I was able to identify it as a White Distress Beacon, using codes that were common about thirty years ago.”
A frisson ran up Zenith’s spine. The temperature in the cabin seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant. “Is it her?”
“If it were just the beacon, it would be a good sign. But there’s more.” Twilight paused, and the viewscreen shifted. Labels appeared around the stars, including the brightest one in the center – Gliese 710. Around it, hyperbolic wave patterns sprang into existence, highlighting a path through interstellar space toward the star. “We crossed a wake signature four seconds before I woke you up. It’s a match for the Phrygian.”
Whatever else Twilight might have said went unheard. A quiet buzz replaced all other sounds, and the world went grey except for the viewscreen, which seemed to expand until Zenith’s whole world was that single yellow dot in its center: Gliese 710. She drew in a weak breath, then another and another. The cabin swam around her.
“Zenith?” Concern filled Twilight’s voice. “Are you alright? Do you need me to get Fluttershy? Hang on, I’ll—”
“No. I’m fine.” She closed her eyes and focused on the steady in-and-out of her breath. “Lay in a course for Gliese. How long will it take?”
“Nine days at full drive. Do you want to sleep for it?”
She shook her head. “No. I need to stay awake. I need to get back in shape.” She lifted a foreleg and grimaced at the sight – it was slender as a twig, most of the muscle withered away by decades of sleep. “Have Rainbow Dash start a workout plan. I need to be ready.”
“It’ll be tight,” Twilight cautioned. “Even with supplements. You were asleep for a long time.”
“Yeah. Better hurry, then.” Zenith looked back at the viewscreen. Like a magnet, Gliese seemed to draw her eyes. Though it was just pixels on a screen, nothing in the universe seemed more real to her than that little spot of light.
The Phrygian. After so many years, she had found her sister’s ship.
At last. I’m coming, Nadir.
* * *
Gliese 710 lay well outside surveyed space. Long-range telescopic observation by the Terrans had catalogued the star’s mass and spectral type down to a few degrees, and based on its wobble they knew it had at least three gas giants the size of Neptune or larger, but beyond that scant primer Zenith had little in the way of warning for whatever lay ahead. Dragons, for all she knew.
Nine days passed in an exhausted blur. The acceleration couch vanished when she wasn’t looking, replaced by a horrid torture device that the ship’s AI, in Rainbow Dash’s voice, called a ‘calisthenics machine.’ Every waking moment was spent stretching her muscles on the machine’s spindly limbs, straining against tension bands, pumping on quad-pedals, or quaffing thousands of calories of nutrient-laden shakes. The spaceship stank of her sweat; it condensed on the metal bulkheads, and Rainbow responded by increasing the cabin temperature, raising the dew point until the liquid evaporated and Zenith’s lips chapped. When she wasn’t gasping for breath she alternated between reading Twilight’s summaries of the approaching star and cursing Rainbow Dash’s parentage and sexual proclivities.
“Yeah, you wish,” Rainbow responded to one particularly imaginative suggestion. “Come on, two more reps. You’re almost done.”
“I want to die,” Zenith gasped. This particular exercise involved curling her body into a ball using only her abdominal muscles, while weighted bands attempted to pull her fore and hindlegs apart. In addition to building core strength, it was also an excellent simulation of what falling into a black hole probably felt like.
“Sure, sure, you can die when you’re asleep.” Rainbow Dash paused. “Wait, is that how it goes? Whatever. One more, you got this!”
With a pained grunt, Zenith managed to touch her elbows to her knees and hold the position for the count of three. The tension bands loosened as she relaxed, and she slumped on the hot floor to catch her breath. “Okay. What next?”
“Next, you’re done,” Rainbow said. There was a sound of pages flipping on a clipboard. “Twilight says we’re out of time.”
“What, already?” Zenith pushed herself up with a groan. The viewscreen still showed an endless list of exercise sets, and she waved it away. A view of the stars outside replaced it – Gliese 710 was magnitudes of order brighter, nearly as bright as the full moon seen from Equus. “I thought we had another day, at least?”
“We have almost thirty hours,” Twilight’s voice said. There was a muffled back-and-forth with Rainbow Dash that Zenith didn’t quite make out, and then it was all Twilight. “But you need to rest for most of that, and we need to plan. This system is weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“Weird, as in, I don’t know what to make of it.” The viewport flashed again, replaced with a schematic of the approaching star system. A dozen planetoids of various sizes spun around Gliese. The view quickly zoomed in on the fourth planet, a rocky bluish sphere swaddled in a thick atmosphere. Only vague suggestions of the surface, cragged by mountains and canyons, managed to shine through the haze. Dust, perhaps, or methane. A faint, gauzy ring, like a veil, circled the planet several thousand kilometers above its equator.
“Gliese 710-d, which I have temporarily designated as Lapis, unless you have any objections,” Twilight continued. The name matched the color, so Zenith did not object, and Twilight drove on after a slight pause. “It’s in the star’s habitable band, but on the cold side. There must not be much water down there or we’d be seeing huge icecaps. And it’s lighter than it ought to be, considering its radius. At a guess, I’d say ten percent of its mass is unaccounted for.”
Zenith blinked. “Unaccounted for, like, removed? Or some exotic geology? An aluminum-silicon core?”
“Probably the latter, but we won’t know until we get closer. All that’s just academic curiosity, though. The real weirdness is in orbit. See the rings?”
“Yeah. Ice moon get too close?” Most planetary rings formed when small moons fell within their parent’s Roche limit and were torn apart by tidal forces. They were pretty and uncommon – fewer than one percent of solar systems had a ringed planet similar to Saturn.
“Good guess, but no. It’s debris.”
Debris! Impossible. There had to be billions of tons of mass in that single orbital band. More metal and synthetics than even the Terrans had managed to lift into space over all their centuries of interstellar flight. Zenith leaned forward until her muzzle was just inches from the viewport, but even expanded to the full extent of the ship’s powerful sensors the rings appeared as nothing more than faint grey bands against the blackness of space. A table appeared beside them, filled with estimates of metallicity based on Twilight’s radar scans. Zenith frowned at the figures: predominantly iron, with a healthy amount of nickel and traces of cobalt.
“That doesn’t look like the material composition of any rational space station,” she said. “Sure it wasn’t an asteroid?”
“As sure as I can be from this distance.” Twilight’s voice held an appropriate tinge of modesty. She was, at heart, a scientific mare, and the AI simulated that well. “Analysis of reflected sunlight from the rings reveals an improbably high number of right angles and other geometric indicators of artificiality. There’s a fair amount of carbon in the ring, too. Graphene, nanofibers, the whole gamut. It’s manufactured.”
“Well.” Zenith sat back on the couch and pondered the viewscreen for a while. A protein shake emerged from a dispenser beside her, and it wasn’t until she’d drained the last chocolate-and-steroidy goodness from the tube that she spoke again. “And the Phrygian?”
An uncharacteristically long pause preceded Twilight’s next words, which were careful and clipped: “The wake trail terminates in high orbit, at which point she presumably switched to sublight drives. I don’t see the ship itself, but the signal we’ve been chasing is from a satellite. It’s been orbiting for decades, as best I can tell.”
Deep breath. “She could be down there, then?”
“Decades, Zenith. Nadir was your age when she left.”
“Technically a few minutes younger. And the Phrygian had a full set of cryosleep pods,” Zenith countered. “Even if it went down hard, she could be using them still.”
Twilight sighed. “Of course, we’ll keep looking. I just want to temper your expectations.”
“Right, consider them tempered.” Zenith wadded the shake tube into a ball and shoved it into the recycling hopper. “Take us in closer.”
“Uh…” The viewscreen flickered. “You’re not concerned about all the evidence of a long-dead space-faring alien civilization?”
“They are dead, right?”
“All signs point to yes,” Twilight said. “The planet is silent as a tomb.”
“Well, we’ll try not to disturb their graves.”
* * *
The Dorian coasted into a high polar orbit over Lapis and began gently teasing the surface with a wide range of microwave and radio frequencies. Whenever she crossed the equator and the enormous orbital debris ring, the speakers in Zenith’s cabin squealed with electronic feedback. The bands were highly reflective across the spectrum.
Zenith slept when she could, which wasn’t much. Her mind spun like a jet engine, feeding her body with nervous energy. The muscles in her limbs, now much fuller than when she’d woken only a week ago, twitched constantly. She trembled so hard the little clock on the shelf beside her pod rattled in sympathy. Sleep, when it came, was disjointed, hot and aching.
All the steroids probably didn’t help.
When she got tired of watching the clock’s digital readout advance, she pulled herself out of the sleep pod and squeezed through the ship’s innards back to the flight deck. Lapis filled the viewscreen from edge to edge. From orbit they could see all the sad details of the world below – enormous rents in the crust that weren’t caused by any geologic process; radioactive craters that still registered as hot; long, paved transportation routes that terminated abruptly in charred patches the size of cities.
“What a waste,” Zenith mumbled.
She hadn’t expected the AI to respond, but of course it could hear anything on the ship, no matter how quiet. If it wanted it could even hear her thoughts, though the AI was generally polite enough not to intrude within her head. So it was a surprise when a soft, refined voice answered.
“Cultures are like people, I’ve found,” Rarity said. A note of pain lingered in her words. “Some of them are self-destructive.”
“They made it to space, though.” She motioned with her muzzle toward the debris ring. “That’s supposed to be the goal line, isn’t it? If you can get to space, you can solve any problem biology tosses your way. Why’d they fail?”
“We might find answers down there. Or maybe just more mysteries.” There was a pause, and Zenith could imagine the real Rarity offering a shrug. “Don’t let it consume you. We can only be responsible for our own happiness.”
Zenith frowned. “Are you quoting a motivational calendar to me?”
Rarity huffed. “Darling, I am trying to mentally focus you for what is likely to be an arduous and stressful next few days, not to mention ones fraught with significant peril. And if we are being totally honest, as you seem to prefer at this moment, I want you to be prepared for disappointment. You know the odds of finding Nadir are low. This mission was always a long shot. And while I will always support you to the utmost of my abilities, part of that means ensuring that you have a realistic understanding of what your real mission here is.”
“I thought my real mission was to find my sister.”
“That has always been an ancillary bonus,” Rarity said. More than any of the other personalities in the AI’s banks, she could inflict her voice as a whip, and she used it that way now. “The real mission is simply to try and find her. To make a noble attempt, as you have already spent decades doing. What I mean is, you cannot fail – you have already succeeded beyond what any of us could have ever hoped.”
A queasy, bilious sensation built in Zenith’s gut as Rarity spoke, climbing slowly up her chest and into her heart. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard the AI’s rationalizations, but those always made sense in the depths of interstellar space. To hear them now, when they had proof of Nadir’s presence somewhere on the world below, felt like the unkindest cut of all.
“Well, I’m sorry.” She tried to keep her voice level, but heat leaked into it nevertheless. “But I didn’t come all this way as part of a gesture. I came to find my sister and—”
“Ladies, I hate to barge in, but I have something new,” Twilight Sparkle’s voice rode in smoothly. “I feel like it’s important.”
“Go ahead, Twilight. I think Zenith needs some time without me, anyway.” Rarity said. The faint sound of hooves on metal deckplates echoed from the speakers, followed by the hiss of a bulkhead door sliding shut. Of course, there were no functioning doors on the Dorian; it was simply the AI’s parting shot.
Zenith took a long, slow breath in, held it for nearly a minute, and let it gently escape. It was never entirely clear to her – or to any other pony or human, even those who researched and designed AIs – just how much of the simulation was real and how much of it was theater for her benefit. Had the Dorian’s AI diffracted itself into multiple threads, and it was talking to itself during these multiple-personality conversations? Or was it just a single intelligence reading from a careful script in different voices? The answer, according to the manual, was not to ask the damn question in the first place. Just play along with the AI’s make-believe. Don’t try to peer into the black box.
“Sorry about that,” Twilight said. “She just wants to help.”
“It’s fine. What’d you find?”
“A couple things. First, we’ll be crossing the distress beacon’s path soon. It’s in a fast, eccentric orbit, about what you’d expect from a ship making a hasty atmospheric entry. We can try to capture it, if you want.”
“Is there a point?” The Dorian was cramped enough already without stray satellites.
“Not in particular. It would take a while to match orbits, and it’s broadcasting exactly what you’d expect from a White beacon – a series of prime numbers in base two, the Fibonacci sequence and its own coordinates. Once it rounds the planet I’ll be able to get it with our telescopes. We’ll know then if it’s from the Phrygian.”
“Okay, leave it be for now. What else?”
“Lapis’s atmosphere. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read about. Look.”
The viewscreen shifted. A timestamp appeared in the lower-left corner – a recording, not a live view. The camera peered out over the horizon as the Dorian began to cross over to the planet’s night side. The blue crescent below grew thinner and sharper, and when the sun finally touched the edge of the planet, there was a brief, iridescent flash of light, as though a rainbow had swept itself across Zenith’s eyes. It was gone in a moment, and the camera looked out on a dark field of stars.
Interesting. “You get a spectrograph of that flash?”
“I did. Nitrogen, of course. Some oxygen. But the refraction you saw was caused by a suspension of iron, nickel and cobalt.”
“Metal doesn’t usually suspend itself in mid-air.” Zenith rewound the footage and played it again, slowed by a factor of a thousand. Seen that way, the flash actually danced through a series of rainbows, vanishing briefly and reappearing more than a dozen times before fading. “That’s the same material as the ring, isn’t it?”
“Same material, same ratio, same isotopes, same everything as best I can tell.” The AI’s tones, which had held a sense of unease, now filled with excitement. The AI was simulating its favorite thing – a scientist. “I’d like to send a probe in.”
Zenith winced, though she knew the request would come eventually. The Dorian only carried two probes, and while the AI could manufacture more given time and materials, they were by far the most limited resource at Zenith’s disposal. Using one – using half – of them now could leave her blind in the future.
But there was no helping it. If the Phrygian was on that planet, then she would have to go down at some point, and not sending a probe first was suicidally reckless. She nodded at the viewscreen.
“Excellent! Probe away. Following with cameras.”
On the viewscreen, a tiny speck of light streaked off toward the planet below. They were on the day side, still, and Zenith quickly lost sight of the probe against the bright blue haze that swaddled Lapis.
“Altitude, 100 kilometers,” Twilight said. “You should be able to see the ionization trail now.”
There it was. Not the probe, which was far too small for Zenith’s meat-based eyes to see, but the vast trail of glowing air left in the probe’s wake as it descended through the atmosphere. A falling star of her own design – she considered making a wish, then discarded the silly thought. There was, after all, only one thing worth wishing for, and she had already bent so much of her life toward that effort. What point was there in wishing for what she had already crafted with her own hooves?
“It’s in. Coasting nicely now. Scoops are out and sampling. We should get some preliminary results back in a few minutes.”
The AI went silent. While its other personalities sometimes tried to fill the space with conversation, Twilight rarely bothered. Zenith could imagine her reading a book at times like this, oblivious to the other ponies in the room.
And that was fine. Being a spacer meant being comfortable with stretches of quiet as deep as space was vast.
Finally: “Huh.”
This was a first. Twilight, stumped? “What?”
“The atmosphere appears to be filled with trillions of inert nanochines. Electrostatic charges are keeping them in suspension. They’re causing that refraction we observed.”
Zenith considered the entirety of the planet on the viewscreen. “That’s a lot of nanochines.”
“It is a lot,” Twilight allowed.
“Dangerous?”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to breathe them, for the same reason you wouldn’t want to inhale any fine particulate matter. But I don’t think they’ll, like, dissolve you or anything. The probe seems fine.”
“So, you’re saying we could go down there.”
Twilight squawked. Literally – her voice broke apart into a squeal of static. “What? Absolutely not! I don’t think you appreciate how incredible a discovery this planet is, Zenith. The ruins of an undiscovered alien civilization, with suggestions of technological paths different from anything we or the Terrans developed! If we burn drives, we can make it back to known space in 17 years. Figure another few years to assemble a research fleet, add in the outbound travel, and we could be back here in 50 years. That’s a reasonable—”
“No.” Zenith shook her head. “And just leave her here? That’s not what I came for.”
Twilight tried another angle. “It’s too dangerous. Some of the nanochines are inert, sure, but they might not all be. Something destroyed that entire civilization – there could easily be enough left over to kill you. Think of the risk, Zenith.”
“I have. I know what I want.” She set her datapad into its cradle and squeezed back through the narrow corridor to her cabin. All the loose junk had to be secured for atmospheric entry, and she began stowing items in their proper spots. “What do the others think?”
“You already know what I think,” Rarity said. She had a weary tone, and for a moment it recalled Zenith’s mother, trying to dissuade her from dating a tattooed colt who turned bolts at the dockyard. “But I suppose I’ll say it for everypony’s benefit: our chances of finding Nadir alive are extremely low. This mission has already succeeded beyond our expectations. We should take that victory and leave.”
“You know me, girl,” Rainbow Dash said. “I came out here to rock and roll. I say we go down.”
“Um, if there’s still a chance we can find Nadir, I think we have to keep trying,” Fluttershy said. Hers was a rare voice, one the AI didn’t often unbox. “But we should be careful, though.”
“Mmmm, color me undecided. Which I guess would be beige?” Pinkie Pie said. “Could go either way, you know?”
So, even the AI was conflicted. Zenith tilted her head toward the ceiling. “Applejack?”
“Sisters is sisters,” Applejack said. “We stay until we know for sure.”
Wonderful. Zenith set her hooves to steady herself against a momentary surge of vertigo. The ship making a slight maneuver, probably. When the sensation passed, she forced her way back onto the navigation deck. The planet seemed closer in the viewscreen, now. Looming larger.
“We’re decided, then,” she said. “Twilight, start scanning for anything that looks promising on the surface. Odd radio signatures, EM emissions, the usual. Get a list of candidate locations to search.”
“As you say, Zenith.” Any lingering hint of dissent in Twilight’s voice was well concealed. “It might take a few days. The longer we scan, the more we can narrow sites down.”
“That’s fine. We have time.” She pondered the viewscreen. “Did you get everything you need from that satellite?”
“I did.” A new image appeared on the viewscreen, a still from one of the telescopes. A tiny oblong prism, no larger than a shoebox, bounded with folding solar panels and a parabolic antenna. It bore a stencil on its side, half-illuminated by Gliese and half in shadow. Even so obscured, Zenith deciphered it easily; every time she closed her eyes to sleep she saw it.
ISTS-N8614-PHRYGIAN
There it was. The last bit of proof she needed. She realized her head was bobbing in a constant nod, as though affirming to herself that all the years of effort had been worth it.
“Wonderful.” And it was. “Do you need anything more from it?”
“Not really. White beacons don’t have any data logs. It’s just a museum piece, now.”
“Good. Destroy it.”
“Uh.” A pause. “Are you sure about that? It could still be of some use, especially if we encounter trouble down—”
Zenith sighed. “Dash?”
“On it, girl,” Rainbow Dash’s voice instantly replaced Twilight’s. “Dialed in. Say the word.”
“Fire.”
The lights dimmed, and a faint vibration passed through the deckplates as the main mass driver activated, propelling a pea-sized iron sphere down the length of the ship. The little projectile left the barrel as a ball of plasma travelling just under nine percent of the speed of light. The sublight engines burned for several seconds to compensate for the recoil.
A tenth of a second later, a bright flash lit the night side of Lapis. Zenith watched on the viewscreen as the glowing cloud expanded, faded and was lost. In time, not even the AI would be able to tell where the satellite’s atoms ended and the rest of the debris around Lapis began.
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Nice first chapter! Keep it going!
Humans have interstellar spacecraft, but no solar system spanning interferometer telescope array or at least a TPF like telescope? Sad!
I like this, so far
I was unaware of this contraction of 'nanomachines', can't say I like it. Not that it's hugely important.
Following the blog post, resolute Yes to Sci-fi from this guy as well. At first, I suspected this fic took major hints from The Invincible, but since the necrosphere of Lapis is inert, there's probably no direct connection to that novel.
Why did she destroy the satellite?
11103325
That is an excellent question.
Liking it so far. Lots of mystery. Lots of unexpected situations. I'm subscribed now.
... why blow up the distress beacon? Seems odd to me.
Though sleeper FTL raises some questions... how much will technology have advanced by the time she gets back?
Nothing like Pinkie to cut through the sleep and wake you up instantly.
Love to see that Dragons are still the default "Here is the unknown, filled with danger. Enter at your own peril" marker.
Gotta admit, getting the chills here.
Not promising.
Hmm. Is the mission Zenith's idea, or is there an organisation or entity driving this with Zenith hitching a ride on it?
That was .. unexpected.
I can see why Zenith doesn't want to wait to investigate the world, but .. if she dies, this world will remain undiscovered for eons more. No mention of any other way of getting information back to the rest of ponydom/humankind either.
Hmm. Strange worlds, scarred ruins, and mystery, mystery in the gulfs of space. This will be fun.
And questions, too, plenty of them and early. What was it that killed this world? What drove Nadir to this place, and what happened to her? Are the AI's personalities original creations here, or were they based on real figures from the past? And why precisely was Zenith so set on destroying that beacon?
This is some good, solid SF, with a delicious pony flavor added. Definitely intrigued about where things are headed, and what's going on with Zenith and Nadir!
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Almost all of these will be answered in the next chapter! Well, maybe half of them.
Very much enjoying this. Getting a lot of Blindsight vibes from it, but that may just be that Peter Watts and you both went for realistic deep space travel. My first thought on the description of the atmosphere was a cobalt bomb, Strangelove style, but the nanomachines have me worrying about some variation on grey goo with the planet's non-atmospheric components excluded for some reason (perhaps sending them out to eat the aftermath of a cobalt bomb?). The distress beacon destruction has me expecting Zenith seeking vengeance on Nadir, which their names are encouraging further. I loved the Rainbow Dash regimen bit, and I'm very excited for the rest of this.
Colour me intrigued. A lovely bit of hard sci-fi with a dash of pony.
More please!
This certainly is a lovely premise. Consider me hooked. I also agree with 11103239 regarding the Invincible flavour to the setting. What an intriguing premise, and I cannot wait for more!
I cannot help but wonder if she has her sister's best interests at heart, or if we are going to see an inversion of the "rescue a lost sibling" trope? At any rate, that certainly is some serious effort put in to locating her, and I am looking forward to seeing her motivations revealed.
ah, this was great thing to break up the sci-fi technology exposition with! very Pinkie Pie. Pinkie PAI?
signal processing! i'm smiling at Twilight's smiling
interesting to have this phrase stick around long past the point where dragons became a familiar species to ponies, fossil phrases are fun!
an interesting twist on the old saying! depends on one's personal view of consciousness, really
so many great bits to appreciate here! the prose is just very solid SF, smoothly running through its exposition, and i really like the more realistic depiction of deep space travel and the effects of hibernation. Zenith and Nadir both work as fantastic pony names and as fantastic sister names, and the decades having passed due to the realities of interstellar travel also raises a lot of intriguing possibilities about what could have happened for Nadir. i mean, i guess that's the point of the story, but i also just love stories about characters on different subjective timelines!
but what i adore the most is the AI system speaking through the voices of our beloved Mane Six. their voices and perspectives were so beautifully spot-on, and just the idea of them being there to make Zenith less lonely and the story feel more pony works wonderfully as a solution on multiple levels. just great stuff!
I love the idea that there's multiple personalities within the AI so not only are you just speaking to a machine or even just a simulated pony but it's like you're with a whole crew! The way they even swap out for different specializations is an amazing touch and even their "back and forth" mutterings.
Well that's scary! I wonder how that works, I guess if Zenith was somehow incapacitated then the ship could still follow their wishes but still.
Oh so it's entirely the AIs doing... I guess whatever it takes to keep itself entertained while maintaining a sleeping pony for decades.
This is peak Twilight, an excitable nerd who is proud of what she knows and fascinated by what she doesn't!
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I know a story with a similar premise with a single AI running all six personalities at once. It's right here! I'd -strongly- suggest you read the one that came before it to get some idea of what is happening. To Devour The Seventh World is also a good romp that needs more people to read it, and the author has some other great Sci-fi stuff.